Damaged Beauties (Romanced by the Damaged Millionaire (Erotic Romance)) (5 page)

“She’s dead,” I say flatly. “Aneurysm.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It happened a long time ago. She was my favorite aunt. She used to play gin rummy with me when I was little.” I don’t know who I’m channeling, but it’s certainly no aunt of mine.

“Where do you come from?”

“Pittsburgh.”

He raises his eyebrows. “That far?”

“It’s my vacation.”

“If I were on vacation, I wouldn’t be having it in Kelowna,” he says wryly.

Oh good. So he still retains his sense of humor, the one that was so evident in
China Noon
– in which he played a priest tempted by a hooker who wants to be reformed.

“Why are you here, Mr. Greene? You don’t strike me as a true blood resident of Kelowna.” It’s actually quite difficult to talk to him over the large expanse of table. I have to raise my voice and enunciate my sentences loudly.

Jeffrey comes in with a chilled bottle of wine. I take this opportunity to get up.

“What are you doing?” Ethan says, startled. I don’t know whether to call him Ethan or David, but since he’s going by his official name, I’ll call him Ethan. He even has had it legalized.

I carry my prawn bowl and wine glass and scoot to the right side of the table, next to him. “Jeffrey, would you mind getting my chair? And my place setting? It’s so difficult to talk when we’re so far away from each other.”

Ethan appears alarmed, but I don’t let that faze me. Jeffrey obediently does as I bid, and soon, I’m sitting on the right side of Ethan. Like a partner. Or a wife.

Ethan is extremely ill at ease, but his good manners forbid him to betray this. I’m enjoying his discomfiture. I take it that he does not often entertain female guests in his dining room, and so my proximity must be extremely unsettling for him.

Then again, it might be something else. After all, what do I know about Ethan Greene?

“So why are you here?” I repeat. The investigative journalist part of me is roused again.

He’s silent.

Then he says, “That’s a question for philosophers, wouldn’t you say?”

He’s trying to deflect me, and he’s doing it in a charming way.

“You know what I mean. You stand out like a sore thumb in this small town.”

“I hardly go into town.”

“Then why live here?” I persist.

He is stunned for a moment, and then he laughs. “Do you always ask such personal questions of people you just meet?”

“Oh, I wasn’t aware I was asking anything personal. I just thought I was making small talk.”

He doesn’t say anything for a moment, but I can see the wheels churning in his head. I have to pinch myself to ensure I am not dreaming. David Kinney next to me . . . having dinner! It used to be a daydream of mine.

Not that I’d let him know it in a million years, of course.

“It’s personal,” he finally says.

“OK.” Sometimes you can’t push too hard, but I’ll bide my time. I’m a reporter after all.

We make small talk for the rest of dinner. I ask him what he does, and he tells me he’s a businessman. Like, duh. He asks me what I do, and I tell him I work at an office. Well, I do.

I find myself relaxing with him. Letting my guard down. And I think he’s relaxing with me too. He’s probably thinking I’m not the ditzy blonde I appear to be, and that I don’t have fangs.

I don’t talk about movies.

Dinner is over before either of us is aware of it. I have eaten more than my calorie ration for the day, and I notice he has barely touched his dessert.

“You must be tired,” he says solicitously.

“I’m not actually.” I want to stay here with him and talk some more. Then I remember I’m supposed to be in convalescence.

“Oh yes.” I fake a yawn. “I’ve been a little tired after the concussion.”

“Jeffrey has already seen to your car. He had it lifted and towed to the Avis workshop in Aberdeen.”

I’m surprised. But then, I shouldn’t be, right? Jeffrey is Mr. All-Fix it.

“Thank you,” I say.

“No problem. It’s under insurance, as you say, and it’s already been paid for under the Avis clause you signed.” He gets up. “I’ll turn in myself. It has been a long day. Would you like Jeffrey to see you to your room, Virginia?”

I like the way he says my name. Vir-gi-nia. So pronounced and enunciated, as if it were a precious jewel on his tongue.

I would like
you
to see me to my room, Ethan Greene.

“No thank you,” I say, feigning tiredness. “I can go up myself.”

“Then I’ll see you tomorrow then.” His eyes arrest mine like a promise.

A thrill shimmies down my backbone.

“I’ll see you. Goodnight,” I say.

“Goodnight.”

As I exit the dining room, I’m aware of his scorching gaze boring holes into the back of my head. But I don’t feel creeped out.

If anything, I’m more excited than ever.

8

I wake up the next morning, unrefreshed. I have been tossing and turning all night in my bed, half-thinking and half-dreaming about Ethan Greene. He is certainly like nothing I expected.

He’s better.

He’s more sophisticated, more dignified, and yet . . . melancholy surrounds him like a shroud. He’s shy, and it’s a quality I find endearing.

I rake my brains through all the interviews I have seen or read on him. He was certainly nothing like this. He never talked much in interviews, preferring to let his work speak for itself. But when he gave them, I remember him as polite but guarded. Maybe a little standoffish, especially with the paparazzi.

But Ethan Greene is an absolute dreamboat. He’s almost like a character David Kinney could have been playing in some romantic comedy, except that David Kinney never made romantic comedies. The characters were not tortured enough for him.

However, he did make doomed romances. Unusual romances.

Obsessive ones.

I wash up, wondering what Ethan Greene is up to today. I put on a V-necked sweater and jeans. My head wound is healing, but the area around it has gone purple. Once again, I arrange my hair to fall in a major wave over it.

I go down to find Ethan Greene. My body bristles with anticipation. For some reason, he affects me more than I thought possible. I want to see him again. I want to be in his company for hours and hours.

I bump into Jeffrey.

“Good morning, Ms. Tremont.”

“Good morning, Jeffrey. Is Ethan up and about?”

“Indeed. He’s out in the back.” Jeffrey points to the open doors leading to a back patio.

I haven’t explored the outside of the house.

Ethan is nowhere to be found on the patio, which opens to a sprawling grassland, bordered by trees and shrubs. This place must be a bitch to maintain.

I wander a little distance, wishing I had brought my walking shoes. I avoid the nettles and uneven hillocks on the ground. I walk beyond the first row of trees and enter a dense tangle. Where is Ethan? I will be doomed to wander around here, never to find him. I had no idea this place was so huge.

Glorious light filters through the trees. I go towards the shine, and I’m rewarded as the scene opens out to a breathtaking vista of a valley amidst hills. The valley is lush with vegetation and scalloped by a bubbling stream a hundred feet below. I wonder if this is the ravine I fell into.

Ethan is seated upon a stool. He faces the valley. He is painting upon a canvas set upon an easel. He looks up and gives me a smile every bit as breathtaking as the scenery.

“Good morning.”

My heart skips a beat. “Good morning.”

I go over to peer over his shoulder.

“Oh wow, you are very good.”

He is. I realize now that all those paintings hanging in the corridor upstairs were done by him. As was probably the still life with the single rotten fruit. An actor, an entrepreneur, and now an artist. Is there no limit to what this man can do?

The scene he is painting is that of the valley, except that he has added details. The landscape is no longer of this world. Spires and fluted towers dot the purple and blue hills. Crafts in the shapes of alien insects, but which are obviously mechanical, swarm across the crimson sky.

The painting is far from finished. It’s still quite barren, but what’s already on the canvas astounds me.

He frowns. “It isn’t quite what I want it to be.”

“But it’s very, very good. You should have your own gallery. I would want to buy this.”

“You would want to buy this?” He averts his head to glance at me quizzically.

“Yeah, if I can afford it.”

I’m being honest. He does really have talent. I’m no art critic, but I do know what I would like to adorn my walls.

“It’s yours,” he says simply.

“Huh?”

“When I finish this, you can have it.”

I’m taken aback. “Oh no, you can’t give this to me. It’s too . . . too much.”

It is. All that hard work. All those days and days of being out here, letting his mind and imagination soar above the clouds – literally.

“Oh no, I mean it.” He is earnest. “There’s plenty more where it came from, and it’s the least I can do since your car crashed inside my property.”

“It wasn’t your fault. It was mine.”

“Still.” He frowns. “Say, since you’re feeling better and all, Jeffrey can drive you to the hospital and drop you there for a checkup. Just to make sure you’re OK.”

I thought you didn’t want Jeffrey’s presence raising questions at the hospital
. But of course, I’m not going to let him know I eavesdropped.

Ethan says, “He’ll drop you at Emergency and you can call him to pick you up when you’re finished. He has other errands to run.”

This comes off smoothly. But I can tell that he doesn’t want Jeffrey in the hospital. Hence the drop-off, now that I’m in walking and sound mental condition.

Just for a lark, I ask him, “Do
you
want to come with me to the hospital?”

It’s his turn to be flummoxed.

“I, uh, have errands to run too.”

“OK.” I ensure that the corners of my mouth droop slightly, giving off the air of disappointment.

He visibly flinches, and I allow myself a secret smile. Ethan Greene exhibits the classic symptoms of not being around people much, and so he quite doesn’t know how to maneuver himself skillfully amongst them. Especially the more manipulative ones.

I spend the rest of the morning chatting to him as he paints. We talk of nothing consequential, and he does not let too much of his personal life seep through. Nothing is said of his past.

It’s amazing how pleasant it is to talk to him. Even when we fall into silence, it’s companionable. There’s no pressure for us to say something interesting, and just watching him scrunch up his brow to concentrate on painting is enough for me.

Jeffrey serves us a picnic brunch all the way out here. We nibble on ham and cheese sandwiches, topped off by raspberry tea.

When the sun climbs high enough in the sky for me to call it noon, Ethan says, “I’ll drop you off at the hospital.”

“OK,” I say.

His secrets will be ferreted out in time.

*

Ethan is as good as his word.

He drops me off at the entrance of the little hospital in Aberdeen.

“Call me when you’re ready,” he says.

“Off to run your errands?” I inquire politely.

He gives me a wry smile. “Yes.”

I get that it’s a small town, even with Aberdeen combined, and everybody knows everybody else.

I register at the normal clinic, not at Emergency. The doctor who attends to me is a black woman –middle-aged, very attractive, and not as harried as I expect doctors to be. Maybe it’s because the waiting room is only half full. It’s probably one of the perks of living in a small town where almost nothing ever happens.

“A concussion, you say?” she asks. “I will have to send you for a CT scan, just to be sure there isn’t any internal hemorrhage.”

“You have a CT scan machine here?”

“Of course. We are not totally in the boondocks.”

The CT scan comes out normal. But I have already spent two hours in the hospital and I’m afraid Ethan might be waiting for me, even though he has never texted me once.

I say casually to the doctor, who has my scans up on a fluorescent projection screen, “Do you know a man who lives in Kelowna called Ethan Greene?”

“Ethan Greene.” She wrinkles her nose, and then a light bulb goes off. “Ah. That Ethan Greene.”

“Why? What did he do?” I feel the hairs on my neck prickle. I don’t know if there has been a shift in the tectonic plates of my emotions in the past twelve hours – but suddenly, I really,
really
don’t want to hear anything bad about Ethan Greene. Though hear it I must. After all, this is my job, isn’t it? To ferret out the lifestyles of the rich and almost forgotten.