Gizmo and Kyle shook their heads.
‘You should ask your girlfriend that question,’ Jim said, gesturing at Izzy. ‘I saw her take a handful of cash from there last week, it looked to be over a hundred pounds. She said you knew so I didn’t say anything but I’m guessing now that you didn’t.’
Izzy didn’t have a chance to stop Ethan this time, before she’d even leapt out of her seat, Ethan had launched himself across the room, punching Jim twice in the face. Jim sprawled back against the wall and Ethan pinned him up by his throat, squeezing hard, making it difficult for Jim to breathe.
‘Ethan, no!’ Izzy pulled him back but he was immobile, his face a picture of furious hate.
Gizmo grabbed Ethan under the arms and clearly using all his strength he yanked him away from Jim.
Jim spluttered with relief, trying to breathe, blood poured from his nose and his eye already looked swollen.
‘What the fuck?’ he choked out, glaring at Ethan.
‘Get out, right now and don’t ever show your face in here again,’ Ethan growled.
‘Are you fucking serious, you’re firing me? You’re choosing some stupid slut over me?’
Ethan moved towards him again, but Gizmo had him in a firm grip.
‘Get out, I swear, if I get my hands on you, I’ll rip you apart.’
With one last look of hate at both of them, Jim walked out, slamming the door behind him.
Gizmo kept hold of Ethan, clearly knowing that Ethan would go after Jim, if given the chance.
Izzy stared at Ethan, she’d never seen this side of him before. Kyle was obviously equally surprised, his mouth hanging open in shock. Eventually he found his voice.
‘What the hell was that? You just punched our cousin.’
‘We’ve all wanted to punch him at one time or another,’ Ethan said.
‘Yes but we’ve never acted on it before. What’s going on between you and Izzy that would provoke that kind of reaction in you?’
‘He accused her of stealing.’
‘I was annoyed as well but not enough to punch him. And you didn’t even ask if what Jim said he saw was true, maybe Izzy took it for legitimate reasons, but you could have at least asked Izzy before you forced your fist down the back of his throat.’
Ethan removed himself from Gizmo’s arms and Gizmo let him.
‘Go and get breakfast, both of you,’ Ethan snapped, thrusting some money into Kyle’s hands. ‘And if you can run Jim over on your way down the drive, that would be great. Psycho, heel!’
Ethan grabbed Psycho’s lead and as the huge dog scrabbled to his feet Ethan stalked out and slammed the door behind them.
‘Has he gone after him?’ Izzy asked.
‘No, he’s probably just gone to cool down,’ Gizmo said. ‘Come on Kyle, I’m starving.’
The boys left, leaving her alone.
Ethan had one hell of a temper, that was for sure.
Chapter Twenty
Ethan didn’t come back for breakfast and his bacon sandwich sat on the desk getting cold as Izzy and the boys planned the promotional film they were going to shoot the following week. When Tia said there was a whole load of issues that Izzy would have to get through to make it work with Ethan, she wasn’t just talking about his bereavement issues. But despite his anger and grumpy moods, she was falling for him. It was impossible not to.
Finally he came back just before the pick up, he didn’t even look at her as he sorted Psycho out with some water and sent the boys out to get the van ready, but as the door closed behind Kyle, he turned to her.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘For what?’
He stared at her incredulously. ‘For being a complete psychopath. I don’t know what it is about you that brings out the absolute best and worst in me. I want to kiss you and hold you all of the time and the fact that I can’t drives me mad. I don’t want anyone to come near you, ever, in case someone hurts you and I’m a nervous wreck around my own family in case they say something to upset you and drive you away. I don’t even want you to see Bex in case she persuades you not to see me anymore.’
‘Well it’s her hen night tonight, so you’ll just have to get over that little problem.’
He groaned, rubbing his hand across his face in frustration.
She stood up and came round the desk, sliding her arms round his waist. ‘You don’t scare me. There is nothing you can do that will push me away.’
‘Oh I can think of a million things.’
‘Stop being so negative, can’t you just enjoy what we have? The sex is spectacular, we enjoy each other’s company, can you try to relax? No one knows what is around the next corner, but there’s no point in worrying about it.’
He breathed out heavily through his nose. ‘I’ll try.’
‘Well what do you do to wind down?’
He arched an eyebrow at her as he wrapped his hands round her waist and pulled her against him.
‘Apart from sex, you pervert.’
‘I don’t know. What do you do?’
‘I take a bath, I read, surely you must have something you do to relax.’
‘Well I take Psycho for walks and I paint.’
‘Ok, well do that. When you’re getting stressed out about me or anything else, focus your mind on painting and don’t think about anything else.’
‘The last two or three days that I’ve been painting, I’ve painted you.’
Izzy felt her eyebrows shoot up. ‘Me.’
‘Yes. It’s not the greatest distraction from wanting to be with you.’
‘Well it’s a start. Maybe the next time you paint you could do a nice landscape instead.’
He sighed and nodded. ‘I’m going away this weekend, I just need some time to think and get my head together. My friend has a cottage by the sea so I figured the sea air would do me some good.’
Izzy felt a sudden sense of loss that she wouldn’t see him for a few days. ‘Ok, that’s probably a good idea. It’s got very intense, very quickly. We could probably both do with a break.’
‘I was going to ask you to come with me.’
She smiled. ‘How is that going to help?’
‘Because it won’t drive me mad that I’m not with you.’
‘Ethan…’
‘Come away with me. I promise no moods, no fighting with anyone, just you and me.’
‘You have to share me with the world at some point.’
‘I will, I promise. Next week we’ll even tell the boys. You can meet my mum too. We can go to dinner with Bex and Gabe, let me just have you to myself for this weekend.’
‘Ok.’
He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her, just as the door swung open. Ethan leapt back from her as if he’d been burned. Gizmo was standing in the doorway. He must have seen something but he didn’t seem fazed at all.
‘Boss, we should go.’
Ethan grabbed his coat and with the tiniest of smiles in her direction he left.
*
Ethan stared at the clock on his mantelpiece for what felt like the hundredth time in the last hour. Psycho was snoring loudly into his lap as he slept on, blissfully unaware of Ethan’s angst.
Where was Izzy now?
He knew the plan had been for Izzy to go for dinner for the first part of Bex’s hen do and then they were going out clubbing afterwards. There would be men at the club, probably dancing with Izzy and the rest of the girls. Would Izzy dance with them? Would she kiss any of them? Would there be strippers?
He’d asked her to come round after the hen night had finished but she had said she’d probably go home as it would be quite late and it meant that she could pack in the morning. It made sense and he wanted to be ok with not spending the night with her but he wasn’t. What if Bex talked some sense into her? What if Izzy met someone else who was much better for her and much less complicated?
He hated that he felt this way. If he thought he was going insane before he was with her, it was nothing to how he
felt right now. He was falling for her, there was no doubt about it and it was happening so quickly he barely had a chance to draw breath. And all he could think about was what it would be like to lose her. And he would lose her, he knew that. Either fate would cruelly snatch her from his life like it did with his daughter and Charlie or she would leave him. Charlie had tried to leave him once, the pain of that was hideous. He tried to think rationally about it, tried to be calm and just enjoy the moment, but inevitably when he thought about the future and Izzy not being in it, panic and pain ripped through him in equal measures and it tore him up inside. Could he honestly live with this feeling of fear and doubt in his heart for the rest of his life? And if he didn’t calm down soon he would push Izzy away anyway with his irrational behaviour. Charlie had messed him up spectacularly and he had to find a way to get over his fear before he cocked this thing up with Izzy.
God he just needed to be with her now, just to hold her against him. When he was with her everything was wonderful.
Right on cue, there was a knock on his door. It was almost two in the morning, there was only one person it could be. He raced to the door, disturbing Psycho briefly in his rush to get to see Izzy again.
He flung open the door and she was leaning against the doorframe, looking sexy as hell and clearly ridiculously drunk.
She took a step towards him and he caught her as she wobbled precariously.
‘You, Mr Chase, are just one great big hulking sex machine,’ Izzy said, squeezing his bum.
He smirked. ‘Is that right.’
She pushed him back and closed the door behind her, trying to look sexy and alluring but achieving only in looking adorable and a bit silly.
She took a step towards him again, grabbed his shirt and ripped it open. Buttons pinged everywhere in the wooden hallway, he couldn’t find it in him to care.
‘You’re all I’ve thought about all night, how I wanted to be with you, what I wanted to do to you. There was a stripper. He was hot too. All bronzed and shiny and muscly and he had a big willy.’
Ethan felt the smile fall of his face. He didn’t want to hear this.
‘But he was nothing compared to you. All I kept thinking about was your body, this chest…’ she ran her hands over his chest and down his arms, ‘and your willy is a million times better than his. You have ruined other men for me. I couldn’t even enjoy a simple stripper, you ruined that for me too.’
He grinned. ‘I’m not going to apologise for that. I don’t want you looking at other men.’
‘But he was a stripper, I’m supposed to look at him, I couldn’t exactly close my eyes. Other married women were screaming at him and stroking him and I couldn’t even do that. I just wanted you. You know I’ve fallen head over heels, one hundred per cent in love with you, what do you think about that, Mr Chase.’
His world stopped. There was no sound apart from that of his pounding heart as it thundered in his ears. She was drunk and he couldn’t take a drunken declaration remotely seriously but his heart soared and filled at the thought of her being in love with him.
But she wasn’t finished. ‘How can I fall in love with you so quickly and so hard? It’s stupid, but I know that I have. I told Bex tonight too that I loved you and she said it was lust and the need for good sex, and the sex is good, well magnificent – but it’s not sex that I love, it’s you. If we were to never have sex ever again I’d still love you.’
‘Ok.’ His voice sounded strangled and ‘Ok’ didn’t cover at all what he was feeling right now. He was elated.
‘Ok?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re not freaked out by me telling you I love you, when we haven’t even been together a week.’
‘Surprisingly not.’
‘Good, now take me upstairs and make love to me.’
He swung her up into his arms. ‘That I can do.’
‘Good because I really want to see your willy.’
He smiled as he carried her up the stairs and by the time he had walked into the bedroom, the smile had stretched into an enormous grin.
Chapter Twenty-One
Izzy woke the next morning to see Ethan lying on his back with his hands behind his head. She frowned slightly at his absence. Normally she woke to him wrapped around her, clinging to her like ivy. She leaned up slightly to see him smiling to himself as he stared at the ceiling.
‘What are you looking so happy about?’ Izzy asked, inching closer to him and stroking a hand over his chest.
He suddenly rolled on top of her, pinning her with his delicious weight.
‘Just generally happy,’ he said, before burying his face in her neck and kissing her throat.
She ran her hand through his curly hair and round the back of his neck, he moaned softly at her touch. ‘What’s happened that’s made you happy? Last time we properly spoke, you were stressing about people hurting me and me leaving you.’
‘Do you remember much about last night?’ He pulled back to look at her.
Izzy thought back to the night before. ‘I had a meal with Bex and the girls, I drank some wine. It all got a bit fuzzy after that. We went to a club. There was a stripper, don’t remember what he looked like, he wasn’t anything special though. Then I came here and you took advantage of my drunken nature and seduced me into bed.’
He smirked. ‘That’s not quite how it happened but ok.’
‘So why are you so happy?’
‘Like you said, I just need to relax, enjoy the moment.’ He slipped from the bed and walked off to the bathroom. ‘Get dressed, we need to leave soon.’ She heard him moving around in the bathroom, singing. She had never heard Ethan sing before and she wondered why he had started now. Something had happened to make him happy and relaxed, she just had to figure out what it was so she could recreate it on a daily basis.
*
Izzy had had the best weekend of her life. Ethan’s friend owned a tiny cottage by the sea which he had lent out to Ethan for the weekend. They had spent two glorious days chatting, going for long walks with Psycho, making love in front of the fire. Ethan had been happy and relaxed all weekend and Izzy had enjoyed every second with him.
But now it was Monday morning and she dreaded having to share him with Gizmo and Kyle again. They wouldn’t be able to talk or kiss and invariably Ethan would get all moody about it.
He had dropped her off at her house a short while before so he and the boys could pick her up in the van shortly.
It was a good job they were collecting her too, the back tyre on her bike was as flat as a pancake. She stared at her old bike sadly propped up against the front of her uncle’s house. She hated getting a puncture, it was such a faff to repair the blasted thing. The boys would probably be another five minutes so she could get a head start now while she was waiting. She grabbed the small tool box that was clipped to the bike and started unbolting the wheel when she heard the van drive down the road towards her.
She heard the van pull to a stop behind her and the door open as she put the spanner back into the tool box and checked the lock was done up on the bike
‘Perfect timing guys, you’ve saved me from the hassle of trying to fix a puncture,’ Izzy said.
Suddenly she was grabbed from behind and dragged into the van. It was obviously Ethan playing with her and she smiled at this sudden show of affection from him, although she was slightly surprised that he would do it in front of the boys.
But the next thing she was tossed unceremoniously, face down onto the floor and leaned on heavily from behind.
‘Ethan, what the hell?’
Her hands were grabbed and tied behind her back and as she tried to look up she realised this wasn’t the company van.
Realising she had really been kidnapped, she reacted instinctively. She wriggled and kicked out, knocking whoever was leaning over her off balance. She saw a hairy male hand near her face that definitely didn’t belong to Ethan. Then it disappeared.
The van door was slammed, plunging her
into darkness and she was left alone. A few moments later, she heard the engine roar back to life and the van drove off up the road.
What the hell had just happened? Was this a rival kidnapping company that wanted to threaten Kidnap My Wife to move off their patch, some kind of turf war thing? Nothing sinister or scary ever happened in Chessingburyford, so for her to be kidnapped twice in a matter of weeks was ridiculous.
Her mobile phone was stuck in her back pocket and with her hands tied behind her back it was quite easy to fish it out, though now she had it in her hands she didn’t know what she was going to do with it.
She tossed it to one side and heard it clatter onto the van floor and then she scooted down so her face was next to it.
Now what. It was a touchscreen phone, so she could hopefully do something with her nose.
She prodded at it with her nose, and the phone stayed blank. She prodded at it again and the screen lit up. After three attempts she managed to unlock the phone by swiping her nose across the screen. Having a bit of a cold meant she was leaving tiny trails of snot across the screen every time she touched it. This was gross. Whenever she had watched the Bond films or any other crime dramas, it always seemed much more glamorous than this. There would always be some kind of knife tucked into one of the shoes, or a nail file that the victim could use to their advantage, no film ever showed the victim wiping snot all over their phone in a bid to escape.
She prodded the phone again, and after several attempts managed to bring up the call list and phone Ethan.
‘Izzy, where are you? We came by to pick you up but your bike is here and you’re not.’
He didn’t sound unduly concerned at this stage.
‘Ethan, I’ve been kidnapped,’ she hissed.
There was a pause for a moment and then he laughed. ‘Oh funny, where are you really?’
‘Lying in the back of a van with my hands tied behind my back.’
‘Are you serious?’ His voice faltered.
‘Yes I’m frigging serious, I’m not joking about something like this.’
‘You’ve been kidnapped?’
Tied up With Love Page 22
