Ethan (Members From Money Book 37)

by Katie Dowe

  “Have dinner with me Harper and get to know the real me not the things you jotted down on your notepad.”

  “I already know who you are,” her voice was a whisper in her throat.

  “Don’t you want to know more?” his deep voice was hypnotic as he bent his head to hers. She was wearing knee length boots with reasonable heels but she only came up to his shoulders. His hand curved her cheek and his thumb caressed her soft skin.

  “No,” she felt the situation slipping away from her, the professional manner she had always held so dear just disappearing!

  “I want to get to know you better,” his lips were a fraction away from hers, his breath stirring against her and bringing back everything she had felt when he had kissed her that night. Her mouth opened beneath his and his tongue inched in, a little at a time as his hand tightened on her face to bring her closer. He caught the moan with inside his mouth as he brought her to him and deepened the kiss. Harper had no choice! The touch of his lips on hers was her undoing. She had thought that before when he had kissed her that it had been due to the fact that she was inexperienced but even so she never dreamed it could feel this way! The feelings sweeping through her unexpected body felt like a tidal wave rushing through her! She wanted more! She thought in panic as she gripped the front of his shirt and held on. But she could not do this! With a superhuman willpower she did not know she possessed she wrenched her lips from his and stumbled back.

  “Stay away from me,” she whispered as she wiped the back of her hand against her mouth. He did not answer for a moment but stood there staring at her. The parted lips and the disheveled hair were as sexy as hell and he had a difficult time not pulling her back into his arms! “I am afraid I won’t be able to do that,” his tone was light as shoved his hands into his pockets. If he did not do something about them, he was going to haul her back into his arms! “We both know that is not going to happen.”

  “It was just a kiss--”

  “You don’t believe that,” he said with a grim laugh. “I am standing over here right now Harper because if I come any closer to you I will not be able to help myself. I want you and you want me, that’s a fact that neither of us can deny. And I know is that you are not a liar. Am I right?’

  “You don’t know anything about me.”

  “I know enough and want to know more if you will let me.” He said softly.

  “Why? So I can be another notch on your belt?” she asked him sarcastically. “I know your reputation Mr. Shaw and I have no intention of being one of the women you have sex with and then discard them. What happened to the woman I saw you with at the club? The one who looks as if she would come running if you just crook your little finger? Do you think I am like that? I am not! I might feel something when you touch me but I have no intention of it going any further.”

  “I guess I deserve that.” He said quietly. “I have a reputation and I am not going to deny it but I want you Harper.”

  “Tough.” She said coldly.

  He started to approach her and she held out her hands to stop him. “Please do not come any closer.” She told him, her body trembling.

  “You are afraid,” his deep voice was soft and hypnotic. “I get it but I want you to know that I am not going to hurt you. I will stop at the kiss if you tell me to stop no matter how difficult that will be.”

  She pulled on her coat hastily. “Please stay away from me.” With that she hurried out of the room and slammed the door shut behind her!

  Ethan thought about going after her, finishing what they started but he knew he did not want to force her! He went behind the desk and sat heavily on his chair, resting his head back, his eyes closed. He was aroused, more than he had ever been in his life and he had no way of doing anything about it. He had really only thought of having dinner with her, taking the chance to get to know her better but his desire had gotten in the way. He opened his eyes as the door opened and for a moment he thought it was her coming back but it was Erica.

  “What are you still doing here?” he asked as he leaned forward on the desk.

  “I was just finishing up some reports.” She came further inside the room. “Are you okay?”

  “Just a little tired.” He said with a forced smile.

  “How was the interview?” she asked as she came to sit on a chair in front of his desk.

  “Very interesting.” He said with a brief smile. “I take it that Erin left a long time ago?”

  “She did.” Erica said with a laugh. “She claimed she had some making up to do with Adam.”

  “How are you Erica?” he asked her quietly.

  “I am fine,” she said with a smile. “I really am. What about you? You don’t look tired. You look pensive. I know that you broke it off with Samantha.”

  “Erin and her big mouth.” Ethan said dryly.

  “She said that you deserve better and I agree with her.”

  “That’s a first.”

  Erica laughed. “I know but you are quite a force and you deserve someone who will not agree with you all the time. Samantha was not that woman.”

  “I know but I hurt her and never meant to do that. I should not have given her hope and now she is suffering because of it.”

  She got to her feet. “Don’t beat yourself up.” She came around and kissed him on the forehead. “I will see you at home.”

  He nodded and watched her leave, closing his eyes as the thoughts assailed him.

  Chapter 8

  Harper sat in her tiny office and stared at the blank screen of her laptop. She had been home for some time now and so far had not put anything together. It was not her lack of creativity because there were no shortage of that but her mind was elsewhere. He was right! She felt something for him and it not just something in passing. When he had started forward with the intention of touching her again she had taken the coward’s way out and had fled. If he had touched her again even a tiny touch she would not have been able to resist him. How could she write something unbiased when she was already biased? She wondered in despair. She had enjoyed talking to him because of the sparring. She had read up on him and realized that he was well educated. He knew everything there was to know about business and had taken the company his father had left him and turned it into something extraordinary! They had holdings everywhere and had a piece of most businesses. He spoke with the President as seen by a photo they had taken together some time ago and it was rumored that he was a strong supporter for their campaign. She had also read his many exploits with the opposite sex and she had found herself reading them over and over again like some overzealous fan that could not get enough of the latest celebrity tidbit!

  With an impatient sigh she got up from her cramped desk and went to the kitchen to get some water.

  The ringing of her cell phone in her bedroom broke through her reverie and had her running to get it. “Laila?”

  “Harper I am sorry to bother you but it’s Nadine.”

  “What’s wrong, honey?”

  “She is burning up. I tried to get the fever down but it is not going down.”

  “You need to take her to the ER.”

  “Could you come over? Nicolas is sleeping and I don’t want to drag him out into the cold.”

  “I am on my way.”

  *****

  “Marry me,” Clive said persuasively.

  “What?” Evelyn extricated herself from his arms and went to get her jacket. She had intended to spend just a couple of hours with him but it had gone way more than that. She did not answer to her children but she had no intention of letting them know that she was spending time with a man, not even Clive. She had an image to uphold.

  “Darling we are two adults and we love each other. I know that you want to hide us from your children but is that fair to us?”

  “Darling Clive, I care for you deeply and you are a source of comfort to me but I have things to consider. Not only my children but I am involved with a lot of foundations and some of them very rigid. I
am not certain marriage is something that I want right now.”

  “Especially marriage with me,” he said bitterly.

  Evelyn stopped buttoning up her jacket and came towards him. The rumpled sheets spoke of their earlier activities. “You know that’s not true. I would like nothing better to do than to shuck everything and run off into the sunset with you but I cannot do that.”

  “Because of who you are.”

  “Precisely.” She squeezed his hands. “You are unencumbered darling with neither wife nor children and free to do whatever you please. It is not the same for me.”

  His used his veined hands to frame her beautiful face. He had lost so much sleep over her being married to his best friend and had become so bitter over it that it was entrenched deep inside him. His wife had never been able to give him children and each time he saw the three children she shared with her husband he had found it hard to appear as if he had been happy for them.

  “How long are we going to go on like this?” he asked her quietly as she got to her feet.

  “Be patient,” she placed her hand on his jaw. “I am so happy that a scandal had not broken out with that drug and ruined the image of the company.” She had her back turned so she did not see the dark scowl on his face.

  “We still want to come out with the drug, but Ethan wants to make sure that it is really reliable. Your son is very careful.”

  “That he is,” she said with a proud smile. “He is his father’s son.”

  “Do you still love him?”

  “Ethan?” she asked with a frown.

  “Samuel.”

  She came back and sat in front of him. “You said you were not jealous of my dead husband Clive. Has that changed?”

  “I loved you first.” He blurted out before he could help it.

  “There was nothing between us. We went on a few dates and nothing more. The minute Samuel and I saw each other we knew that it would turn into love. I will always love him.”

  “I know darling. Please forgive an old man his insecurities. It’s just that you are so beautiful and I find it hard to believe that I could be of interest to you.” He tried desperately to do damage control. She could not suspect that he had bitterness inside him!

  “Nothing to forgive and I want you to know that I really care about you.” She said sincerely.

  But not love, he thought bitterly. “And I am happy for that.”

  “I really have to go.”

  He got to his feet and walked her to front door. “I will see you at the office tomorrow.”

  “I doubt you will. You are going to be buried in your lab and I have several board meetings to attend. I will see you on Friday or Saturday.” She assured him.

  He bent to kiss her cheek. “Take care my love.” He watched her leave with a grim look on his face before closing the door behind her.

  *****

  She woke up when Laila came in.

  “Hey.” She rubbed her eyes as her friend walked into the living room with her daughter in her arms. “How is she?”

  “Ear infection,” Laila whispered. “The doctors said it should clear up in a day or two but she should stay home for that period.”

  “Go put her down.”

  Harper went to the kitchen and put the kettle on to make them some tea. It was already eleven o’clock and she was just going to crash on Laila’s sofa until the next morning.

  The tea was ready when her friend came in. “Here,” Harper handed her the cup of steaming chamomile.

  “Thanks.” She sat at the counter wearily and started sipping. “Apparently it is going around; there were lots of kids there down with it. She woke me up screaming Harper and for a moment there I had no idea what to do. When Barry was here he was the calm one in the family and he would diagnose the problem and deal with it the way it should be dealt with,” she put the cup down. “It’s time like these when you realize that parenting should not be done with only one person.”

  “I am not a parent but I promise you that I will be there for you and them.” Harper reassured her.

  “I know honey and I am so thankful. If you were not available who would I get at this time of the night? I would have had to drag Nicolas out of bed and taken him with me. Barry’s parents want me and the kids to move to Missouri to be near them so that they could be of help but he was never close to them and neither are the children. I am afraid of uprooting them from their home and they are not happy.”

  “On the plus side, you could get help.”

  “And on the negative side, the children and I would be able to see why Barry did not get along with them.” Laila said with a sigh. “They tried to control him Harper. They had someone picked out for him to marry and when he told them that he was in love with me he threatened never to speak to him again. He did not care about that and we went ahead and got married. They came to the wedding for appearances sake but they never gave me the time of day. They never wanted Barry to go into the military but it was not up to them and they told me that I should have used my influence on him to stop him.”

  “They were still trying to control him.”

  Laila nodded and blinked back tears. “I wished he was here.”

  *****

  Harper knew what she wanted to write!

  As soon as she reached back to her apartment, she went straight into the little office and started typing and the words flew as she delved deeper and deeper into the effects of war. When she had stopped she read the pages carefully and made a few corrections here and there. Now neither Dudley nor Ethan Shaw could say that she had been anything but fair!

  *****

  “Have you read it?” Evelyn asked as she placed the paper on her son’s desk. “This woman you had the interview with…who was she?”

  “Does it matter?” Ethan picked up the paper idly and scanned the contents. “She does have a way with words,” he said in amusement before looking up at his mother. “This does not malign us in any way Mother if that is what you are thinking.”

  “I am not sure what it does darling. She is very clever with her words.” Evelyn took up the paper and read it again. “She quoted your views on the sufferings of the world.”

  “I told her that I am not immune to it and that the company is involved in dozens of charities.” Ethan told her.

  “Then she writes about the heart of it. “’While we have to concentrate on the physical ravages that war has on those involved we have yet to touch on the emotional side of it. What about a mother who although dealing with the pain of losing her husband or a husband losing his wife; they still have to go on and be strong for the children involved. There are always the day to day worries of a single parent dealing with something as simple as a heightened fever to an ear infection in the middle of the night. Where does one turn to for support in a case like that? When the mother have to hustle a sick child out while taking the other one from the bed even when the weather is cold. We are not forgetting the single parent household where a mother has to carry on without a father involved but the effect of war has more than one side to it and even though Mr. Shaw wants to believe a masquerade ball to gain monetary support for those involved, there is still the emotional side to it.’”

  “She is right,” Ethan said as he leaned back in his chair.

  “You are taking her side?”

  “It is not taking sides Mother. I have no intention of closing off that side of the company that supplies the military but she has certainly given us food for thought and not only us, but I hope that the White House is reading it as well.”

  “Darling, what is going on with you?” his mother asked him curiously.

  “Maybe I am growing a conscience.” He said with a wry smile.

  “You already have one.”

  “Maybe it has been lying dormant over the past years. There have not been demonstrators standing at our doorsteps for the past couple of weeks so we are safe.”

  “I don’t believe that darling. People do not just stop dem
onstrating for a cause just like that.”

  “You worry too much.” His phone rang just then and he picked it up. “I have to take this call.” He told her.

  “I will see you later at dinner.”

  *****

  He called her and she picked up. “Harper.” His deep voice sounding in here ear caused her to shiver slightly.

  “Where did you get my number?”

  “I have my ways,” he told her lightly. “I read your piece. Very interesting. You just manage not to blame us for emotional and psychological trauma.”

  “I was happy to be of help.”

  “I want to see you.”

  “And you already know the answer to that.”

  “I also know where you live.”

  “Is that supposed to scare me?” she scoffed. “I don’t have to let you in if you turn up.”

  “And I would stay out there banging the door until you do. We need to finish what we started. I need to see you.”

  “We don’t need to finish anything. I did the interview with you and that’s that. We are moving on.”

  “When I touched my tongue to yours, I swear that sparks flew beaten us. We will not be moving on at all.”

  “Don’t you have anything better to do?” she asked him in irritation, trying to mask what she was feeling because of his words.

  “I am afraid not. I am here sitting in my car and wondering how I am going to go home when I cannot stop thinking about you. You could solve the problem by having me coming to pick you up and we go to my apartment.”

  To her horror, Harper almost thought about acceding! She almost told him yes as she felt the betrayal of her body to his words. “I am hanging up now.”

  “Don’t!” he whispered. “I want to see you Harper. I would like to tell you that I want to take you out to dinner but the minute I do our faces will be plastered in the papers. I could arrange to have us eat dinner at my apartment and afterwards I take my time and make love to you, my mouth going over every inch of your delectable body. I would of course want you to spend the night as I suspect that one time with you will never be enough. What do you say?’