She shouldered her gym bag, grabbed her racquet and left the change rooms. Her heart pumped out a quick double-beat as she approached their regular court. She curled her fingers around the cool metal of the door handle, took a deep breath and entered the court.
He was stretching his legs out against the wall. She’d only seen him once today in passing as they both grabbed coffees between clients. They’d barely had the time to exchange greetings before she’d had to race off. She stole a moment to admire the pull of his dark navy T-shirt across his broad shoulders and the snug fit of his shorts. Then she cleared her throat.
“Hey.”
He glanced over his shoulder. “Hey.”
She threw her bag beside his in the corner.
“How did your day go?” she asked.
“So-so. How about you?”
“Yeah, you know. The usual.”
Normally they were knee-deep in mutual insults by now. She wracked her brain from something to say.
“Hope you’re ready for me to wipe the floor with you, Pretty Man,” she said.
He smiled faintly but didn’t say anything.
She grabbed her racquet and took up position on the court. Ethan followed suit.
“Prepare to feel the pain,” she said.
“You’re perky today. Had a good night last night, did we?”
She glanced at him. His expression was unreadable. She pretended to examine the grip on her racquet. No way was she telling him she canceled her date. She manufactured a casual shrug.
“It was nice.”
“
Nice.
What does that mean?” He bounced one of the balls and hit it at the wall so they could warm up with a few practice shots.
She returned the shot. “It means I had a good time,” she lied.
Ethan caught the ball on the full and sent it back at her. “So are you going to see him again?”
She missed the shot and followed the ball into the corner to collect it. “You’re full of questions tonight.”
He shrugged. “Just being a friend. So are you going to see him again or not?”
“We haven’t decided yet.”
“So it didn’t go that great then?”
She didn’t know what to say to make him let it go. “Can we talk about something else? Head lice? Male-pattern baldness? Better yet, can we just play?”
“Sure.”
He served and they raced around the court until she caught him with a short, sharp corner shot.
“So, was I right about the BMW and the house in Kew?” Ethan asked as she collected the ball and prepared to serve the next point.
“That’s a pretty insulting question,” she said, frowning.
“Why?”
“Because it implies I went home with him on the first date.”
“Did you?”
Whoa. Where the hell had that come from?
If it was any other man she’d ascribe his questions and veiled hostility to jealousy. But this was Ethan and he’d already made his feelings where she was concerned more than clear.
She faced him, hands on her hips. “What’s going on, Ethan?”
He was silent for a long beat. Finally he met her eyes, his gaze intense. “What if I asked you not to see him again?”
She stilled. Suddenly it felt as though all the oxygen had been sucked out of the room.
Was he saying what she thought he was saying? All the hours she’d sat in his tuxedo jacket last night, breathing in his smell and telling herself she could never have him—had she been wrong? Had she let her experience with Jacob taint her judgment?
She took a step toward Ethan. “Why?” she asked, never taking her eyes from his face. It felt like the most important question of her life. “Why would you ask me to do that?”
“You know why.”
“No, Ethan, I don’t. I have no bloody idea about anything when it comes to you. I have no idea how you feel about me, or what you want or anything.”
Her voice wavered on the final words but she swallowed the wash of emotion at the back of her throat.
“How about this? It nearly drove me nuts last night knowing you were out with another guy. I dream about you every night. I can’t stop thinking about you. I spend half the day coming up with excuses to drop by your office. When I saw you at the fundraiser the other night I wanted to throw you over my shoulder and take you home. Does that clear anything up for you?” Ethan’s face was anguished, his body rigid with tension.
She was so relieved, so overwhelmed she felt dizzy. Ethan cared for her. Maybe he even loved her. And he was declaring himself, which meant—
She bent her knees and sat on the floor before she fell down.
“Alex…” He was instantly at her side, crouching with his hand on her back. “Are you all right?”
She lifted her face to him. “I thought it was just sex. Or that maybe you cared but it wouldn’t make a difference because of what happened with your divorce. I thought we didn’t stand a chance.”
There was a flicker of something behind his eyes but she barely registered it as she reached out to grip his forearm, her fingers wrapping around the strong muscles.
“Ethan, I love you. And I didn’t go on that date last night. I couldn’t, not when my head is full of you.”
He closed his eyes for a long moment. When he opened them again there was so much heat and need and want in them that she almost laughed out loud. He loved her. Ethan Stone loved her. She’d convinced herself that her love for him was a lost cause, that he would never, ever want the same things that she wanted, and yet he loved her.
She used her grip on his arm to pull him closer. They kissed, a hard, determined, fervent kiss, his hands gripping her shoulders to pull her closer, hers tightening around his forearm as she strained toward him.
He loved her. Ethan Stone, serial womanizer, Mr. Anti-Commitment, loved her. A bubble of relief and joy rose inside her and she broke their kiss to release it in the form of a laugh.
“My God, Ethan, if you only knew how pathetic I’ve been over you. Mooning around like a teenager…”
He kissed her again. It didn’t take long for things to get heated between them. She wanted to touch his skin, to feel all of him against all of her. She needed the reassurance, the confirmation. Somehow she ended up in his lap, her legs straddling his waist, his hands up her T-shirt as he caressed her breasts.
She could feel his erection pressing against her. She broke their kiss and drew her head back a little so she could look him in the eyes.
“Let’s go back to your place. Or my place. Hell, let’s go out to the backseat of my car,” she said, a big grin on her face. She felt as though she had champagne in her veins instead of blood, as though she would float to the ceiling if he let go of her.
Ethan loved her. He loved her.
She started to slide out of his lap but his hands tightened on her waist.
“Alex. Wait. There’s something I need to say to you first.”
He sounded very serious. She settled back into his lap.
“Okay.”
She looked at him, waiting. His gaze searched her face, then he reached out to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear.
“Alex, I care for you enormously. I think you’re a woman in a million. There’s nothing I want more than to go home with you right now and get you naked. I want to have a relationship with you, but I need you to know that I don’t ever want to marry again.”
She blinked, the smile freezing on her face. “Okay. So…what, we live together? Is that what you’re suggesting?”
Then she registered the other thing he’d said. Or, more accurately, the thing he hadn’t said.
I care for you enormously.
Not
I love you.
“I think we should play it by ear. You’ve got your place, I’ve got mine. We could see how things work out. But I’d be happy to try for a baby straight away. I know that’s something you want and that we’re on the clock. And we’ve already hammered out the basics of a co-parenting agreement, so if things didn’t work out—”
She held up her hand. “Wait a minute. You’re already thinking about the end of things before we’ve even started…?”
She was still sitting in his lap. It suddenly seemed exactly the wrong place to be. She slid awkwardly out of his lap and moved so that she was sitting to one side of him, one knee drawn to her chest.
All the heat of passion and need and triumph had turned clammy on her skin.
“Let me get this straight,” she said. Because it was becoming more and more clear to her that they were not on the same page. Not by a long shot. “You’re happy to have a child with me, but you don’t want to marry me or live with me. And you
care for me.
Am I getting this right?”
“Alex—” He sighed and lowered his head, pressing his fingers into his forehead for a beat. Then he lifted his head again. “This is really… I never thought I’d be in this place again. That I’d feel this way about another woman. I want to be with you, I do. But not marriage.”
“Do you love me?” It hurt her somewhere inside to have to ask. Her pride, probably. Later she could lash herself for being so weak.
“Yes. Yes, I love you, Alex.”
The words were hard for him to say.
She shook her head. “But you don’t want to, do you? You don’t want any of this.” She pushed herself to her feet and strode for the corner.
“What are you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m going home. Alone. Because I’m an idiot. A willfully delusional idiot who apparently still believes in fairy tales.” Her throat and chest were tight.
Ethan was standing behind her when she turned with her bag and racquet in hand.
“Alex. Let’s talk about this,” he said, stepping forward with his arms wide as though he was going to embrace her. There was pain in his eyes and a world of doubt but she was dealing with her own pain right now.
She warded him off with her racquet. “There’s nothing to talk about. You know what I want, Ethan. I want a family. I want a man who loves me the way I love him. I want—” Her voice broke and she took a deep, fierce breath and forced herself to continue. “I want the whole loaf, Ethan, and you offered me half of one. And you know what the worst thing is? There’s a part of me that wants to take it even though I know it would only make me miserable and sad and that I’d probably wind up hating you.”
She dodged around him but he stepped in her path.
“Alex, I love you. I do. If you’ll just listen to me—”
“No, I won’t. I can’t. I won’t let you convince me. I deserve more, Ethan. I’ve put up with half a loaf all my life. And I deserve more from the man who loves me. I don’t know the details of your marriage and your divorce because you’ve never trusted me with them, but I’m not Cassie, Ethan. I’m me, and I won’t pay the price for her sins.
I deserve more.
”
He was very pale. “If I could give you what you wanted, I would, Alex, believe me.”
The emptiness in his eyes…
“I know. And that’s the saddest thing of all.”
She left him standing on the court. The need to cry was like a giant’s hand pressing down on her chest as she made her way through the gym and out to her car. She refused to give in. She needed to stay strong. She needed to cling to her resolve because she was terrified that if she let herself feel the pain and gave herself over to her grief she would be tempted to take the crumbs from Ethan’s table.
So she kept her head high and her eyes dry as she got in her car and drove home. And inside, she died a little.
She was right. He knew she was right. What he’d offered her was a million times less than she deserved. It was selfish and self-serving and
it was all he had.
He raked his hands through his hair and sat on the couch, his fingertips digging into his scalp as though the pressure could force his brain to forget the past and grab a hold of Alex and all that she represented. Love, hope, a chance to do it right the second time around.
His head felt as though it was going to explode. He wanted, and he was scared. The two warred within him, making his gut churn and his chest hurt.
He had no idea how long he’d been sitting on the couch when the intercom buzzed. His first instinct was to ignore it—he was hardly good company right now—then it occurred to him that it might be Alex. That maybe she’d reconsidered and was prepared to give him a chance to explain.
It was a flimsy hope and it died the second he heard his brother’s voice.
“Ethan. I was on my way home. Buzz me up.”
“I’m in the middle of something.”
“It won’t take long. I want to apologize for last night. I was way out of line—”
“You were right. But it doesn’t matter. I’ll call you later.”
He walked away from the intercom, even though it buzzed three more times. He was in the kitchen pouring himself a hefty Scotch when there was a knock at his door.
No prizes for guessing who it was. Derek had obviously entered with one of the other tenants, the same trick he’d used at Alex’s building.
He considered not answering but the knocking was already getting louder.
His brother started yelling as Ethan was approaching the door. “I’m not buggering off until I’ve spoken to you, so you might as well open the—”
Ethan swung the door open.
“—door.”
His brother stared at him, then at the glass of Scotch in his hand.
“What happened?” Derek asked, pushing his way past Ethan and dropping his briefcase to the floor near the hall table.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Wow. Where have I heard that before?” Derek strode into the living room, shrugging out of his suit jacket and loosening his tie.
Ethan found him in the kitchen, pouring himself a more conservative Scotch. He met his brother’s eyes and took a deep breath.
“I appreciate the concern but I’m fine,” he said.
Something warm and wet fell onto his hand. He looked down at it. It took him a moment to understand that he was crying. He put down his glass.
“Jesus,” Derek said, and then his brother’s arms were closing around him and he was being held tightly and he couldn’t keep the rest of the tears from falling.
He fought them every step of the way until Derek gave him a shake.
“Cry, you big dickhead. It won’t kill you.”
Ethan turned his face into his brother’s shoulder and gripped his shoulders hard. Five years of shame and anger and hurt soaked into his brother’s Ralph Lauren shirt and still his brother didn’t let him go. Only when Ethan sniffed mightily and tried to break away did his brother release his grip.
Ethan avoided his eyes, concentrating on grabbing some paper towel from beneath the sink.
“This is about Cassie,” Derek guessed.
“And Alex.” Ethan wiped his cheeks and blew his nose. Only then did he look directly at his brother again. “Sorry about your shirt.”
“Screw the shirt. Talk to me.”
Ethan crumpled the paper towel in his hand until it was a tight ball within his fist. He hated talking about this stuff. Small wonder, then, that he never had. That he’d never told anyone the full, ugly truth of his divorce. He tried to find a place to start, but there was so much shame and anger attached to the memories that he couldn’t think past it.
“Something happened today. Tell me about that,” Derek said.
“We were playing racquetball. I asked Alex about her date—”
“Alex is dating someone else? And you let that happen?”
Ethan rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Yeah, I did,” he said heavily.
“So what happened?”
“I asked her what she would do if I asked her not to see the guy again. And she wanted to know why. So I told her that I was crazy about her.”
“About freaking time. What did she say?”
“She told me that she loves me.” The memory made his stomach pinch. The look on her face when she’d said it. The way she’d laughed… For a few seconds he’d made her happy. Then he’d screwed it all up again because he didn’t have the guts to follow through.
“That must have freaked you out.”
Ethan looked up sharply. His brother shrugged.
“Pretty confronting, getting the thing you want when you’re not sure you want it.”
Ethan reached for his Scotch and swallowed a generous mouthful. “Yeah.”
“So how did you screw it up?” Derek asked.
Ethan smiled thinly. “I told her I didn’t want to get married again.”
“Ouch.”
“Then she asked if I meant we should just live together, and I told her we should see how it goes, keep our own places…”
Derek winced. “At which point she tore you a new one.”
“At which point she told me that she wasn’t Cassie and that she deserved better. And then she walked. And I let her go because I’m a freaking pussy.”
He could hear the self-pity and contempt in his own voice but he was powerless to stop it.
There was a long pause before Derek responded. “I know a lot of guys who are divorced. Hell, me and Kay joke all the time about being each other’s starter spouse. Most of those guys are pissed for a few months, maybe a year, then they get back on the wagon, and more than half of them are married again within two years. But not you.”
“No.”
“I know you see a lot of crappy marriages with your work, but it’s not that, is it?” Derek said.
“No.” Jesus, he wished it was. He took another swallow of his drink. Then he took a deep breath. “Those other guys, your friends. Some of them probably cheated on their wives. Or maybe they had money troubles and they fought about it too much, or maybe she met someone else or maybe they both realized they just didn’t have what it took to go the distance. Cassie and I… We were together for four years before I proposed to her. I can still remember the day we met—I went to my first Ethics class and she was standing talking to someone. I took one look at her and fell for her on the spot. We moved in with each other after a month and we never looked back. I never had a doubt that we’d marry and have kids and the rest of it.
“That day when I came home from work and Cassie told me she wanted a divorce…” He stopped, shook his head. This was hard. Not only the telling of it, but the remembering. He’d done his damnedest to put it behind him. To move on. But it was all washing over him again.
The way she’d been sitting at the kitchen table when he came in, a crisp white business envelope on the table in front of her. The way she’d looked at him, as though he was a stranger. No, worse—as though he was one of her clients. Someone she had to deal with because it was her job. Then he’d noticed the overnight bag against the wall and he’d understood that something was very, very wrong.
“We need to talk,” she’d said.
Then she’d slid the envelope across the table and told him that she wanted a divorce. She’d had papers drawn up. She didn’t want anything of his but she wanted half of the house proceeds once it was sold and he was welcome to all their furniture. Once the mandatory year of separation was up they could file for the decree of dissolution and sign some papers and that would be it. Twelve years down the tubes.
“I don’t understand,” he’d said. They’d had some minor spats, but nothing that came close to being grounds for divorce. He loved her. She was his wife. They were in this thing together. “If you’re unhappy, we’ll get counseling. Whatever it takes. Tell me what’s wrong and I’ll fix it. We’ll fix it.”
“I don’t love you anymore.”
It had been like a fist in the face. And so out of the blue, so unheralded he couldn’t believe it, couldn’t make his mind grasp the words and accept them.
He’d sat beside her and taken her cold hands in his and told her that he loved her, that all marriages had ups and downs, that love ebbed and flowed and he was sure it would flow again.
Then she’d looked him in the eye and told him.
“She had an abortion,” Ethan said, forcing the words past the lump in his throat.
“What?” Derek’s expression was uncomprehending.
Ethan almost smiled. He remembered feeling that way. Being literally unable to believe what his ears were telling him. “She was pregnant, and she had an abortion without telling me.”
Derek’s face was pale. He swore. “Ethan…”
Suddenly Ethan wanted it all told, all of it out in the open.
“We weren’t planning on trying for a baby until the following year, but she got pregnant accidentally and when she found out she said she had a revelation. She didn’t want the baby. Or, more specifically, she didn’t want
my
baby. She didn’t want our marriage anymore. She didn’t want the life we’d made together. She didn’t love me, and she wanted out. So she made arrangements to get rid of the baby and she got her shit together. Then she told me and walked.”
Ethan swallowed strongly. Five years on and he still felt sick and angry and impotent.
“Mate.” His brother was looking at him with a world of pity and compassion in his eyes.
This was why Ethan had never told anyone the truth behind his divorce. He didn’t want his family to feel sorry for him. Then Derek pulled him into his arms again and Ethan decided that maybe a bit of compassion wasn’t so bad after all. Maybe it was even exactly what he needed.
After a minute his brother released him, his eyes suspiciously bright. “I don’t know what to say. If Kay had done that to me…” Derek shook his head. “But she’d never do that.”
Ethan smiled grimly. “That’s what I thought about Cassie.”
“But Kay is—” Derek closed his mouth on whatever he’d been about to say and Ethan saw full understanding dawn on his brother’s face.
Ethan had trusted his wife, just as Derek trusted Kay, and yet he’d had no idea that she was so unhappy that she’d choose to get rid of the child they’d made together rather than be bound to him for life.
“Jesus,” Derek said quietly. “No wonder you’re so messed up.”
Ethan laughed. He had to, or he was going to disgrace himself by crying again. He’d always vowed he’d never tell anyone. He’d been so ashamed that something could be so wrong with his marriage and he’d not known about it. He’d been stupidly cruising along, living in a fantasy world where he and Cassie loving each other was more important than the lumps and bumps of everyday life, and all the time she’d been quietly dealing with her unwanted pregnancy and putting her affairs in order before she left him.
“Did you ever talk about it? Ask her why?” Derek wanted to know.
Ethan shook his head. He’d had questions, things he’d wanted to know, but the anger that had followed hard on the heels of her fait accompli had meant that he couldn’t bear to be in the same room with her. Or, more accurately, he couldn’t trust himself to be in the same room as her. He’d wanted to hurt her. Make her suffer for hurting him and making a decision about their child without consulting him. Most of all he’d wanted to punish her for not loving him even though he still loved her, even after what she’d done.
Then she’d taken up a job with a multinational insurance company and moved to Singapore and he hadn’t heard from her until the divorce papers arrived a year later. She’d sent him a letter a month after their divorce was finalized, but he’d burned it without reading it.
“Maybe you should.”
“What’s to know? She changed her mind. She didn’t want to be with me. Game over.”
It was hard to say it out loud, but it was the truth. After twelve years together, the woman he’d loved had simply walked out of his life, leaving him gasping like a landed fish. He’d gone over and over and over it in his head, but that was what it boiled down to. She’d stopped loving him, and she’d left.
Derek started to say something then stopped when his stomach growled demandingly. “You got anything to eat? Some pretzels maybe?”
“Pretzels. No, I do not have pretzels. But I can make us some bruschetta if you like.”
“I would like. I would like a lot.”
Ethan started pulling ingredients from the fridge, glad to have something constructive to do. He could feel Derek watching him as he diced the onions and squeezed the seeds out of the tomatoes. When his brother finally spoke, his voice was low and careful.
“Falling for Alex must have been pretty freaking scary after all of that stuff with Cassie, huh?”
Ethan nodded shortly. He hadn’t wanted to fall for Alex. Had done his damnedest for a long time to satisfy his need to be a part of her life without getting too close, too involved. Then she’d come to their racquetball game that night all churned up over seeing her ex and he hadn’t been able to stop himself from comforting her.
“What she said is right, you know. She’s not Cassie,” Derek said.