“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.
So why had it started to feel like it was?
IT was sort of nice to have a reprieve from Ethan’s presence. Noelle spent the day in and around the hotel, trawling the little shops and indulging in a Vienna coffee at a café near the beach. It was decadent in so many ways. No one telling her what to do, and no pressing, horrible worries.
The bubble bath afterwards had been a major highlight too. Relaxing, which was nothing like being with Ethan. Warm and sensual too, which was a bit like being with Ethan.
She swore out loud in the empty hotel suite and embraced the rush of satisfaction it gave her. Her mother had used whatever language she wanted, whenever she felt like it, but Noelle had always been bound to protect her image of being a sweet, eternal child. Nothing even remotely adult or scandalous could be associated with her.
In the end, it hadn’t helped. She’d grown up. She’d gotten uninteresting.
She flopped onto the couch and put her feet on the coffee table. This was familiar. Nights spent alone in a hotel room. She’d always cherished the time. Time simply to be herself. To eat a chocolate bar and watch a movie showing her what she was missing, locked up in her ivory tower while the rest of the world lived.
She took a bite of her chocolate bar. She was reliving old times in a way. But there would be no sexy movies. Being around Ethan was messing with her head and she didn’t need to encourage her suddenly perky hormones.
The door to the suite opened and Noelle scrambled to get her robe into place so that everything was covered.
“Hi.” He walked in and stripped his black tie off in one fluid motion, casting the strip of silk to the floor. It was like something from a cologne commercial—or one of her late-night movie indulgences. The gorgeous man returning home after a long hard day to sweep his woman off her feet and into bed …
“Hi,” she replied, hopping up from the couch, holding the lapels of her robe tighter now.
“Good day?”
“I did more data entry. And had coffee.”
“All good then?”
“I suppose.”
“We’ve rated the papers over here. Pictures of us getting off my private plane are everywhere.”
She took a step toward him. “Do you have them with you?”
“You like being in the news, don’t you?”
She shrugged, slightly embarrassed by her enthusiastic reaction. “I got used to it. To watching it. Seeing what people said, what they thought. Good and bad, it all sort of … validated me.”
He reached into his laptop bag and pulled out a folded paper. “Enjoy.”
She took the newspaper from his hand and opened it slowly, her heart pounding as she looked at the pictures, at the headlines.
Ethan Grey returns home with new squeeze, pianist Noelle Birch, in tow. Meeting the grandparents?
“That’s … cool,” she said.
“Cool?”
“To get in the pubic eye again like this … like we talked about. But it’s more than just showing my mother up. You don’t know what this might mean for me.”
He didn’t smile. His face didn’t seem to change at all. But something in his eyes looked different. Darker. “I have an idea.”
“You don’t approve of my enjoyment of fame?” His silence was its own kind of answer. “My life … the life I had before, it was … It’s hard to explain. Parts of it were brutally hard. And yet, there were things that I loved. I loved to play in front of a crowd. I loved it when I would hear the beginning notes of a new song in my head. And I loved when people recognized me. When they were excited to see me. Like they cared or something.”
He shook his head, his expression suddenly fierce. “That’s not real. None of it is.”
“It feels real,” she said softly, looking down at the picture.
“Trust me, it’s not. Ask my mum how real it is. She was an A-lister for a while. Invited to every party, cast in