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
