by Cara Colter
She was looking out at the sailboats and yachts bobbing in their moorings, something faintly wistful in her expression.
Very romantic.
She turned, startled when she heard him come out, turned away instantly. He almost laughed out loud when she pulled at the front of her dress, again. The dress fit her graceful lines perfectly and showed off her slender curves to mouthwatering advantage.
But for some reason he found her discomfort with it far more delightful than the dress itself.
“Gorgeous night,” he said conversationally.
“Hmm.” Noncommittal. Suspicious.
“Lucky catch on the bouquet.”
“I guess that depends what you think lucky is.”
“Isn’t the one who catches it the next one to get married?” he asked.
“There’s a disclaimer clause if you’re just saving the bouquet from a disastrous dip in chocolate.”
Ethan laughed, and not just because it was the perfect answer for a man with a mission like his.
“What did you do with the bouquet?” he asked.
Her eyes slid guiltily to the left and he saw the bridal bouquet had been shoved in a planter, the elegant lilies bright white against red geraniums.
“I’m Ethan Ballard,” he said, extending his hand.
“We met in the reception line,” she said, pretending she didn’t see it.
The music started inside. He wondered if he should ask her to dance, again, and was surprised that he wanted to dance with her. But on the other hand, there was no sense romancing her. His marriage proposal wasn’t about romance, and he didn’t want her to think it was.
Job one, he reminded himself, surprised at how hard it was to get down to business with her scent tickling at his nostrils.
“Do you know a family named the Finkles, over Stone Harbor way?” he asked.
Her brow scrunched in momentary concentration. “No,” she said. “I can’t say I do.” Then, with a touch of defensiveness, “My world is pretty small. You’re looking at it.” And she nodded her chin toward the sea and then the barely visible lights of town.
“I’m looking for a wife,” he said, always the businessman, cutting to the chase, even while he kept his tone light, and even while he was aware of being not completely professional. A renegade part of him was looking forward to getting to know her a tiny bit better.
She shot him a look. “Goodie for you.”
Despite the fact this was all a business venture for him, he was a little taken aback at her lack of interest in him. That was not the reaction he got from women at all. Obviously she had no idea who he was, and he found that in itself refreshing.
What would it be like to get to know another human being who didn’t know you were heir to a fortune, a millionaire businessman in your own right and a retired major league baseball player?
“You caught the bouquet, it seemed fortuitous. I have a proposition for you,” he said carefully.
“Propose away,” she said, but he realized when she tucked a wayward strand of her glossy dark hair behind her ear that she was not as cavalier about his attention as she wanted him to believe.
For the first time, he felt a moment’s hesitation. Maybe she wasn’t right for this job, after all; there was something sweetly vulnerable under all that not very veiled cynicism.
At that moment the side door exploded open. His cousin, Amanda, came bursting out, the skirt of her bridal confection caught in her hands, tears streaming down her face. She raced down the stairs with amazing swiftness given that her outfit was not exactly designed for a one-hundred-yard dash. She was at the bottom of the stairs before the door exploded open again, and Charlie came out it.
“Mandy, honey, come on. Don’t be like this.”
“Don’t you Mandy, honey, me!” she yelled, rounding on him. “How could you?”
Ethan was pretty sure that neither of them had even noticed that he and Samantha were in the shadows behind the door. Samantha had gone still as a statue, and he did the same.
And then the bride turned around, tore past the pier, up a set of stairs on the other side of it and into the parking lot. Charlie gained on her and caught her; a furious discussion ensued that Ethan felt grateful he could not hear.
The discussion resulted in Amanda climbing behind the wheel of her bright yellow sports car convertible, revving the engine and leaving Charlie in a splatter of gravel.
Ethan turned to see how his bridesmaid reacted to the drama. She was leaning on the railing, her small chin on her hands, a knowing little smile playing sadly on her lips as she gave her head a cynical shake.
His doubt of a moment earlier was erased. She was perfect.
“Will you marry me?” he asked.
“Why not?” she answered, then smirked at his startled expression. “We have at least as good a chance as them.”
And then she looped her arm through his and dragged him back through the door, he suspected so that Charlie, who was coming back up the steps, shoulders drooping, would remain unaware that the horrible little wedding-night drama had had witnesses.
Ethan was struck by how the sensitivity of the gesture, the loyalty to her friends, did not match the cynicism she was trying to display.
She could have saved herself the effort, though. Back inside it was evident the bride and groom had had many witnesses to their first argument as a married couple.
“About my proposal,” Ethan told her, taking her elbow and looking down at her, “I’ll make it worth your while.”
She smiled sweetly at him. “Believe me, it already is.”
And that’s when he saw a mountain of a man moving toward him, a scowl on his face that could mean nothing but trouble.
CHAPTER TWO
“YOUR boyfriend?” Ethan asked Samantha.
“Worse,” she told him, still smiling sweetly at him. “My brother.” She reached up and brushed her lips on his, he presumed to make sure he was really in trouble.
But the kiss took them both by surprise. He could tell by the way her eyes widened, and he felt a thrilled shock at the delicacy of those lips touching his, too.
But she backed away rapidly, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “And that will teach you to take twenty bucks to pretend you’re interested in me. Oh, hi, Mitch, this is Ethan. He just asked me to marry him.”
Then she wagged her fingers at him and disappeared into the throng of people milling about discussing the tiff between the bride and groom.
Her lips, Ethan thought, faintly dazed, had tasted of strawberries and sea air.
He watched her go, troubled not so much by the impending arrival of her brother, as by the fact she thought someone would have to pay him to show interest in her, and that she thought, even on the shortness of their acquaintance, that he would be such a person.
Of course, he was trying to buy a bride, not exactly a character reference.
The man stopped in front of him and folded hamsized hands over a chest so wide it was stretching the buttons on his dress shirt.
“I’ve got a question for you,” Mitch said menacingly.
In a split second an amazing number of possibilities raced through Ethan’s mind. What were you doing outside with my sister? What are your intentions? Why are you kissing someone you just met? You asked my sister to marry you? None of the answers Ethan came up with boded well for him.
He braced himself . Ethan did not consider himself a fighter, but he wasn’t one to back down, either.
“You really are Ethan Ballard, aren’t you?”
The question was so different than what he was bracing himself for that Ethan just nodded warily.
“I gotta know why you left the Sox. One season. No injury. Great rookie year. I gotta know.”
Despite the menace, Ethan felt himself relax. He could tell Samantha’s brother was one of those hardworking, honest men that these communities, once all fishing villages, were famous for producing.
Ethan had his stock answer to
the question he had just been asked, but he surprised himself by not giving it. In a low voice he said, “I wanted to be liked and respected for who I was, not for what I did.”
A memory, painful, squeezed behind his eyes, of Bethany saying, her voice shrill with disbelief, You did what? And that had been the end of their engagement, just as his father had predicted.
Samantha’s brother regarded him thoughtfully for a moment, made up his mind, clapped him, hard, on the shoulder. “Come on. I’ll get you a beer and you can meet my brothers.”
“About that marriage proposal—”
The big man’s eyes sought his sister and found her. He watched her for a moment and then sighed.
“Don’t worry. I know she was just kiddin’ around, probably kissed you to get me mad, as if I could get mad at Ethan Ballard. Nobody’s gonna marry my little sister.”
“Why’s that?” Ethan asked, and he felt troubled again. Samantha Hall was beautiful. And had plenty of personality and spunk. Why would it seem so impossible that someone—obviously not a complete stranger who had just met her, but someone—would want to marry her?
“They’d have to come through me first,” Mitch said, and then, “And even if they didn’t, she’d have to find someone who is more a man than she is. My fault. I raised her. Don’t be fooled by present appearances. That girl is as tough as nails.”
But it seemed to Ethan what Samantha Hall needed was not someone who was more a man than her at all. It was someone who saw the woman in her. And who could clearly see she was not tough as nails. He thought of the softness of her lips on his and the vulnerability he had glimpsed in her eyes when he had joined her outside. And he wondered just what he was getting himself into, and why he felt so committed to it.
Sam couldn’t believe it. A complete stranger had asked her to marry him. She knew Ethan Ballard was kidding—or up to something—but her heart had still gone crazy when he had said the words! Having been raised by brothers, Sam knew better than to let her surprise or intrigue show. There was nothing a man liked better than catching a woman off guard to get the upper hand!
She was annoyed to see her brothers liked him. She watched from across the room as they gathered around him, as if he was a long-lost Hall, clapping him on the shoulder and offering him a beer. Ethan Ballard had wormed his way into their fold effortlessly.
Well, she thought, that’s a perfect end to a perfect day. Her feet hurt, she was tired of the dress and she felt sick for Charlie and Amanda. Fighting on a wedding night had to be at least as bad for luck as the bouquet not getting caught. Sam had just postponed the inevitable by making her heroic save.
Still, her work here was done. Much as she would have liked to know what that proposal was really about, she didn’t want Ethan Ballard to think she cared! No, better to leave him thinking she shrugged off marriage proposals from strangers as if they were a daily occurrence!
Sam made her way to the front door and finally managed to get away. Outside, she kicked off her heels and went around the parking lot toward the yacht club private beach that bordered it, the shortest route back to the small hamlet of St. John’s Cove.
“Hey!”
Samantha turned and saw Ethan Ballard coming toward her, even his immense confidence no match for the sand. If she ran, he’d never catch her. But then he might guess he made her feel afraid in some way she didn’t quite understand.
Not afraid of him. But afraid of herself.
She thought of the way his lips had felt when she had playfully brushed them with hers, and she turned and kept walking.
He caught up to her anyway.
“I see you survived my brothers.”
“You sound disappointed.”
“They usually run a better defense,” she said. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest, and she was pretty sure it wasn’t from the exertion of walking through the sand.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
A different girl might have said, Midnight swim, skinny-dipping, but she couldn’t. She didn’t quite know what to make of his attention. She was enjoying it, and hating the fact she was enjoying it. “Home.”
“I’ll walk you.”
No one ever walked her anywhere. She was not seen as the fragile type; in fact her bravery was legend. She was the first one to swim in the ocean every year, she had been the first one out of the plane when the guys had talked her into skydiving. When they were fourteen and had played chicken with lit cigarettes, she had always won. She was known to be a daredevil in her little sailboat, an old Cape Dory Typhoon named the Hall Way.
Sam was a little taken aback that she liked his chivalry. So she said, with a touch of churlishness, “I can look after myself.”
“I’ll walk you home, anyway.”
There was nothing argumentative in his tone. Or bossy. He was just stating a fact. He was walking her home, whether she liked it or not.
And she certainly didn’t want him to know that she did like that feeling of being treated as fragile and feminine.
“Suit yourself.”
He stopped after a moment, slid off his shoes and socks. Since she was stuck with him anyway, she waited, admiring the way he looked in the moonlight, silver beams tangling in the darkness of his hair, his now bare feet curling into the sensuousness of the sand.
He straightened, shoes in hand, and she saw the moonlight made his dark eyes glint with silver shadows, too.
She started walking again, and he walked beside her.
“Do you want to talk about the proposal?”
A renegade thought blasted through her of what it would be like to actually be married to a man like him. To taste those lips whenever you wanted, to feel his easy strength as part of your life.
Maybe that’s why Amanda and Charlie had rushed to get married even when the odds were against them, pulled toward that soft feeling of not being alone anymore.
“I already said I’d marry you,” she said, her careless tone hiding both her curiosity and the vulnerability those thoughts made her feel. “My brothers, strangely enough, liked you. What’s to discuss?”
He laughed, and she didn’t feel like he was laughing at her, but truly enjoying her. It would be easy to come to love that sensation. Of being seen. And appreciated.
“Setting a date?” he kidded.
“Oh. I guess there’s that. How about tomorrow?” She reminded herself most of his appreciation was thanks to the costume: the dress and the hair and the makeup.
“I’m free, and by happy coincidence that’s when I need a wife. Just for the day. Want to play with me?”
The awful thing was she did want to play with him, desperately. But what she considered playing—a day of sailing or swimming—was probably not what he considered playing. At all. His next words confirmed that.
“I’m a real estate investor. I buy higher end properties that have gone to seed, fix them up and flip them.”
Oh, he played with money.
“I thought the market was gone,” she said. She thought of the real estate sign hanging in front of her own rented premises, and thanked the wedding for its one small blessing.
She hadn’t thought of that all day.
Because ever since the sign had gone up, she’d been getting stomachaches. Her business relied on its prime Main Street, St. John’s, location, the summer people coming in and buying grooming supplies, the cute little doggy outfits she stocked, the good-grade dog foods, the amazing and unusual pet accessories that she spent her spare time seeking out. But she knew she’d been getting an incredible deal on the rent, which included her storefront and the apartment above it. A new owner meant one of two things, neither of them good. She would be paying higher rent, or she would get evicted.
“I’m in a position where I can buy and hold if I have to,” he said with easy self-assurance, “though the market is never really gone for the kind of clients who buy my properties.”
“Oh,” she said. He dealt with the old rich, like the St.
John family who had founded this town.
“One of my scouts called in a property down the coastline from here a few miles, a little closer to Stone Harbor than here. It’s ideal—beachfront, a couple of acres, an old house that needs to be torn down or extensively remodeled, I’m not sure which yet.”
The private beach they were walking down intersected with a boardwalk. Sam leaned over to put on her shoes to protect her feet from splinters on the weathered old boardwalk. When she raised up one foot, she took an awkward step sideways in the sand.
She felt a thrilled shock when Ethan reached out quickly to steady her, his one hand red-hot on her naked shoulder, his other caressing as he took her remaining shoe from where she was dangling it from its strap in her hand. He slid it onto her foot, his palm cupping the arch for a suspended second before sliding away.
He stepped away from her, acted as if nothing had happened as he sat down and put on his own socks and shoes.
How could he possibly not have felt that current that leaped in the air between them when he touched her foot? His touch had been astoundingly sexy, more so than when she had touched his lips earlier. She felt scorched; he appeared cool and composed.
Which meant even considering his proposal would be engaging in a form of lunacy she couldn’t afford!
She didn’t wait for him to finish with his shoes, but went up the rickety stairs in front of him, though she soon realized putting back on her own shoes had been a mistake, the heels finding every crack between the boards to slide down between. She was with one of the most elegant, composed, handsome men she had ever met, and she felt like she was in the starring role of March of the Penguins.
On the seaside of the boardwalk she was passing a scattering of small shingle-sided beachfront homes and cottages. Ethan caught up to her.
She slipped up the first side street of St. John’s Cove, where it met the boardwalk, and now less wobbly on the paved walkway, marched up the hill past the old saltbox fishing cottages, one of which she had grown up in and where her brother Mitch still lived. The lobster traps in the front yard were real, not for decoration. He must have brought them home to repair them.
