by Rian Kelley
“I have only an overnight case with me.”
“And your surfboard.” He’d noticed it, locked in the roof rack of her sporty SUV. A short board, probably a Handley, by the look of its sleek curves. A serious surfer girl. The thought made him smile. He wondered if Shae did everything with a do it right or don’t do it at all attitude. Which of course led his errant mind back to the side of his fantasy-Shae.
He closed the curtain on any theatrics his mind was conjuring, even though his body screamed action!
“I never leave home without it,” she assured him.
“We have a decent roll here.”
“You surf?”
“By the time I was walking. San Diego, born and raised.” He wondered what she’d packed in her case. Certainly a swimsuit. Taking her practical side into account, he decided she probably favored a tankini. Something in vivid colors with enough support she could be athletic with confidence. For a petite woman, she had generous curves. Just the thought of them—because he damn well wasn’t going to look at them again and slip back into that sexual maw—made his voice husky, “We can have your things at the Marmot packed and brought up here.”
“Someone I don’t know touching my things?”
She didn’t say intimates or unders, but Ethan heard it in her tone. His pulse kicked up a notch, but that was as far as his reaction got. Because, he reminded himself, he was a man of discipline. “We could send Eva for them,” he offered.
Yeah, he liked that. His voice was smooth, unaffected. The offer clean.
But Shae shook her head. “I saw several boutiques in town when I was driving through. I can pick up a few things there.”
“Then you’ll stay here?”
She nodded. “I’m in a hurry, too,” she reminded him. “The sooner we’re done the better.” She picked up the Tablet, but then looked at him over the top. “I’ll stay, but only as a matter of business.”
“Understood.” Although the way her eyes heated as they moved over his shoulders, dwelled on his chest, skimmed over his thighs, was like an intimate caress and told him that he hadn’t imagined their brief connection earlier. “Just out of curiosity, what’s waiting for you in Mill Valley?”
“A baby,” she said. “And there you have it. That one thing about me I haven’t told another soul.”
“A baby?” he repeated dumbly, because that was the last thing he’d expected to hear.
“Yes,” she confirmed. “And I’d appreciate it if you kept that to yourself.”
“You’re having a baby?” If he continued to repeat it maybe it would sink in.
“That’s the plan.”
“You can’t hide something like that,” he pointed out, though his lips still felt numb. He let himself look at her this time. She had large breasts and maybe that was the result of the pregnancy. Her hips were nicely rounded. You’d think under the circumstance his body would stop reacting to hers. But no. He was of two minds. The rational hung a no trespassing sign over Shae, but his dick was apparently deaf and blind.
“I can for now.”
He nodded. “Your secret is safe with me.”
Chapter Six
The screenplay opened with a telegram from the Red Cross and a Marine chaplain approaching Ethan in a tent in the middle of the Registan Desert in Afghanistan. Then it cut to a scene already in motion. A woman behind the wheel of a compact car, idling on a set of railroad tracks, staring resolutely forward as a passenger train approached at seventy miles per hour. The blare of the train’s whistle. Tears on the woman’s face. Thunder from the tracks.
Shae felt the impact. Her body actually jolted. And this was the third time she’d read over the opening scene.
Ethan wasn’t a bad writer. His words were like stones, with their many jagged edges catching on the skin. They needed a little polish for mass consumption, but they were good.
And the screenplay needed some serious weeding. Whole scenes could be tossed. . .six hundred plus pages. She shuddered at the thought. How much grief could a man hold?
Shae had managed, in three days of reading and taking notes, to get through only one-hundred-forty-eight pages. The trouble wasn’t the emotions, as Ethan thought, but the way they flowed on the page—in so many directions and each one simply stopping without resolution. And the story itself was all over the place. It began in Afghanistan with the arrival of the telegram, went to the revelation of Tina’s death, then jerked back to the day they met in high school. Then followed a series of small snippets focused on defining moments for the couple, bumping along to their wedding day, which was at the point where Shae had stopped today.
Shae expected it to end with a tragedy bigger than the woman’s death. The tragedy that was messing with Ethan’s life, as he put it. But what could be more agonizing than the suicide of your spouse?
The reason she chose death?
Definitely. That would really screw with a man’s mind and heart, put his life in a tailspin, wipe out all reason to trust—in himself and in others.
She placed the Tablet on the desk and stretched, pushing her arms up over her head and arching her back. In another life, she may have been a cat. The thought made her smile. She had incredible flexibility, though her appearance in the yoga studio was spotty at best. And her only other form of exercise was surfing. Which was exactly what she planned to do right now.
She’d wanted to get through Ethan’s screenplay and get on the road. She had catalogs to look at, an appointment with her gynecologist in San Francisco in less than a week, the demands of her ovulation to meet—she’d been charting it for three months now and while she wasn’t clockwork she did fall into a three day spread for optimum implantation—and a nursery to prepare in a home she had yet to buy. But there was no fast-forwarding through Ethan’s story.
She’d become fascinated with the teenaged Ethan, who’d already formed a strong sense of honor and responsibility. And in her writer’s eye, she began shaping that into a mesmerizing film targeted for the young adult audience, which was lacking meaningful entertainment. She planned to talk to him about that later—much later, when he’d gotten what he wanted from her and from his writing and he was, perhaps, more open to the idea.
She was anxious to know about Ethan’s marriage, where it had faltered and how, at age twenty-four, he’d ended up alone even before his wife’s death—there were scenes that indicated this as the story’s direction. Words written in the raw that, she suspected, would branch out like the forks of a river. All water flowed to the ocean—in this case, Ethan’s heart—and Shae expected that to hold unfathomable depth.
Tina. As a teenager, she had been bold and flighty, she’d aced trigonometry and floundered in her after school job as library technician. She’d been tall and graceful and had lacked any athletic inclinations. Through Ethan’s words, Shae felt affection for the young woman. She was beginning to mourn her passing.
Which placed her in a somewhat strange position, almost an “other woman” kind of thing as Shae found herself undeniably attracted to Ethan. In the past few days, she’d watched him prowl around the house, like a giant cat seeking a way out. He seemed packed with tension, but she supposed that was rooted in the slow exposure of his emotions. She’d caught him watching her on several occasions, his eyes hooded, deep but unreadable, turbulent even. But he hadn’t said much. Until the evenings, when they sat down together to discuss what she’d read and how she felt about it. He listened to her observations and tried to work them into his way of thinking. He was ready to assume all responsibility for the past events in his life and Shae had to remind him that memory was faulty and often one-sided. They were finding a comfortable report. And her respect for the man was growing.
He believed that he’d done wrong, and he wanted to right that. It took an impressive amount of self-awareness and inner strength to travel that road. Shae didn’t doubt that Ethan was up for it. She’d seen evidence of his courage and honor, in the screenplay and in their talks.
Shae suspected that whatever had gone awry in his marriage was rooted in his time in the Middle East. Scenes of war were often juxtaposed against the softness of home. And Shae had just read through a reunion scene where Ethan had been wistful, missing something he wasn’t yet able to define—the first recognition in the screenplay that something had changed in his relationship with Tina.
She stood, bent over at the waist and touched her toes, and then shifted into downward facing dog pose. She loved yoga just never had enough time for it. She fell back into her heels and brought her hands to her ankles, her head parallel to her knees, and felt her whole body wince in protest. Okay, so she wasn’t Gumby. But she could be. The thought made her chuckle. And then she opened her eyes, and realized she was no longer alone.
Feet laced up in a pair of silver Nike’s, long legs covered in a thin matting of dark hair, thighs defined by daily exercise. . .She got to his hips, encased in a pair of black silky shorts, and the impressive package nestled between them, and wondered if Ethan was aroused or just over-endowed. It was impossible to tell at this angle. Her neck begged for release and Shae gave in. She stood and turned to face a sweaty Ethan.
He must have gone miles, was her first thought. Ethan ran every day, as far as she could tell, but this afternoon he’d returned flushed, sweat saturating his hair and running down his neck. His shirt clung to his shoulders and chest.
“Are you training for something?” she asked. This was his second run of the day. Shae was already up, the coffee brewing and the Tablet booting, when he’d walked through the door at seven-forty this morning in a similar condition.
Now, his mouth thinned and he looked fiercely grim for a moment. “Working on endurance,” he explained. He hooked his hands on his hips and regarded her for a long, silent moment. “What are you doing?”
“Quitting for the day.” She hadn’t been surfing since the morning she’d left L.A. and she needed it. The salty air, cool water, and exercise would clear her mind and recharge her muscles. She bent over to retrieve her flip flops and told him, “No dinner for me tonight.” He’d cooked the past two nights and while the food was simple barbecue fare, it had been good. “I’m going surfing.”
“Now?”
His tone held surprise but a little censure, too, and Shae felt her back rise.
“I’ve been working on your screenplay almost nonstop,” she pointed out. “Now I’m going to catch a few waves. Grab a fish taco afterwards and maybe nurse a Margarita while the sun sets.”
“You shouldn’t be drinking,” he said. “And maybe surfing is too much exercise right now. Couldn’t you stick with the yoga?”
His words gave her pause, and his tone really rubbed her wrong—he was definitely casting aspersions on what he felt were her less than stellar decisions.
“I beg your pardon?” She felt her eyebrow shoot up to her hairline.
He didn’t back down. If anything, his face seemed to grow harder, his scowl deeper.
“Nine months isn’t a huge sacrifice,” he declared. “Surely you can exercise a little discipline.”
“Nine months?” Shae baffled over that one. He couldn’t think this process, of combing through his life, locating and identifying that missing piece, was going to take months? He couldn’t possibly have the audacity to think she was giving him that much of her precious time? She had plans. A baby to make— “Nine months,” she repeated, softer this time, because it was sinking in.
“Or however much time you have left.” He raised his arms, gesturing toward her midsection. “You don’t look pregnant. Not really. So you probably have longer than you’d like—”
She cut through his words. “If I had eighteen months left I wouldn’t mind,” she assured him. “Not at all. Nor would I be drinking or dealing with someone else’s problems.” She felt the heat of anger on her face. “I would be home, buying a house and decorating a nursery.”
Confusion loosened his frown. “Eighteen months? That’s the gestation of an elephant.”
“Ethan? Shut up,” she advised. “You’re not doing anything to improve my mood right now.”
“But you’re pregnant—” he protested.
“No, I’m not,” she corrected. “Not yet. Check with me this time next month.”
“What?” His body became liquid and he started pacing around the room. “But you said you were,” he accused.
“No. You asked me what was waiting for me in Mill Valley and I told you a baby. And that’s exactly my intention. One way or another, I am becoming a mother.”
He was having a hard time with it. He pushed his hands through his hair so that the short strands, made darker with his sweat, stood on end. Confusion reigned on his face.
And what a beautiful face. Even pissed, Shae appreciated the rugged cast of his high cheekbones and the strength of his jaw, the scratchy look of his day-old beard. She didn’t care for the righteousness that entered his eyes and made him squint at her as though she were a puzzle missing a few pieces.
“Are you married?” he asked.
“Archaic,” she shot back.
“Engaged? Seeing anyone special?”
“There are other ways of becoming a parent, Ethan.”
“You’re not involved at all? There’s no man in your life?”
“You sound like an Episcopal nun.” She folded her arms across her chest. “Feeling unnecessary, Ethan?”
He stepped to within inches of her body and lowered his head so that she had to meet his gaze. She felt the heat radiating from him, the attraction snapping between them.
He was so much bigger than her, his muscles more powerful, his height towering. And yet she felt. . .feminine. Delicate, but not weak. She suspected that being in Ethan’s arms would be more about empowering than the loss of anything.
“I have spent the past three days sporting wood,” he said. “Calling myself all sorts of despicable names because I have it hard for a woman who just happens to be pregnant, and pregnant by another man.”
His words ended in a growl and Shae watched as his head descended. Her lips were already parting, preparing for his. She knew they would be hot and demanding, taking but giving, too, because she’d learned that was his way.
He didn’t disappoint. He didn’t bother with a smooth, teasing introduction, either. His mouth opened hers, his tongue dipped inside and began a bold caress that made her moan. She placed her hands on his arms, her fingers learning the curves of his biceps. She leaned into him so that her breasts, already heavy with arousal, could find some solace against the solid wall of his chest.
The move drew a shudder from his body. His hands found her hips and pulled her against him, lifted her so that they could meet intimately, and she no longer questioned his state of being. Ethan was aroused and as impressive as she’d thought. And then he rocked against her, his shaft rubbing against her clit and causing a flash of need to spiral through her. She gasped his name.
“Yes, like that,” he whispered against her lips and began an exploration of her cheek and hairline. “I’ve heard you call my name a thousand times since meeting you.” He found her ear, stroked the lobe with his tongue. “Exactly like that.”
Full of want, Shae realized, because that was the only thought she had at the moment. She wanted Ethan Abrams. Had wanted him from hello. And then other thoughts intruded. Baby. She was going to be a mom. Soon. And that meant there could be no Ethan—no anyone—in her life right now. No disruption to her plans. Her clock was ticking. A very loud second hand keeping the time.
She stepped back, but it cost her. Her whole body seemed to weep at the separation. The air, chilled by the AC, caused her to shiver. She looked at Ethan. His face was dark, his brows drawn together in frustration.
“I’m having a baby, Ethan. Sooner than later. As soon as we get done here and I can get on with my life.”
“What’s the hurry?”
She raised an eyebrow.
“I mean, what’s wrong with meeting a guy, dati
ng, falling in love, marriage and then the baby carriage?”
“You’re a traditionalist,” she summed up. She didn’t go into how she’d tried all that already and it was an abject failure. She didn’t provide the gory details of each ending and how they had shaped her decision. She simply stated the truth, “Hollywood and traditional values are not a good mix.”
“True,” he conceded.
She brushed past him, her flip flops slapping against her feet. She did her best to ignore the electricity arcing between them. Because there could be no them.
“Where are you going?”
“Surfing,” she called over her shoulder. She needed space. She needed mind over matter—will over want. She needed to get a firm grip on her desire for Ethan and channel it back into her dream of a baby. And she damned that voice in her head that demanded why she couldn’t have both.
In the guest bedroom, Shae slipped out of her clothes and into her swimsuit. She pushed back into her shoes and rummaged through the closet and drawers, looking for her beach wrap. She knew she’d brought it with her—she’d draped it over the back seat of the car to dry on the drive up from L.A. Which was probably where it remained. And that left her with a dilemma. She could parade through Ethan’s house, clad only in her red bikini, or she could wrap herself in a towel, like a shrinking violet—with just an overnight case, she was limited in her choices. And then she thought about his comment, how she didn’t “really” look pregnant. From his tone, she knew he’d meant not too pregnant.
Well, Shae was a woman with curves. And maybe they were generous or maybe it was her short stature that made them seem so. Either way, she decided to let him see how perfectly not pregnant she was. She looped her hair into a pony tail, picked up her beach bag and slung it over her shoulder, then padded down the hall toward the kitchen.
She heard him in the refrigerator, the clink of glass bottles and the deep timbre of his voice as he spoke.
To whom? she wondered. Eva had left that first night, returning to her boyfriend with the hope of making up. Maybe that hadn’t worked out.
