he himself knew more than a little about. Anger burned his throat.
A bittersweet smile crossed her mouth as she cut circular slices of an orange and handed one to him. “Vince and I used to call these rings of sunshine. There were always oranges in Florida.”
He wanted to know how she’d been wronged. But he wasn’t going to walk on that common ground.
“Aunt Louise and Fernando are coming for dinner on Wednesday.” He cut to the matter at hand. “We need to prepare. Our first order of business is making this apartment look like we truly live here. We will start with...”
“The artwork!” they chimed in unison.
“We will visit my favorite galleries in Soho. You can make the final selection.”
Outside, stormy skies had given way to more hard rain.
“Dress accordingly.”
He plucked his phone from his pocket and began tapping.
* * *
Half an hour later, a stocky man in a suit and chauffeur’s cap held a car door open for Holly.
“This is my driver, Leonard,” Ethan introduced.
“Ma’am.”
Holly darted into the black car without getting too wet from the downpour. Sliding across the tan leather backseat, she made room for Ethan beside her. Leonard shut the passenger door and hurried around to the driver’s seat.
As they pulled away from the apartment building, Ethan activated the privacy glass that separated the front seat from the back.
Holly didn’t know what she’d gotten herself into. Fear and excitement rattled her at the same time.
Soho galleries and shareholders’ galas... She didn’t really know how she was going to fake her way through a life so different from hers. Being ferried around New York in a town car with a privacy glass.
Ethan had clearly noticed her discomfort at his shielding his driver from any conversation they were going to have. “Obviously we need complete discretion to pull off our little enterprise, do we not?”
“Yup.”
“Off we go, then. Yes?”
As crazy as it was, she’d already said yes to this wild ride with him. “Yes.”
She watched New York though the car window. The city was gorgeous in the rain. Buildings seemed even taller and grander beneath the turbulent skies. People in dark clothes with umbrellas hurried along the sidewalks. To her eyes, they looked as if they were from a bygone era. Her mind snapped mental pictures. She wanted to paint all of it.
While Ethan checked messages on his phone Holly was aware of every breath he took. Her lungs couldn’t help synchronizing each of his inhales and exhales with her own. They were so near each other on the seat her leg rested along his. She detected a faint smell of his woodsy shampoo.
You’ll get used to him, she told herself. Soon enough, he won’t be so enchanting.
Ethan touched his phone and brought the device to his ear.
“Nathan. Did you receive my text? Have you made all of the appointments for today?”
He nodded once as he listened.
“Diane—got it. Jeremy—got it. Thank you. Set me up for meetings next week with Con East and the Jersey City contractors.”
He looked toward Holly and licked his top lip, although she was sure he didn’t realize he had.
“I will be in New York for a while this time. As a matter of fact I have quite the announcement to make at the shareholders’ gala.”
A squiggle shot up Holly’s back. No one had ever looked at her the way he did.
Ethan sent a sincere laugh into the phone. “All right, Nathan. I suppose I can spare you your beheading. This time.”
He clicked off the call. “That explains the mystery about the apartment. Nathan had me booked in for the same dates but next month. You were right—it was meant to be yours. But now, to everyone concerned, the apartment is ours.”
Holly pulled up the collar on her leather jacket as Leonard shuttled them downtown.
Curbside at the first gallery, Leonard helped them out of the car. And then back in as they made their way to the second. And then to the third.
Naturally the staff at each were overjoyed to see Ethan. They reminisced about art openings and museum dedications. Holly felt completely out of place, with nothing to add to the conversations. But she held her own, making intelligent comments about the art on display.
Ethan didn’t mention anything about their upcoming nuptials. That announcement was for the gala. Instead he introduced Holly as a friend and painter from Florida whom he had been lucky enough to enlist for an upcoming commission.
Back in the town car again, they munched on the fancy sandwiches Ethan had had Leonard pick up from a gourmet shop. They discussed the paintings they had seen. Holly wanted two, and explained why she’d chosen them.
“If we had more time I’d have my brother send up some canvases that he’s storing for me,” she said. “If it was really our apartment I’d like to have my own work on the walls.”
“I would like that, too,” Ethan agreed, with such unexpected warmth it stretched at her heart.
He was masterful at throwing her off-kilter. When they’d been making breakfast that morning she’d had the feeling several times that he was going to kiss her. At one moment she had desperately hoped he would, while in the next she’d known she must turn away.
Ethan Benton was a bundle of inconsistencies.
Such a precise way he used a paper napkin to brush away imagined crumbs from the corners of his mouth. He was so definite about everything he did. Hobnobbing with gallery people or eating take-out lunch in the car—he did everything with finesse.
It wasn’t as if any crumb would dare stick to those glorious lips. Men who showered on planes didn’t get food on their faces.
Yet Holly knew there was something damaged underneath all Ethan’s confidence and class...
“Can I paint you?”
He contemplated the question as he slowly popped the seal on his bottle of artisan soda.
“You know those drab black and whites of the tree and the flower on the wall?” she went on.
Last night when they’d been critiquing those photographs, flickers had flown between them.
“Flat, corporate...”
“Impersonal,” she finished. “That’s where I’d hang a painting of you. It would bring personality to the whole room and really make it ours.”
“Yes...”
