ETHAN

She closes the patio door, and the sound of the ocean waves take over again.

I’m not sure why I answered her that way. Just habit, I suppose. Every time someone’s tried to insist on a little bit more for me, I have declined. At first, I just didn’t meet anybody worth latching onto. Then I got wealthy, and I never really knew which women were authentic. There’ve been a lot of them. Some gold diggers, but some decent ones too. But after a while, it just sort of became easier to keep them all at arm’s length rather than trying to separate the real ones from the fake ones.

So, which one is she?

Then again, it doesn’t matter. I just pushed her away, didn’t I? And she went, willingly. She walked away. So that’s that.

I stand up from the lounge chair, stretching. I’m sore everywhere. Feeling my thigh muscles ache, I have to smile. Ava has really given me a workout over the last few days. So much for that shy virgin act. When she came out of her shell, she turned into an absolute animal, demanding more and more from me, several times a day.

And now she wants to go back home.

Figures.

It takes my eyes a few seconds to adjust when I walk back inside, out of the glaring sunlight. After I shoot a couple of texts to Perry, I’ve got the plane all fueled up, checked and ready to take off. We can just go.

When I walk into the bedroom to let her know, she’s already dressed, with her hair pinned up on top of her head and sunglasses perched over that. She smiles at me in a friendly way, like we’re neighbors.

“The jet will be ready for us,” I tell her. “Ben is going to drive us in a little bit. You all set?” I ask her.

“Totally,” she shrugs. There’s not a trace of regret there. Amazing.

“Perfect,” I answer, matching her breezy attitude. “I’ll just hop in the shower. Looks like a lot of people are waiting for me back in San Francisco anyway. You mind taking a taxi when we get there? I already have a meeting set up.”

“Sounds great,” she smiles. Like a bank teller, like I expect her to add have a nice day on the end of it.

We spend the rest of the time we have together acting like coworkers. Logically, I know this is the best way. We both got what we wanted, right? She wanted to shed her virginal roadblocks, get a taste of the good life. I wanted to cross her off my to-do list. And I did.

Totally fair, no hard feelings, that’s that.

Once we’re on the jet, Nadine brings out coffee. She gestures toward the champagne that’s always kept on board and I shake my head. This is not a champagne kind of trip.

Ava slides into one of the captains’ chairs, peering out the window and buckling the seatbelt over her hips.

“I still can’t get over it,” she muses. “Did you think your life was going to be this way? Did you think you were going to end up the sort of guy who travels the world in a private jet?”

“Of course I did,” I answer reasonably. “Nobody gets rich by mistake. I mean, it takes luck, but you still have to aim for it.”

She nods thoughtfully. “I hadn’t thought about it that way.”

“Well, you should,” I say. “I mean, you should think about where you’re aiming. You should have a plan.”

She smiles, her cheeks dimpling in that way that I love. I try not to notice.

“Speaking of plans,” she starts. “Didn’t we have a plan to make a cover story? Aden is going to be all over me like a detective. I need something to tell him, and we never did get to tour your companies and look for a job…”

“Oh, you’re totally right. Your brother’s going to freak.”

She lowers her chin and glares at me. “No, my brother is not going to freak,” she retorts, suddenly all sassy. “Because you’re going to keep your word, Ethan. You’re going to give me a job.”

“Okay, okay,” I answer. She’s right. “Fair enough. A promise is a promise. So, what would you like to do?”

She shrugs one shoulder, settling back in her chair as we start rolling down the runway. Immediately I remember our first trip on the jet, holding her in my arms, eager to touch her, eager to make her moan in my ear. I push the thought away with prejudice.

I don’t want to think about that right now.

“I think I would like… well, not an internship. Something real.”

“Something real,” I repeat with a smirk. “What does that mean?”

“Well I can’t go home with just an internship, now can I? Internships are supposed to turn into real jobs.”

“Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. You think your internship went well? You got promoted just like that?”

“I think my internship went amazing,” she answers with a twinkle in her eye. Does she have to flirt like this? “I definitely think I got promoted. I’m practically running the place now.”

I can’t help but chuckle. She really is adorable. “Okay then. A real job. Doing what?”

The jet lifts into the air, leaving the ground behind. Leaving all of last week behind, just like that.

“Well, do you have something in media? Television? Movies? It is California.”

“Hmm… not really. Television is kind of a dying industry. I do have a small company that does videos, like short dramas. Web-based.”

She raises her eyebrows at me. “Like soap operas? Like daytime television?”

“Yeah, I don’t know if that really exists anymore,” I laugh. “But I think you might like it, now that you mention it. It’s right downtown, as a matter of fact. They have been doing really well, and I know they just lost a couple of production people. Would you be interested in trying something like that?”

“It sure sounds like a good start,” she says. I search her eyes, looking for a trace of the woman who was in my arms just this morning. Anything. But no.

“Okay then,” I say finally. I guess it’s all settled.

The jet lands again in about thirty-five minutes, which goes by so quickly. The taxi is waiting on the tarmac when we get there, and we deplane, chatting in a friendly but awkward, albeit professional, way, I suppose.

She looks up at me for just a moment before she gets into the taxi, pushing her hair back from her forehead with her hand. I see fifteen years of her, all layered at once. The young girl, the teenager, the young woman, the vixen, and now the savvy negotiator who just talked me into giving her a pretty great job even though I don’t even know what her major was in college.

“All right, then,” she says brightly, smiling and squinting in the glaring sunlight. “See you soon, Boss!”

She ducks into the taxi and the door thuds closed. As it rolls away, I wonder if I’ve done the right thing. My stomach clenches.

I mean, I don’t know what else I could have done. I’ve never done anything else but say goodbye, over and over again.

So why is this one so hard?