Falling For Her Fake Fiancé (The Beaumont Heirs 5)

by Sarah M. Anderson

  “I did. Our table’s ready.” He took her hand in his and led her to the waiting table. After they were seated, he asked, “Anything interesting happen today?”

  She arched an eyebrow at him. “Yes, actually. My twin, Byron, came to see me.”

  “Oh?” Had it been the same kind of visit he’d gotten from Chadwick?

  Frances was watching him closely. “His new restaurant opens next week. He’d appreciate it if we could put in an appearance. Apparently, we’re great publicity right now.”

  “Which was the plan,” he said, more to remind himself than her. Because he had to stick to that plan, come hell or high water.

  She leaned forward on her elbows, her generous cleavage on full display. He felt his pulse pick up a notch. “Indeed. You? Anything interesting today?”

  “A few things,” he tried to say casually. “Everyone at the Brewery is waiting to see if you bring me my very own donut this Friday.”

  A dazzling—and, he hoped, genuine—smile lit up her face. “Oh, really? I guess I should plan on coming, then?” Her tone was light and teasing.

  This was what he’d missed today. She could talk circles around him, and all he could do was keep up. He reached over and cupped her cheek in his hand, his thumb stroking her skin.

  She leaned into his touch—a small movement that no one else could see. It was just for him, the way she let him carry a little of her weight. Just for him, the way her eyelashes fluttered. “I requested a chocolate éclair.”

  “Maybe I’ll bring you a whole box, just to see what they say.”

  She would not like him. He should not like her.

  But he did, damn it all. He liked her a great deal.

  He didn’t want to tell her the other interesting thing. He didn’t want to watch her armor snap back into place at the mention of one of her brothers. Hell, for that matter, he didn’t really want to be sitting in this very nice restaurant. He wanted to be someplace quiet, where they could be alone. Where her body could curl up against his and he could stroke her hair and they could talk about their days and kiss and laugh without giving a flying rat’s ass what anyone else saw, much less thought.

  “Chadwick came by the office today.”

  It was a hard thing to watch, her reaction. She sat up, pulling away from his touch. Her shoulders straightened and her eyes took on a hard look. “Did he now?”

  Ethan let his hand fall away. “He did.”

  She considered this new development for a moment. “I suppose Phillip talked to him?”

  “I got that feeling. He also said I’m making him look bad, with all the flowers.”

  Frances waved this excuse away as if it were nothing more than a gnat. “He can afford to buy Serena flowers—and does, frequently.” Her eyes closed and, elbows back on the table, she clasped her hands in front of her. She looked as though she was concentrating very hard—or praying. “Do I even want to know what he said?”

  “The usual older-brother stuff. What are my intentions, I’d better not break his little sister’s heart—that sort of thing.” He shrugged, as if it’d been just another day at the office.

  She opened her eyes and stared at him over the tops of her hands. “What did you say? Please tell me you didn’t kowtow to him. It’s not good for his already-massive ego.”

  Ethan leaned back. “I merely informed him that what happens between two consenting adults is none of his business and for him to presume he knows best for either of us was patronizing at best. A fact I have recently been reminded of myself.”

  Frances’s mouth opened, but then what he said registered and she closed it again. A wry smile curved her lips. He wanted to kiss that smile, those lips—but there was a table in the way. “You didn’t.”

  “I did. I don’t recall any kowtowing.”

  She laughed at that, which made him feel good. It wasn’t as if he’d fought to the death for her honor or anything, but he’d still protected her from a repeat of what had happened last night.

  She shifted and the toes of her foot came into contact with his shin. Slowly, she stroked up and down. His pulse kicked it up another notch—then two.

  “I got you something,” he said suddenly. He had decided it would be better to wait to give her the jewelry until after dinner, but the way she was looking at him? The way she was touching him? He’d changed his mind.

  “The flowers were beautiful,” she murmured. Her foot moved up and then down again, stroking his desire higher.

  The room was too warm. Too hot. He was going to fall into the flames and get burned, and he couldn’t think of a better way to go.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out the long, thin velvet box. “I picked it out,” he told her, holding it out to her. “I thought it suited you.”

  Her foot paused against his leg, and he took advantage of the break to adjust his pants. Sitting had suddenly become uncomfortable.

  Her eyes were wide as she stared at the box. “What did you do?”

  “I bought my future wife a gift,” he said simply. The words felt right on his tongue, like they belonged there. Wife. “Open it.”

  She hesitated, as if the box might bite her. So he opened it for her.

  The diamond necklace caught the light and glittered. He’d chosen the drop pendant, a square-cut diamond that hung off the end of a chain of three smaller diamonds, all set in platinum. Tiffany’s had some larger solitaires, but this one seemed to fit Frances better.

  “Oh, Ethan,” she gasped as he held the box out toward her. “I didn’t expect this.”

  “I like to keep you guessing,” he told her. He set the box down and pulled the platinum chain out of its moorings. “Here,” he said, his voice deeper than he remembered it being. “Allow me.”

  He stood and moved behind her, draping the necklace in front of her. She swept her mane of hair away from her neck, exposing the smooth skin. Ethan froze. He wanted nothing more than to lean down and taste her, to run his lips over the delicate curve where her neck met her shoulders—to see how she would react if he trailed kisses lower, pulling the dress down farther until...

  She tilted her head down, pulling him back to the reality of standing in a crowded restaurant, holding nine thousand dollars’ worth of diamonds. As he tried to fasten the clasp, his hands began to shake with need—the need to hold her, the need to stroke her bare shoulders. The need to make her his.

  He’d had other lady friends, bought them nice gifts—usually when it was time for him to move on—but he had never felt this much need before. He didn’t know what it was—only that it was because of her.

  He willed his hands—and other body parts—to stand down. This was just a temporary madness; that was all. A beautiful woman in a gorgeous dress designed to inspire lust—nothing more, really.

  Except it wasn’t. No matter what he told himself, he knew he wasn’t being honest—not with himself, not with her.

  Honesty was not supposed to figure into this, after all. The whole premise of their relationship was based on a stack of lies that only got taller with each passing day and each passing floral arrangement. No, it was not supposed to be honest, their relationship. It was, however, supposed to be simple. She needed the money. He needed the Beaumont seal of approval. Everyone came out a winner.

  That was possibly the biggest lie of all. Nothing about Frances Beaumont had been simple since the moment he’d laid eyes on her.

  Finally, he got the clasp hooked. He managed to restrain himself enough that he did not press a kiss to her neck, did not wind her long hair into his hands.

  But he was not exactly restrained. His fingertips drifted over the skin she’d exposed when she’d moved her hair and then down her bare shoulders with the lightest of touches. It shouldn’t have been overtly sexual, shouldn’t have been all that erotic—but unfamili
ar need hammered through his gut.

  It only got worse when she let go of her hair and that mass of fire-red silk brushed over the backs of his hands. Without meaning to—without meaning any of this—he dug his fingers into her skin, pulling her against him. She was soft and warm, and she leaned back and looked up at him.

  Their gazes met. He supposed that, with another woman, he’d be staring down her front, looking at how his diamonds were nestled between her breasts, so large and firm and on such display at this angle.

  But he was only dimly aware of her cleavage because Frances was staring up at him, her lips parted ever so slightly. Color had risen in her cheeks, and her eyes were wide. One of her hands reached up and found his. It was only when she pressed his hand flat against her skin that he realized his palms were moving along her skin, moving to feel everything about her—to learn everything about her.

  He stroked his other thumb over her cheek. She gasped, a small movement that he felt more than saw. His body responded to her involuntary reaction with its own. Blood pounded in his ears as it raced from his brain to his erection as fast as it could. And, given how she was leaning against it, she knew it, too.

  This was the moment, he thought dimly—as much as he could think, anyway. She could say something cutting and put him in his place, and he’d have to sit down and eat dinner with blue balls and not touch her like he meant it.

  “Ethan,” she whispered as she stared up at him. Her eyes seemed darker now, the pupils widening until the blue-green had almost disappeared.

  Yes, he wanted to shout, to groan—yes, yes. He wanted to hear his name on her lips, over and over, in the most intimate of whispers and the loudest of passionate shouts. He wanted to push her to the point where all she could do, say—think—was his name. Was him.

  His hand slipped lower, stroking the exposed skin of her throat. Lower still, tracing the outline of the necklace he’d bought for her.

  Her grip on his hand tightened as his fingers traced the pendant. She didn’t tell him to stop, though. She didn’t lean away, didn’t give a single signal that he should stop touching her. His hand started to move even lower, stroking down into the body of her dress and—

  “Are we ready to order?” a too-bright, too-loud voice suddenly demanded.

  Frances and Ethan both jumped. Suddenly he was aware that they were still in public, that at least half the restaurant was still watching them—that he’d been on the verge of sheer insanity in the full view of anyone with a cell phone. What the hell was wrong with him?

  He tried to step away from her, to put at least a respectable three inches between their bodies—but Frances didn’t let go of his hand.

  Instead—incredibly—she stood and said, “Actually, I’m not hungry. Thanks, though.” Then she turned to give him a look over her shoulder. “Shall we?”

  “We shall,” was the most intelligent thing he was capable of coming up with. The waiter smirked at them both as Ethan fished a fifty out of his wallet to cover his bar tab.

  Every eye was on them as they swept up to the front together. Ethan took Frances’s coat from the coat check girl and held it as Frances slipped her bare arms into it. They didn’t speak as they braved the cold wind and waited for the valet to bring his car around. But Ethan put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. She leaned her head against his chest. Was he imagining things, or was she breathing hard—or at least, harder than normal? He wasn’t sure. Maybe that was his chest, rising and falling faster than he normally breathed.

  He didn’t feel normal. Sex was always fun, always enjoyable—but something he could take or leave. He liked the release of it, and, yeah, sometimes he needed that release more than other times. But that’s all it was. A pressure valve that sometimes needed to be depressurized a bit.

  It wasn’t this pain that made thinking rationally impossible—a pain that could only be erased by burying himself in her body over and over again until he was finally sated.

  This wasn’t about a simple release. He could achieve that with anyone. Hell, he didn’t even need another person.

  But this? Right now? This was about Frances and this unknown need she inspired in him. And the more he tried to name that need, the more muddled his head became. He wanted to show her what he could do for her, how he could take care of her, protect her and honor her. That they could be good together. For each other.

  Finally, the car arrived. Ethan held her door for her and then got behind the wheel. He gunned it harder than he needed to, but he didn’t want to waste another minute, another second, without Frances in his arms.

  They weren’t far from the hotel. He wouldn’t have even bothered with the car if it’d been twenty degrees warmer. The drive would take five minutes, tops.

  Or it would have—until Frances leaned over and placed her hand on his throbbing erection. Even through the layers of his boxers and wool trousers, her touch burned hot as she tested his length. Ethan couldn’t do anything but grip the steering wheel as she made her preliminary exploration of his arousal.

  It was when she squeezed him, shooting the pain that veered into pleasure through his whole body, that he forced out the words. “This isn’t a game, Frances.”

  “No, it’s not,” she agreed, her voice breathy as her fingers stroked him. His body burned for her. If she stopped, he didn’t know if he could take it. “Not anymore.”

  “Are you coming up to my room?” It came out far gruffer than he’d intended—not a request but not quite a demand.

  “I don’t think the hotel staff would appreciate it if we had sex in the lobby.” She didn’t let go of him when she said it. If anything, her hand was tighter around him.

  “Is that what you really want? Sex, I mean. Not the lobby part.” Because he was honor-bound to ask and more than honor-bound to accept her answer as the final word on the matter. Even if it killed him. “Because it wasn’t part of the original deal.”

  That pushed her away from him. Her hot hand was gone, and he was left aching without her touch. “Ethan,” she said in the most severe voice he’d heard her use all night long. “I don’t want to talk about the damned deal. I don’t want to think about it.”

  “Then what do you want?” he asked as they pulled up in front of the hotel.

  She didn’t answer. Instead, she got out, and he had no choice but to follow her, handing his keys to the valet. They walked into the hotel without touching, waited for the elevator without speaking. Ethan was thankful his coat was long enough to hide his erection.

  They walked into the elevator together. Ethan waited until the doors were closed before he moved on her. “Tell me what you want, Frances,” he said, pinning her against the back of the elevator. Her body was warm against his as she looked up at him through her lashes and he saw her. Not her armor, not her carefully constructed front—he saw her. “To hell with the deal. Tell me what you want right now. Is it sex? Is it me?”

  “I shouldn’t want you,” she said, her voice soft, almost uncertain. She took his face in her hands, their mouths a whisper away. “I shouldn’t.”

  “I shouldn’t want you, either,” he told her, an unfamiliar flash of anger pushing the words out of his mouth. “You drive me mad, Frances. Absolutely freaking mad. You undermine me at the Brewery and work me into a lather, and you turn my head around so fast that I get dizzy every time I see you. And, damn it all, you do it with that smile that lets me know it’s easy for you. That I’m easy for you.” He touched his thumb to her lips. She tried to kiss his thumb, and when he pulled it away, she tried to kiss him, pulling his head down to hers.

  He didn’t let her. He peeled her hands off his face and pinned them against the elevator walls. For some reason, he had to tell her this now before they went any further. “You complicate things. God help me—you make everything harder than it has to be, and I don’t want you any other w
ay.”

  Her eyes were wide, although he didn’t know if that was because he was holding her captive or what he’d said. “You...don’t?”

  “No, I don’t. I want you complicated and messy.” He leaned against her, so she could feel exactly how much he wanted her. “I want you taunting and teasing me, and I want you with your armor up because you’re the toughest woman I know. And I want you with your armor off entirely because—” Abruptly, the flash of anger that gave him all of those words was gone, and he realized that instead of telling a beautiful woman how wonderful she was, he was pretty sure he’d been telling her that she irritated him. “Because that’s how I want you,” he finished, unsure of himself.

  Her lips parted and her mouth opened—right as the elevator did the same. They were on Ethan’s floor. He held her like that for just a second longer, then released his hold in time to keep the doors from closing on them.

  He held out his hand for her.

  And he waited.

  Twelve

  “You want me complicated?” Frances stood there, staring at Ethan as if he’d casually announced he wore a cape in his off time while fighting crime.

  No one had wanted her messy and complicated before. They wanted her simply, as an object of lust or as a step up the social ladder. It was when things got messy or complicated or—God help her—both that men disappeared from her life. When Frances dared to let her real self show through—that was when the trouble began. She was too dramatic, too high-maintenance, her tastes and ambitions too expensive. Her family life was far too complex—that was always rich, coming from the ones who wanted an association with the prestige of the Beaumont name but none of the actual work that went into maintaining it.

  She’d heard it all before. So many times before.

  The elevator beeped in warning. Ethan said, “I do,” and grabbed her, hauling her past the closing doors.

  She didn’t know what to say to that, which was a rarity in itself. They stood in the middle of the hallway for a moment, Ethan holding on to her hand tightly. “Do you?” he asked in a gentle voice. “Want me, that is.”