“You twisted your sister’s emotions for your own ends. In my book that’s not what family members do to each other.”
“She likes you. I thought you liked her. It seemed as if she could use a little fun. That’s all I was thinking about.”
For an instant he recalled Sienna’s face as she realized that he’d slept with her after finding out that she’d been blackballed from the primary art market for her sketchy activities. No doubt she’d felt betrayed. Well, that was nothing compared to how he’d felt as he’d stood before his parents yesterday.
“Well, just so you know, you will never be the CEO of this company.” As much satisfaction as he took saying those words, the sense that he had made the right choice was more important.
“That’s not really up to you to decide,” Teagan countered.
“You’re right. It’s up to the current chairman of the board—my grandfather—and the current CEO and president—my father. And after I shared with them that you deliberately spilled the story about my trip to Savannah when Sienna asked you not to—”
He actually hadn’t said anything, but Teagan wasn’t the only one who could use lies and misinformation to throw his opponent off track.
“Did Sienna tell you that?” Teagan interrupted, rolling her eyes. “Of course you believe her.”
“She didn’t tell me anything. I overheard her asking you to keep quiet yesterday morning.”
He paused and waited as her poker face slipped before continuing. “You had no qualms about hurting me or my family to get what you wanted and when they heard that, they were pretty clear that you’re not the sort of person they want running the company they spent their lives building.”
He watched the lie sink in for several seconds, feeling no guilt whatsoever at the horror and grief she displayed.
She rallied faster than he could’ve believed possible. “I’m surprised that you went to them with no proof.”
“Do you seriously think I need to prove anything to them?” Ethan offered a flat smile. “They know me. They trust me.” And then, because he knew from his conversations with Sienna exactly how to push Teagan’s buttons, he added, “And I’m not the outsider in this little scenario. You are. I might not be a Watts by blood, but I am family.”
The point being that she couldn’t come in with her New York City tricks and expect to shatter a lifetime of love. Love. As if the woman had any clue what the word meant. She certainly hadn’t shown that she cared for her sister. If she had, she would’ve known that what she was doing to Sienna would rip her apart.
* * *
Sienna was on her way to the front hall with the first of her suitcases when she met her sister storming up the stairs in her direction. Seeing the angry flush coloring Teagan’s cheeks, Sienna braced for another confrontation.
“Hey,” she began as they met on the landing between the first and second floors. “How come you’re home?”
“Declan Scott is the devil!” Teagan declared, her eyes narrowed with murderous intent.
“Well, yes,” Sienna agreed, thinking about how many times since they’d first met in high school that Teagan had clashed with the handsome real estate tycoon. “So?”
“So?” Teagan echoed in outrage.
“He’s back in New York,” Sienna reminded her sister, resisting the urge to roll her eyes at Teagan’s melodrama.
“No. He’s here. In Charleston. I just ran into him. I don’t know when exactly he showed up, but I suspect not long after we arrived.”
“What is he doing here?” Sienna clutched the handle of her suitcase to her suddenly churning stomach. When Teagan and Declan were in the same space, their battles had a tendency to damage everyone around them.
Over the years the two strong personalities had struck at each other in a private war that began when Teagan had gone after his sister, who’d been a classmate of Sienna’s. She’d never understood what had motivated Teagan, but the incident had caused Declan to notice her and they’d been enemies ever since.
“Ruining everything.” Teagan flipped her long hair, eyes becoming arctic jade as she continued, “He tipped Ethan off from the start.”
“From the start?” Sienna grabbed for the railing as her knees wobbled. Ethan had known all along that Teagan was out to steal the CEO position from him? “What do you mean? Tipped him off how?”
“He sent Ethan an anonymous email the day we arrived, warning him that I intended on taking over Watts Shipping. He’s been playing with me this whole time.”
Click. The pieces snapped into place. Was Declan responsible for Ethan learning about her troubles with the New York City galleries? She thought of Ethan’s pursuit of her and cringed. The charm that had swept Sienna off her feet took on a sinister quality now that she recognized the manipulation behind it. Every time he’d taken her into his arms, it had been a sham. Every smile he’d bestowed on her. All of it had been a lie. Sienna flushed hot with shame. A second later she shivered as humiliation and despair moved through her like a biting wind off the ocean.
“Why would he do that?” Sienna asked, her fury blazing to life. Declan Scott was one area where the Burns sisters agreed.
“Because it’s Declan,” Teagan said, tossing her head. “He takes any opportunity to ruin my life.”
“And mine, as well,” Sienna muttered, recalling all the times the war between the two had spilled over. “Was he the one who told you about why Ethan went to Savannah?”
“No.”
Despite Teagan’s closed expression, Sienna believed Declan wasn’t the source of that information. But her short-term relief ended with her sister’s next words.
“Don’t worry. I have a plan to get rid of him.”
This only reaffirmed Sienna’s decision to leave Charleston. “Good luck with that.”
As she began moving past her sister, Teagan blocked Sienna’s path.
“You can’t leave me here alone. Ethan told his entire family that I’m only here to take over the family company.”
Good! Yet Sienna couldn’t crow about her sister’s scheme falling apart. The setback would only cause Teagan to dig in and try harder.
“Isn’t it better for you to be up front about your intentions?”
“Are you kidding? Thanks to him they’re all going to hate me.”
“I’m sure that’s not true,” Sienna soothed. “But there is an alternative. You could return to New York and give up this crazy idea of running Watts Shipping.” The instant that suggestion left her lips, Sienna realized she’d made a mistake.
“Give up?” Teagan looked appalled. “And let Ethan and Declan win?”
“Win?” Sienna couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “This isn’t a game. These are real people with real feelings.”
“You don’t understand. You never have.”
“I do understand. Better than you realize. All my life I’ve been in your shadow. I watched you fight and scheme to be on top. So that everyone would love you.” Sienna gulped in air and rushed on. “Why don’t you stop relying on your beauty and success and let people love you for who you are?”
Speaking her mind for the first time left her heart pounding so hard she thought she might stroke out. No matter how many times Teagan had hurt her in the past, Sienna loved her and only wished for her to be happy. It just seemed that Teagan was always going about it the wrong way.
“Really?” Teagan sneered. “What would you know about being loved? Our parents adopted me because you weren’t good enough.”
Compared to what she’d been through with Ethan, this declaration landed like the punch of a downy feather. Sienna’s mind went oddly calm. Her relationship with Teagan had always been a complex scramble of love and pain and understanding and exasperation.
“You don’t think I know that?” Sienna began. “Mother placed more value on appearance than a
nyone I know except perhaps you. I’m not beautiful. And I don’t share your aggressive ambition to rule everyone and everything in my orbit. But I am smart and loyal. I have a career I love and friends I trust who support me. Those things might not be important to you, but they matter to me.” Rehearsed hundreds of times in her mind, the words poured out of her in a jagged rush. “And the best part of all is that I can look myself in the mirror every day and not be ashamed of who I hurt or the harm I’ve caused. Can you say the same?”
Sienna was gasping for breath by the time she finished her impassioned speech. Yet in the aftermath of the fervent soliloquy, she wasn’t suffused with triumph or vindicated. One look at Teagan’s scornful expression left Sienna hollow and empty.
“I don’t need you,” Teagan declared, her voice low and biting as she headed toward the door. “I never have and I never will.”
Fighting tears of helpless frustration, Sienna resumed manhandling her heavy luggage down the endless flights of stairs. She was hot, angry and miserable by the time she exited the house with the second suitcase only to discover that the car pulling into the driveway wasn’t her ride to the airport, but was driven by the last person she wanted to see.
“You’re leaving?” Ethan asked unnecessarily, eyeing her suitcases.
What did he expect? Even if things between them hadn’t exploded into a million shards of anger, resentment and pain, she’d planned to head back to New York in a day or two. Neither one of them had spoken about her staying longer or him visiting her between business trips. The revelations over the last twenty-four hours didn’t change the reality that they’d had a fling and now it was over.
“There’s an auction in Salzburg coming up next week.” She would be bidding on pieces for four clients. “I need to head back to New York to prepare.”
“I thought you’d planned to stay a little longer.”
“That was before.”
Had he already forgotten his brutal indictment of her as Teagan’s feckless pawn in the battle for control of Watts Shipping? He couldn’t possibly expect that she’d stick around for more abuse?
“And you weren’t going to say goodbye?”
Sienna gaped at him. “I thought we already had.”
The ride she’d been waiting for pulled into the front driveway and came to a stop behind Ethan’s car. She began rolling her luggage toward it as the driver got out and went toward the trunk.
“I spoke with my parents,” Ethan began from behind her, his deep voice heavy with anguish and rage. “They are devastated.”
She winced as her heart clenched. The impulse to comfort him rose in her, but she gritted her teeth and resisted. He wasn’t interested in being consoled by her. He wanted to punish. Handing off her suitcases to the driver, Sienna turned to Ethan.
“Do you feel at all guilty about what you and your sister have done?” he continued, speaking each word with deliberate care, letting his distaste show.
“The only thing I did was not tell you that Teagan wanted to be the next CEO of Watts Shipping,” Sienna reiterated, wishing he’d just let her leave. “Besides that, I haven’t done anything to you or your family.”
“No regrets then?”
“Just one. I regret coming here.” Because if she hadn’t, she never would’ve met Ethan or had her heart torn apart in the battle between him and her sister. Sienna sighed. “No, that’s not true. I’m glad I met you. I just wish that you weren’t like Teagan.” Misery shredded her voice. “You knew all along what she was up to and used me to get to her.”
She hadn’t realized how much it would hurt to face him, knowing that he’d been misleading her about his feelings this whole time. He’d accused her of sleeping with him as part of a scheme, but obviously that was what had motivated his actions. He’d lied to her. Used her desire against her. And he’d manipulated her as if she was nothing but a pawn in his chess match with her sister.
She searched Ethan’s expression for remorse or grief, but saw only righteous obstinacy. How had she missed such devious calculation on Ethan’s part?
“Stop playing the wronged innocent,” he retorted, his tone roughening with irritation. “You could’ve warned me what Teagan was up to, but you didn’t.”
“You’re right, but to be fair, she’s my sister and you’re—”
“Just some guy you had sex with?”
“Sure...that.” She held strong against the bitterness in his voice and met his eyes without flinching. Maybe she’d been a fool to fall for him in the first place, but she didn’t have to keep making the same mistake. “So tell me, if you haven’t trusted me from the start, why did you bring me with you to Savannah to meet your family?”
Why make her feel like her company mattered to him? That he appreciated her support and craved her affection?
“Maybe because I was curious to see how far you would go for her.” He leaned toward her, pinning her with his dark stare. “I guess this weekend I found out.”
Sienna recoiled from the implication that she’d seduced him to gain his trust. “I didn’t sleep with you to help my sister.”
“No?”
“No. I care about you and I thought you felt the same way about me.” Sienna put her hand on his forearm. When his forbidding expression remained unchanged, she let it fall back to her side. “Until today I had no idea how wrong I was.”
“I had to know what you were up to.”
How had she been so blind? She should’ve recognized that it was beyond crazy that Ethan could be falling for her.
Sienna offered him a tight smile. “I guess that means we can both stop pretending that last weekend meant something.”
“It meant something to me,” he said in a shocking turnaround, his expression like granite, his gaze steady and sincere.
“Damn you, Ethan Watts,” she cried, confused and terrified by the way her heart reached for him. “I’m done being manipulated by you. Now, if you’ll kindly move.” Desperation gave her the strength to wedge her laptop case into the space between him and the car and shift him aside. “I have a plane to catch. And I really can’t afford to miss it.”
THIRTEEN
The two days following Sienna’s departure from Charleston didn’t go as Ethan expected they would. He assumed that with her gone and Teagan rethinking her strategy, his emotions would calm and his focus would shift back to work, socializing and family time. Instead, he caught himself snapping at his employees, brooding alone at his house and turning down invitations from everyone. In fact, his antisocial behavior had gotten so bad that he’d stopped answering calls altogether.
Which was why he wasn’t all that surprised when Paul appeared in his office with no warning, a thick file in his hand. “So, I finally got a line on your anonymous friend,” his brother said, skipping the lecture about how the family was worried about him.
Ethan stuck out his hand and accepted the file. “I thought you said the email address was impossible to track.”
“Did I say that?” Paul smirked. “Maybe what I should’ve said was that it was impossible to track through normal channels.”
“Do I want to ask?” Ethan began, knowing when his brother started talking about the dark web it was like watching a foreign language film without subtitles. “Nope, I don’t wanna know. Who is he or she?”
Paul slouched in one of Ethan’s guest chairs and propped his cheek on his hand. “A guy by the name of Declan Scott.”
Ethan scanned the file without registering much of the data. His thoughts churned as he imagined what he’d like to do to the guy whose misinformation had made Ethan doubt Sienna.
“Aside from the fact that he’s from New York, how is he connected to Teagan?” he asked.
“They attended the same high school, although they were three years apart. Since then they’ve appeared at the same events, but never together. They have friends in comm
on, but from what I can gather they can’t stand each other.”
Having been on the receiving end of Teagan’s scheming, it made sense that she would’ve made enemies. “Okay, so that explains why the guy warned me against her, but what’s with all the cloak-and-dagger business?” Ethan spread several photos across his desk, of Declan Scott. He looked like an aloof Ralph Lauren model, with classic Town & Country stuffiness. “But what does he get out of involving himself in our business here in Charleston?”
“Why don’t you ask him?” Paul got to his feet. “He has a suite at Hotel Bennett.”
“He’s here?” The news propelled Ethan to his feet. He snatched up his car keys. It was the most alive he’d felt in two days. “I don’t suppose you got a room number.”
Ten minutes later Ethan was heading for the boutique hotel. He had attended several parties there, including one wedding, and been to Gabrielle, their signature restaurant, on several occasions. In fact, if he and Sienna hadn’t gone to Savannah, he would’ve taken her there.
He’d lost count of the number of times over the last two days when he’d imaged how Sienna would’ve reacted to a place or an experience. Thoughts of her consumed him. As did the melancholy he couldn’t seem to shake since she’d left. And as many times as he’d reminded himself what she’d done and that he couldn’t possibly care about someone who’d been working against him, nothing seemed to ease the constant ache in his chest.
He missed her. All the damned time. No matter how angry he was with her for what she’d done. No matter how many times he called himself a stubborn fool for allowing himself to trust her with his secrets and fears. Despite all that had happened, Ethan couldn’t shake the certainty that he’d been wrong to let her go back to New York.
The lack of closure was making him crazy. That was the only thing that could account for his sleepless nights and manic restlessness.
At the hotel, Ethan pounded on the door to Declan Scott’s suite, letting his frustration out. The man who answered was tall, lean and dressed in a crisp navy suit, but not Declan Scott.
Harlequin Desire June 2021--Box Set 1 of 2 Page 31
