So this relationship had been doomed from the get-go. Nothing lost, nothing gained. She was not going to let this gallery fail. She needed the steady job and the sense of purpose far more than she needed Ethan to look her in the eye and tell her that he wanted her just as complicated as she was.
Unexpectedly, Becky pulled her into a tight hug. “I’m so sorry, honey,” she whispered into Frances’s ear.
“Jeez, Becks—it was just a disappointing date. Not the end of the world.” And the more Frances told herself that, the truer it’d become. “Now go,” she said, doing her best to sound as if it was just another Friday at the office. “Contractors don’t stand around for free.”
She had to make this gallery work. She had to...
She had to do something to not think about Ethan.
That was going to be rather difficult when they had dinner tonight.
* * *
She wore the green dress. She felt more powerful in the green dress than she did in the bridesmaid’s dress. And she’d only worn the green dress to the office, not out to dinner, so it wasn’t like wearing the same outfit two days in a row.
The only person who would recognize the dress was Ethan, and, well, there was nothing to be done about that.
Frances twisted her hair up. The only jewelry she wore was the necklace. The one he’d gotten for her. It felt odd to wear it, to know he’d picked it out on his own and that, for at least a little while, she’d been swayed by something so cliché as diamonds.
But it was a beautiful piece, and it went with the dress. And, after all, she was getting engaged tonight so it only seemed right to wear the diamonds from her fiancé.
She swept into the restaurant, head up and smile firmly in place. She’d given herself a little pep talk about how this wasn’t about Ethan; this was about her and she had to get what she needed out of it. And if that occasionally included mind-blowing sex, then so be it. She needed to get laid every so often. Ethan was more than up to the task. Casual sex in a casual marriage. No big whoop.
Ethan was waiting for her at the bar again. “Frances,” he said, pulling her into a tight embrace and brushing his lips over her cheek. She didn’t miss the way he avoided her lips. “Shall we?”
“Of course.” She was ready for him tonight. He was not going to get to her.
“You’re looking better,” he said as he held her chair for her.
“Oh? Was I not up to your usual high standards this morning?”
Ethan’s mouth quirked into a wry smile. “You seem better, too.”
She waved away his backhanded compliment. “So,” she said, not even bothering to look at the menu, “tell me about this mysterious Richards person. If I’m going to be accused of industrial espionage, I should at least get some of the details.”
His smile froze and then fell right off his face. It made Frances feel good, the rush of power that went with catching him off guard.
So she’d had a rough night and a tough morning. She was not going down with a whimper. And if he thought he could steamroll her, well, he’d learn soon enough.
“Actually,” he said, dropping his gaze to his menu, “I did want to talk to you about that. I owe you an apology.”
He owed her an apology? This morning he’d accused her of betrayal. This evening—apologies?
No. She did not want to slide back into that space where he professed to care about her feelings because that was where she got into trouble. She pointedly stared at her menu.
“Do you know who Zeb Richards is?”
“No. I assume he is the Richards in question, however.” She still didn’t look at Ethan. She realized she was fiddling with the diamonds at her neck, but she couldn’t quite help herself.
“He is.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ethan lay down his menu. “I don’t feel it’s my place to tell you this, but I don’t want to come off as patronizing, so—”
“A tad late for that,” she murmured in as disinterested a voice as possible.
“A company called ZOLA is trying to make my life harder. They’re making noises that my company is failing at restructuring and that AllBev should sell off the Brewery. One presumes that they’ll either buy it on the cheap or buy it for scrap. A company like the Brewery is worth almost as much for its parts as it is for its value.”
“Indeed,” she said. She managed to nail “faux sympathetic,” if she did say so herself. “And this concerns me how?”
“ZOLA is run by Zeb Richards.”
This time, she did put down her menu. “And...? Out with it, Ethan.”
For the first time, Ethan looked unsure of himself. “Zeb Richards is your half brother.”
She blinked a few times. “I have many half brothers. However, I don’t particularly remember one of them being named Zeb.”
“When I found out this morning that he was related to you, I assumed you were working with him.”
She stared at him. “How do you know about any supposed half brothers of mine?”
“Chadwick,” he added with an apologetic smile.
“I should have known,” she murmured.
“I asked him if he knew about ZOLA, and he gave me a file on Richards. Including proof that you and Zeb are related.”
“How very nice of him to tell you and not me.” Oh, she was damnably tired of Chadwick meddling in her affairs.
“Hence why I’m trying not to be patronizing.” Ethan fiddled with his silverware. “I did not have all the facts this morning when you got to the office and I made a series of assumptions that were unfair to you.”
She looked at him flatly. “Is that so? And what, pray tell, was this additional information that has apparently exonerated me so completely?”
He dropped his gaze and she knew. “Chadwick again?”
“Correct. He believes that you have never had contact with your other half brothers. So, I’m sorry about my actions this morning. I was concerned that you were working with Richards to undermine the Brewery and I know now that simply isn’t the case.”
This admission was probably supposed to make her feel better. It did not. “That’s what you were concerned with? That’s what this morning was about?”
And not her? Not the way she’d insulted him last night, the way she’d stormed out of the hotel room without even pausing long enough to get her dress zipped properly?
He’d been worried about the company. His job.
Not her.
It shouldn’t hurt. After all, this entire relationship was built on the premise that he was doing it for the company. For the Brewery and for his private firm.
No, it shouldn’t have hurt at all.
Funny how it did.
“I could see how you were trying to get your family identity back. It wasn’t a difficult mental leap to make, you understand. But I apologize.”
She stared at him. She’d wanted to get revenge. She’d wanted to bring him down several pegs and put him in his place. But she hadn’t conspired with some half brother she didn’t even know existed to take down the whole company.
She didn’t want to take down the company. The people who worked there were her friends, her second family. Destroying the company would be destroying them.
It’d mean destroying Ethan, too.
“You’re serious. You’re really apologizing?”
He nodded, the look in his eyes deepening as he leaned forward. “I should have had more faith in you. It’s a mistake I won’t make again.”
As an apology went, it wasn’t bad. Actually, it was pretty damned good. There was only one problem with it.
“So that’s it? The moment things actually get messy, you assume I’m trying to ruin you. But now that my brother has confirmed that I’ve never even heard of Zeb Richards or whatever his name is
, you’re suddenly all back to ‘I like you complicated, Frances’?” She scoffed and slouched away from the table.
It must have come out louder than she realized because his eyes hardened. “We are in public.”
“So we are. Your point?”
A muscle in his jaw tensed. “This is the night when I ask you to marry me,” he said in a low growl that, despite the war of words they were engaged in, sent a shiver down her spine because it was the exact same voice he’d used when he’d bent her over the bed and made her come. Twice.
“Is it?” she growled back. “Do you always ask women to marry you when you’re losing an argument?”
He stared hard at her for a second and then, unbelievably, his lips curved into an almost smile, as if he enjoyed this. “No. But I’ll make an exception for you.”
“Don’t,” she said, suddenly afraid of this. Of him. Of what he could do to her if she let him.
“This was the deal.”
“Don’t,” she whispered, terrified.
He pushed back from his chair in full view of everyone in the restaurant. He dropped to one knee, just like in the movies, and pulled a robin’s-egg-blue box out of his pocket. “Frances,” he said in a stage voice loud enough to carry across the whole space. “I know we haven’t known each other very long, but I can’t imagine life without you. Will you do me the honor of marrying me?”
It sounded rehearsed. It wasn’t the fumbling failure at sweet nothings she’d come to expect from him. It was for show. All for show.
Just like they’d planned.
This was where the small part of her brain that wasn’t freaking out—and it was a very small part—was supposed to say yes. Where she was publically supposed to declare her love for him, and they were supposed to ride off into the sunset—or, at the very least, his hotel room—and consummate their relationship. Again.
He was handsome and good in bed and a worthy opponent and rich—couldn’t forget that. And he liked her most of the time. He liked her too much.
She was supposed to say yes. For the gallery. For Becky. For the Brewery, for all the workers.
She was supposed to say yes so she could make Frances Beaumont important again, so that the Beaumont name would mean what she wanted it to mean—fame and accolades and people wanting to be her friend.
She was supposed to say yes for her. This was what she wanted.
Wasn’t it?
Ethan’s face froze. “Well?” he demanded in a quiet voice. “Frances.”
Say yes, her brain urged. Say yes right now.
“I...” She was horrified to hear her voice come out as a whisper. “I can’t.”
His eyes widened in horror or confusion or some unholy mix of the two, she didn’t know. She didn’t wait around to find out. She bolted out of the restaurant as fast as she could in her heels. She didn’t even wait to get her coat.
She ran. It was an act of cowardice. An act of surrender.
She’d ceded the game.
She’d lost everything.
Sixteen
“Frances?”
What the hell just happened? One second, he was following the script because, yes, he damn well had planned out the proposal. It was for public consumption.
The next second, she was gone, cutting an emerald-green swath through the suddenly silent restaurant.
“Frances, wait!” he called out, painfully aware that this was not part of the plan. He lunged to his feet and took off after her. She couldn’t just leave—not like that. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.
Okay, today had not been his best work. He’d acted without all the available facts this morning and clearly, that had been a bad move. There were no such things as coincidences—except, it seemed, for right now.
Yes, he should have given her the benefit of the doubt and yes, he probably should have groveled a little more. The relief Ethan had felt when Chadwick had told him the only Beaumonts who knew of Zeb’s identity were him and Matthew had been no small thing. Frances hadn’t been plotting to overthrow the company. In fact, she’d been apologizing to Ethan. They could reset at dinner and continue on as they had been.
But he hadn’t expected her to run away from him—especially not after the way she’d dressed him down after they’d had sex.
If she didn’t want to get married, he thought as he gave chase, why the hell hadn’t she just said so? He’d given her an out—several outs. And she’d refused his concessions at every turn, only to leave him hanging with a diamond engagement ring in his hand.
This wasn’t right, damn it.
He caught up with her trying to hail a cab. He could see her shivering in the cold wind. “For God’s sake, Frances,” he said, shucking his suit jacket and slinging it around her shoulders. “You’ll catch your death.”
“Ethan,” she said in the most plaintive voice he’d ever heard.
“What are you doing?” he demanded. “This was the deal.”
“I know, I know...” She didn’t elucidate on that knowledge, however.
“Frances.” He took her by the arm and pulled her a step back from the curb. “We agreed—we agreed this morning—that I was going to ask you to marry me and you were going to say yes.” When she didn’t look at him, he dropped her arm and cupped her face in his hands. “Babe, talk to me.”
“Don’t babe me, Ethan.”
“Then talk, damn it. What the hell happened?”
“I—I can’t. I thought I could, but I can’t. Don’t you see?” He shook his head. “I thought—I thought I didn’t need love. That I could do this and it’d be no different than watching my parents fight, no different than all the other men who wanted to get close to the Beaumont name and money. You weren’t supposed to be different, Ethan. You were supposed to be the same.”
Then, as he watched in horror, a tear slipped past her blinking eyelid and began to trickle down her cheek.
“I wasn’t supposed to like you. And you, you big idiot, you weren’t supposed to like me,” she said, her voice quiet and shaky as more tears followed the first.
He tried to wipe the tears away with his thumb, but they were replaced too quickly. “I don’t understand how liking each other makes marrying each other a bad thing,” he said.
“You’re here for your company. You’re not here for me,” she said, cutting him off before he could protest.
An unfamiliar feeling began to push past the confusion and the frustration—a feeling that he hadn’t often allowed himself to feel.
Panic.
And he wasn’t sure why. It could be that, if the workers at the Brewery got it in their collective heads that he’d broken their Frannie’s heart, they might draw and quarter him. He could be panicking that his foolproof method of regaining control over his business felt suddenly very foolish.
But that wasn’t it. That wasn’t it at all.
“See?” She sniffed. She was openly crying at this point. It was horrifying because as much as she might have berated him for being lousy at the game when he dared admit that he might have feelings for her, he knew this was not a play on her part. “How long will it last?”
His mouth opened. A year, he almost said, because that was the deal.
“I could love you,” he told her and it was God’s honest truth. “If you’ll let me.”
Her eyes closed, and she turned her head away. “Ethan...” she whispered, so softly he almost didn’t hear it over the sound of a cab pulling up next to them. “I could love you, too.” For a moment, he thought she was agreeing; she was seeing the light, and they’d get in the cab and carry on as planned.
But then she added, “I won’t settle for could. Not anymore. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I want to be in love with the man I marry. And I want him to be in love with me, too.
I want to believe I’m worth that—worth something more than a business deal. Worth more than some company.”
“You are,” he said, but it didn’t sound convincing, not even to his own ears. “You are, Frances.”
She gave him a sad smile full of heartache. “I want to believe that, Ethan. But I’m not a prize to be won in the game. Not anymore.”
She slipped his jacket off her slim shoulders and held it out to him.
He didn’t want to take it. He didn’t want her to go. “Keep it. I don’t want you to freeze.”
She shook her head no, and the cabbie honked and shouted, “Lady, you need a ride or not?” so Frances ducked into the cab.
He stood there, freezing his ass off as he watched the cab’s taillights disappear down the street.
When he’d talked to Chadwick Beaumont on the phone today, he’d barely been able to wait for Chadwick to get done explaining who the hell Zeb Richards was before asking, “Does Frances know about this?” because he’d been desperate to know if she was leading him on or if those moments he’d thought where honesty were real.
“Unless she’s hired her own private investigators, the only people who know about my father’s illegitimate children are me and Matthew. My mother was the one who originally tracked down the oldest three. She’d long suspected my father was cheating on her,” he had added. “There are others.”
“And you don’t think Frances would have hired her own PI?”
“Problem?” Chadwick had said in such a genial way that Ethan had almost confided in him that he might have just accused Chadwick’s younger sister of industrial espionage.
“No,” Ethan had said because, at the time, it hadn’t been a problem. A little lover’s quarrel, nothing that a thirty-thousand-dollar diamond ring couldn’t fix. “Just trying to understand the Beaumont family tree.”
“Good luck with that,” was all Chadwick had said.
Ethan had thanked him for the information and promised to pass along anything new he learned. Then he’d eaten his donuts and thought about how he’d make it up to Frances.
Falling For Her Fake Fiancé (The Beaumont Heirs 5) Page 16