She loved him. That was not supposed to have happened. It hadn’t been part of the plan. This, whatever this had turned into, could not end well. She had to bury this. Deeply. But not right now. No, for now, she’d savor it before she had to put it away. For now, she would let herself contemplate what might be.
But not for long. The soft whimpers from the baby monitor next to her head erupted into mighty wails.
He groaned. “My turn.” He kissed the top of her head. “How couples ever manage to have more than one child is a mystery.” He climbed out of bed, pulled on his jeans, and made his way to the nursery.
Had he referred to them as a couple? That was... confusing. Didn’t being a couple imply some kind of a commitment? More than a few words on a legal document outlining and defining roles and responsibilities? Sure, the world thought they were Romeo and Juliet incarnate, but things hadn’t worked out so well for those two, and it wouldn’t work out well for them either. She let it pass because, honestly, she didn’t have the brainpower to make sense of anything.
All she wanted to do was drift.
Was this what the eye of a hurricane felt like? Buffeted by the high winds of passion, dipping and gliding on the gale-force blasts, rocketing up, spiraling down only to catch another updraft before exploding through the eyewall to land in the calm that followed the orgasmic plunge.
How had all those romance novels gotten it so wrong? A million sparkling shards of crystal? Fireworks? Shattering? None of those came close to the whirlwind that might have been a rollercoaster going over a waterfall. Backward. Upside down. Without a safety belt.
So what was nagging at her? What was the problem? The problem was she could get used to this. There was no way she could allow that to happen. Somehow, she had to find a way out of this before her well-meaning aunts pushed them to the altar. While she could still escape from him with her heart intact.
CHAPTER 37
ETHAN PUT THE FINISHING touches on lunch while Stephanie worked at the dining room table. He had been telling the truth when he’d told her sex wouldn’t be good for him if it wasn’t good for her. Unless she was a talented actor—and he doubted anyone could be that skilled—it had been good for her, and that had made it great for him.
The intensity of her orgasms humbled him, invigorated him, drove him to a pleasure he never dreamed existed. How could that kind of response not inflate him? This wild, wonderful woman touched something in him, healed something that had been broken too long. Or had she created something in him that was always supposed to have been there but never had been?
For the first time since—well, since forever—Ethan was dreading Monday morning, resenting the careers that would require them to leave this comfortable cocoon and rejoin the real world. Why had he dreaded the daily sex clause in their postnuptial agreement? What a fool. He was already anticipating the encore performance required on Saturday and Sunday.
He set a plate in front of Stephanie and set his own plate on the table next to her.
Stephanie grabbed a fork, isolated a single strand of pasta, and twirled it around her fork. “Is this your famous Alfredo over homemade fettuccine?” she asked.
He hadn’t seen eyes that big since the first time he’d handed a client a multi-million-dollar check after winning their case.
“With shrimp and scallops. Dig in and tell me what you think.”
She speared a scallop, swirled it in the sauce, and popped her carefully crafted creation into her mouth. Her eyes half-closed, she chewed slowly and moaned as she swallowed.
Ethan’s ego soared. “That’s your orgasm face. It’s nice to know I can give a fully-clothed woman that kind of pleasure.” Take that, Valarie. Yeah, he might have a glorious cock, but he was no one-trick pony.
She set up another forkful, this time stabbing a shrimp. “The way the flavors and textures explode over my taste buds rivals an orgasm, that’s for sure.” She pointed at him with her fork. “This is nearly as sensual as your backrubs.”
She took her time chewing and swallowing. How could she make eating so sexy? But then, everything about her turned him on.
“If cooking was the only thing you could do, it would be worth keeping you around.”
Ouch. He forced a smile. “Good thing I’m multitalented.”
“Exactly.” She dipped a corner of the warm garlic bread into a puddle of sauce and nibbled at the edge. “Carbs have never tasted so good. If I’m not careful, the ten extra pounds I’ve always carried could turn into twenty in no time. I’m going to have to learn to pace myself.”
He waggled his eyebrows. “Don’t worry, we’ll find some way to work off the extra calories.” He took a sip of wine. It wasn’t easy drinking with a grin as wide as the one straining the muscles of his face, but he managed.
Good food, good sex, good company. What a perfect afternoon. He was relaxed and happy and satisfied in every way possible.
“I saw you give some of them money. Aren’t you afraid...? I mean, don’t you think...?”
Damn it, when was he going to learn to not tempt karma? “What?”
She shot him a sheepish grin. “It’s hard to find the right words without sounding like a bigoted bitch, but aren’t you afraid giving them money will turn them into entitled moochers?”
Ethan set his fork down and folded his hands. “That bigoted bitch thing? You nailed it.”
“Hey,” she protested.
“In legal terms, you opened the door, don’t blame me for walking through it. Think about it, Steph. How many so-called welfare Cadillacs did you see in the parking lot? Anyone wearing Nikes or Air Jordans?”
She blushed. At least she had the decency to look embarrassed. “No, there weren’t many cars in the parking lot at all.”
“That’s because most of them don’t have cars and either walk or rely on public transportation,” he said.
“And no one wore fancy clothes. In fact, they were kind of ratty.”
“Thank you for making my point. Steph, it’s a system that eats its young. You saw Manuel this morning. The kid is brilliant, but he’s living with his grandmother and five other kids. There’s no man in the house to teach him the simple things like how to properly shake a hand. Without that basic skill, he doesn’t have a chance to make a good first impression at a job interview.
“You know Megan and I grew up in the system. Fewer than twenty-five percent of siblings in foster care manage to stay together, but, through some miracle, we did. Father Jim claims it was because God had a special reason for that, but let’s just say I’m still waiting to be clued in.” He drained his wine glass.
“I can’t believe two healthy, adorable kids bounced around the system their entire lives and didn’t get adopted. People go to China for babies; they adopt medically fragile kids from Russia. But at least you eventually got out,” she said.
He paused to refill his wine glass. “We did, and it’s damn near impossible to get out of that neighborhood. Most of my friends work more than one job, but it isn’t enough. Hell, it would take most of them a month to earn enough to pay for one hour of my time then there wouldn’t be money left over for anything else. I got lucky, in a way.”
Lucky. That was a word he would never have used to describe himself, at least before he’d met Stephanie. But now, he knew he had been lucky. He had made it out when so many others hadn’t. Sure, there had been endless work and plenty of sacrifice along the way. A lot of hurt and humiliation, but he had survived, even thrived. Then a quirk of fate had put him on a collision course with the beautiful woman sitting across from him.
Collision? Yeah, Smitty’s collision with a drunk driver had sent Ethan caroming into Stephanie’s orbit, and he’d been captured in her gravitational field. A force that was becoming impossible to resist. Did he want to resist? Was Stephanie that special reason Father Jim had talked about?
“How is giving a woman a few dollars to fill her gas tank to get to a job interview any different from paying five hundred dollars
for some charity event where everyone sips champagne and congratulates themselves on how magnanimous they are? So much money gets lost in the bureaucracy there isn’t much left for the people who need it. If a few bucks here or there helps, I’m okay with it. I don’t give a crap about one church or the other. I let others worry about doctrine and dogma; I worry about the people. The people Megan and I grew up with. The people we used to be.”
The heat of his rising temper singed him. This was so not the direction he wanted to take this conversation. Preaching was the last thing he wanted to do. It never ended well. Especially with—Valarie.
“But it makes them dependent.”
“Think about it, Steph. Who made sure you had a place to live, food to eat, clothes to wear? Who bought your first car? Who paid your tuition? Your father? Did his help and support make you dependent? Or did it give you the foundation you needed to be successful in life?”
“Leave Daddy out of this. I can’t help the way he and Mom raised me. The things they taught me. Somethings are too deeply ingrained, too much a part of my values to abandon because of a good-looking, well-spoken man, no matter how many orgasms he’s given me. At least not yet.”
So there was hope.
She took a sip of wine. “Are you an alcoholic?”
He pushed his plate away and crossed his arms over his chest. “You think that giving someone money calls my judgment into question? Soft heart, soft head?”
“No! No... it’s just I did some research on St. Alexander’s. I read about the communion controversy. I was... curious.”
He picked up his wine glass and swirled it. “Most of us are broken in some way. Jim has a real gift for rebuilding hearts and souls.”
She giggled.
“What?”
She shook her head. “A vision of Father Jim wearing a stained blue chambray work shirt, sleeves rolled up past his elbows, with an oval name tag stitched over his heart—no, make that halo-shaped, with wings—popped into my head. The idea of him rooting around in someone’s chest as God’s mechanic is funny. Is he rebuilding your heart?”
Ethan pressed his lips together. “It’s not that simple.” But he knew that wasn’t true. Jim had told him that point-blank during their monthly all-you-can-eat wing night at the local pub, their confessional. The last sane thing he’d done before madness had invaded his world.
The answer was simple. Jim had rebuilt Ethan as far as he could. Over the years, the priest had become Ethan’s father in both senses of the word. He was the only one who knew Ethan’s entire history. The only one who knew how deep Ethan’s pain ran. The only one who knew how frightened he was to love again. And how much he wanted to.
Sour grapes.
“It could be that simple if you wanted it to be,” Stephanie challenged him.
He arranged his silverware in straight line. Could it be that simple? No, this was about as complicated as it got. Married to his nephew’s stepmother. To the widow of his sister’s... his sister’s what? Boyfriend? Lover? Wow, if that wasn’t the quintessential country song, he didn’t know what was.
He took a deep drink. Remember. Yeah, he remembered. Jim had rebuilt him as far as he could, but was it far enough? No. He still wasn’t whole. Wasn’t good enough. He finished his wine. The fruity blend burned its way down his throat and hit his stomach like vinegar. “My heart has nothing to do with anything.”
HIS WORDS SLAPPED HER; it took all her self-control not to recoil. Of course, his heart had nothing to do with anything. And it never would.
She chewed the once-succulent shrimp that might as well still be in its shell with the tail attached. The heavenly Alfredo was suddenly no better than the school glue her brother Knox had once convinced her was béchamel sauce. She swallowed hard to push the food down, hoping the pain would follow. It didn’t. She took a sip of water to dislodge the quickly expanding lump in her throat.
“My mistake,” she croaked, nearly choking on her words.
Her insecurities attacked. Why would a man like Ethan want to invest a single second longer with her than was absolutely necessary?
She wouldn’t be surprised if he kept a calendar on his desk with Megan’s anticipated release date circled in red. Did he start each day by drawing a bold X through the day like a prisoner counting down the days to freedom? Or did he save that task for the end of the day, savoring it like a decadent dessert?
Either way, when his self-imposed sentence was over, he and Megan—and Pete—would celebrate a joyous homecoming that wouldn’t include her.
She’d been an idiot to think that something more was growing between them. That there were actual feelings for him growing in her. The only thing that needed to grow in here was a baby.
Smitty’s baby.
CHAPTER 38
ETHAN ACCEPTED THE flute of orange juice he’d bribed a waiter to bring him. He was no teetotaler, but alcohol and breakfast didn’t mix. Okay, so this was technically brunch, but it was only eleven a.m. Still in the breakfast zone. Prime rib for breakfast? That he could do. Mimosas? Not so much.
Stephanie’s aunt Deb, hell, his aunt Deb, had practically wrestled Pete away from him the moment they’d walked into the club’s ballroom and now sat cradling the baby in her arms. The poor kid’s face was covered in lipstick kisses. Aunt Deb had won this round of the baby war, bringing the score to one all, but once Aunt Sandy—who had been waiting for them at the church door this morning—made her grand appearance, the battle would renew.
How many red lights had Aunt Deb run to get here ahead of Aunt Sandy? The world would never know, but Ethan would bet a year’s worth of contingency fees that next Sunday would find both women ducking out of mass immediately after communion to get to brunch first. He wouldn’t be surprised if they trade their Jimmy Choo pumps for running shoes. Anything for an edge in the Pete sweepstakes.
Ethan shook his head. Two weeks with Stephanie and he already knew the difference between Jimmy Choo and Christian Louboutin. A stupid red sole made a shoe worth that kind of money? It was nearly obscene, considering his wife had an entire wall of their closet devoted to designer shoes. What was really obscene? He loved those shoes, and their effects, as much as she did. Perhaps more.
Especially last night when—Uh oh.
With her face set in a grim determination he’d only seen when he’d pushed the legal limits to the bleeding edge, the Honorable Sandra J. Banner stormed into the ballroom looking anything but honorable and stalked straight toward Deb Tobin, her supposed best friend and sorority sister. Nothing in either woman’s posture said friend or sister. He only hoped they didn’t try to play tug of war with the baby.
But he couldn’t begrudge all the love those two were showering on his precious nephew. Wasn’t that what he wanted for Pete? To have the security that only came from knowing you were loved unconditionally? Something he had never experienced. Hell, he would have been happy with conditional love.
“So, you and Stephanie. Congratulations on pulling off that little coup.”
Her voice raked over him. Every muscle clenched as the cloying aroma of her signature scent engulfed him. It was all he could do to keep from gagging. Funny how, on her, it was always the masculine sandalwood undertones that struck him first. So much for Chanel being the ultimate in femininity.
How could I ever have thought this was sexy?
But he had, once upon a time. Before she’d passed him off to the next station on the assembly line. “Dr. Galindez, shouldn’t you be trolling some makeshift skateboard park up in the Badlands for another vulnerable, young street urchin to civilize?”
“I’ve always loved your sarcasm. You’re a natural at it. No augmentation necessary in that department.” She poked a blood-red fingernail behind his ear and drew it slowly down his jaw. “You’ve healed nicely. Any residual pain?”
“Not from my jaw.” Other parts, sure, but he had to give the devil her due. “I had an excellent surgeon. Outrageously expensive, but excellent.”
“There’s the proper appreciation I expect. I’m thinking it’s time for an interest payment on that ‘outrageously expensive’ bill.” She continued her journey south, caressing his neck.
Damn if that didn’t send his dick pulling into his body for protection. No worries, buddy. Not gonna happen. “I defended a case last year, a male escort charged with prostitution. Guilty as sin, but, if you pardon the expression, I got him off on a technicality. He told me the going rate for male escorts in Philly is two grand a night. My bill was paid in full a long time ago.”
“Prostitution is such an ugly word. I never gave you money.”
“You gave me your credit card. Same difference.”
“Po-tay-to, Po-tah-to.”
“So, what? We traded services? Your surgical talents for my bedroom talents?”
“You didn’t have any bedroom talents until I taught you what to do. I hope Stephanie appreciates all the hard work I did.”
Her attempt at a sexy laugh churned his stomach. “What do you want, Maria? You have to know this won’t end well.”
“Still holding a grudge, I see, but, if you’re honest with yourself, you have to admit you enjoyed it every bit as much as I did.”
Okay, she had him there. What eighteen-year-old, semi-homeless virgin wouldn’t have welcomed a night in a woman’s bed? And he hadn’t cared that the woman was old enough to be the mother he didn’t remember.
Huh.
Could that have been the attraction all along? A stupid Oedipus complex?
“You were welcome to my body, but did you have to mangle my heart in the process?” God, he hoped that didn’t sound as pathetic as it felt.
Another stomach-turning sexy laugh tore through him. Had he lapped those up like a kitten attacking cream? Yeah, he had. Now that was pathetic.
“It was part of the process. We couldn’t turn you into a polished, sophisticated super-stud and leave you with a tender heart. That would have hurt you more in the long run.”
For Pete's Sake: An Enemies to Lovers Marriage of Convenience Standalone Romance Novel (Tobin Tribe Book 1) Page 19