closer to the surface. Like everything was more real and more fantastic all at the same time.
“I’ll take some of that ice cream.” Ethan returned holding two water bottles, looking sexier than any man should in a pair of sandals and some board shorts. He sat next to her and she fought the urge to move closer. Or scoot away. She wasn’t sure which she wanted more. So she stayed where she was.
“You had yours. You ate it too fast,” she said, licking a drip from the side of the cone.
“And yours is melting. You need help.”
She laughed. “I assure you, I don’t.” She lapped at another drip.
“While I love watching you do that, my professional opinion remains the same.” He smiled and she had a vision of the charming playboy she was certain he could be. But behind that, deeper, there was a flicker of heat in his eyes that went beyond simple flirtation.
“I …”
He leaned in and her heart stopped. He was so close to her, close enough that if she just dipped her head, she could brush her lips against his.
He moved first, angling his head, but not the way she’d been anticipating. He took a long lick of her ice cream cone before leaning back again. “Thanks,” he said, his voice rough.
Her hand was shaking from anticipation. From the fact that watching his tongue sliding over the ice cream had actually been pretty hot. She didn’t know herself right now.
No. That wasn’t true. She was getting to know herself. A sexual encounter on a piano bench and an ice cream cone on the beach at a time. It was like finding out there was a whole different side to herself when she’d always thought there had only been one. She’d been all about the piano. All about performing. But this was living. Real living.
“This has been … this has been great. Thank you,” she said, still trying to catch her breath from the sexual shock of watching him lick her ice cream cone. “Sorry I unloaded on you earlier. About my mother.”
“We all need to let it out sometimes.”
“We both lost the parent lottery, didn’t we?”
“Seems so.”
“Will you be happy when you get the resorts? I mean, will that be it? Will you win?”
“Is that a trick question?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Not a trick. I’m really wondering. Because I want my … I want my life back, Ethan. Not exactly like it was. I want beach days. But I also want to perform. I want the recognition, the hard work, the reward. The money. I don’t … I don’t know what to do without it, and I have to believe that if you have a goal like that, when you reach it you’ll be satisfied.”
Ethan looked toward the sun glinting off the crystalline waves, his brow furrowing. “I don’t know the answer to that. I don’t really care. I’m more than happy to keep fighting for the next thing. Bigger and better.”
“That sounds … exhausting.”
“More exhausting than doing piano drills for the rest of your life?”
“Infinitely more.”
“There’s not really anything more to life, Noelle. You keep going, you get more. I doubt you’ll be satisfied just playing again. How many people do you need in the auditorium, and after you fill up a large one, won’t you need a stadium? That’s how it works.”
“I don’t …” Noelle’s voice trailed off. She didn’t like what he was saying. Because it was frighteningly close to what she feared might be the truth. That there would be no satisfaction in ‘reclaiming’ her career. That she would get back to that life and find it as empty as the one she was living now. “I don’t believe it. I won’t need more. I’ll be happy sitting at the piano, playing.”
“Maybe you think sitting at the piano will satisfy you. But then, you do know how to have fun on a piano bench, don’t you?”
His words hit her like a physical blow, the sudden venom in his tone shocking her. She stood, brushing sand off the back of her shorts. “Why would … why would you say that to me?”
“Noelle—”
“I want to go. Today was … fun. And it was neat to kind of play hooky from life. But we both have a plan. And hanging out on the beach just isn’t in it.”
He nodded. “Not for either of us.”
“I don’t think hanging out on piano benches is in it for us either.” She turned and headed back to the path that led to the teeming boardwalk area. A little noise would be good. A little something to keep her mind off the raw wound in her chest.
How could he say that? As if she let men touch her like that all the time? Though, he might think she did.
Well, so what if she did? She knew he was an epic playboy, and if she wanted to get off with men on piano benches every other night of the week that was her business. Not her mother’s and not Ethan’s. Hers.
She whipped around and was not that surprised to find Ethan only a couple of paces behind her. “You know what, Ethan? It’s none of your business what I do in my spare time. Beyond this little charade of ours, my life is none of your business. I could have had sex with a hundred guys, and guess what? Not your job to judge. I’m the one who has to live my life. The one who has to live with me. So … there.”
She turned again and walked away, her heart pounding hard in her head, her entire body shaking. It was true, and she hadn’t even realized it until she’d said it.
She had to live her life. No one else. Why had she always taken the path other people put her on? Why was she still doing her drills for hours every day?
It was her life. No matter how much her mother had wanted to treat it as her own, no matter how much her instructor had fed his ego on her success. They had had no right.
She was angry now. Not just about her situation, but for herself. For everything she’d accepted, her whole life, because she’d believed that her only option was to do as she was told.
Ethan’s firm grasp on her arm stopped her in her tracks. He didn’t seem at all concerned by the people walking by, craning their necks to see if there was going to be a huge fight between them.
“You’re right, Noelle, it’s not my job to judge you. And I don’t. My comment was out of line.” His dark eyes blazed with an intensity that stood in direct opposition to his apologetic words.
“Really?”
“Really.”
“I … you apologized,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“I don’t think anyone has ever apologized to me.”
“I’m a confident guy, Noelle, and that means my ego can take it when I have to admit I’m wrong. That was wrong. It isn’t my business how many men you’ve slept with, or intend to sleep with.
