by Maisey Yates
“I don’t think anyone thinks it’s funny at all. I think they assume we’re in here not working.”
“Oh. Really?”
“Really. Did you see the paper this morning?”
“No, I didn’t have the chance to grab it.”
“We’re the new hot couple, you know.”
“Can I see?”
He rounded the desk and leaned over, typing in the web address for the newspaper they’d been featured in. “There you are.”
She leaned in next to him, that sweet vanilla scent teasing his senses, making his body harden with tension and arousal.
A small smile curved her lips. “They know my name.”
“You sound surprised.”
“No one’s missed me much over the past year. Which I actually consider kind of a blessing. I haven’t really been keen on sharing my downfall with the world.”
“What? That your mother stole your money?”
“That she abandoned me because she knew she’d gotten everything she could out of me. Because my sales—album sales, ticket sales—were dwindling to nothing.”
“So what have you been doing then, this past year?”
She shrugged again, her blue eyes fixed on a point somewhere behind him. “Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
She looked at him, pale eyes filled with anger now. “Maybe I haven’t done the best I could with my time. But I didn’t really know what to do. I only know how to do one thing.” She looked away. “My mother made sure I only knew one thing. I tried to … I tried to talk to my old booking agent. Tried to see about playing venues I used to play. I called my label and asked them if they wanted to release a greatest hits album. Turns out, they don’t think I have any.” She laughed, a hollow, bitter sound that made his chest ache. “So in that sense, I did something. But I just … I didn’t know what else to do when all of that was shot down.”
“What about playing piano bars and things like that?”
“Ironically, that’s the kind of thing I am a bit too famous for, and I don’t mean that in a snobbish way, I mean … I didn’t want that to show up in tabloids.”
“That’s not really a great excuse, Noelle. You basically just sat there and let everything fall apart.”
“No. No I did not. Everything was wrecked, utterly wrecked by my mother. She smashed everything to pieces—I didn’t let it fall apart. And yes, maybe I could have done something, maybe I should have, but every night I’ve gone to bed hoping … hoping that somehow in the morning it would be fixed. That things would go back to normal. I tried to force it to go back to normal.” She looked at him, blue eyes intent on his, an impact he felt all the way through his body. “Now … now I don’t even want things to go back to normal. But I just … I felt burned out. I was just so tired. This, having a chance to hold onto something, this at least makes me feel like I can fight. Like I have something to fight with.”
His chest felt strange. As if it had gotten smaller, or his heart had gotten larger. He didn’t like it. “You could learn something else.”
Her frame slumped. “I don’t know if I have the energy anymore. To devote myself to mastering something other than music, I mean. I’ve done that. Practicing, improving, every day without stopping since I was a child. It didn’t really get me anywhere, did it?”
He didn’t know why he felt compelled to try and offer her … something. Comfort maybe? He only knew that he did. “Very few people live their lives that way, Noelle. With drills and practice for eight hours a day, in addition to performing and promoting and traveling.”
“Are you telling me you work any less hard?” she asked.
“No, I work a lot. But I choose to. There are plenty of people who go nine to five, five days a week.”
She looked down, her throat working. “What if I can’t do anything else?”
Everything about his carefully laid plan, her being in the office, her being anywhere near him, suddenly felt wrong. Like he was joining in the queue of people who’d used her.
A bit too late to feel that way.
Much too late. And she was walking in with her eyes open.
“Of course you can. Here,” he slapped his palm on the leather back of the chair, “get in the chair.”
She sat back down, her expression confused. Damn, but she made him feel every inch the Big Bad Wolf to her Little Red Riding Hood. He didn’t really like the feeling.
He shoved his conscience to one side. He’d deal with it later. “Do you type?”
She grimaced. “Not really. Not fast.”
“Well, you’re going to learn.” He pulled out a stack of papers he’d set aside for his PA. “I want you to enter this into the computer. These are specs for different building plans. If you enter the numbers in these cells, the computer will do the math for you. You just enter it in.”
“I can do that.”
“Okay, do that. I’m going to go down the hall and make some phone calls, and I’ll be back to check on you.” Distance was definitely necessary.
He walked out of the office and closed the door behind him, his chest still tight. He didn’t know why it mattered, but he wanted to show Noelle that she could do something. Something other than doing drills every day for a career that had crumbled to nothing right in front of her.
More than that, he didn’t like what he saw in her eyes. That look that said she saw herself as a failure. He’d watched his mother go through that. Watched her pin her self-worth on the perception of a fickle public.
There was no happiness there.
When and how had he started comparing her to his mother? He ought to be comparing her to her own. Actually, the truth of it was, he shouldn’t be putting this much thought into her either way. She was just the means to an end, and he was the same to her.
This wasn’t personal. Not between the two of them.
He ignored the kick in his gut that said otherwise.
The sense of accomplishment that filled Noelle when she moved the last piece of paper to her finished stack was silly, and she knew it. It had been an easy job, one that she was sure anyone with fingers could do, and yet, it was more than she’d pushed herself to do recently.
She’d been so determined to live in the past. All the time she spent still doing drills she could have used to learn any number of job skills. She simply hadn’t. Part of her hadn’t believed she could. But Ethan had believed in her. Enough to leave her in his office on her own, to trust her to do the work.
The door to the office opened and Ethan walked in. “I did it,” she said, not quite able to wipe the idiot grin off of her face.
“Good,” he said, not half as thrilled as she was.
“Thank you.”
The corners of his mouth turned down. “It’s nothing. My PA will be happy that she doesn’t have to do that today.”
“It was something to me.”
His eyebrows locked together. “You can do things, Noelle. You aren’t stupid. You aren’t handicapped in any way. You can do whatever you like. Don’t leave it up to the public to decide how much you’re worth.”
Did she do that? She supposed she had. She’d been so worried about what people might think … that was one reason she hadn’t gone and gotten a job. That and the lingering hope that someday she’d be able to fix things.
But she hadn’t fixed it yet. And she’d let things get too bad. So much of this had become her fault.
“You’re right.”
“Yeah, well, of course,” he said.
“Really. I could have done something. I didn’t.”
“Well you can do data entry for me if you like. It’s boring, but my PA thinks so too, so she’ll be glad to do other things.”
Noelle felt her throat tighten and then she just felt silly. Getting emotional over a desk job.
“Thank you.”
“It will allow you to be around the office more, which will be good as far as setting the stage for our wedding.”
She swall
owed. “Yes, it will.”
“No working late, though. I plan on keeping you very busy at night.”
CHAPTER SIX
KEEPING her busy at night turned out to mean something very different from what she’d immediately thought. She was slightly embarrassed to admit, even to herself, exactly what her first thoughts had been.
But what he actually meant turned out to be something far beyond what she’d imagined.
“Australia?” she asked the next morning when Ethan stopped by. It was good for the staff to see him there, he said. Even better if they just thought he was leaving early after a night of unbridled passion.
“Yeah. I need you to come and meet my family, and in order to do that you have to come to my family’s home. Not my parents’ home. My grandparents’ home. I spent a lot of time there growing up.”
“That’s … that’s really nice.” She frowned. “I really don’t like the idea of lying to your grandparents.”
“I’m sure my grandfather half expects this. He’s controlling as hell, but I actually think he means well. He knows I’ll do the right thing, or at least the thing he asks of me. Which is more than he’s ever got from his own son.”
Ethan made it sound as if his parents were a lost cause, but at least he had his grandparents. She didn’t have that. Her father, an investment banker from Switzerland according to her mother, had left before her first birthday. And her mother’s antics had alienated Noelle’s grandparents long before she was born.
She couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to have that stability. Any stability.
“Do they … do they know about my mother and your father?”
“Odds are they do. He wasn’t exactly discreet.”
“Ethan, I’m …”
“Don’t.”
She stopped the apology from tumbling out and tried not to be too hurt by the hard tone of his voice. She cleared her throat. “But your grandfather … he’s good to you?”
Ethan shrugged. “Yeah. He’s tough, but that’s probably a good thing.”
Do it again, Noelle. You’re getting sloppy. Why was her mother’s voice still so loud? Just the memory of it made her hands ache. She remembered doing scales for hours, so long that she could hardly feel her fingers anymore, so that the action seemed disconnected from her body, divorced from conscious thought.
“Too tough isn’t always good,” she said, flexing her fingers to try and relieve the phantom pains.
“Too easy isn’t good either. No discipline? No control? Makes for a pretty worthless excuse for a human being.”
The venom in his tone surprised her. “And too much turns you into a machine repeating the same drills on the piano eight hours a day.”
“It’s a rare person who has too much discipline, Noelle. But you might fit under the heading.”
“You too, Ethan?”
He turned to face her, his dark eyes molten, hot, burning straight into her. “That remains to be seen, I think. Be prepared for my grandmother to grill you, by the way.”
She let out the breath she’d been holding and tried to smile. “This is going to be quite the dinner party.”
“This may be why I haven’t married yet.” He chuckled darkly. “My family is far too dysfunctional to inflict on anyone else. Of course, it may be me. If they’re as bad as all that, I can’t be much better.”
“You seem nice to me.”
“Well, that’s the thing, Noelle, you don’t really know me. If you did, you might feel differently. And you aren’t marrying me, not really. Not forever.” The look that flashed in his dark eyes was strange, pain-filled. It made Noelle’s stomach tighten.
“It’s all right, you don’t know me either.”
“It’s probably why we get on so well.”
She laughed. “Is this your definition of getting on well?”
“We’re both still standing.” Ethan cocked his head to the side, his expression intense. She could feel his gaze, almost like a physical touch as he looked at her body. Her breasts. She was certain he was looking there because she could feel it. “For now.” The air in the room seemed to thicken, a strange electric feeling arching between them as he took a step towards her. Only one step. No more. And she had the feeling that if there was going to be anything more, she would have to make the next move.
Her feet seemed to be rooted to the spot.
“I guess we’ll get to know each other in Australia,” she said. “Although I think it’s kind of a raw deal, you hiring me and then making me ask my boss for vacation time.”
“I’ll keep you busy,” he said, his voice rough. “And yeah, we may get to know each other a little better.”
“We won’t actually be staying with my grandparents.” Ethan turned to look at her as he navigated the busy Brisbane expressway and took an exit that led off into one of the suburbs.
She could swear that Ethan’s accent had thickened the moment they’d landed in his home country. And she liked it. A little bit more than she should. But it was fascinating, being alone with a man like this. It was something she’d never really experienced before. Well, discounting her piano instructor.
“Where will we be staying?”
“One of my hotels. On the beach. I think you’ll like it.”
“How long have you owned it?”
“It’s been there for years, but I bought it and had some renovation done on it about six years back.”
“I’ve been here before,” she said, looking out the window at the passing scenery. “I didn’t get to see anything. Just the roadway from the airport to the hotel, to the theater, then back to the airport. We went to Sydney after. I didn’t get to see much of it either.”
“You never went sightseeing when you traveled?”
She bit her lip. “When we were in Europe we did a bit of it, as part of my schooling. I had a good tutor. He made sure I finished my studies early. I graduated at fifteen, so I was able to practice my music more.”
“Have you ever concentrated on anything but your music?”
“I’ve just been concentrating on breathing this past year,” she said, watching the deep green eucalyptus trees blur together into a continuous smear of color. “And before that, just breathing and playing. I want to do more than that now.”
“Data entry?”
She shot him her deadliest glare, which, she knew, wasn’t very deadly. She’d been told she looked like a Kewpie doll more than once. Not very threatening. “Something more than that maybe even. But it’s a good start.”
The car pulled up to a massive, wrought-iron gate and Ethan leaned out the car window and punched in a series of numbers. “Gated community,” he said. “Nothing but the best, you know.”
“I think it’s nice.” The car wound up a long, winding hill and she knew that Ethan’s grandparents’ house was certain to have billion-dollar views.
“It’s a bit pretentious, actually, but don’t tell my grandmother I said that.”
“I wouldn’t.”
He turned to her, sliding his hand across the expanse of seat between them. He laced his fingers through hers, his thumb drifting over the back of her hand. She felt goosebumps raise up on her arms. He hadn’t touched her for a long time. Only a few days, actually, and yet … it felt like a really long time.
“I’m going to introduce you to my grandparents and get the family ring from my grandfather after dinner, let him know my intentions and all that.”
Her heart slammed against her breast. She nodded, trying to pretend she was unaffected.
“And then I’ll give it to you after we leave. We’ll have to come up with a nice story for my grandmother because she’ll want all the gory details. Women always do.”
“Yes. True.” Her stomach tightened, a sick feeling spreading through her. “I … I don’t know how I feel using your family heirloom ring when it’s … when we’re lying.”
“So? I’ll return the ring when our marriage fails. What difference does it make?”<
br />
“None, I guess.” Except it kind of did. “Why didn’t your mother end up with the ring?”
“It wasn’t new. She doesn’t really like antiques.” The corner of his mouth curved up slightly. “She likes really modern stuff. Spot-on trend. And my grandmother never would have let her put it into a new setting.”
“Family traditions shouldn’t be broken. I mean, I don’t think. We didn’t really have any.”
It was no use feeling wistful about it. She’d spent so long just wishing things were different. From the moment she’d realized her life wasn’t like other girls’, she’d wanted something else. More. A connection with her mother that wasn’t based on her career.
But that hadn’t happened. It had always been about Noelle’s career for her mother. About what she could do, what she could get thanks to Noelle’s talents. Noelle accepted it now, more or less. Anyway, the charming revelations Ethan had uncovered about her mother made her realize Celine wasn’t the kind of woman she wanted a relationship with anyway.
No, she wasn’t going to waste time being pouty about what she had and what she didn’t have. Not anymore. She was going to take the money, and she was going to get on with her life. She would take her new office skills, or her rediscovered favor with the media, and she would make something of herself, and manage her own money. Without her teacher. Without her mother. Without Ethan.
She was done being played like a puppet. She was in charge now.
“Mine have more to do with status than sentimentality. My mother is new money, you see, so she doesn’t understand how special it is to have things that have been passed down. Or so I’ve heard,” he said, his words cut short as they passed through another gate and onto the grounds of an opulent estate with lush, manicured grounds and three fountains stationed right out front, seemingly for the sole purpose of trumpeting that the people who owned the house had money. Bags of it.
Ethan pulled the car through and parked it in the drive. “My grandparents have valet service,” he explained dryly.
He got out and rounded to her side, opening the door for her. “Full service,” she replied, standing to find herself just about breast to chest with him.