by Sandy James
A moment later, his eyes opened wide as she took him into her mouth. With a strangled moan, he threaded his fingers through her hair and tried to hold tightly to his self-control. The moist heat of her mouth, the way she glided her tongue over his skin, made the need to be inside her almost unbearable.
“I want you,” Ethan said, practically begging. When she kept up her tender assault, he took control of the situation. Easing away from her, he hauled her to her feet and fumbled with her pants. Thankfully she helped by wiggling out of them and then squirmed out of her panties. A moment later, he had her on her back. As she wrapped her legs around his hips, he slid inside her, a bit in awe at how wet and ready he found her.
The cadence was fast. Rough. And thoroughly captivating. His release threatened, and he tried to hold back, wanting her to be with him. A moment later, she lifted her knees and gasped. The way her body pulsed around him pushed him over the edge, and his orgasm left him breathless.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chelsea was the first to stir. She tapped Ethan’s back, not because he was getting heavy but because she suddenly felt vulnerable lying there splayed out beneath him.
With a rather insulting masculine grunt he pulled away from her and headed to the bathroom.
As she quickly dressed, she realized that they hadn’t used a condom. Not that she was worried. She’d been on the pill for years and Ethan had mentioned he’d been tested not long ago. What bothered her about forgetting the condom was that she’d lost all control, and knowing that he could succeed in making her forget everything was downright horrifying.
She’d admitted to herself a long time ago that she was a woman who needed to be in charge of her life. She offered no apologies for insisting on having things done her way. Her hard work and desire for perfection had helped her claw her way to the top of country music. Even in her personal life, she’d been in total control. No one bossed her around. She always called the shots. She kept the reins firmly in her hands.
And Ethan had snatched them away far too easily. Even though she’d had every intention of discussing their problems and trying to come to some kind of agreement, the moment she saw him, all she’d wanted to do was to touch him and have him touch her.
So much for control…
She was no better off now than when she’d been with guys like Lance Watson. Ethan might not be quite as big a jerk as Lance, but he wanted things to all be his way. In Ethan’s eyes, there was no compromise.
But if he wanted to be in her life, to share their lives, he would have to learn how to bend. Otherwise, there was no hope for them as a couple.
Ethan came back into the bedroom and picked up his underwear and jeans. Silence reigned as he dressed. Since he didn’t seem to care that they hadn’t used a condom, she didn’t bother bringing it up.
“I need more wine,” she said as she left him there.
In the kitchen, she downed what little pinot noir was left in her glass before refilling it. She was well one her way to finishing the refill when he joined her. They stood next to the island, her working on her wine, him standing there with his hands slid into his back pockets. After a few awkward moments, he finally let his gaze meet hers.
Before Chelsea could start this conversation, she needed to confess her rather loose lips. “I need to tell you about what happened on that stupid interview this morning,” she said.
“I saw it.”
“You saw it?”
He nodded. “At least some clips.”
“So that’s why you wouldn’t call me back. You’re pissed.”
“Of course I’m pissed, but I already told you: I didn’t call you back because my battery died and I left my charger back at the resort.”
She took another long drink of her wine, unsure how to keep this conversation from becoming an argument. He was angry. Over what? Her telling the truth and trying to squelch a ridiculous rumor that had been fueled by a picture taken by some snoop?
Before she could come to any solution, Ethan fired the first shot. “I can’t believe you told that bitch so much. Geesh, baby, what were you thinking?”
Her defenses snapped into place. “What exactly was so terrible about what I said? Did I lie? Did I even exaggerate?”
“No, but why would you even talk about our private life? You know how I feel about that.”
“I had no choice,” she insisted. “Someone took a picture of us on the beach after the wedding. Cathy was trying to convince everyone we got married. I had to set the record straight.”
He shook his head. “All you had to tell her was that she was wrong. That’s all. Just tell her she was full of shit.” After a deep inhale and slow exhale, he continued. “Whatever we feel for each other is no one’s business but our own.”
Addie had been right. Ethan was going to have to learn to accept that he was in a relationship with a celebrity. “I had to do something to stop the stupid rumors. All I did was tell people the truth.”
“You didn’t have to say a goddamn word, Chelsea. Let ’em talk. Let ’em say we’re married. Who gives a shit?”
“I do. My fans care about me and—”
He scoffed at her. “No, they don’t. Trust me. They don’t give two fucks about you except to use you. I’ve lived with it my whole life. Fans are nothing but vultures.”
“How can you say that? My fans made me what I am.”
“Your voice made you what you are,” Ethan said before taking on long pull on what little beer remained in his bottle. “Your fans are just think you owe them something. You don’t owe them a damn thing.”
How could she put up any kind of argument with someone who was so wrong and so stubborn that he wouldn’t even listen?
She had to try. She loved him too much to not at least attempt to get him to bend. “Ethan, if my fans didn’t buy my songs, if they didn’t support my albums, I would be just another wannabe singer putting her stuff up online and hoping someone eventually discovered me. I owe my fans for their loyalty. They care about me. They care about my life. They want to share my happiness, my sadness, my success.”
“They’re not your family,” he insisted. “They’re just…people. People who want a piece of you. They’d pick your carcass clean if you gave them the chance.”
This conversation was going around and around and coming back to the same place. “Then I’ll let them have a piece of me.”
“Funny,” Ethan said. “I thought you belonged to me.”
The word choice made her cringe. He sounded too much like Lance, and she couldn’t stop herself from bristling. “Belong? You think I belong to you?”
“Yes. And I belong to you.”
Temper rising by the moment, Chelsea shook her head. “If you can’t accept who I am, what I do, then maybe…Well, maybe we need to take a step back.”
He just stared at her.
“Maybe things just went too fast,” she said, her anger giving way to sadness. No matter how hard she tried, it seemed he would never see things her way.
And she would never be able to stop being who she was.
“Maybe…Maybe we need a break.”
“No. I love you, Chelsea!” His forceful shout shocked her and made her eyes lock with his. With the exception of the times they’d made love, she’d never been seen Ethan looking so open, so exposed. “I’m not some fucking teenager, Chelsea. I’m old enough to know love when it happens. We might not have been together long, but I know my own mind. This isn’t some…some…fling. It’s not something that I can get over. When I talked about marrying you, I meant it, and I meant forever.” His features hardened. “I thought you loved me too.”
“I do, Ethan. I love you.”
“But you love being famous more,” he accused. He’d closed himself off again, the vulnerability giving way to naked rage. “Admit it. You have more than enough money to walk away right now and never want for anything. Right?”
“Yeah, but—”
“But. See that’s the thing
about people like you. There’s always a ‘but.’”
She set her hands against her hips. “What do you mean by ‘people like me’?”
“People who get off on seeing themselves on TV, every time they find themselves on the cover of some magazine.” He shook his head. “People like my parents. They loved being famous a helluva lot more than they loved—” His hand clenched into tight fists and his gaze grew hard. “I’m not going through that again. I’m not. Choose, Chelsea.”
While her heart went out to him—to the hurt child who never felt as if he had his parents’ love—she wasn’t about to chuck everything she’d worked her ass off to achieve into a dumpster. And for what?
For the man you love, her heart said.
For him to get his way, to boss you around, her brain argued back.
She had to know exactly what he’d meant. Because if he was willing to walk away simply because she’d been honest with her fans, he wasn’t the man she thought he was. “Are you saying that if I keep singing, you’re going to leave me?”
“I’m saying that I love you and I want you to share your life with me. But…”
“But?” Chelsea let out an acerbic laugh. “Funny, I thought only people like me said ‘but.’”
His mouth drew into a grim line. “But I can’t deal with the fear of losing you like I lost my parents.”
“That’s not going to happen, Ethan.”
“How do you know that? And I can’t live with cameras being shoved in my face. I don’t want my children constantly worrying about the shit I had to worry about. I couldn’t fucking go to the john without some idiot following me in. No. Not doing to my kids what my parents did to me.”
“I would protect my children,” she insisted. “Lots of celebrities have private lives. Their kids aren’t fair game. Things aren’t the same as they were when you were a kid, Ethan.”
“Bull. Shit.”
Wrapping her arms around her middle, she knew they’d arrived at an impasse. She wasn’t willing to stop being Chelsea Harris, and he wasn’t willing to let her do what she had to do to survive.
What more was there to say?
A stray tear slipped down her cheek, and she didn’t even bother to brush it away. “You knew who I was.”
His brows gathered as he scowled, but he said nothing.
“You knew who I was, and you made me fall in love with you anyway.” She tossed the words like an accusation, her anger growing like some living thing inside her. “Fuck you, Ethan. Fuck you for doing that to me. And fuck you for doing that to us.”
* * *
Ethan gritted his teeth, trying to will his feet to move. He couldn’t find the strength.
If he left, if he walked out of that condo, he was never going to see Chelsea again, unless it was on television or at a concert. He almost laughed as he pictured himself years from now, hiding far back in a crowd just to get a glimpse of her and hoping she didn’t see him.
He’d become pathetic, letting her pull his strings like he was some puppet. She was demanding that he do things her way without an ounce of compromise. He was supposed to let people intrude on his life, people he didn’t know, who had no connection to him. But what did she offer in return?
Not a damn thing.
Chelsea wanted to stay famous and would keep right on telling everyone things that were supposed to be private, something shared between a man and a woman in love. He had a bad flashback to his father jokingly telling a reporter about the time Ethan had been really sick and wet the bed. For God’s sake, Ethan had been all of eight at the time, and his father—a man who was supposed to love him—had humiliated him for the sake of a little publicity.
That had hurt. A lot. No way in hell he’d put his children through that kind of ordeal. Nor could he sit around worrying the press would kill Chelsea the way they’d murdered his parents.
Despite the ridiculous things she was asking of him, he didn’t still want to lose her. Not like this. He kept trying to tell himself that all he had to do was open up to the world, to let the things he considered personal become public domain. But after the nightmare of a childhood he’d endured, he balked.
Love her or not, he couldn’t live that kind of life again.
Chelsea picked up her glass and hurled it against the wall. Shards of glass rained down on the tile. “Say something!”
“Like what, baby? You’ve made up your mind.”
“Evidently so have you.”
His heart dropped to his boots and he forced himself to take a few steps toward her. When she hugged herself in response, seemingly blocking him coming any closer, he stopped and stared down at her.
Tears brimmed her eyes, and Ethan’s every instinct screamed to take her into his arms.
But at what cost?
She didn’t want him as he was. If he wouldn’t change, even though she was refusing to do any changing herself, she was more than willing to let him go.
Ethan reached up to brush away a tear on her cheek with the back of his fingers. Throat clogged with emotion, he tried to find the words.
They wouldn’t come.
With a shake of his head, he walked out of her life.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
You promised her, Ethan,” Savannah said. “You told Chelsea you’d sing the duet.”
Ethan took the plate of spaghetti she held out to him and shook his head. “She won’t want to sing with me.”
“The album is almost done,” Brad chimed in, pulling out the bar stool next to Ethan’s and taking a seat. “‘When You Were Mine’ was supposed to be the last song, then she can get it released.”
“Chelsea will do just fine with seven songs instead of eight.” Ethan grabbed his fork, twirled some pasta around it, and took a big bite, hoping their badgering would swiftly come to an end.
“She wants eight,” Brad said, “so if you won’t do the duet, she’s coming tomorrow to do a solo.”
“You should sing with her,” Savannah said. “It’s been long enough that you two should be able to get together for the time it takes to record a song. What’s it been? A month?”
“Three weeks,” he whispered.
Three weeks. Three agonizing weeks since he’d left Chelsea’s condo. And the only time he’d seen her was when the ad for her Saturday concert had popped up on his TV one evening. The damn thing was already sold out, which made the ad a waste in his opinion.
It wasn’t as though she acted as if she wanted to see him again. Hell, less than a week after their breakup, a truck pulling a two-horse trailer had arrived at the farm. The driver brought a letter from Chelsea that had a check to reimburse Ethan for anything he might have spent on Hamlet. Despite Ethan wanting to keep the horse close in hopes his owner might eventually show up, the driver had taken Hamlet away to a new home. Angry, Ethan had torn the check up and tossed it into the trash.
Uncle Joe would barely talk to him, going on and on about Ethan being “boneheaded.” Not that he needed a reminder.
He missed her. Plain and simple. The way she snuggled against him at night. Her laugh. The sweet sound of her voice. How comfortable he was whenever she was near, a kind of relaxed ease he hadn’t enjoyed since.
Now, he had his privacy—for all the good it was doing him.
“Earth to Ethan,” Savannah said.
Ethan glanced up. “What?”
She pushed her own plate of pasta away, frowning. “I’m worried about you.”
“Why?”
Brad let out a snort. “Why won’t you just admit it already? You’re miserable without Chelsea.”
“I’m fine,” Ethan insisted.
In her typical mother hen way, Savannah came to stand at his side and put her hand on his shoulder. “You still think there’s no way to make things right with her?”
The same question he’d asked himself a million times. Yes, he could’ve done things differently. Very differently. But only if he would have surrendered himself to giving up his private life.
Only if he’d have agreed to do everything on her terms.
No, she’d demanded he prostitute himself to the press. He refused to do that.
“I just don’t see how, Savannah,” he said with a shake of his head. “Chelsea and I…we didn’t mesh.”
“You meshed fine,” she insisted.
“She wanted more than I could give. Okay?”
She frowned as she withdrew her hand. “It’s not that bad, you know.”
“Pardon?”
“Being in the public eye. It’s not as horrible as you think,” she said. Then she glanced to Brad.
Her husband nodded in response. “I know things were intense because of the marriage rumors and all…But the press isn’t always in our faces.”
Although Ethan itched to argue with his friends, to force them to see things from his point of view, he refrained. That didn’t prevent his brain from scrambling for comebacks to their reassurances. Neither of them was as famous as Chelsea. They were a media draw because they were both in the music business, but Chelsea was at the top of the game, and Ethan’s parents had been—as everybody and their uncle liked to remind him—the King and Queen of Nashville. Had he remained with her, they would be hounded to death.
At least that’s what he feared…
But God almighty, he missed her. Every single minute of every damn day.
He decided to go right ahead and argue with Savannah and Brad. “You told me just the other day that you were worried about Caroline. You said you don’t want her picture all over the place.”
“That’s not what I said,” Savannah scolded.
“Then what were you griping about?” Ethan asked.
“I was, as you so eloquently put it, griping about the fact that she would have to get used to seeing herself in magazines. She was getting teased about that People magazine article, and she was carrying on about feeling like a freak.”
“See? That proves my point,” he insisted. “She feels exactly like I do! Reporters are a bunch of bastards, always sticking their noses into stuff that’s none of their damned business.”