where did you come from?” Ethan asked, sounding more annoyed than surprised.
“Didn’t you say eleven? I don’t wear a watch, but I could swear I’m right on time.” Her voice and body language just screamed sex.
Mary heard Ethan curse, but she didn’t dare turn back to face him, not with her neck turning red as she knew it was. He had a date. An after-party date. Of course he did. Why not?
“Wait for me by the pool, Allison,” Ethan said, his voice soft but commanding. “I’m not quite finished here.”
Finding her nerve at long last, Mary forgot about her red neck and gave the hot blonde a hotter glare. “Allison, is it?”
She smiled. “Two Ls and two Ns.”
Brilliant and beautiful, Mary mused dryly. What a combination. “You don’t need to go anywhere. Mr. Curtis and I are finished.” She turned to Ethan and gave him a fake smile. “I’ll call you in a few days, sir—to discuss the next function.”
Anger burned in her stomach and, as she walked swiftly through his house and out the front door, she called herself fourteen kinds of fool for even considering him in a romantic way. He was an egotistical, spoiled player who had no idea what he really wanted.
“Mary, slow down.” Ethan caught up with her on his driveway and grabbed her hand as she tried to open her car door.
She brushed him off. “I have work waiting for me at home and you have a Barbie twin waiting for you by the pool.”
“I made that date weeks ago. Before…well…” He pushed a hand through his hair. “This is awkward.”
“Damn right,” she retorted in a sharp voice. “So, I’m going to go now before it gets any more awkward.”
“No.”
“I’m not into threesomes, Curtis.”
“I didn’t even know you were interested in a twosome.”
Gritting her teeth, Mary stared at him. “Ditto.”
He took a moment to process her meaning. “If you think I don’t want to go to bed with you again, you’re wrong.”
“Who the hell could tell?”
“What does that mean?”
“You hardly looked at me tonight,” she said with a scowl. “Then the cover of Sluts-R-Us magazine walks in and your eyes pop out of—”
“I see you, Mary,” he interrupted hotly. “I remember every damn detail.”
“But?”
“Weren’t you the one who said that what happened those nights at the lake would never happen again?”
She hated when the truth was tossed in her face. “Yes.” She wrenched open her car door.
“And it’s complicated, isn’t it?” he continued. “What we did? What we made? Who I am.”
“Who you are? I can’t figure it out.”
“The bastard who blackmailed you…basically.”
His words shocked her. The easy admission of something so base and vile. She got in her car and slammed the door. “So, what? You feel guilty?”
“No.”
“Of course not. You see nothing wrong with what you did.”
“I don’t feel guilty, that’s true. But I do feel…” He cursed. “Conflicted. Protective.” He shrugged, as if the truth surprised the hell out of him. “Isn’t that the damnedest thing?”
“Protective? Of whom?”
“You.”
“You’re protecting me from you?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Well, stop it,” she said caustically, gunning her engine. “Sex doesn’t have to be any more emotionally significant than a really charged football game.”
The words exploded into the air like fireworks, but she didn’t believe them, and she knew that he knew she didn’t believe it. What was she trying to do? Why couldn’t she abandon this idea of him and her, one more time, or two or three? What was she? A masochist?
“Mary—”
“Go prove my point to Allison in there,” she said bitingly before shoving the car into Reverse and taking off down the quiet, wooded drive.
Mary sat in Little Bo and Peep’s baby shop, up to her eyeballs in terry cloth, stretch cotton, bouncy seats and black and white mobiles. For the past twenty minutes, she hadn’t been able to pick out a single thing for the nursery. She knew exactly what clothes she loved, what crib and bassinet she wanted, she even knew the drawer pulls she would pick out if this were all real. But designing a nursery for a child that didn’t exist was next to impossible. She felt like a total fraud and she wanted to give up.
The doorbell over the shop entrance jangled merrily, and Mary watched a young couple come through the door with excited grins. They oohed and aahed as they moved from one quaint set of nursery furniture set to the next, hands clasped tightly, the woman’s round stomach looking like a sweet watermelon. She wanted that. A real relationship, a real baby…something impossible to have with Ethan Curtis. Mary’s mind rolled back to the party and how it had ended. For the past two days she’d thought of nothing but him and that blonde, and her own irrational need to be with him again. She’d wondered what had happened after she’d left. Had Ethan met her by the pool? Did they go for a swim together? Allisonn—two Ls, two Ns—hadn’t seemed like the kind of woman who thought swimsuits were all that important.
Beside her, the young mother pointed at a tiny Minnesota Twins baseball cap and squealed with delight, catching Mary’s eye in the process. Mary forced a smile, then moved on to look at bathtubs and safety accessories. Why the hell did she care what Ethan did? Or who he did, for that matter? She had to get over this.
The saleswoman walked by her again with that look all salespeople give a person when they think you’re lingering without purpose.
Are you stealing or just indecisive?
“Right, I get it,” Mary grumbled under her breath as she abandoned the bath supplies and headed to the front of the store. Nothing was going to happen today. She wasn’t about to do any work on the nursery in her state of mind. If Ethan asked her how she was progressing, she’d just have to stall and—
“Mary?”
Coming into the shop just as Mary was exiting was a very elegant woman in her midseventies, dressed in a thin crepe navy blue suit, her white hair swept off her mildly wrinkled face in a tightly pinned chignon.
“Grandmother?
