by Rian Kelley
Emme reached across the table and laid a hand over Shae’s. “Sorry. That was really lacking sensitivity, wasn’t it? What I wanted you to get out of that, is that you’re different, too. Also, different-good. You have more substance. And definitely a personality.”
“Ethan’s women lacked both?”
“They smiled. A lot. Even when they were talking. It gave them this breathy voice that was absolutely irritating—a come-on in every syllable.”
Shae laughed. The Marilyn Monroe effect. She’d seen it in a lot of the young starlets.
“Am I interrupting something?” Ethan asked. He pulled a chair up to their table and sat down, close enough he could lay his arm along the back of Shae’s chair. His fingers caressed lightly over her shoulder.
“We’ve been talking about you,” Emme said. “Tearing apart past girlfriends and giving up secret handshakes.”
Ethan frowned and Shae felt his body tense. No one liked having their secrets spilled. Shae tried to lighten the mood:
“Did you really read from one of Emme’s love letters at the dinner table?”
“Pure retaliation,” he assured her.
“And a lot of embellishment,” Emme said.
They laughed and Shae felt the breath ease out of Ethan’s chest. He adjusted against her side, pulling his arm from her shoulder so he could twine his fingers with hers.
“It’s good to hear you laugh, sis,” Ethan said.
Emme’s face sobered, but she returned, “It’s good to see you moving on.”
Ethan’s expression turned thoughtful and he nodded once. “It feels good, too.”
“Ditto.” Emme smiled. It touched her eyes and added warmth to her cheeks.
Eva dropped into the only vacant seat at their table then and proclaimed, “Time to go.” She nodded toward the house, where Rob and their mother stood under the amber glow of the lanterns, engaged in quiet conversation. “So what do you think, Ethan? Mom and Rob?”
“It’s a good thing,” he said.
“I’m sorry they waited so long,” Emme murmured. “I would have understood—”
“They’re not sorry, Em,” Ethan assured her. “You were a priority. You needed to be.”
Eva nodded her agreement and took her sister’s hand in her own.
Shae knew she was missing a critical piece of information. Something about Emme and her private life, so she didn’t intrude with obvious questions, but enjoyed watching the sibling closeness. She wanted to experience that again, too, with her sisters and brother. And she would, soon, she reminded herself.
There was nothing like family to ground a person. And she needed them more now than
ever before.
“How’s the work progressing?” Eva directed the question at Shae, but turned to Emme to fill her in. “Ethan wrote a screenplay.”
Emme nearly choked on a mouthful of Mai Tai. “You didn’t!” She protested.
“I did,” Ethan confirmed, his voice stiff with feigned offense.
“But you can’t write,” Emme pointed out.
“Ouch.” Ethan rubbed his chest, above his heart, but continued in a thoughtful tone, “It’s the process I need. I don’t care about grammar. It’s not a story, really, but my life. And if I can get it all on paper, then I can take a step back and look at it objectively. So far, it’s working..”
Emme understood, but had clearly chosen sides. “I hope you made Tina the villain.”
“No one is all bad,” Shae said and all eyes turned on her. She shrugged. “I’m not defending her. I don’t even know the whole story. Not yet. But I think there was a lot more going on than. . .” She searched for the right word. In front of his sisters, stating it as betrayal or an affair or anything close, seemed too personal.
“Infidelity?” Emme posed.
“Yes,” Shae agreed.
“What more?” Eva asked.
“Distance. Isolation—for both of them. Even—” Shae began.
“Friendly fire,” Ethan confided, the words whispered as though he’d just discovered what
had eluded him all these years. Answers. Why had his marriage slowly faded to black? Why had Tina chosen to end—everything?
Shae still had a good third of the screenplay to get through, so she could only guess, but she felt the plot was moving toward a devastated and contrite Tina. And an Ethan reduced to that empty numbness where any action at all was impossible, mired as he was in conflict—abroad and at home. Feeling betrayed by himself, his country and his woman.
For Ethan, the revelation was complete. Shae could see it on his face. The stark reality made his features tense. A muscle ticked at his temple.
“I didn’t really react,” he said.
“She would have felt better if you yelled at her. Had some kind of angry reaction,” Eva said. “I know I would have.”
“Instead, she was left to deal with her guilt. And the evidence of her betrayal was inescapable,” Emme added.
Ethan turned to Shae. “Tina was pregnant when she died,” he told her. “And the baby wasn’t mine.”
She heard the raw emotion in his voice, the way it shredded his last words. Her response to Ethan’s pain, to the loss of the woman and child, to the decision to end something so promising, such an opposite from what Shae so desperately wanted for herself, was to fall inside herself. She heard the rushing of blood through her veins, the shallow gasps of her breath, the hitch in her throat. She pressed back the hot rush of tears and sought the purchase of something tangible to steady herself. When she flexed her hand, she realized it was still clasped in Ethan’s and was surprised that she had lost the feel of him, even momentarily.
She gave him a reassuring squeeze, but it wasn’t answered. And when she opened her eyes she found him staring at her, his expression pained.
“You okay?” he asked, his voice rough, close.
She would be. She felt a shifting inside herself, emotions both vulnerable and strong—that nurturing, life-giving part of who she was, what she was meant to be—rose up, strengthening her spine and her resolve.
She smiled, but knew it was weak. Her lips trembled and she gave up the gesture before it became obvious to everyone at the table that there was something terribly wrong going on inside her.
“We’d better go,” Emme said. Concern was clear in the glance she gave Shae. “Mom is waiting, Eva.” She took Shae’s hand in her own and drew her attention. “I hope we see each other again,” she said.
Shae nodded. She wanted that, too. And she must have said as much because Emme smiled then released her hand and stood up. Eva came around the table and gave Shae a hug.
“You’re leaving for San Francisco tomorrow,” she said. “You have family up there. Ethan told us. But you’re coming back.” Her eyes were soft with confusion and worry. “Right?”
Shae nodded. She was supposed to come back. That was the plan. “Monday,” she said.
Eva nodded. “So, we’ll see you again. Maybe.”
She sounded as certain as Shae felt. She watched his sisters hug Ethan and then they turned as a group and Ethan walked them through the house and to their car.
Why was this new piece of the puzzle so hard for Shae to bear? Why did she feel that baby’s loss as a personal experience? There had to be more to it than her own desire for a baby. She was confused and scared and didn’t understand why. And for her, that meant she needed the shelter of a familiar place.
She stood and walked into the house. She found the guest room as she’d left it earlier, with her suitcase open on the trundle and the towel she’d used after her shower on the floor in front of the dresser. She picked it up and deposited it in the hamper in the adjoining bathroom. Then she began sorting and folding the few pieces of clothing she had with her. She found the file she’d brought with her, labeled “Baby Matthews,” and took it to the bed, where she sat and began looking through it.
The file included her ovulation charts for the past three months—she’d forgotten to up
date them this morning and the day before and was stunned by her lack of focus. She had last tested her ovulation Sunday morning and it had been positive, as she had predicted, using her established cycle from the previous two months. She also found the small pamphlet entitled, “Sperm Donor Selection Guide.” She had looked through it numerous times. Had, in fact, taken notes and made comparison charts, and after lengthy deliberation had chosen her baby’s father—number 17B647. He was athletic, aced astrophysics and had similar coloring to Shae. So why was she now seeing a small, wiggling bundle of baby with green eyes?
No. Unacceptable. She would not go there. She was not having Ethan’s baby. Impossible.
Especially now. Shae would understand if Ethan never wanted a child, having been so thoroughly betrayed by a woman he had loved.
There was a knock on her door. This time Ethan didn’t wait for Shae to invite him in. He pushed the door open, stepped into the room, and gazed at her with some serious weight in his eyes.
“They’re gone,” he said. “Back to the hotel.”
His eyes traveled over her body, lingered on her face.
“I enjoyed meeting them,” she said.
He towered over her, all muscle and power. It was hard to imagine him the jilted lover; so much easier to see him as the strong and confident man he was today.
He sat down beside her, his eyes warm with concern. “What happened out there?”
She knew what he was referring to. Her reaction to the baby bombshell. But she had no answers for him. She had withdrawn from him. She figured it was something close to the need to affirm life in the wake of tragic death. She played absently with the paper still in her hands until he reached over and took it from her. And then she remembered what it was, but it was already too late. She watched him skim the title and the muscles in his jaw tensed. When he looked up at her, his eyes were darker, sharper.
“You don’t have to go tomorrow, Shae,” he said.
“I do. Especially now.” She tugged at the pamphlet until he released it. She tucked it into the file and set it aside. “I know you have plenty of reason not to want a child of your own,
Ethan, and I understand that.”
How do you properly mourn the passing of a wife impregnated by another man? How do you mourn a baby not you own?
And yet Shae was. A senseless death. The kind of death Ethan saw almost every day when he was in the Middle East. That had clawed at him. Built in him. Rendered him numb.
It scared Shae, the loss of that tiny life, made her tremble inside. But it also fired up her need for a baby. She wanted motherhood. She was choosing motherhood. And that desire was like flame pushing back the darkness of Tina’s final decision.
“I wanted a family. . .once.,” he said.
“But not since?” she ventured.
“I haven’t thought about it,” he admitted. “I did everything I could not to think about those things. . .marriage and babies and, well, commitment.”
Shae appreciated his honesty. She admired his determination to get to the root of his problem, as he called it, and make the adjustments needed. Ethan was a strong man. He was honorable and so hot he made her skin sizzle with awareness. He was exactly what Shae wanted for herself.
Timing, as they say, was a bitch.
She lifted a hand and smoothed her palm over the stubble on his cheek. She loved the feel of his rougher skin. She curled her fingers through his hair and down around his nape.
“Come here,” she said, knowing that when they made love this time she would be offering a part of herself she’d have to do without forever after.
His mouth was warm and gentle on hers. He moved slowly, tasting and savoring. And when he pulled back to look into her face, his expression was softened by tenderness.
“Are you okay with this?” Even as he said the words, he nudged her backwards until her head was pillowed and he was balanced over her on his forearms.
“I want you, Ethan.”
“Tonight, but not tomorrow?” he prodded.
She thought she’d always want him. And knew that some questions were better left not answered. She found the hem of his shirt and pushed her hands under it. Her fingers played along the sculpted muscles of his back. She shifted her legs so that he fit perfectly between her thighs and sighed her satisfaction with the position.
“We have too many clothes on,” she said.
She tugged at the waistband of his jeans but when he didn’t immediately comply with her demands, she smoothed her hands over his jeans, cupped his ass and pulled him closer. His shaft pressed against her core, the contact putting an arch in her spine as she instinctively sought more of him.
“Shae?”
“No more talk tonight, okay?” she asked, and shifted her legs so she could curl them around his waist. She lifted, moving against him in a sensuous rub.
Arousal snapped in his eyes, his breath came faster, but he wasn’t exactly happy about it. He wanted answers, but tonight she had none to give him.
He bore down on his hips to keep her from moving, and for a moment she thought he was going to pursue the issue. She stared into his eyes, hers steady, determined, and tightened her legs around him. She felt his cock harden and the want in her body twisted almost painfully. She did nothing to hide her response from him. The fire in his eyes intensified.
“You want me?”
“Yes. Now.”
He lifted himself, pulling her with him as he stood, and then made quick work of removing her dress and panties. She reached around to unclip her bra but he stopped her.
“No,” he said, and moved closer so that his leg slipped between hers. He pressed his thigh against her mound and a gasp rose from her lips. Then he pulled the lacy cups of her bra down so that they lifted her breasts, offered her nipples to him like a creamy dessert.
“Yes,” he growled. “Like that.”
He striped his shirt off and then moved her hands to his fly. His erection strained against the zipper, pulsed as she cupped him and thickened further.
“How do you want it tonight, babe?” He lowered his hand, his fingers spreading over her belly, reaching further, into the springy hair at her sex. “You want it hard and fast? On your knees? On top? Spell it out for me, Shae.”
He was raw and edgy, working off emotion. She wondered if he knew what he felt, or if,
like her, feelings were ricocheting around inside him, driving him but impossible to capture and look at closely.
She worked his zipper down, slipped her hand inside the soft cotton of his boxer-briefs, and gave him a long, firm stroke. His body jerked. She felt moisture at the tip of his sex and she gathered it on her fingertips, lifted it to her lips and licked. Liquid fire snapped in his eyes.
“Any way you want it, Ethan,” she promised.
And he accepted her invitation, pulling her closer again so that her sex pressed against the rigid muscle of his thigh. His hands moved up her back, so that she arched, and his lips came down on her breast, kissing the plump flesh, pulling her nipple into his mouth in a long suckle that shot to her core. She squirmed, rubbing her clit against him, and felt herself melt.
“Mmmmm,” he murmured his appreciation, but lifted his head only long enough to find her other breast. A starburst of sensation shot through her. She was tight and achy but so soft and pliable, too, and she needed him inside her.
Her hands swept up his back, sank into his hair and tightened. “Now.”
“No.”
He lifted her so he could kiss her navel, his tongue swirling through the shallow indentation. A slow and simple touch that coiled through her. Then he took her piercing between his teeth and tugged. It was like a silk thread was attached to her spine and she arched almost violently while pleasure shot through her veins and the evidence of her arousal grew in every trembling breath she drew, and in the wet between her thighs.
His hands smoothed down her sides, cupped her hips and rocked her and Shae’s breath
bottled in
her throat. He stepped forward and lowered her and Shae felt the soft mattress against her back. He nudged her legs open with his knees and then his warm breath was again on her breasts, his teeth nibbling, his lips pulling on her nipples while his fingers found her folds, gently parted them, and slid smoothly between them.
“You’re so wet,” he whispered his appreciation, circled her clit with his fingertips and then asked, “Are you ready for me, Shae?”
“Been ready,” she managed, her voice husky and not a little pleading.
He laughed, short and full of amazement, but continued to torment her, “Not yet.”
He slid one finger into her. “That’s not enough, is it?”
“No. Only you will be enough.”
He wasn’t moved. Not much, anyway.
He slid a second finger into her, withdrew, then plunged back into her with a swirling move that curled her toes.
“You like that.”
“Yes.” Her breath was thick, made the single word one of praise.
He shifted back on his haunches and Shae’s eyes fluttered open. He was watching her.
“I think you’re going to have to come with my mouth on you,” he told her.
“I need you inside me.”
“Later.”
She heard a plaintive growl and realized it was her.
“You said anyway I want you, Shae,” he reminded her.
“I changed my mind?”
Her words ended on a question because he’d lowered his head and opened his mouth over her clit, suckling it, laving it with his tongue, teething it gently and causing any kind of coherent thoughts to shatter and scatter inside her head. She scooted closer, clutched his head and curled her thighs around his neck. He moved his attentions lower, pushing his tongue inside her, swirling the tip against the plush channel and that rush built to tenuous heights. Her thighs trembled and he clutched her ass, holding her firmly to his mouth and he delved deeper. That coil of desire tightened, drew her into a tempered bow and he seemed to know exactly when she was going to climax because he paused, drawing out the moment until the ache was unbearable, and then plunging his tongue inside her again as his thumb pressed against her sweet spot.
