Ethan (California Dreamy)

by Rian Kelley

  Shae dropped her purse on the floor—there was nowhere else to put it—and turned full circle. The hemline of her blouse flared around her hips. The wedged heels of her sandals squeaked on the wood flooring.

  “Nice work space.”

  “Describe nice,” Ethan demanded.

  “Uncluttered?” she tried. She had a few other words that would do but each of them felt like criticism.

  “You can do better than that,” Ethan prodded. “What does this place reveal about me?”

  Because there was revelation in every thought and action… “Are you a minimalist?”

  His bark of laughter was a surprise. Shae had been trying for a neutral tone.

  “Evidence?”

  She shrugged. “Small house. I saw a toaster and a blender in the kitchen, but no espresso machine.” She nodded toward his desk. “There’s nowhere for me to sit.”

  “I can fix that.”

  He placed her laptop on the only chair, the tea and sandwiches on the desk, and strode across the room. He disappeared through the door and Shae could almost see the air ripple with his passing. Weird. The man could move. Nothing flashy, but strong, economical progress that left her a little dizzy.

  He returned with a chair from the kitchen table. Wood lattice back but the seat was cushioned.

  “I just moved in,” he explained. “Well, seven months ago.” He smiled, abashed. “Redecorating, remodeling any of that will have to wait.”

  “Until you’re done with this project?”

  “Yes.” He stared at her. “What was the other comment? Oh, yeah, ‘small house.’ There’s only me, so I don’t need a lot of room. Never really had any. I grew up in a ranch house and had my own bedroom only because gender singled me out. Then it was the military—you never get more than elbow room in the service. It also makes a guy something of a minimalist. Your possessions are whittled down to what you can carry.”

  “I didn’t mean it as a judgment.”

  He ignored that. “Notice anything else?”

  Well, since he asked, “You move a lot.” Not really a nervous energy, because Shae recognized a contained kind of strength in Ethan. He had a stunning physique, with well-defined muscle and sleek lines, broad shoulders and chest, thighs that strained against the material of his faded jeans. Powerful was a more apt description of him. And yet, she got the impression that he was feeling a little edgy.

  What was up with that? she wondered. Exactly what had he called her here to wrestle with?

  She remembered Stevie’s words, that Ethan had first-time jitters—another description she had a hard time applying to the man. He was just too . . .composed.

  “That’s pretty much a state of being for me,” he admitted. “I’m in constant motion. I think I have a vestibular thing going on,” he explained.

  Shae tilted her head, considering that. She’d heard the term before but couldn’t quite come up with its meaning.

  “It’s one of our senses, it’s all about movement. I think I need more than the average person.”

  “No transcendental meditation for you?”

  He chuckled, and his smile grew big and full of amusement. It made her heart cartwheel.

  “No. Although it would be a viable form of torture should you need to use it.”

  “You’re giving away your secrets?”

  “I haven’t even begun.” His voice thinned and Shae realized the man had a true case of the nerves.

  “I promise to go easy.”

  But he shook his head. “I want honesty.”

  “The truth doesn’t have to draw blood.”

  “You have to sink your teeth into this,” he returned. “Otherwise we’re wasting time.”

  She sat in the chair he’d brought in and lifted her hands. “So give it to me.”

  He opened a desk drawer and pulled out an Apple Tablet. “I converted it for you.”

  “It would have been easier if you’d just e-mailed it to me,” she pointed out. “I could have come in ready.”

  But he shook his head. And he was still holding onto the Tablet, his arms crossed over it and pressing it to his chest. This wasn’t going to be easy.

  “You’re going to have to give it to me,” she prompted.

  “I know.” But he looked grim about it.

  Again, unexpected. Standing in front of her was Ethan Abrams, award-winning director. Man of arms. He’d faced down the enemy, tackled Hollywood and was now King of the Mountain, and yet the man who stood before her was acting a lot more like Clark Kent than a super hero.

  “Why don’t we talk first? Tell me the storyline.”

  “It’s autobiographical,” he confessed.

  Shae nodded as understanding moved deeply inside her. “That’s never good.”

  Ethan’s eyes flared slightly. “What happened to the gentle approach?”

  “That was gift-wrapped in kindness. You should know better,” she pointed out. “How long have you been in this business? Ten years?”

  “Eight.”

  “The first rule of success, no one cares who you are.”

  “Until you’ve made it.”

  “Is that your angel?” She felt a little dip of disappointment. “You’re going to capitalize off your name?

  “Absolutely not.” Indignation made his tone snap. “This—” he held up the Tablet—“isn’t for sale. I wrote it in the frame of a screenplay because that’s all I know. That’s what I see. But it will never make it to film.”

  Okay, dizzy again. Very little about this man or this situation made sense, including her unrelenting awareness of him. The breadth of his shoulders, the intensity in his gaze, even the way his jaw tensed before he surrendered a small morsel of personal information called to her. On top of that, she sensed a vulnerability in him that was appealing, not to mention totally out of place and possibly fatal in this sea of man-eaters in which they swam. But Shae wasn’t looking for an affair and she wasn’t out to save the world. She was on the cusp of becoming a mother. Time to make her exit and pick up the reins of her plan.

  Shae stood up. “Then why am I here?”

  “Because I need help.”

  “But not the writing kind?”

  “Yes, the writing kind. But something else, too. The way you get to the heart of the matter. That’s what I need.”

  “You’re so close to the forest you can’t see the trees,” she stated. “Which is why autobiographies never work. They’re too narrow. Too—”

  “Yeah, I get it,” he assured her. “And that’s why you’re here.”

  “But if it’s never going to make it to the screen—”

  “It’s messing with my life,” Ethan said. “This thing I can’t see. I’m so close to it, I can feel it. What it does to me. I need to understand it so I can move beyond it.”

  It sounded like Ethan Abrams needed a therapist, not a screenwriter. She didn’t think he was in the frame of mind to hear that, though.

  “That isn’t my strength,” she began.

  “The hell it’s not. That is in everything you do. You have that intuitive thing down. That unraveling of the female psyche and the male ego.”

  “You read that in a review,” she accused. Shae remembered every good word written about her work, and too much of the bad, unfortunately.

  He smiled. “I did. But it’s true.”

  “How many of my movies have you seen?”

  “All of them.”

  “Yeah?” she challenged. “When?”

  “Well, I saw ‘Personal Touch—’ the Academy Award winner— “when it was released last year. That’s why I thought of you.”

  “And the others?”

  “Last week,” he admitted.

  She nodded. “I thought so.”

  “You’re talented. Very. And you’re—”

  She held up a hand to stop him. “I don’t need platitudes.” She was finally at a place where her confidence in her work was unshakeable.

  “What do you need?” h
e asked.

  “The facts,” she decided. “Give me some background and then give me the Tablet.”

  Chapter Five

  Ethan thought about his options. He could hand over the Tablet peacefully and retain some of his male dignity. Or he could sit on it and stare her down, thus accomplishing nothing and reducing himself to the level of a two year old.

  He held it out to her, but she had to use both hands to wrestle it away from him.

  “It can’t be that bad,” she muttered.

  She shook her head, but then that smiled bloomed on her lips—patient, knowing, sexy as hell. He felt his dick stir. He was definitely attracted to her. His skin had been humming ever since he’d stood on the other side of the gate, staring at her smiling profile.

  “The writing is crap,” he told her. It was raw and real and it spilled onto the page in choppy lines and, sometimes, one word epithets. The man in those pages was a casualty. In his mind’s eye, Ethan saw his crumpled, blood-stained body and wanted to haul him over his shoulder and run him to the medics. Only the guy was him and he couldn’t save himself. He’d tried. “The events are real.” He struggled for his next words, “The emotions—” God, how he hated that word. It was worse than feelings and about on par with apocalypse—“are a mess.”

  She was already navigating through the first pages. She looked up and nailed him with her eyes.

  “Who’s Tina?”

  “My wife.”

  “You said you weren’t married,” Shae pointed out. “And not divorced. So I’m assuming your wife passed away?” Her voice softened on her last words.

  “Yes.”

  She considered him for a moment. Her eyes were a startling shade of mid-summer sky. Ethan felt like he could free-float in her gaze, buoyed by the promise of carefree days and languid nights.

  “Are you having trouble dealing with her loss?”

  “No. I’ve worked through that.” That was his starting point when he took on this project. He’d thought it had to be Tina’s death holding him back and so he’d dove right into it. “It’s what happened before. I think.”

  “How did she die?”

  “Read and you’ll see.”

  “What happened before?”

  He pointed to the Tablet. “It’s all in there.”

  She laid the Tablet in her lap and stared up at him. “Even if I read the whole thing, we’re going to have to talk about it.”

  “You mean you’re thinking about not reading it?”

  She sighed and Ethan watched conflict wage on her face.

  “It’s six hundred and seventeen pages,” she pointed out.

  Ethan flinched. He’d written enough to fill out two or three screenplays and he wasn’t even done. She probably thought he was an egomaniac.

  “What else do you have to do with your time?” he tried for humor.

  “I’m leaving town tomorrow.”

  “When are you coming back?”

  “Never.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a permanent move,” she explained, and Ethan heard defensiveness in her tone. “I want more than this town can offer me.”

  Stevie had said something about Shae contemplating a move that would result in career suicide. He tried to remember the man’s exact words.

  “And it’s waiting for you in Mayberry?”

  “Stevie talks too much.” She frowned and it put the cutest wrinkle between her eyebrows. “And it’s Mill valley. I grew up there.”

  “They say you can never go home.”

  “Who says that?” she challenged.

  “The people who tried?”

  “The people who have nothing waiting for them,” she corrected.

  “And you do?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you can’t delay a few days?”

  She held up the Tablet. “It’s going to take longer than that.”

  “A few weeks then?” He inhaled deeply. Hell, he hated the whole idea of need—unless it was sexual in nature, and then you could deal him in. “I know it’s asking for a lot. And there’s really nothing I can do to pay you back for it. I mean, it’s not like we can start practicing our acceptance speeches, right? And paying you, well Stevie said—”

  “You can’t buy heart,” Shae cut through his words. “And that’s what you’re asking for.”

  And because that was it, exactly, Ethan stood quietly in front of her and agreed. “I need your help.”

  His soft entreaty sealed the deal. He watched the fight roll off her shoulders, loosen the tension in her face. Shae Matthews was beautiful, with delicate, sunny features that reminded him of cat naps in the hammock and buttery sunsets that settled in a golden patina over the ocean.

  “I’ll get a hotel room.”

  “A hotel room?” he repeated. Okay, so he had sex on the brain and his first reaction was one hundred percent male. Shae naked and atop the silky sheets at the Marmot, her dark blond hair fanned out around her head, her blue eyes, so open and expressive, calling to him. And of course it made him stupid.

  “I can’t commute,” she pointed out. “Just getting here took me two hours.”

  One beat. Of course she couldn’t. He recognized that fact but his inner caveman had control and was unwilling to leave his imagination behind so easily. Certainly not when fantasy-Shae was beginning to move on that big mattress. She rolled to her side, propped her head in her hand, and that sunny smile of hers turned sultry. A second beat. His mind refused to budge. He tried to shake it off. Really he did. But then she opened her mouth and her voice was thick with need, “Come here, Ethan.”

  His attraction to her was stunning. It was almost mortifying, but he managed to slam the door shut on the images that taunted him before he could embarrass himself completely.

  “Ah, sorry,” he mumbled. “What did you say?”

  “I’ll need to book a hotel room,” she repeated. Her lips, full and glistening because she’d just swiped them with her tongue—a move that went straight to his dick—turned down at the corners.

  Ethan took refuge in the office chair, tipping back and covering his lap with his folded hands. The move served two purposes—it gave him a few moments to collect his scattered wits, and it hid the evidence of his arousal—or so he hoped.

  “This has really gotten to you,” she said. “You don’t like exposing yourself.”

  “I’m not exposed.” Not yet. But he almost choked on the words and concern softened her face.

  “But you will be.” Her fingers strummed the screen of the Tablet. “As soon as I get back to this.”

  “Oh, yeah,” he agreed and he was clearly off beat. Shae tipped her head and her eyes became lasers.

  She set the Tablet on the desk, close enough Ethan could grab it if he wanted to.

  “You’re going to need to trust me,” she began. “But you don’t know me and even if you did I think you’d still have trouble with that.”

  He nodded. It wasn’t always that way. He’d trusted before. He’d trusted Tina, and she’d abused it. He’d trusted himself, but feared he’d messed up and would again.

  “Maybe if we set some ground rules, you’d feel more comfortable.”

  “What kind of rules?”

  She shrugged. “It’s going to get personal. There’s no way around that. But it doesn’t have to become judgmental. If we treat your life like a story—which is really the only way I can do this—and you remember that my comments are strictly about plot and character—we should do okay.”

  “We’d do better if you shared a little about yourself,” he countered. “You know, confess something you’ve never told another soul.”

  “One naked person in the room is embarrassing, but two is a party?” she summarized for him and waited for his nod of agreement before she followed it up with an emphatic, “That’s not gonna happen.”

  He smiled. “I didn’t think so.”

  Their gazes locked and Ethan watched her eyes flare. She exhaled and it was breat
hy. Then she tucked a strand of hair behind an ear and he noticed that her hand trembled slightly.

  Awareness. Thick enough it was a form of captivity. For a moment. And then she shifted, broke eye contact, and busied herself. She searched for and found her purse on the desk. She brought it to her lap and rummaged through it, bringing out her cell phone and a small notebook. When she looked to him again, her creamy skin was tinged lightly with pink, but that was the only remaining evidence of her interest in him.

  “You have a recommendation?”

  He stared at her, his mind a complete blank. What the hell was wrong with him? He was smart, quick. He’d never lost the threads of a conversation and now he felt them flapping at his fingertips. He couldn’t grab them.

  Sexual heat. It simmered just below the surface. It melted his brain cells. He tried to remember the last time he was so completely moved by a woman. High school. Back when Tina was more dream—dating but not dipping into the honey—than reality.

  “Recommendation?” he tried to raise a cool eyebrow but in the face of her open appeal, he couldn’t pull it off. How had Shae managed to remain so fresh and genuine in a world of wind-up toys?

  “For a hotel,” she prompted him.

  Damn, that again. Ethan stepped on the brake with both feet and brought his imagination to a grinding halt before it could get the better of him.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I’m preoccupied. I’m all about this—” he indicated the Tablet— “right

  now.” Liar, he called himself. “That’s the way I work.” Which was true. He tended to be a frenzy of energy with one focal point when he was on a project.

  “Me, too.” She held up her phone. “So let’s get this out of the way and then we’ll get to it.”

  “You can stay here,” he offered. “I have two guest rooms. They’re all primped up—my mom and sisters did it because they need a little more than toilet paper and Cheerios to get by.”

  Shae laughed.

  “We’ll get more work done that way, too. Maybe it won’t take weeks to plow through this.” He tapped the Tablet and ignored the itch to draw it close.