“And?”
“And...” His voice trailed off as he wrapped his fingers more tightly around hers.
She swallowed. “The woman?”
For some reason, she needed to know that she wasn’t like all the rest.
Please, she thought, please say something I can believe. Something real and honest and sincere, even if it kills me.
“The woman,” he said, lifting her hand away from his chest and pressing a kiss to her palm, “the woman is unlike any other. Beautiful, a great conversationalist, highly cultured—but there’s something else about her. Something that runs deeper.”
Frances realized she was holding her breath, so she made herself breathe normally. Or as close to normal as she could get, what with her heart pounding as fast as it was. “You make her sound like a river.”
“Then I’m not doing a very good job,” he said with a chuckle. “I’m not used to whispering sweet nothings.”
“They’re not nothing.” Her voice felt as if it were coming from somewhere far away.
His hand trailed down from her hair to her back, where he rubbed her in long, even strokes. “Neither are you.”
She wasn’t, was she? She was still Frances. Hell, in a few weeks, she wouldn’t even be a Beaumont anymore. She’d be a Logan. And then after that... Well, nothing stayed the same, after all.
“We can call it off,” he said, as if he’d been reading her mind.
She pushed herself up and stared down at him. “What?” Was he serious?
Or was this the real, honest, true thing she’d asked for? Because if this was it, she took it back.
“Nothing official has changed hands. No legal commitments have been made.” She saw him swallow. He stared up at her with such seriousness that she almost panicked because the look on his face went so far beyond fond that she didn’t know what to do. “If you want.”
She sat all the way up, pushing herself out of what had been the safe shelter of his arms. She sat back on her heels, only vaguely aware that her skirt had twisted itself around her waist. “No. No! We can’t end this!”
“Why not? Relationships end all the time. We had a couple of red-hot dates and it went nowhere.” He tilted his head to the side. “We just walk away. No harm, no foul.”
“Just walk away? We can’t. I can’t.” Because that was the heart of the matter, wasn’t it? She couldn’t back out of this deal now. This was her ticket back to her old life, or some reasonable facsimile thereof. With Ethan’s angel investment, she could get the gallery off the ground, she could get a new apartment and move out of the Beaumont mansion. She could go back to being Frances Beaumont.
He sat up, which brought their bodies into close proximity again. She didn’t like being this aware of him. She didn’t like the fact that she wanted to know what he’d look like without the shirt. She didn’t want to like him. Not even a little.
He reached over and stroked her hair tenderly. She didn’t want tenderness, damn it. She didn’t want feelings. She wanted cutting commentary and wars of words and... She wanted to hate him. He was the embodiment of her family’s failures. He was dismantling her second home piece by piece. He was using her for her familial connections.
And he was making it damned near impossible to hate him. Stupid tender fondness.
It only got worse when he said, “I’d like to keep seeing you,” as if he thought that would make it better when it only made everything worse. “I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that I haven’t stopped thinking about you since the moment you offered me a donut. But we don’t have to do this rush to the altar. We don’t have to get married. Not if you’d like to change the deal. Since,” he added with a wry smile, “things do change.”
“But you need me,” she protested, trying vainly to find some solution that would not lead to where she’d started—alone, living at the family home, broke, with no prospects. “You need me to make the workers like you.”
His lips quirked up into a tender smile, and then he was closing the distance between them. “I need more than just that.”
He was going to kiss her. He was being sweet and thoughtful and kind and he was going to kiss her and it was wrong. It was all wrong.
“Ethan,” she said in warning, putting her hand on his chest and pushing lightly. “Don’t do this.”
He let her hold him back, but he didn’t let go of her hair. He didn’t let go of her. “Do what?”
“This—madness. Don’t start to like me. I won’t like you back.” His eyes widened in shock. She dug deeper. “I won’t love you.”
Ever so slightly, his fingers loosened their hold on her hair. “You already said that.”
“I meant it. Love is for fools, and I refuse to be one. Don’t lower my opinion of you by being one, too.” The words felt sharp on her tongue, as if she were chewing on glass.
Cruel to be kind, she told herself. If he got infatuated with her—if real emotions came into play—well, this whole thing would fall apart. This was not a relationship, not a real one. This was a business deal. They couldn’t afford to forget that.
Well, she couldn’t, anyway.
If she’d expected him to pull away, to be pissed at her blanket rejection, she was sorely disappointed. He did, in fact, lean back. And he did let his fingers fall away from her hair.
But he sat there, propped up on hotel pillows that were just like any other hotel pillows, and he smiled at her. A real smile, damn him. Honest and true.
“If you want out, that’s fine,” she pressed on. She would not be distracted by real emotions. “But don’t take pity on me and don’t like me, for God’s sake. We had a deal. Don’t patronize me by deciding what’s best for me. If I want out of the deal, I’ll tell you. In the meantime, I’ll hold up my end of the bargain and you’ll hold up yours—unless you’ve changed your mind?”
“I haven’t,” he said after a brief pause. His mouth was still slightly curved into a smile.
She wanted to wipe that smile off his face, but she couldn’t think of a way to do it without kicking and screaming. So all she said was, “Fine.”
They sat there for a few moments. Ethan continued to stare at her, as if he were trying to see into her. “Yes?” she demanded as she felt her face flush under his close scrutiny.
“The woman,” he murmured in what sounded a hell of a lot like approval, “is a force unto herself.”
Oh, she definitely took it back. She didn’t want real or honest out of him. No tenderness and, for the love of everything holy, not a single hint of fondness.
She would not like him. She simply would not.
She had to nip this in the bud fast.
“Ethan,” she said, baring her teeth in some approximation of a smile, “save it for when we’re in public.”
Ten
The next day, Ethan had Delores send a bird of paradise floral arrangement with a note that just read, “Yours, E.” Then he sent Frances a text message telling her how much he was looking forward to seeing her again that night.
He wasn’t surprised when she didn’t respond. Not after the way she’d stalked out of his hotel room last night.
As hard as it was, he tried to put the events of the previous evening aside. He had work to do. The production lines were up to full speed. He checked in with his department heads and was stunned by the complete lack of pushback he got when he asked about head count and department budgets. A week ago, people would have been staring at the table or out the window and saying that the employees who had those numbers were out with the flu or on vacation or whatever lame excuse they assumed wouldn’t be too transparent.
But now? After less than a week of having Frances Beaumont in his life, people were making eye contact and saying, “I’ve got those numbers,” and smiling at him. Actually smiling! Even when a
turnaround was going well, there weren’t a lot of smiles in the process.
Then there was what happened at the end of the last meeting of the day. He’d been discussing the marketing budget in his office with the department managers. The men and women seated around the Beaumont conference table looked comfortable, as though they belonged there. For the briefest moment, Ethan was jealous of them. He didn’t belong there, and they all knew it.
It was 4:45 and the marketing people were obviously ready to go home. Ethan wrapped things up, got the promises that he’d have the information he’d requested on his desk first thing in the morning and dismissed everyone.
“So, Mr. Logan,” an older man said with a smile. Ethan thought his name was Bob. Larsen, maybe? “Are you going to get a donut on Friday?”
The room came to a brief pause, everyone listening for the answer. For what was quite possibly the first time, he grasped what Frances kept talking about when she said he should save it for the public.
Still, he had to say something. People were waiting for a reaction. More than that, they were waiting for the reaction that told them their trust in Ethan’s decisions wasn’t about to be misplaced. They were waiting for him to admit he was one of them.
“I hope she saves me a chocolate éclair this time,” he said in a conspiratorial whisper. He didn’t specify who “she” was. He didn’t have to.
This comment was met with an approving noise between a chuckle and a hum. Whew, Ethan thought as people cleared out. At least he hadn’t stuck his foot in it. Not like he had with Frances last night.
She’d been right. He did need her. If they walked away right now, whatever new, tenuous grip he had on this company would float away as soon as the last donut had been consumed. He’d gotten more accomplished in the past week than he had in three months, and, as much as it pained him to admit it, it had nothing to do with his keen managerial handling.
So why had he offered to let her out of their deal?
He didn’t know the answer to that, except there’d been a chink in her armor and instead of looking like a worthy opponent, Frances had seemed delicate and vulnerable. There’d been this pull—a pull he wasn’t sure he’d ever felt before—to take care of her. Which was patently ridiculous. She could take care of herself. Even if she hadn’t seen fit to remind him of that fact, he knew it to be true.
But the look on her face after they’d left her brother behind...
Ethan hadn’t lied. There were similarities between Frances and all his previous lady friends. Cultured, refined—the sort of woman who enjoyed a good meal and a little evening entertainment, both the kind that happened at the theater and in the hotel room.
So what was it about her that was so damn different?
It wasn’t her name. Sure, her name was the starting point of this entire relationship, but Ethan was no sycophant. The Beaumont name was only valuable to him as long as it let him do his job at the Brewery. He had no desire to get in with the family, and Ethan had his own damn fortune, thank you very much.
Was it the fact that, for the first time in his life, he was operating with marriage in mind? Was that alone enough to merit this deeper...engagement, so to speak? He would be tied to Frances for the next calendar year. Maybe it was only natural to want to take care of the woman who would be his wife.
Not that he knew what that looked like. His father had certainly never taken care of his mother, aside from providing the funds for her to do whatever she liked. Troy Logan’s involvement with the mother of his two sons was strictly limited to paying the bills. Maybe that was why his mother never stayed home for longer than a few months at a time. Troy Logan wasn’t capable of deeper feeling, so Wanda had sought out that emotional connection somewhere else. Anywhere else, really.
Ethan went to the private bathroom and splashed cold water on his face. This wasn’t supposed to be complicated, not like his parents’ relationship. This was cut-and-dried. No messy emotions. Just playing a game with one hell of an opponent who made him want to do things that were completely out of character. No problem.
He checked his jaw in the mirror—maybe he wouldn’t shave before dinner tonight. As he was debating the merits of facial hair, he heard his office door shut with a decent amount of force.
“Frances?” he called out. “Is that you?”
There was no response.
He unrolled his sleeves and slid his jacket back on. The only other person who walked into his office without being announced by Delores was Delores herself. Even if it was near quitting time, he still needed to maintain his professional image.
But as he walked back into his office, he knew it wasn’t Delores. Instead, a tall, commanding man sat in one of the two chairs in front of the desk.
The man looked like Phillip Beaumont—until he gave Ethan such an imperious glare that Ethan realized it wasn’t the same Beaumont.
He recognized that look. He’d seen it on the covers of business magazines and in the Wall Street Journal. None other than Chadwick Beaumont, the former CEO of the Beaumont Brewery, was sitting in Ethan’s office. The man every single employee in this company wanted back.
Ethan went on high alert. Beaumont had, until this very moment, been more of a ghost that Ethan had to work around than an actual living man to be dealt with. Yet here he was, months after Ethan had taken over. This couldn’t be a coincidence, not after the interaction with Phillip last night.
“I had heard,” Beaumont began with no other introduction, “that you were going to tear this office out.”
“It’s my prerogative,” Ethan replied, keeping his voice level. He had to give Beaumont credit—at least he hadn’t said my office. “As I am the current CEO.”
Beaumont tilted his head in acknowledgment.
“To what do I owe the honor?” Ethan asked, as if this were a social call when it was clearly anything but. He took his seat behind his desk, leaving both hands on the desktop, as if all his cards were on the table.
Beaumont did not answer immediately. He crossed his leg and adjusted the cuff of his pants. Which was to be expected, Ethan figured. Beaumont was a notoriously tough negotiator, much like his father had been.
Well, two could play at this game. Troy Logan had earned his reputation as a corporate raider during the 1980s the hard way. His name alone could make high-powered bankers turn tail and run. Ethan had learned at the feet of the master. If Beaumont thought he could gain something with this confrontation, he was going to be sorely disappointed.
While Beaumont tried to wait Ethan out, Ethan studied him.
Chadwick Beaumont—the scion of the Beaumont family—was taller and blonder than Frances or even his brother Phillip. His hair held just a shine of redness, whereas Frances’s was all flame. There was enough similarity that, even if Ethan hadn’t met Phillip the night before, he would have recognized the Beaumont features—the chin, the nose, the ability to command a room just by existing in it.
How had the company been sold away from this man? Ethan tried to recall. An activist shareholder had precipitated the sale. Beaumont had fought against it tooth and nail, but once the sale had been finalized, he’d packed up and moved on.
So, yeah—this wasn’t about the company. This was about Frances.
Which Beaumont proved when he tried out something that was probably supposed to be a smile but didn’t even come close. “You’re making me look bad. Flowers every day? My wife is beginning to complain.”
Ethan didn’t smile back. “My apologies for that.” He was not sorry. “That’s not my intention.”
One eyebrow lifted. “What are your intentions?”
Damn, Ethan had walked right into that one. “I’m sorry—is that any of your business?”
“I’m making it my business.” The statement was made in a casual enough tone, but there was no missing the implicit t
hreat. Beaumont tried to stare him down for a moment, but Ethan didn’t buckle.
“Good luck with that.”
Beaumont’s eyes hardened. “I don’t know what your game is, Logan, but you really don’t know what you’re getting into with her.”
That might be a true enough observation, but Ethan wasn’t about to concede an inch. “As far as I can tell, I’m getting into a relationship with a grown woman. Still don’t see how that’s any of your concern.”
Beaumont shook his head slowly, as if Ethan had blundered into admitting he was an idiot. “Either she’s using you or you’re using her. It won’t end well.”
“Again, not your concern.”
“It is my concern because this will be just another one of Frances’s messes that I have to clean up after.”
Ethan bristled. “You talk as if she’s a wayward child.”
Beaumont’s glare bore into him. “You don’t know her like I do. She’s lost more fortunes than I can count. Keeping her out of the public eye is a challenge during the best of times. And you,” he said, pointing his chin at Ethan, “are pushing her back into the public eye.”
Ethan stared at Beaumont. Was he serious? But Chadwick Beaumont did not look like the kind of man who made a joke. Ever.
What had Frances said last night? “Don’t patronize me by deciding what’s best for me.” Suddenly, that statement made sense. “Does she know you’re here?”
“Of course not,” Beaumont replied.
“Of course not,” Ethan repeated. “Instead, you took it upon yourself to decide what was best not only for her but for me, as well.” He gave his best condescending smile, which took effort. He did not feel like smiling. “You’ll have to excuse me, but I’m trying to figure out what gives you the right to be such a patronizing asshole to a pair of consenting adults. Any thoughts on that?”
Beaumont gave him an even look.
“I suppose,” Ethan went on, “that the only surprising thing is that you came alone to intimidate me, instead of with a herd of Beaumont brothers.”
“We don’t tend to travel in a pack,” Beaumont said coolly.
Falling For Her Fake Fiancé (The Beaumont Heirs 5) Page 10