But he had glanced over the bodyguards and figured he knew why she had them. Princesses didn’t leave their castles without a couple of knights to watch over them.
Ethan had looked, wanted, taken . . . and it wasn’t until later that he realized who she was.
Celeste Harper was actually Celeste Harper Jeffers.
And she was the only daughter of Paul Jeffers.
Ethan didn’t personally know the man, but he had heard of the bastard.
He was a drug lord and his speciality lay in creating derivatives of the date-rape drug, Rohypnol.
Celeste had no idea.
Until Ethan had told her.
He shouldn’t still look that perfect, Celeste thought, more than a little disgusted at the way her body was reacting to him. It was like she was twenty-two all over again, and caught up in his spell.
“You never thought I hung the moon and stars,” she said, keeping her voice low and level when all she wanted to do was scream.
He glanced away, hiding his disconcertingly pale eyes from her. He didn’t say anything, but that wasn’t a surprise. Ethan had never been one for explaining himself, or trying to convince people to listen. He said what he needed to and if people listened, fine. If not, he didn’t give a damn.
He’d tried to convince you. And he did give a damn . . .
Shut up, she told herself. That quiet voice, even after all this time, tried to insist that Ethan hadn’t done anything wrong, that it had been a weird quirk of fate that had brought them together.
Just walk away. That was what she needed to do. Desperately needed to do. Walk away from him, get back on the bus and head back home. Of course, she didn’t really know where home was. Not any more.
Not for ten damn years, ever since she’d realized the truth.
Ever since Ethan had told her the truth.
Watching him from under her lashes, she tucked her knife back inside her boot. She spent a few seconds smoothing out her jeans, and wished she could do something about the way her hands shook.
Slowly, she straightened and stared at him. For the past ten years, she’d wondered how she’d feel if she saw him again. What it would be like to look at the man responsible for shattering everything she’d valued in her life. She’d clung to the notion that if she ever saw him, she’d pummel that perfect face of his bloody.
The bottom of her stomach gave out on her as she realized something.
She didn’t want to beat him bloody. She didn’t want to shriek, yell, punch. She wanted to throw herself at him and feel those arms come around her, feel him tangle his fingers in her hair and hold her close.
This is bad, bad, bad . . .
Setting her jaw, she crossed her arms over her chest. She bit the inside of her mouth. She made herself think about how terrible the first few years of her life had been after she learned about her father. She dredged up every bad memory that she could link to Ethan’s existence.
Nothing was working. She still wanted to run to him.
Desperate times called for desperate measures.
Baring her teeth at him, she asked in a cool tone, “So . . . was it you?”
Ethan cocked a brow at her. “Pardon?”
“Was it you? Are you the one who killed my father?”
The only reaction she saw was the faintest flicker of his eyelashes. His face never changed, no anger, no guilt, no surprise showed in his eyes. Nothing.
“I wasn’t involved with anything connected to Paul Jeffers,” he said.
Was he lying? If he was, would she even be able to tell? She narrowed her eyes and watched him closely, looking for . . . she didn’t even know what. What did she expect to see? A glaring red sign that read: I’M A LIAR. Or maybe one that said: YES, I DID IT. I KILLED HIM. YOU RE RIGHT TO HATE ME.
Except she didn’t hate him. And she couldn’t make herself not believe him. “Not ‘involved’. Exactly what does that mean?”
“Just what it sounds like,” he replied. His pale-grey eyes held hers. “I wasn’t involved. I had nothing to do with it. I didn’t know it was going down. I didn’t even know he’d died until it was on the news.”
Celeste swallowed. To her horror, she realized her eyes were burning – she was so close to crying. So close. Blinking away the tears, she looked away from him and muttered, “Well, maybe that counts for something.”
Ethan sighed. “It shouldn’t count for anything.” He came forwards, edging around her. He passed so close she could feel the warmth of his body, so close she could smell the warm, vaguely exotic scent of the sandalwood soap he used.
Was she imagining it or did he lightly brush the tips of his fingers over her hair?
“Goodbye, Celeste.”
Goodbye?
Narrowing her eyes, she spun around and glared at his retreating back. “Excuse me? Goodbye? You show up here after ten years and all you have to say to me is ‘goodbye’?”
He glanced over his shoulder at her, a sad smile tugging at the corners of his hard mouth. “What else do you want me to say, Princess?”
“How about ‘sorry’? How about an explanation for why you are here? Something.”
“You’re a bright woman, Celeste. It’s 2 July. This is Belle, Texas. You’re always in Belle on 2 July.”
Celeste gaped at the back of his head. “You expect me to believe you’re here because of me?”
“I don’t expect anything of you,” he said, his deep, smooth voice quiet and steady, stroking over her like a velvet glove. Then he sighed and pushed a hand through his black hair. “But you asked for an explanation. So there you go. I knew you’d be here. I wanted to see you. End of explanation.” He turned back to face her, a grimace twisting his lips. “The explanation is easy. But an apology? Not so easy.”
He watched her with a deep, penetrating stare that made her feel like he could see clear through to her soul. “What should I apologize for, Celeste? I’m sorry you’ve been hurt in this – I can say that. But I can’t apologize for telling you the truth about your father. You needed to know. You were busting your cute little ass in school, making all these plans for how you wanted to help disadvantaged youth, while your dear daddy paid for that education by exploiting women and children.”
She flinched. Shame hit her, a slap across the face. Blood rushed to her cheeks. “You bastard.”
“So you’ve said. Twice already.” A cynical smile twisted his lips and he shook his head. “But that doesn’t explain what you want me to apologize for. I’m not sorry I told you the truth and I’m not sorry that sick son-of-a-bitch is dead.”
“That sick son-of-a-bitch was my father,” she snarled at him. “I loved him.”
“I know.” His voice was gentle, his eyes kind. There was sympathy there, sympathy, understanding . . . and other emotions she didn’t want to study too closely because it hurt too much. Just seeing his face hurt. Hearing his voice.
Furious with herself, Celeste snarled, “No, you don’t know. You don’t have any idea what it’s like to realize you come from a monster; to realize that you loved that monster. To realize that the monster even loved you back. He loved me. He did everything he could to take care of me, to make sure I never wanted for anything . . .” A sob stole her voice.
I can’t do this.
Glaring at him, she backed away. “Stay away from me, Ethan. I don’t ever want to see you again.”
She took off running, barely able to see the ground for the tears that blinded her.
Two
He was out there.
It was disconcerting as hell to realize that.
Celeste got out of her bed and padded across the hardwood floors to the small balcony facing Main Street. The Belle Inn was the only moderately profitable business in Belle, catering to those who enjoyed spending the night in older hotels that had a history of being haunted.
It had been redone period-style. The room she stayed in probably looked as it had back in the 1800s, with the exception of the air conditioning and indo
or plumbing.
Thick curtains covered the windows, blocking out the light, muffling sound. Too bad they weren’t enough to keep Celeste from sensing him.
Ethan.
He was out there.
Why?
She’d made herself clear, right?
‘I don’t want, ever want, to see you again.’ Nice, short, to the point. Pushing the curtains back, she opened the narrow door and stepped out on to the balcony, peering into the dark. There were street lights here and there, but none of them cast enough light to penetrate the darker shadows that lay between the buildings.
That would be where he was. Somewhere in the shadows. Watching her.
Bracing her hands on the railing, she leaned against it and stared into the darkness, looking for some sign of him.
Where are you?
And even as she silently asked that question, part of her wondered, Why do I care?
Because it was Ethan.
Because she had to care.
It was Ethan . . .
“Where are you?”
From where he was, he couldn’t hear the question.
He saw her lips move, but for all he knew, she was up there begging God to strike him down where he stood. Leaning against a crumbled brick wall, Ethan stared at the woman on the balcony and tried to figure out why in the hell he was still there.
She didn’t want him around.
She’d made that fact pretty damn clear.
Still, he’d lingered around the little town and, come nightfall, he did exactly what he’d done the night before – stood outside her hotel and waited. Just as he’d done for the past nine years.
When she backed away from the balcony, he breathed out a sigh that was part relief, part frustration. Relief because if she wasn’t looking at him, he could almost breathe past the band constricting his chest; frustration because now it would be another year before he saw her again – if she came back to Belle next year at all.
It had felt like she had been looking straight at him from on the balcony. That look had made it all but impossible not to go to her, even as it made him want to grab her, hold her.
The past nine years had been so damned hard. He missed her. Needed her. Wanted her . . .
She slipped into the room from the balcony and he waited for the doors to close, for the curtains to fall back into place.
But they didn’t.
The door remained open and the curtains pushed aside.
Waiting . . .
“You need to leave,” he muttered.
But he found himself leaving the alley . . . crossing the street . . .
One second she was alone, and the next she wasn’t. There was no sound. If she hadn’t been staring at the open curtains so intently, she wouldn’t even have seen the darker shadow before it was lost to the rest of the darkness.
She eased up in the bed and waited.
The only sound was her erratic breathing, but she knew he was in there. She could feel him – a ripple of electricity dancing through the air, his gaze an unseen caress along her bare skin.
The man moved like a ghost, utterly silent. It should have terrified her – she was alone in a room with a man who’d been trained to kill. But she wasn’t terrified.
Celeste held her breath and waited for him to speak, but the silence stretched on. Her heart raced within her chest and she squeezed her eyes closed, tried to figure out what in the hell she was doing, why she’d opened the door, why she was lying here like she was waiting for him.
It came to her then. Clear as daylight. Clear as the longing she’d seen in his eyes. The same longing she’d felt echoed in her own eyes. Longing . . . for him.
She was waiting.
From the time he’d walked away, even as part of her wanted to hate him, she had been waiting for him to come back.
She’d needed him to walk away at the time. He had to go before she did something, said something, she could never take back. She’d needed the time to come to grips with who she was – who her father was. After he’d died, just a few short weeks later, she’d needed the time to grieve.
She’d needed the time to understand.
To find herself away from her father’s overwhelming influence.
Now, a decade later, she could finally admit something else.
She needed Ethan. She’d needed him almost from day one. She could survive without him, but she didn’t want to survive without him. She wanted to live, wanted to experience the happiness, the peace, she’d known only with him.
None of the men she’d allowed into her life had ever measured up to him. No matter how much or how little she’d cared, none of them had ever come close to Ethan. None of them had ever come close to her own heart.
Taking a deep breath, Celeste kicked her legs over the edge of the bed.
He was so quiet . . . she couldn’t even hear him breathe. So quiet. And her teeth were all but chattering, she was so nervous. She wished he’d say something, but if she tried to open her mouth to speak, she was going to start to babble, and then she’d lose her nerve and she really needed to get this done. Get it over with. If she ended up with a boatload of guilt and self-disgust come morning, so what? It wouldn’t be anything new.
Without wasting another five seconds, she grabbed the hem of her short nightshirt and hauled it over her head.
She let it go and, as the fabric hit the ground with a whisper, she finally heard something from him.
A harsh intake of breath, followed by the sound of slow, deliberate footsteps, coming right in her direction.
Abruptly, terror seized her and she reached out, blindly hit the light switch on the bedside lamp. A soft golden glow filled the room and she stared at him, blinking her eyes against the light.
He wasn’t staring at her face, though.
He was staring at her body – a naked, hungry look on his face. Terror held her frozen. Need churned inside her. Her hands shook and she fisted them at her sides, fought not to cover herself.
“Celeste . . .” His voice was a ragged, harsh growl, so unlike his normal tone, always so deep and mellow. He lifted a hand and she caught her lower lip between her teeth as he brushed the back of his fingers over the outer curve of her breast.
She caught his hand and pressed it to her. “Come to bed.” She took a step backwards, taking him with her.
Heat flared in his eyes, but when she went to lie back, he didn’t come with her. He opened his hand, cupped her breast in his palm, but did nothing else as he watched her. “Why?”
“Because I need it. I need you.”
Ethan shook his head. “No, you don’t. You’ve gone ten years without me in your life. You want me to leave you alone. You don’t want to see me again. So why?”
“If I didn’t want to see you, I wouldn’t have opened the door,” Celeste said quietly. She leaned against him and pressed a kiss to his chest through his T-shirt. She could feel the warmth of his skin, the solid feel of muscle and man through the thin cloth. “If I didn’t want to see you, I wouldn’t have followed you when I saw you on the street earlier.”
Lifting her head, she stared at him through her lashes. Fisting her hands in the worn fabric of his T-shirt, she eased it up. She held her breath when the shirt caught under his arms, wondered if he would stop her, but then he grabbed it and tore it away, hurling it across the room. He caught her arms, keeping a few scant inches between them when all she wanted to do was press her mouth to his chest and lick, suck, bite, nuzzle all that bare, golden flesh.
“I want you.” He pressed his brow to hers, his pale-grey eyes boring into her. “I’ve wanted you every day for the last ten years, and I’d damn near sell my soul for this. But not if you plan on walking away in the morning. Or the day after. Or the year after. Walking away from you almost killed me. I won’t do it again – not if this happens.”
The naked need in his eyes wrenched at her heart. So often, she’d looked into his eyes and seen a blank wall – he rarely left himself expos
ed. Reaching up, she trailed her fingers down his jawline, feathered them over his lips. “I haven’t thought about tomorrow. Or the day after. The year after. I can’t think right now. All I know is that I’ve missed you, even while I tried to tell myself I hated you. I’ve spent the past ten years missing you, too. Spent the past ten years being lonely . . . and I’m so tired of it. I want you, Ethan.”
“You want me, but do you still love me?”
Celeste stepped forwards and wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing her naked breasts to his chest. “I don’t think I ever stopped.” She caught his lower lip between her teeth and bit him lightly.
His body shuddered, but he didn’t pull her close. He held still, so very still. Seconds stretched out endlessly – would he pull away? Would he walk away?
Walk away. Ethan knew that was exactly what he should do. Coming to her in the dead of night, without even knowing why, without even understanding what in the hell she was doing – hell, he doubted she knew what she was doing. Just a few hours earlier, she’d told him to stay away and now she stood naked in his arms.
Naked.
In his arms.
And he wasn’t doing anything . . . why?
Fuck it.
He’d figure the rest of it out later. Bending his arms around her, he boosted her slender form up until she could wrap her legs around his waist. “Celeste . . .” He groaned her name against her lips as he tangled a hand in her hair, tugged.
She tipped her face back and met his kiss, hunger for hunger, heat for heat. Taking her to the bed, he tucked her smaller body under his and settled his hips against the cradle of hers. Through his jeans, he could feel her, warmth and woman . . . waiting. Waiting for him. Finally. After ten fucking years.
Levering up on to his knees, he tore at the fly of his jeans, swearing as his fingers fumbled with the button and the zipper. His breath hissed out of him. He ached, throbbed. He shoved his jeans and underwear down past his hips. Celeste reached out and wrapped her fingers around him, smiling.
Her hair, black as the night, spread around her shoulders and a wicked smile curled her lips. “Witch,” he muttered. She had a confidence now that she hadn’t before. Some seed of jealousy tried to grow inside him, but he shoved it aside. It had no place here – neither of them had stopped living. He certainly hadn’t.
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