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Much more of emotion-tugging Ethan and she’d leave this assignment with a marshmallow heart. “I’m sorry for laughing earlier, about you living with your aunt, I mean. It’s really sweet that you stayed on to take care of her.”
“Take care of her?” Ethan snorted. “Better not let Aunt Eugenie hear you insinuating she needs help for anything. She’s sixty-five going on twenty.”
“Oh, okay.” Was his aunt some kind of socialite poster-girl for plastic surgery? Panic tickled her lungs. She might like herself just fine the way she was. That didn’t mean she wanted to spend the next two weeks with Ethan’s aunt questioning what he saw in such a quiet wallflower. “She knows this is just a working relationship, right?”
“Yes.”
Her panic faded. “Good.”
“But the servants don’t.”
“Servants?” Kelly pulled her gaze away from Ethan and looked out the window. Sprawling houses loomed on either side of the road—brick, columns, even the occasional turret. Plots of land acres large spread between gates and towering homes. With every block, the houses grew bigger and Kelly grew more uncomfortable.
“We need to protect the cover,” Ethan continued. “The servant network is tight in my aunt’s world. We don’t want them wondering and passing along their doubts. If we expect to pull this off, they need to think we’re a couple and we can use the practice.”
A couple? How had she gone from getting over him to pretending to be his girlfriend for two weeks? “What have they been told?”
“That you work for an embassy as a translator. I met you through a friend. We fell for each other, and you’re taking an extended vacation to meet my family.”
The sense of having been maneuvered washed over her and she didn’t like it. If he’d told her this the night before, she would have shot down his plan.
And he probably knew it. “When were you going to tell me?”
“I’m telling you now.”
Kelly stared out the window and counted passing houses to calm her temper. Of course she didn’t get to count very many since the yards were so darned big. No snowmen littered these lawns like in her Nebraska hometown.
She’d realized he was wealthy. But this neighborhood wasn’t just rich. It was filthy rich. Beyond-her-comprehension rich.
He obviously didn’t have to work. She recognized his thrill-seeking need, but he could have channeled that into any number of expensive hobbies. Instead of swimming with sharks in Aruba, he dodged bullets to make others safe.
Damn. He grew more admirable with each passing Mercedes.
“This didn’t have to be so complicated.”
“It isn’t,” Ethan insisted. “If anything, there will be fewer questions and more acceptance than if I’d just shown up at the summit ball with you. People would have been curious about you, which would attract too much attention. This gives everyone two weeks to become accustomed to the idea.”
“And afterward?”
“We break up.”
Breaking up with a guy she’d never gotten to enjoy. That depressed her as much as the loss of his longer hair, the lost chance to test the length and texture with her fingers.
Ethan turned off the road, pausing at a security gate to punch in a code. Kelly peered through the metal bars.
This wasn’t just a big house. It was a mansion.
A white-columned palatial home sprawled before her. Towering evergreens with snowcapped branches proclaimed age and heritage. An iced-over fountain bigger than most pools perched in the middle of a horseshoe driveway.
All of Ethan’s altruistic qualities aside, he came from a different world. He might as well reside on a different planet. She’d harbored dreams and fantasies about this man for two years, and yet she didn’t know the first thing about him.
No doubt, their break up would be completely believable.
Steering up the drive, Ethan thought through the round of introductions he would have to make—housekeeper, chauffeur, cook. Thought of all the times he would touch Kelly like an attentive boyfriend. Like a lover.
His great plan had a serious flaw.
Too late now. Bottom line, this would protect Kelly on a number of levels. Not only would she be better prepared by his aunt, but Ethan also fully intended to follow through on the plan to teach her self-defense. Who knew what their digging into foreign embassy workings might stir? All the more reason to have her close by where he could guard her.
At least her voice wasn’t tormenting him anymore since she’d started clamming up four blocks ago. The tension emanating from her had increased with the size of the houses. He dreaded the moment she would turn and look at him differently, when she wouldn’t be able to see past the stacks of money to the man anymore.
The house might be his but it wasn’t him, and for some reason it became important that Kelly understand that.
Forget front-door welcomes. He didn’t want her first impression of his home to be some three-story winding staircase and a cathedral ceiling. He sped past the horseshoe driveway and circled around to the back. Pulling into the five-car garage, he parked between his aunt’s Mercedes and the housekeeper’s VW Beetle.
Ethan shut off the engine as the door slid closed behind them. “Leave your luggage. I’ll bring it up later when I take you to the main house. First, we’re going to head upstairs to the apartment.”
“Where I’m staying?”
“No.”
“Your Aunt Eugenie has a suite over the garage?”
“No. I do.” The surprised lift to her brow brought a rush of victory. He’d find his footing with this complex woman yet. “I thought you could use the time to ask any more questions before you meet everyone.”
“You mean questions about how you set me up.” Her eyes probed him with quiet censure.
She couldn’t have already figured out why he needed her here, could she? Heaven help him if he’d been too obvious about the socialite polish.
He reached behind the seat for her laptop computer to give himself a reason to look away. “Set you up?”
“By not telling me about the real reason for coming here.”
He twisted forward with her laptop and lapsed into the foolproof method of answering questions with questions. “Suppose you tell me since you do such a good job at spelling things out.”
“Because even with everything I said yesterday, you still don’t trust that I can keep my head on straight while posing as a couple. So you’ve planned this ‘lover practice’ in front of your servants for the next two weeks.”
Lover-practice. Now that had a tempting ring to it. “Kelly, I’m not doing anything more than I said. We’re here to work through leads in hopes of finding Alex Morrow before someone tortures him to death. And maybe we’ll be able to stop the whole heist attempt before the summit so a room full of people won’t be in danger. And if that doesn’t work, we’re going to make damned sure we both have every tool available so no one gets hurt.”
So Kelly wasn’t hurt.
He ignored the nagging voice that insisted he was already hurting her by not being honest. But he’d abandoned scruples long ago in favor of winning, and he wanted that thirty-year-old file on his parents.
Kelly threw her door open. “Then let’s get started.”
Ethan led her up the stairs, punching in the alarm code onto the pad outside his door before pushing inside. As always, he made a quick sweep through his barnlike studio apartment. He held up a hand for Kelly to stop while he took the six steps in three strides up to his loft bedroom. Closing the door behind him, he jogged up another half set of stairs to the open gallery computer area. Loping back down, he nodded. “All clear.”
“Do you always check your own house this thoroughly?”
She thought that was thorough?
“Yes.” He tucked his hands in his back pockets and cruised to a stop in the seldom-used kitchen area.
Kelly trailed a hand along the back of a gray leather sofa, her gaze sweeping the sparse furnishings. “So you brought me to your bachelor pad, after all.”
“I’ve never brought anyone outside of family here.”
Her gaze snapped up to meet his. Solemn brown eyes studied him with confusion and an odd sort of expectation he knew he couldn’t fulfill.
Ethan turned his back on eyes that threatened to become as tempting as her voice. “If we’re going to work together, this is the only truly secure place.” He swept an empty pizza box off the kitchenette table. “You can set up your laptop here today. I’ll arrange something better by tomorrow.”
Shrugging out of her coat, she strolled through the cavernous room. Her tennis shoes squeaked on the bright tiles his Aunt Eugenie had ordered from Italy. She’d insisted he needed something lively in his dark world.
“There’s certainly plenty of space. My apartment would fit in here twice.”
“I like how open it is.” Easier to watch. Even at home, he never relaxed his guard, probably hadn’t slept through the night since he was five.
Ethan pitched his jacket over a kitchen chair. He opened the refrigerator and pulled out a can of orange juice for himself. “Want one? Or something more substantial—like a two-day-old burrito?”
He earned her genuine smile for the first time in twenty-four hours, a heady victory.
“No, thanks. I had breakfast already.”
Ethan elbowed the refrigerator closed and planned his next move for relaxing her. His computer system upstairs might not make a bad start.
Footsteps sounded in the stairwell. Ethan tensed a second before—
“Yoo-hoo, Ethan?” His aunt’s voice floated up the hall. Eugenie Williams charged through the door and across the room. The sleeves of her mummy-covered caftan, a souvenir of her latest trip to Egypt, fluttered from her open arms. “You’re early! Why didn’t you come into the house?”
“Because we’re early.”
“Like manners have ever mattered to you.” She folded him in a hug.
He dropped a kiss on her head. “You tried your best.”
A soft smile creased her round face. “I certainly did.”
Ethan couldn’t stop his smile in return as she stepped back. He loved his aunt, eccentricities and all. She’d been the only constant during his childhood after he lost his parents. He would never forget how she’d put her own jet-setting life on hold for him.
Well, not exactly on hold, but she’d carted him along on one extended field trip after another, giving him purpose, just as ARIES had done after Celia. “Aunt Eugenie, this is Kelly Taylor.”
She spun to face Kelly, stirring a drift of flowers and some kind of spice. No doubt his aunt had been knee-deep in aromatherapy this morning. Every time Ethan turned around, she sported a new mood-enhancing scent concocted by her masseur.
Eugenie studied Kelly with keen eyes, before nodding. “Ethan, go put her things in the Jefferson suite. And don’t blow out the candles the way you always do. I ordered a special blend of sweet marjoram, lavender and ylang ylang for serenity.” She flapped her hands to shoo him away. “Now scoot, so we can talk.”
The tension Ethan hadn’t even realized gripped him eased. There might be something to all Eugenie’s mood oils and fragrances after all.
He should have trusted his instincts, which had told him he’d made the right decision in handing Kelly over to Aunt Eugenie’s tutelage. The woman was a miracle worker. She’d actually made something halfway productive out of a screw-up rebel like himself.
This would come together. Aunt Eugenie would not only transform Kelly, but she would also be the perfect buffer for any awkwardness.
And while they worked on hairstyles, he could figure out who the hell had been following them.
Chapter 4
Kelly trailed Ethan’s aunt to the sofa. Not that she had much choice unless she wanted to stand in the middle of the room pinned by the woman’s curious eyes and the gaze of all those gold mummies on her muumuu.
Why didn’t Ethan hurry? She wanted to work, not chit-chat with his eccentric aunt. She would prove herself a worthy partner, not a woman who had to practice something as simple as pretending to be a girlfriend.
At least she wouldn’t have to pretend when she was alone with Eugenie Williams, since Eugenie knew Ethan and Kelly were working together. Kelly relaxed onto the sofa, grateful she didn’t have to hide her lack of polish for the next few minutes.
Her crush on Ethan, however, Kelly intended to keep well hidden around his aunt.
Eugenie swept across the room toward the gray leather couch, her steely bun twined on top of her head adding two inches of height. As she drew closer, the older woman’s vitality radiated through despite the tiny lines around her eyes.
Eugenie Williams sat.
Well, sort of. Just sitting seemed too ordinary a word to describe any motion from this woman. Her imposing presence made a simple stroll across the rug seem as if it deserved a diva spotlight.
Apparently Ethan had learned to command a room from a master.
Her caftan settled to rest around her, revealing strappy yellow sandals. Those snow-encrusted spike heels would have sent Kelly sprawling. “Tell me about yourself, dear.”
“Well…” Kelly couldn’t imagine anything about her upbringing on a Nebraska wheat farm that would be of interest to this woman. “I work with Ethan.”
“So I hear.”
Kelly searched for a safer topic. The woman might be a fountain of information for the quest to learn more about Ethan, but those shrewd eyes would be onto her in a heartbeat. Kelly tapped an edge of the woman’s caftan. “This is lovely.”
The pattern of Egyptian sarcophagi on silk stared back with eerie voids for eyes. “No, it’s not.”
“Pardon me?”
Eugenie fluffed her silver hair with her fingernails. “It’s a godawful eyesore I bought with the sole intention of shocking the Chanel right off those pastel suits worn by the country-club set.”
“Oh.”
“But it’s comfortable.”
Kelly snuck a quick glance at the door. Still no Ethan. “That’s important.”
“Essential. Life should be lived. Enjoyed.” She whipped the air with her bejeweled fingers. “Savored.”
Kelly agreed a hundred percent. She inched back farther on the sofa. “How wonderfully liberating not to worry what others think.”
“Oh, I do care. Very much.” Eugenie’s hands fell to rest on her lap. “I absolutely cannot tolerate the thought that someone might think I’m bowing to the god of status quo.”
Not much chance of that. “Where did you find this, uh, comfortable eyesore?”
