NOELLE had been like a living flame to the touch. Her skin so soft, her breasts the perfect weight in his hands. It had been hell to leave her. Hell to turn away from her when he’d wanted nothing more than to lift her onto the piano and settle between her thighs. To lose himself in her body.
Twelve hours later and he was still so turned on, his teeth ached. And it was the wrong time to be so distracted. And she was absolutely the wrong woman.
It was like a cosmic joke that his body responded to her. Actually, responded wasn’t a strong enough word—a response was expected between a man and a woman. No, this was … combustion. And it made him feel on edge and out of control, both things he hated.
He gritted his teeth and tried to fight the arousal that still pounded through him. Part of him didn’t want to fight it. Part of him wanted to embrace it. To sink back into the dark sensuality that Noelle seemed able to create around them with such ease.
No. Not happening. This was complicated enough without adding sex to the mix. He could control his desire for her, and he would control it.
He walked out of his bedroom and into the main area of the hotel suite. It was empty, and he wondered if Noelle was still in her room. And if she was wearing that same, brief nightgown she’d been wearing the night before. She seemed to have a collection.
He could feel his body hardening, his erection pushing against the seam of his jeans, and he tried to reroute his thoughts. Spreadsheets. Spreadsheets and the falling value of real estate. That wasn’t sexy at all.
But Noelle still was, and he couldn’t shake the image of her from his mind.
He stepped down to the piano and looked outside. She was out there on the balcony, a stack of documents on the table in front of her, alongside a cup of coffee—a vanilla latte, he assumed—and the laptop he’d packed for her.
He slid open the glass door and walked out into the warm coastal morning, relishing the slight bite of the salt air in his throat when he breathed in. Relishing even more the scent of her as it caught in the breeze and teased his senses.
“Working?” He looked at her intently, taking everything in. The way her brows knit together with concentration, the way her fingers moved over the keyboard as they had over the keys of the piano the night before …
Just thinking about the night before made his erection throb.
“Yes,” she replied, not looking at him. Her posture was still, her manner cool enough to cut through the Brisbane temperatures. A pink flush spread from her cheeks down her neck. He was starting to wonder whether she actually wasn’t that experienced with men—an idea that completely contradicted what he knew about her mother, and what he’d imagined it would have been like for her growing up.
But that blush. Those eager, honest responses …
No. He wasn’t letting his thoughts go there again. That way madness lies.
“I appreciate it, but you don’t have to. I can do that. Or it can wait until we’re back in the States.”
She kept her eyes fixed, very decidedly, on the computer screen. “No. It’s nothing. I mean it’s something. It’s part of my job, right?”
“Not really.”
“You told me that …”
“Yeah, I said you could do it, and you can, but it’s not what I need from you.”
The flush on her face darkened, and she turned to face him. “Oh. And what exactly is it that you … need from me?”
A few days in his bed. Uninterrupted. Room service brought to the door so they could just forget the world. Just for a while. That idea was more tempting than it ought to be.
Unsatisfied desire made his tone a little rougher than he intended. “What we discussed in the beginning. My priorities haven’t changed. I assume yours haven’t either.”
She looked away again. “No.”
“Good.” He sat down in the chair across from her. “Last night …”
“I know what it was.”
“You do?” Because he was starting to wonder whether he knew. And he knew.
“There’s tension between us. We’d be lying if we pretended there wasn’t. So it was a … tension … relieving … thing.”
“Oh yes, I feel much less tense,” he said, fighting the urge to reach back and work the knotted muscles on his shoulders.
“So do I.”
“Liar.”
She turned to face him again. “You were the one who … stopped it.”
“It was the right thing to do, Noelle.”
“I know.”
“You know?”
She nodded. “Of course. Sex complicates things. And sex between the two of us would get more complicated than things have a right to be. I’m glad one of us was thinking straight. I just want to get through this and get what I need. My house. That’s all I really want from you.”
It wasn’t all she’d wanted from him last night. He was sure of that. She’d been with him every step of the way, no doubt. And today, if not for the blush, he would’ve assumed she didn’t remember that it had happened at all.
“And don’t worry, I’ll be able to put on a show for the press. What happened happened, and it doesn’t change anything. It certainly doesn’t change my expectations.”
“It doesn’t?” Because his body’s expectations now seemed radically altered.
“Even if it did, I would do my part. I’ve always been a good actress.”
“You were a musician, you weren’t an actress.”
She looked past him, her blue eyes unfocused. “Sure I was. I would spend the whole day rehearsing, until the sides of my thumbs bled from scraping against the edges of the piano keys. The whole time my mother would scream at me to do it better. Cleaner. More precise. My teacher would pace the floor and try to run interference between the two of us. When I was a teenager I started yelling back. I would get slapped. And then, after all that, I would go on stage. And I would smile and I would play like I didn’t have any troubles. I am an actress, Ethan. Better than most you’ll find in Hollywood.”
She stood up and closed the laptop. “I need to shower.”
He grabbed her wrist and held her still for a moment, his stomach tight, sick. “Clearly, the affair with my father was the least of your mother’s sins.” She looked away from him and he took her chin between this thumb and forefinger, directing her attention back to him. “What happened to you wasn’t right. It wasn’t normal. You don’t have to live that way.”
He wasn’t so dumb that he hadn’t realized Noelle wasn’t her mother. It had become obvious after only a few days in her company. But he’d never imagined it could have been like that for her. Had never fathomed just how much she’d been controlled.
Noelle nodded slowly. “I know that’s not how it’s supposed to be. But I’m not really sure how I am supposed to live.”
She left the terrace and went back inside the suite, sliding the door closed behind her.
“What was one thing you weren’t allowed to do?”
Noelle jumped when Ethan strode into the main area of the suite, and her heart leapt up into her throat. After last