Chapter Thirteen
Ethan
I had been sending emails for the last hour when my desk phone rang. I answered it, and my receptionist, Julie, announced the arrival of Reginald. I told her to send him in, got up from my desk, and opened my office door for my financial advisor. I returned to my seat and waited for him while I finished the tail end of my last email.
I had just hit send when Reginald came in, shrugging out of his coat and hanging it on the coat stand behind the door. “Good afternoon, Ethan,” Reginald said cheerfully, making his way to my desk and taking the seat across from me.
“Afternoon,” I said with a curt nod.
“I was surprised to hear from you so soon. What can I do for you today?” Reginald asked, sitting slightly forward on the edge of the chair like he was awaiting bad news.
“I just wanted to give you an update,” I said, “and thank you for steering me in the right direction. One Billion Fantasies proved to be the perfect solution to my predicament. I found the right girl, and believe it or not, she’s already pregnant. Things are coming together nicely.”
Reginald lifted both eyebrows in delighted surprise. “I am so glad to hear of this, my boy,” Reginald said rather affectionately. His business tone was gone. This was friends discussing life. I told him about Devon without mentioning her name and confessed how excited I was.
I realized, fifteen minutes later, that all I had been looking for was someone to share all the news with. Since I was unable to tell Heather or my family, I needed someone to unload all my excitement on. Reginald had become a dear friend, and his enthusiasm about the pregnancy seemed to match my own. By the time he left, my mood was at an all-time high, and I went into all my afternoon meetings feeling confident and excited.
That excitement ebbed away when my sister called later in the day asking if we could get together for dinner.
“Dinner won’t work for me tonight, Heather, sorry. I have a meeting with a client from out of town, and tonight was the only time that worked for him,” I lied, feeling a little guilty. But I couldn’t have her over for dinner. Devon’s stuff was all over the place, and I wasn’t going to banish the girl carrying my child to her bedroom for the evening so we could keep our little secret from my sister.
“Oh,” Heather said. “That’s all right. Is there another time that works for you? I miss you.”
I glanced at my watch. It was nearly one in the afternoon. “Is it too late to grab lunch right now?”
“Lunch would be wonderful,” Heather said gleefully. “Same place as last time? I haven’t been able to stop thinking about that wrap I had.”
“Sure thing. See you in half an hour?”
“Perfect,” Heather said, hanging up the phone.
Heather had beaten me to the restaurant when I arrived twenty-five minutes after getting off the phone with her. She was sitting at the window reading the menu when I came in. She glanced up, waved me over, and gave me a greeting hug.
“You look good,” she said. “New suit?”
“No.” I shook my head.
“Hm, something’s different. I just can’t put a finger on it. New hair? No,” she said quickly, her mouth tightening into a thin line as she scrutinized me while I sat down across from her.
“I don’t think I’ve changed anything since I saw you last,” I said, plucking my menu from the table. “You must be imagining things.”
She placed her index finger on her chin and shook her head. “I’m not imagining anything. Something is different. I’ll figure it out.”
“Okay.” I chuckled, scanning the menu while trying to ignore her invasive stare. After an awkward minute, I glanced up at her, one eyebrow raised. “Seriously? It’s going to bother you that much?”
Heather narrowed her eyes. “Yes. Yes, it is. Maybe it’s the stubble. Usually, you’re clean-shaven, aren’t you? Am I just making that up?”
“No, you’re not,” I said, even though she was. There were plenty of mornings where I rocked the five o’clock shadow, but I was willing to say anything to get her to stop staring at me. There was a pit of nerves in my gut that told me she was inching closer to finding out about me and Devon, which was completely impossible. My sister wasn’t a psychic.
But she was a woman, and they knew things.
I was relieved when she shrugged it off, and we ordered our food. Conversation sort of flowed. I stumbled over my words more than once, catching myself nearly spilling the beans about the baby. I reeled it back in and tried to only talk about things that were work-related. I was sure I was boring Heather to death, but for now, this seemed like the only safe course I could take. I had promised Devon we wouldn’t tell anyone about our arrangement, and it was a promise I was going to keep.
As I was halfway through telling Heather about my most recent meeting, a shadow fell across the table. My sister and I both looked up to see a tall young man with a mane of blond hair and a thick, tidy beard staring down at us.
Liam crossed his arms as he stared down his nose at me. “Look at that. You are alive after all.”
“Liam,” I said, nodding at the empty chair beside Heather. “Care to join us?”
“Don’t mind if I do,” Liam said, sliding into the open chair and smiling a warm hello at my sister. “Heather, nice to see you. I see Ethan still makes time to see you. How nice,” he said, his gaze flicking over to me.
“What?” I asked defensively.
“Where have you been, dude?” Liam asked. “We never go out anymore. And you bailed early on me last time. What’s the deal?”
I could feel Heather’s eyes on me. I had to play this cool. “There’s no deal,” I said as our food arrived. I leaned back as the waiter put my plate in front of me. The chicken rice bowl I had ordered was steaming, and my mouth started watering at the smell of curry. “I’ve been really busy with work. I know picking up women at the bars seems like a top priority, but I do have a company to run and sometimes the ladies need to wait.”
Liam and Heather shared a skeptical look. I tried to ignore them by taking a bite of my food. I burned my tongue, scowled and cursed under my breath, and swallowed the piping-hot morsel. I sipped my water. They were both still staring at me.
“Is there something the two of you want to say?” I asked over the rim of my glass of water.
“Well, your sister and I have probably come to the same conclusion,” Liam said slowly, the corner of his mouth twitching in a smile he was trying to control.
“Oh?” I said dryly.
Heather looked at Liam than back at me. “Ethan, is there, perhaps, a new girl in your life? A girl you might be serious with?”
Before I had a chance to answer, Liam leaned forward, both elbows resting on the table. “Yeah, you know, the kind of girl you don’t kick out of your bed as soon as you’re done with them? A secret girl you don’t want anyone to know about?”
“No,” I said as nonchalantly as I could manage.
“Really?” Liam asked, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms. “You’re sure?”
“Leave it,” I said. “There’s no girl. And if there were, why would I tell either of you? You both behave like children at the slightest idea of me being interested in a woman.”
“Because it’s fascinating,” Liam chuckled. “Womanizer Ethan getting serious with a girl. I just want to know what that looks like on a day-to-day basis, you know? Do you cook? Does she? Do you let her sleep in your bed, or do you banish her to somewhere else in the house so you can still get your beauty sleep?”
I wasn’t in the mood for teasing.
Heather giggled and covered her mouth. “Oh, come on. He wouldn’t be like that. Not if he loved her,” she said dramatically. She and Liam both burst into obnoxious laughter.
I put my fork down, wiped my mouth with my napkin, and grabbed my wallet from my back pocket. I dropped enough cash on the table to cover our meals and a generous tip. “You two have fun with your fictional ideas,” I said. “I have to get back to the office.”
“Don’t be like that, Ethan,” Heather said apologetically. “We were just having a bit of fun. Come, sit, and we’ll talk about something else.”
“It’s fine. I really have to get back to work. I’ll see you both around.”
They both called after me as I made my way out of the restaurant. As I passed them on the other side of the window, I kept my gaze straight ahead, feigning interest in the man throwing a miniature tantrum over the parking ticket he had discovered tucked under his windshield wiper.
I called Eddison, who picked me up around the corner, and instead of having him take me back to the office where I should have gone, I had him drive me home. I was hoping Devon would be there.
I needed her to be there.
On the drive over, I called her cell. She answered, sounding a little sleepy. “Hey, Ethan.”
“Hey,” I said. “Did I wake you?”
“No, I just had a nap. I was in and out of it for the last fifteen minutes or so. What’s up?”
I felt a little bad for waking her. Her voice was thick with fatigue, and I knew she was lying. She had been in a deep sleep. “I’m on my way home from the office. I just wanted to know if you’d be there or if you had class.”
“I’ll be here. My class was earlier this morning.”
“Great. I’ll see you shortly then,” I said, feeling the eagerness to see her, swelling in my chest and my pants.
When I came in the front door, Devon called out a hello from the living room. I shouted back and kicked off my shoes before shrugging out of my jacket and untucking my shirt. I made my way down the hallway until I was in the living room. Devon was curled up in her favorite corner of the couch with a book in her lap. She gave me a beautiful smile and folded the corner of her page down.
“How was your day?” she asked, shifting so she was facing me.
“All right,” I said, making a mental note of how nice it was to have her asking me how my day went. “How about you?”
She shrugged before standing. She tossed her book on the coffee table and stretched. She was wearing a pair of black cotton shorts with lace around her thighs and a black long sleeve shirt that was thin enough for me to see her nipples. She was most definitely not wearing a bra. The socks she wore were knee-highs, and I suffered from a rush of excitement at the thought of rolling them slowly down her legs and feeling her soft skin beneath my fingertips.
“Class this morning was good,” she said as she made to walk around me, “but lectures always tire me out. I had a nice nap before—”
I caught her wrist, spun her to me, and then crushed my mouth against hers. I couldn’t help it. I was powerless against the pull of her. She was so sexy, so soft, so intoxicating that I had to have her right then and there or my brain would surely explode in my skull.
She tasted like a dream. I let my tongue caress hers in her mouth and traced her lower lip with a deliberate slowness that earned a soft sigh from her.
I walked her backward without breaking our kiss. She followed my lead until I had her up against the wall. Her hands were cold as they wandered up my shirt. I caught her wrists, yanked her hands away from me, and pinned her by her wrists with her arms above her head. My free hand grabbed the hem of her shirt, and I yanked it up over her breasts.
Her nipples were hard. I pulled my kiss from her mouth, down her neck, over her chest, and to her breasts, where I suckled her nipples and pinched them gently with my teeth. She squirmed in my grasp. Her efforts were futile. She and I both knew she didn’t want to escape me.
“Ethan,” she breathed as I drew on her nipple. “What’s all this about?”
“Hush,” I told her. “I just want to relieve some stress. And you look so damn good. I need you right now.” I returned to sucking her nipple and pressing my tongue against the soft flesh of her breast.
She moaned softly, her eyes falling closed as she rested her head against the wall. Her fingers ran through my hair. “Works for me,” she said softly, her hands tightening to fists. “You can do whatever you want to me. Whatever you want.”
I looked up at her. Her breast was still in my mouth, and her hands were still buried in my hair. I pinched her nipple playfully between my teeth and ran my tongue over the sensitive tip of her. She flinched, blinked her eyes open, and stared down at me.
I could get lost in that bright stare of hers. “I’m going to ravage you, woman,” I said.
She grinned and then gave way to the sexiest bout of giggles I had ever heard. “I expect nothing less from you,” she said.
I pulled her wrists down but didn’t loosen my grip. I led her to the bedroom by her wrists, where I threw her down on the bed and stripped her clothes off her. She laid beneath me in nothing but her knee-high socks. I met her eyes and released her wrists.