Ten

Ethan

“Tell me about your life as a model.” Misha sat cross-legged on top of the picnic table we’d commandeered inside the urban park.

I knew the time would come when Misha would start to push and it appeared that the time had come. “What do you want to know? I booked a lot of the best jobs, appeared on magazine covers and catwalks around the globe. Then I got sick of it, left and started Aegle.” That was the truth, just not the whole truth.

“So you brought me here to Australia to stay at your brother’s new resort, so we could not talk?”

I smiled at her sarcastic question. “Well I thought maybe you wanted to take advantage of some world class surfing while we’re here. Besides we’re completely anonymous here. No press,” I whispered and leaned forward on the sand, sliding my sunglasses over my eyes so I could look my fill of her in that barely there peach bikini. Misha leaned back on her elbows, face tilted towards the sun with a Cheshire smile on her face.

“Surfing does sound incredible.” She moaned the words like I’d just slid a finger inside her and hooked it the way she liked.

The woman was incredibly sexy. It oozed out of her and she didn’t seem to concern herself with it, she wore what was comfortable and she wore it well. Sometimes she showed a lot of skin but Misha didn’t go out of her way to be sexy and that just made her even sexier. And, fuck me, that lush, earthy body of hers was the stuff dreams were made of. “You look happy.”

She turned her pretty face towards me and smiled affectionately. “So do you Ethan Mahoney.” Her head tilted to the side like she was trying to figure something out. “What did you get sick of, with modeling I mean?”

I sighed because I wanted to shrug it off but I couldn’t. Brian had told me—and Misha—that an interview was scheduled with The Women, a talk show geared toward my prime demographic, in two weeks. “The need to always look perfect and the lengths people went to just to get it.”

She turned her face back towards the sun, a sober expression on her face. “Did you ever do anything dangerous to look a certain way? I mean, I know eating disorders and drug use are rampant in the industry for female models but I assumed men got a pass. Like always.”

For the most part, she was right. It was an unfair part of life but everyone played the card they were dealt. “Other than a few ill-advised diets to drop weight quick, no I never did. But I was the exception.” It sounded arrogant but back then it had been a burden, explaining to the other models why I refused to take pills or snort coke just to book a gig. “I got plenty of gigs by taking care of myself and because I wasn’t on drugs, photographers and directors liked working with me.”

“I completely believe you were the exception,” she told me, mouth curling up into a sexy smile.

“Do you know how many friends were there one day and gone the next? Overdose, addiction, suicide. All in the name of having a specific look on the whim of some eccentric asshole. And do you know sometimes it wasn’t even the clothing designers? It was photographers, art directors and other people who should have fucking known better!” He sat up. “Too many, Misha. Too damn many.” I hated even fucking thinking about it because it brought back too many memories and not just of Katarina. Back then it felt like the sixties the way people dropped off the grid, never to be heard from again. Some of them, I knew, had simply gone back home to Iowa or Nebraska, but plenty more had been found in gutters with needles in their arms.

Misha’s face was turned to mine but her oversized glasses shielded her expression. “She must’ve been something special.”

It didn’t surprise me that she had picked up on it. Misha, I was beginning to learn, was very intuitive. “She was.” At least to my twenty-year-old heart she was. “Katarina Shipova. Back then I’d been so in love with her. Long silky hair, so blonde it was almost white. She was tall and thin, too thin, but I didn’t see it at the time, and she read things like Nietzsche and Kierkegaard and Camus. In English and Russian. I was smitten.” As hard as it was to believe, even the memory of her made me smile.

“Young love,” she said wistfully, arms wrapped around her middle so her breasts spilled over the bikini top held up seemingly by sheer will.

“Exactly. We met on a shoot for a unisex cologne. That shit smelled awful and we laughed about it all day as they pretty much bathed us in it.” She’d been wearing this skintight dress drawing every eye in the studio to those mile-long legs. “After the shoot, I asked her out for coffee. She said yes.”

“Big surprise,” she shot me a grin.

“Maybe it was our age or the industry but we fell fast, and hard. We would steal a weekend in Paris, meeting there as she flew to Italy for a shoot and I was headed home after a shoot in Prague, that sort of thing. We’d meet up in a club in Manhattan and spend the weekend together at the Four Seasons.” I shook my head, thinking of how out of touch, how decadent it all sounded.

“What woman in her twenties wouldn’t have fallen for a guy like that?”

One side of my mouth kicked up into a sardonic grin. “Yeah. Well I loved her. Everything about her. She was strong but delicate and brought out a protective side of me I didn’t know I had.” As the baby in a house full of men I was used to being protected so it had taken me by surprise.

Misha looked like she wanted to say something, but wisely kept her thoughts to herself.

“We were in love.”

“Sounds incredible,” she said, again sounding wistfully and making me wonder if she’d ever felt that before.

“It was. Until it wasn’t.” I frowned when she stood and reached her hand out to me. “What?”

“This part sounds like we need to walk.” She stood with a neutral expression on her face, patiently waiting for me to join her. When I did, she gifted me a small smile.

“I started booking bigger gigs, better ones. Vogue , Italian Vogue , Guess, Versace. You name it and they wanted me. Kat hated it. Resented me. Every gig I got was like a knife to her heart.” She’d look at me with those big damn eyes, hurt swimming in them and aimed at me like I was the source of all her pain. “At first she decided it was her look so she died her hair black and lopped off six inches.” The feel of her hand on my arm startled me but I kept going. She wanted to know, so I’d share the whole sordid tale. “Then she thought she wasn’t thin enough, which was fucking insane. She was five-eleven, one hundred twenty pounds, she was already too thin. But she’d only eat one salad a day, if that much. She smoked too much, did too much blow and she started to look emaciated. Unhealthy.”

“Did she get the results she wanted?”

I let out a bitter laugh. “How could she when she could barely function on a shoot. Between the drugs and lack of nutrition she could hardly keep her eyes open on shoots and started losing jobs. Things only got worse from there.” As though she could sense things were about to get dark, Misha clasped our hands together, kicking at the spray of water at our feet. “She started to use more and more. Didn’t want to see me, wouldn’t take my calls. Then no one saw her at all for a couple weeks. I went to her house and her roommate said, ‘she died a week ago’. That was it. She was gone. Overdosed.”

Misha was quiet for a long time, squeezing my hand hard as tears trekked down her cheeks. She stepped in front of me and stopped, her free hand flat on my chest. “That must have been hard, Ethan. I am so sorry.” Her lean arms banded my waist and she buried her face in my chest, hugging me like her life depended on it. “So sorry.”

“Thank you,” I choked out, overcome with emotion. She was the first person to offer up true condolences and I felt it down to the center of my heart. Everyone had spoken their meaningless platitudes about her “poor soul” or how she brought it on herself. She was “gone too soon” they’d said like they fucking knew. They didn’t know. But this woman, this bohemian fixer who wore crazy hippie clothes had given me the strength to mourn Kat. “Thank you, Misha.” Her coconut scented hair surrounded me as I leaned in and pressed a kiss to her forehead before turning away and walking a few feet into the water.

I walked parallel to the water for hours.

Grateful for her help but equally grateful she decided not to follow me.

***

“This place is magnificent Roc.” Every time I took in the luxury resort on the western coast of Australia, complete with dozens of small bungalows surrounding an eight-story hotel, it took my breath away. The entire décor was sand and surf, with smooth sand and sea blue colors that forced you to relax whether you wanted to or not. A few hints of black in doorknobs, headboards and elevator buttons, gave the resort its name. “Onyx.”

Jax and Uncle Noah echoed their sentiments as we stood on the patio looking out at the guests enjoying the opening weekend celebration.

Roc smiled and placed a hand on my shoulder. “Thanks Ethan. This place was a long time coming but I’m happy with the result.”

“Do you plan to stay here a while or will you be gone after the Grand Opening week?” He’d gone to Puerto Rico as an act of revenge against his ex-lover Abby who was now his wife, and after discovering the daughter he didn’t know he had, they’d reconnected and stayed in Puerto Rico until he’d bought this place.

“Not too long. Abby is eager to set up our new home, so we’ll spend a few months here and then head back.”

My eyebrows arched. “Home?” Roc hadn’t stayed in one place for more than six months in years and as far as the rest of us knew, his home was whatever one of his properties was closest. “Puerto Rico?”

“We just closed on a place in California. She wants to get everything set up before the baby comes.”

If I had any doubts this was the first any of the family had heard about, their raucous praise and congratulations squashed it. “Baby? Congratulations man, maybe this time you’ll get a boy.”

“We need another Mahoney male,” Noah said, wrapping Roc in a hug that illustrated just how much the man had aged. “I’m happy for you son.”

“Thank you, Uncle Noah.” Roc’s voice was choked with emotion. “It wasn’t planned but we’re both happy as hell about it. Chelle too, she’s eager to have someone else to boss around.”

I had to laugh at that because that little girl bossed us all around. “Does it make me a bad uncle that I’m happy to put someone else in her path?” Chelle was damned adorable and had us all wrapped around her finger, so maybe we were to blame for her take charge attitude.

Jax’s gaze wandered over to where Abby stood with a smile on her face as Misha sat in the sand with Chelle, making a castle together. “How are things going with Misha?”

Talk about a question I didn’t know how to answer. “Okay I guess. I feel more relaxed, less anxious but I can’t really tell if this is all working or not.” I’d kept my distance from Misha today because yesterday had wrung me out emotionally. I was sure she understood since this was her job, but I felt like a jerk all the same. More so when she’d clearly taken my lead and stayed away.

“I guess we’ll find out soon enough,” Roc said. “Eight days.” The words, meant to be a simple reminder, hung in the air like a threat.

“Don’t remind me,” I groaned and sipped cucumber water that dotted every table. “Let’s talk about this view.” It was fantastic with a never-ending view of the Indian Ocean.

“He’s deflecting,” Jax laughed. “Means it’s working or he’s got a thing for Misha.” I glared at my middle brother and the smug bastard shrugged. “What? Everyone has a thing for Misha.”

“What?” I turned to him, poised for a fight. “You said she didn’t go there with clients.” It was a bit hypocritical of me to even be upset about it, but dammit I wanted to know the truth.

“She doesn’t, asshole. But that doesn’t mean they don’t try. Hell, I don’t even think she dates at all.” His stare lingered on her and I tamped down the jealousy when I caught the look of understanding in his gaze. “There’s always been this underlying hurt in her.”

“Sounds like you might be the one with a thing for her,” I spat out, angry that I felt jealous of my brother. I’d gotten over that shit years ago when I learned nothing I did would change who Jax was as far as women were concerned. NFL star always trumped male model.

He sent me a glare that showed me just how wrong I was. “She’s helped a lot of my athletes, we’re friends. As close to friends as she allows anyway.”

I nodded, ready to drop the subject. “I’m just trying to let this work, whatever it is. If I don’t think too hard about it, I figure it might be working, okay?” I couldn’t afford for this not to work, but even as I had the thought, Misha’s question came back to me. When will it be enough? “Then I can get my life back.”

“Some life.” Uncle Noah snorted and shook his head as he clapped me on the back. “You work too damn much, kid. Retire and spend some of that money on a beautiful woman. Get yourself a houseful of kids like Roc, here.”

I laughed at his words because I wasn’t ready to settle down, but the laugh was bitter and without amusement. “Jax is older than me, he should have at least one kid now.”

Uncle Noah scraped a hand over his thick silver hair, blue eyes bouncing between me and Jax with a look that had us both squirming. “He’s hopeless for now. But you, I have a feeling you’ll get bitten soon. I can’t wait!” He scrubbed his too tanned hands together with glee, looking like a Disney villain. “Oh, I can’t wait.”

“Says the lifelong bachelor who worked eighty-hour weeks for forty years.” I didn’t resent Noah’s work growing up. We were all just grateful he’d taken us in so they couldn’t split us up, but I was well aware that we’d cost him a relationship with a woman who’d wanted the rich and glamorous life he offered—without three orphaned boys.

“That’s why you should listen to me. Don’t make my mistakes when you can learn from them. How much more money do you need?”

“Why does everyone think it’s just about the money? What about success? Creating a legacy for those future children so they can choose their own future?” That was more important than anything. I pulled my gaze away from Misha and noticed every man in my family giving me an odd look, like maybe they thought I’d lost it.

“If you’re happy with your life Ethan, that’s what matters.” Roc offered with a sympathetic smile I didn’t need. It was so easy to pity the rest of us when his mistakes could be corrected. He’d missed a few years with Abby and Chelle but now he had them—and another baby on the way—because Abby was still around for him to fix it.

“Where’s Aunt Melanie?”

Happy for the subject change, Uncle Noah grinned at the mention of Abby’s aunt who he was slowly sweeping off her feet. It had taken her some time to warm up to the handsome playboy but slowly she was coming around and we all had bets on how long it would be before he asked her to marry him. “Over there looking as pretty as a picture. And if I’m not mistaken, itching to dance.” He grinned and made his way over to where she chatted with an older couple wearing a bright happy smile.

“Uncle Noah has the right idea,” Roc said, his gaze settled on his wife with a satisfied smile.

Leaving me and Jax, the eternal bachelors alone together, watching the festivities. “I saw you two on the beach yesterday.”

The protective tone in his voice had my hackles rising, my spine straight. Ready to go on the defensive. “It wasn’t what it looked like so spare me your lecture on hurting her.” Just because I hadn’t been serious about a woman since Kat, didn’t mean I was a heartless bastard. I was just a man smart enough to learn a tough lesson. Love wasn’t worth the heartache. If losing my parents hadn’t taught me that, losing Kat had made sure I would never forget. “She was consoling me.” The first person to offer real comfort after Kat’s death.

“Calm down baby brother, I wasn’t even going there. It’s just, I don’t know exactly. You looked relaxed. Content.”

I let out the breath I’d been holding in and turned to Jax, my protector, my idol, my best friend. “You know, Jax, I do feel more relaxed.” I just hoped whatever Misha was doing, worked.