by Mindy Klasky
“Why don’t you come sit down?” She hadn’t heard Ethan come up behind her. His voice was solicitous.
“I don’t want to sit down,” she said. She realized that she was still angry with him. He had backed them into that impossible corner in Margaret’s room, forced them into a conversation that should never have been started on board the No Comment.
“Come below,” he whispered. “We can have some privacy there, in one of the bedrooms.”
“I will not go into a bedroom with you!” Her voice was louder than she’d planned. She darted a look around but, mercifully, no one seemed to have heard.
Ethan sighed and shifted his weight, resting his forearms on the railing. He couldn’t say anything right. He would just have to wait for Sloane to change her mind. Wait for her to get over the peak of her anger.
The guests swirled in little pockets behind them, exclaiming as they found each other in the growing twilight. Waiters passed trays of bite-size desserts, along with after-dinner drinks. Grandmother finally made her appearance, raising a round of applause and carefully orchestrated fawning by the partygoers.
Throughout it all, Ethan stood beside Sloane, locked into her silence, riveted by her fury. The worst part of it was that she looked so beautiful. Her profile was stark against the night sky. She held her chin high. A breeze caught a few stray tendrils of her hair.
Each breath carried her unique scent to him, the combination of her delicate skin and whatever soap or perfume or fragrance she wore. In the past month, he thought he’d grown accustomed to the gentle aroma, but now he found that it awoke his own senses, heated the pads of his fingers, scratched across the back of his throat. He longed to pull her close to him, to crush the crisp fabric of her dress beneath his needy hands, to absorb her essence through his palms.
The first fireworks startled her. A quick explosion, and a spatter of crimson and white, high in the sky above them. Sloane caught a yelp at the back of her throat, even as she realized what was happening. Even as she felt Ethan tense beside her.
A dozen more blasts followed in quick succession. The concussions were nearly deafening over the river, the sound echoing back toward the shower of light. Scarlet and silver, cobalt and emerald. The guests oohed and aahed over each display, catching their collective breath in astonishment at the beauty.
Sloane tilted her head back for a better view. Her eyes filled as she watched. It was so beautiful. The entire evening could have been so beautiful, everything about it. Instead, it had all been ruined by a stupid fight. Stupid, but necessary. Because Sloane knew that she was right.
A tear snaked from the corner of her eye, trailing into her hair. She wiped at it with her palm, hurried, embarrassed. Another followed, though, and another—she couldn’t stop herself from crying.
“Sloane,” Ethan breathed, but she shook her head furiously.
Finally, with a grand finale that left her half-deaf, the fireworks display was over. The other guests cheered and clapped. Someone launched a chorus of “She’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” and Margaret made a little speech, thanking them all for joining her, exclaiming that she could never ask for more than an enjoyable night with friends and loved ones. The boat’s engine finally thrummed to life, and they made their slow way back to the marina, to the dock. To freedom.
Of course, Margaret was waiting at the head of the gangplank, bidding farewell to each guest. Sloane longed to slip past her, to huddle off the boat anonymously, lost in a group of strangers. Margaret, though, made a special point of reaching for her hand, of closing her aged, knotted fingers over the sparkling diamond that had given Sloane so much pleasure only a few hours before.
“I’m sorry that we didn’t have a chance to chat more, dear,” Margaret said. Her voice was kind, and she waited for Sloane to meet her gaze. “I’m so glad that you came this evening.”
“It was lovely,” Sloane said mechanically. She was positive that Margaret was studying the remnant tracks of her tears.
Margaret reached out for her grandson’s shoulders, pulling Ethan close in an awkward embrace. Sloane couldn’t hear what the woman murmured, but she caught the urgency behind the words.
Ethan was astonished when his grandmother hissed, “Make this right.”
“I—” he started to protest, barely remembering to keep his voice down. How could he ever have worried about Grandmother’s health? She was as sturdy as an ox, pinning him with her agate eyes.
“Now,” she ordered. “Make this right.”
He shrugged and pulled away. Certainly Grandmother could issue her edicts. She’d been doing it her entire life. But Sloane wasn’t some merger or acquisition. Sloane wasn’t a government review board to be convinced about the safety and efficacy of a new treatment. Sloane wasn’t an investor to be charmed into parting with millions of dollars.
Sloane was the woman he loved.
As soon as he thought the words, he knew that they were true. He should have realized it weeks before, when they had spoken together, laughed together, shared stories of their torn and tangled pasts.
It had taken arguing with her in front of Grandmother, though, hurting her in a way that he’d never intended. It had taken watching her standing at the boat’s railing, pretending that she was fine, that their fight hadn’t driven her to real tears…?.
Ethan had felt his own heart shred at her pain. They weren’t playing some game, acting out some parts for Grandmother’s benefit, for the investors and business partners invited to the party. This was reality. This mattered. This was life.
Sloane Davenport was the mother of his child, the woman that he loved. The woman he had hurt. And he didn’t have the first clue about how to fix things.
The car was waiting for them at the end of the dock. Ordinarily, he would have been grateful for his driver, for the luxury of someone else to deal with the crowded streets, with the throng of other fireworks-viewers, everyone returning home after a long, hot summer evening. Tonight, though, Ethan regretted that he couldn’t get behind the wheel of the car himself. At least driving would have given him an excuse for the unending silence between them, the jagged stillness that sucked up oxygen like a dying fire.
Why was this so difficult? Why couldn’t he just talk to Sloane? After all the words they’d shared, all the conversations they’d had, why was he struck mute now?
But he knew the reason. It kept repeating inside his skull. He loved Sloane. And he had no idea how to prove that to her.
Finally, he let them into the house, working the alarm code with the ease of long familiarity. By the time he turned away from the keypad, Sloane was halfway up the stairs. He longed to follow her, but he knew that he could not. Until he found the right words, he had to let her go.
Sloane slumped against the bedroom door as soon as she had closed it.
She didn’t want to be this woman. She didn’t want to be so angry. So scared. So alone.
That was it. Loneliness. The loneliness of the child who had feared Angry Mother. The girl who had befriended a goose rather than figure out how to interact with human companions. The woman who had made herself so busy with school, with work, that she had never bonded to close friends. Loneliness—that was the emotion beneath all the turmoil, beneath everything else that was swirling through her head.
She shook her head and stepped out of her sensible sandals. She stripped off her dress, left it draped over the chair in front of the vanity. She added her panties, her bra. Suddenly, she was exhausted. Too tired to dig in her dresser drawers for a nightgown. Too tired to do anything but snap off the overhead light, cross the room, worm her way beneath the sheets.
As she lay naked in the darkness, she cupped her hand over her baby bump. The swell was real. She was going to have this child.
Alone.
She twisted at her engagement ring. She couldn’t keep that lie on her finger. An engagement ring was a sign of trust, of promise. Ethan didn’t trust her. He didn’t think of her as an equal. He certainly didn’
t love her—he’d never come close to saying anything about love.
She couldn’t wear his ring.
The stupid thing was caught on her finger. Her hands must be swollen, from the pregnancy, from standing in the heat all night. Nevertheless, she tugged harder, suddenly consumed with the notion that she had to get the platinum band off her hand. Her heart started pounding in her ears. She closed her eyes, trying to force herself to calm down.
She remembered the last time she had felt this helpless, when the reporters had confronted her on the doorstep of her sweet little apartment, the apartment that was long gone. After she left Ethan tomorrow, she would have nowhere to retreat, no place to escape to. Her lungs constricted, and her breath started to come in short, sharp pants.
It wasn’t just her personal life that was ruined, either. Her professional life was going to be a wreck. She’d already lost one job because of Ethan, the AFAA. How could she move ahead with the Hope Project now? With the gossip from the past month smeared all over the internet, any potential investors would think that she was just another in a long trail of women who had ridden on Ethan’s coattails, who had thrown herself into a shortlived relationship for a good time and the thrill of reading her name in the tabloids. She’d never launch Hope, never grow the website from a dream to reality.
Her heart squeezed tight, sending a spear through her chest.
Her hands curled into fists. She was having a heart attack. Here. Now. With the baby inside her, innocent and helpless. Sloane scrambled for the telephone on her nightstand. Zero. That was the only number that she needed to press. James would answer. He would help her. Save her. Her and the baby.
Her hand swung wide, knocking the bedside lamp to the floor with a crash of shattered glass. Sobbing, she fumbled for the phone again, found it, dropped it, tried to pick it up one more time.
Ethan heard the clatter from the hallway. Unable to bear the thought of exiling himself to his bedroom, he had slumped against the guest suite door. In the darkness, he’d replayed the entire disastrous night. “Make this right,” Grandmother had said. Just how did she expect him to do that? How could he admit to Sloane a truth that he was nearly afraid to admit to himself?
Ethan was launching Round 731 of how his grandmother had made his life miserable when he heard the crash. Adrenaline spiked through his veins as he recognized the sound of glass breaking, the jangle of a phone smashing against the floor.
He sprang to his feet and slammed his hand against the doorknob, hurtling into the room.
His eyes were dazzled by the moonlight streaming through the window, so much more light than he’d had in the hallway. As if Sloane were illuminated from within, he could see her reaching for the nightstand, clutching her fingers over empty air. She was choking, gasping for breath, kicking against her sheets. Even as he flew across the carpet, she worked one foot free, then the other. Flailing, she cast her legs over the side of the bed, toward the sprawling phone. Toward the shattered glass.
“Sloane!” he cried, leaping onto the bed. She flowed through his arms like water, drifting away. He adjusted his grip, closed his fingers around her waist.
She fought him, her voice rising in a terrible, wordless moan. He could hear her breath stutter from her lungs, feel the heat rising off her as she writhed in panic. Flattening his palms against her hips, he pulled her back onto the bed, onto him. He folded his arms around her, pinning her hands to her sides, wrapping his legs around her, enveloping her in the fortress of his body.
“You’re all right,” he said. “Sloane, you’re all right. Listen to me. Breathe. You’re all right.”
His words came to her as if she were awakening from a nightmare. She felt the iron bands of his arms holding her close against his chest. She was entwined in his legs, captured, stilled. She felt his strength against her back, his deep breaths that reminded her to take her own, to fill her lungs.
The arrow that had pierced her heart finally crumbled.
“Breathe,” he said again, and she followed his instruction. “Breathe.” Her chest remembered how to expand. “Breathe.” She forced herself to swallow, to hold one of those deep breaths, to stop. His hands moved from her waist. He stroked the hair off her face, smoothed it back, twisted it away from her neck. “Breathe,” he reminded her one last time.
“I—” she whispered, her voice broken. “I thought I was having a heart attack.”
He pitched his voice to match her own, so low that she had to calm herself more to hear it. “A panic attack, more likely.”
“My chest,” she said.
“Do you feel any pain now?” She barely shook her head. “Numbness?” Another shake. “Tingling in your arms?” Another one. “You’re going to be fine,” he said.
She closed her eyes, feeling foolish. What was she doing, working herself up like that? It couldn’t be good for the baby. Or for herself. And she certainly wasn’t doing any favors for the bedroom. She winced. Had she really broken the lamp? And probably the phone? James was going to have a mess to deal with in the morning.
Ethan slid his arms closer around her, cradling her against his chest. Lying in the dark, listening to Sloane growing calm, Ethan knew that he had to do something, had to say something. Make this right, Grandmother had commanded.
He knew how to make business right. At Hartwell Genetics, in the office, at the helm of a Fortune 500 behemoth, Ethan knew that he had to keep information to himself. He needed to parcel out the truth, keep his employees on a need-to-know basis. He needed to outsmart his competitors, keep them in the dark about markets, about the future.
But Sloane wasn’t his employee. She wasn’t his competitor. She was the woman who was going to be his wife. He needed to share with Sloane. He needed to treat her as an equal. Trust. Respect. Partnership. She’d taught him the words weeks before, when she’d first shared her list with him.
“Sloane—” he started, but he had to stop, had to clear his throat. As much as he longed to confess everything to her, to admit his love, to tell her all the truth that he now knew, he had to apologize first. He had to make it right. “Sloane, I am so sorry. I was wrong to pull away from Daisy, to ignore her. I acted out of fear, but that is no excuse. I blocked her out of my life, and you, too. I had no right to decide how you should handle the bad news, to even try to control you that way. I am so, so sorry.”
She grew absolutely still as he spoke. He felt her listening, absorbing every word. He waited for her to say something, anything.
But while he waited, his body betrayed him. His noble thoughts were cheapened by his body’s realization that the most desirable woman in the world was lying, naked, in his arms. The sudden heat in his groin made him shift to relieve the pressure against the confining cloth of his trousers.
As long as he was shifting, he might as well leave the room altogether. He’d said everything that he could say. Done everything that he could do. Offered his best bid to make it right. She would never believe anymore words that he said, not when he’d been betrayed by a body that would never tire of Sloane’s beauty.
Before he could leave the bed, though, her fingers clutched at his. Her hand folded around his, pulling him closer, keeping him near.
Sloane had felt his body stiffen; she recognized the heat of his desire, sudden and firm against her back. She knew that he was leaving in defeat, in shame.
But she also knew just how much his words had cost him, how deeply he’d been moved as he whispered to her in the darkness.
His confession hadn’t come from the Ethan Hartwell of the boardroom. No. He’d spoken as the Ethan Hartwell that she’d first met in the Eastern Hotel, that she’d recognized as some sort of kindred spirit within minutes of their first words at that fateful hotel bar. This was the Ethan Hartwell who had opened his life to her.
She’d heard the remorse in his voice, heard the devastating emotion behind his confession. He was doing the best that he could. He was admitting his own fear. He was sharing, reaching out to her.<
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She twisted, turning to her side, letting him roll with her so that they lay on the bed, face-to-face. “I’m strong enough to do this,” she said. “I’m strong enough to love Daisy. To love our baby. No matter what happens. You have to believe me. To trust me.”
He brushed the hair back from her face, his fingers impossibly gentle. “I do. I understand that now.” And then he knew that he could say the rest, that he had to say the rest, no matter how his flesh had tried to lead him astray before. “I trust you, Sloane, and I love you.”
He made the words sound new, fresh, as if they’d never been spoken by any human being in the entire history of the world. Sloane might have thought that she was dazed, that she was dreaming, if she hadn’t seen his lips form the syllables. Those last three words filled her, capsized her, steadied her again. She held herself perfectly still as she whispered, “I love you, too.”
Only then could she lean forward to kiss him. At first, she merely brushed her lips against his. The instant that their mouths met, though, passion leaped high inside her. She parted her lips, yielded to the velvet of his tongue.
She arched her back as he ran his hand down her arm; she shivered at the heat he spread all the way to her fingertips. He raised her wrist to his lips, drank deeply of the pulse point that pounded there. “Sloane,” he breathed after teasing her with the tip of his tongue. She heard her name catch in his throat. “I love you,” he said, as if he were discovering the words all over again.
She laughed, a little breathlessly. “And I love you.”
His teeth teased the pad of her thumb. “Say it,” he growled. “Admit that you’ve changed your mind.”
Suddenly, she was standing back on the balcony of the Kennedy Center. She was enchanted by moonlight, by the magnetic power of the man beside her. She was determined to stand fast, to be absolutely, positively, one hundred percent certain that she was doing what was best for her child. Not necessarily for her. Not for her body that sparked and sighed, that longed for pure, physical release.
