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“I’m certain I wouldn’t call it a coincidence. I know you far too well for that.”
“Maybe I’m in love.”
“Are you marrying her?”
He nodded once. It was the truth in the strictest sense. He was simply leaving out his plans for what came after the vows. “That’s the plan.”
“And you’ll be faithful to her?”
Ethan set his glass down on the bar top. “I’m not like my father. If I make a commitment, I honor it. I take care of what’s mine.”
“Now, that I trust. You know if I do pass the company straight to you what a slight it will be to Damien. Your father has been waiting for this all of his life.”
“I’m completely aware.” He was counting on it.
“He’s my son, Ethan, but I’m not proud of what he’s become. I want to make sure you do better for yourself. I want you settled before you get wrapped up in running a corporation like Grey’s.”
“No offense intended, but the one I run now is larger than Grey’s.”
His grandfather nodded. “True enough. Which begs the question why you want Grey’s so badly.”
Revenge was the easy answer, one that didn’t seem quite right in this scenario. But there were other reasons, more complex. Ones he didn’t like to dwell on. Those reasons took him back to being a boy, a boy with nothing. Of no importance to his parents. Barely worth a second glance if they passed him in the hall of their large family mansion.
“Because what you have is never enough,” Ethan said. “That’s how it is for businessmen. You know that. You always need more.”
“I don’t really know what it is you’re doing here, Ethan.” Nathaniel let out a sigh. “Maybe I don’t want to know. I just want you to be happy. Stable.”
“I’m stable. I know that my marriage to Noelle will make me very happy.” If not for the reasons marriages usually made people happy. If they ever did.
“I hope so. I assume you will want your grandmother’s ring?”
This was a huge part of making it all look real. “Yes.”
“I’ll go and get it from the safe.”
Ethan ignored the slow burn of guilt that mingled with the alcohol in his gut. Everything was working out now, just as he’d planned. The ring was another piece of the puzzle.
He downed the last of his whiskey, letting the fire overtake the uncomfortable emotion that was swirling in his stomach. Everything was starting to fall into place, and guilt had no part in it.
“You’re tense,” Noelle commented.
They were about five minutes into the drive from his grandparents’ house and he hadn’t spoken a word. His hands were locked tightly around the steering wheel, the muscles on his forearms corded, showing his strain.
“Not at all,” he replied, teeth gritted.
“You’re a bad liar.”
He tossed her a quick glance. “I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I’m not trying to lie.”
“Well, then you’re a bad liar when you aren’t trying to be a good one. You aren’t fine, even I can see that, and I’m not really an authority on reading people. You can use my mother as exhibit A on that one.”
He hunched slightly and shifted his hands lower on the wheel. “It doesn’t thrill me to lie to my grandparents.”
She swallowed. “I’m with you. Your grandmother is … she’s very kind.”
“She always is. She’s so stable. Calm.”
“Not like my mother at all.”
“Or mine.”
“Want to tell me about her?”
He leaned his head back against the seat. “Not in the least. You?”
“Don’t you already know about her?”
“I know what I saw. She was beautiful. Charming. She had my father under a spell. What did you see when you looked at her?”
Noelle bit her lip. “All of that. She could play this kind of sweet beauty, act a little bit naive so that she could get away with being demanding. But that was an act. She was smart. Smarter than I am, obviously. She used me to make money, and I can’t seem to manage that.”
“She was dishonest, you weren’t. That’s not smarter. That’s cheating.”
“Then what are we doing right now?”
“We’re cheating too. But it’s for a good cause. Trust me.”
She wished she could.
They were quiet again until he turned the car down a winding road that led toward the beach. Noelle unrolled her window and let the salt air and the sound of waves on the sand fill up the interior of the car. It was preferable to that ear-ringing silence.
Ethan pulled the car up to the front of the hotel and left it, keys in the ignition. He got out, slamming the door behind him, not bothering to come around for her door this time. She sat with her hands in her lap for a moment before opening her own door and following him in to the opulent lobby.
Her stomach tightened as she hurried to catch up with him, her high heels clicking on the black marble floors. She looked up at the high ceiling, at the five levels of rooms, each with a balcony that overlooked the massive lobby, ornate carvings on the hand rails with vines growing over them. Like a ruined city that still glittered with riches.
She’d been here before. Stayed here with her mother whenever she performed in Brisbane. It brought so many things back. Every time they’d come, she’d practically been frog-marched through the lobby on her way to the many-roomed suite at the top floor, and, jet lag not even accounted for, had been settled in front of the piano to practice within five minutes of her arrival.
And her mother had gone out, as she always did. To network or whatever it was she called it. And she’d been alone.
“We’re staying in the room with the piano, aren’t we?”
Ethan stopped dead in his tracks and turned, his dark eyebrows locked together, the heavy tension still radiating from his body. “Yes.”
“I’ve been here. We came to Brisbane quite a bit for a few years and we always stayed here.”
There was a strange light in his eyes, something cold. Dark. “Is that so?”
“Yes. I mean, I like it … it’s … nice.”
“If you’d like to stay somewhere else …?”
She shook her head. “No. It’s fine.”
She followed him over to the side of the lobby that had a stone wall and water running closely down the side of it. There was a line of elevators with golden doors, the water routed well around them so that people could step inside without fear of getting their designer clothing wet.
“When did you buy this hotel?” she asked, stepping inside the lift behind him.
“A few years ago. The first of my grandfather’s hotels that he surrendered to me. My father used to manage it.” He spat the last words out as if they tasted bitter.
“I don’t even know who my father is.”
He turned to her, his eyes hardened into black ice. “There are times when I wish I didn’t know who mine was.”
It was difficult to hold his gaze when he looked like that, when the remnants of his charming facade fell away and he was all hard, angry male. But she managed it. She’d spent a long time being submissive, doing as she was told and cowering in fear. She didn’t want to do it anymore.
“Why?”
“I think he was quite like your mother in many ways. A cheat.”
“Aren’t we a pair, Ethan? Probably a good thing we aren’t getting married for real.”
He grunted in what, she assumed, was agreement.
The doors to the elevator slid open after a moment and revealed an opulent gilded entryway, glowing with gold and cluttered with ornate carvings. She couldn’t hold back a laugh as Ethan punched in the key code. She was glad to find a reason, any reason, to laugh. To break some of the tension in her. Tension brought on by being here again. Tension from being near Ethan.
“What?” he asked, pushing open the door.
“This whole hotel is so very not you.”
“How do you figure?” he asked, holding the door open for her and letting her enter the room first. He must have calmed down because that reflexive chivalry of his had returned.
“You don’t strike me as a man who does ornate. Your hotel in New York is much more in keeping with how I see your style.”
“Hotels aren’t about me. They’re about the people who patronize them.”
“True.” She knew all about that. When she composed music she had to keep in mind what people would want to hear, and yet … pieces of her soul were always there.
She wished that her gift hadn’t gone. That aspect of music … it had been so much in her. Woven through her being. To look at the scenery, this gorgeous hotel, and not hear a soundtrack to it was still painful. She didn’t know if she’d ever get used to that resounding silence always filling her head now.
It made her body feel foreign to her. Wrong. All of her, every bit, felt wrong. Like being caught off guard by a change in tempo and not quite being able to find the rhythm again, stumbling over notes, breaking the melody so that it was an unrecognizable jumble. It was such a hellish nothing.
She meandered across the plush living area, her fingers drifting over the keys of the piano reflexively as she passed it by on her way to the exterior balcony. She needed air. Space. If only she could escape from herself. Just for a moment.
She opened the sliding door and stepped outside, the cool air from the ocean raising goosebumps on her arms. At least out here she could breathe better. She hadn’t gone out on the balcony the previous times she’d stayed here. She’d looked out the windows at the view, had thought about stepping out, but there hadn’t been time.
She frowned. Why? It would only have taken a moment. What else had she missed? Small things. Simple things. An ocean breeze. Having friends. Being kissed.
She closed her eyes and relished the feel of the damp wind on her cheeks.
As much as she wanted to blame everything on her mother, she’d been guilty of having tunnel vision. Her mother had pushed it, supported it, but it had been in her. That drive. That obsession. The need to be better, the best. To push a bit harder each and every day.
Was it any wonder it had all deserted her?
She opened her eyes, watched the waves, the whitecaps glowing in the moonlight as they crashed over the shore. Ebbing and surging, soft and hard, fast and slow. Like music. Something she’d never stopped to look at before, not really. She felt a low hum vibrate in her throat and a couple of notes spilled out. A piece of music. Not one she’d heard before. Her heart thundered hard, adrenaline surging through her. It was the first time in a couple of years there had been something, a sound, a note. Anything.
“Thought the night called for champagne. Alcohol of any kind, really.”
She turned at the sound of Ethan’s voice and saw him standing in the doorway, two flutes of bubbly in hand, his shirt unbuttoned halfway, his feet bare, dark hair tousled like a woman had just run her fingers through it.
Now, this was very, very different than her stay last time. She swallowed, but despite the moisture in the air, her throat felt dry.
“I won’t say no to that.”
He walked to where she was standing, looking like every woman’s secret fantasy, his dark eyes locked with hers. He handed her a glass and leaned over the railing, touching the edge of his flute to hers. “Cheers.”
She lifted hers in mock salute. “Cheers indeed.” She took small sip of the bubbly liquid, then cursed it, because champagne wasn’t going to help her dry throat. She turned her focus back on the waves. “It must be nice. Having your own success. Having all of this.” She gestured to the view.
He shrugged and leaned against the railing. “I don’t mind it.”
“You still want more, though? Enough to lie to your grandparents?” He shot her warning look. “I’m not judging. I’m involved in this too, aren’t I? I’m just asking.”
A muscle in his cheek ticked. “It’s not about having more. It’s about keeping my father from getting it.”
“I don’t understand why your grandfather would pass it on to him if he was that incompetent.”
“It’s not about his incompetence, though I guarantee you I’m twice the businessman he is. It’s about principles. You can’t just treat people like they’re there to serve you, with no regard for how they feel, and then get rewarded for it. I won’t see it happen.”
“Ethan …”
“I won’t watch him win, Noelle. Not after the way he treated my mother. It goes beyond the fact that he was unfaithful to her. He took her money, you know. Like your mother did to you. When his father wouldn’t give him what he thought he needed to expand his business interests, he siphoned it off of my mother while he was screwing other women behind her back. Or worse, in plain view. Everyone knew how little he respected her.” He took a drink of his champagne. “My mother’s not perfect, but she didn’t deserve that.”
Noelle’s throat felt tight. “No one does. I … I’m sorry.”
He laughed. Cold. Humorless. “Now isn’t that ironic? You, apologizing. I thought I told you not to do that.”
“Fine. Then I won’t. But I am sorry your mother was hurt. But will this … I mean … will it fix anything?”
He knocked back the rest of the champagne and backed away from the railing. “I’m going to bed.”
“Instead of talking to me?”
“I didn’t ask you to marry me for psychotherapy or companionship, Noelle. I won’t start pretending now.”
He turned and left the balcony, left her standing there with her heart pounding in her chest, a sick feeling rolling in her stomach. This was pretend, he was right. And it wasn’t about getting to know each other, or caring, or anything real.
