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.
