the perception of a fickle public.
There was no happiness there.
When and how had he started comparing her to his mother? He ought to be comparing her to her own. Actually, the truth of it was, he shouldn’t be putting this much thought into her either way. She was just the means to an end, and he was the same to her.
This wasn’t personal. Not between the two of them.
He ignored the kick in his gut that said otherwise.
The sense of accomplishment that filled Noelle when she moved the last piece of paper to her finished stack was silly, and she knew it. It had been an easy job, one that she was sure anyone with fingers could do, and yet, it was more than she’d pushed herself to do recently.
She’d been so determined to live in the past. All the time she spent still doing drills she could have used to learn any number of job skills. She simply hadn’t. Part of her hadn’t believed she could. But Ethan had believed in her. Enough to leave her in his office on her own, to trust her to do the work.
The door to the office opened and Ethan walked in. “I did it,” she said, not quite able to wipe the idiot grin off of her face.
“Good,” he said, not half as thrilled as she was.
“Thank you.”
The corners of his mouth turned down. “It’s nothing. My PA will be happy that she doesn’t have to do that today.”
“It was something to me.”
His eyebrows locked together. “You can do things, Noelle. You aren’t stupid. You aren’t handicapped in any way. You can do whatever you like. Don’t leave it up to the public to decide how much you’re worth.”
Did she do that? She supposed she had. She’d been so worried about what people might think … that was one reason she hadn’t gone and gotten a job. That and the lingering hope that someday she’d be able to fix things.
But she hadn’t fixed it yet. And she’d let things get too bad. So much of this had become her fault.
“You’re right.”
“Yeah, well, of course,” he said.
“Really. I could have done something. I didn’t.”
“Well you can do data entry for me if you like. It’s boring, but my PA thinks so too, so she’ll be glad to do other things.”
Noelle felt her throat tighten and then she just felt silly. Getting emotional over a desk job.
“Thank you.”
“It will allow you to be around the office more, which will be good as far as setting the stage for our wedding.”
She swallowed. “Yes, it will.”
“No working late, though. I plan on keeping you very busy at night.”
KEEPING her busy at night turned out to mean something very different from what she’d immediately thought. She was slightly embarrassed to admit, even to herself, exactly what her first thoughts had been.
But what he actually meant turned out to be something far beyond what she’d imagined.
“Australia?” she asked the next morning when Ethan stopped by. It was good for the staff to see him there, he said. Even better if they just thought he was leaving early after a night of unbridled passion.
“Yeah. I need you to come and meet my family, and in order to do that you have to come to my family’s home. Not my parents’ home. My grandparents’ home. I spent a lot of time there growing up.”
“That’s … that’s really nice.” She frowned. “I really don’t like the idea of lying to your grandparents.”
“I’m sure my grandfather half expects this. He’s controlling as hell, but I actually think he means well. He knows I’ll do the right thing, or at least the thing he asks of me. Which is more than he’s ever got from his own son.”
Ethan made it sound as if his parents were a lost cause, but at least he had his grandparents. She didn’t have that. Her father, an investment banker from Switzerland according to her mother, had left before her first birthday. And her mother’s antics had alienated Noelle’s grandparents long before she was born.
She couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to have that stability. Any stability.
“Do they … do they know about my mother and your father?”
“Odds are they do. He wasn’t exactly discreet.”
“Ethan, I’m …”
“Don’t.”
She stopped the apology from tumbling out and tried not to be too hurt by the hard tone of his voice. She cleared her throat. “But your grandfather … he’s good to you?”
Ethan shrugged. “Yeah. He’s tough, but that’s probably a good thing.”
Do it again, Noelle. You’re getting sloppy. Why was her mother’s voice still so loud? Just the memory of it made her hands ache. She remembered doing scales for hours, so long that she could hardly feel her fingers anymore, so that the action seemed disconnected from her body, divorced from conscious thought.
“Too tough isn’t always good,” she said, flexing her fingers to try and relieve the phantom pains.
“Too easy isn’t good either. No discipline? No control? Makes for a pretty worthless excuse for a human being.”
The venom in his tone surprised her. “And too much turns you into a machine repeating the same drills on the piano eight hours a day.”
“It’s a rare person who has too much discipline, Noelle. But you might fit under the heading.”
“You too, Ethan?”
He turned to face her, his dark eyes molten, hot, burning straight into her. “That remains to be seen, I think. Be prepared for my grandmother to grill you, by the way.”
She let out the breath she’d been holding and tried to smile. “This is going to be quite the dinner party.”
“This may be why I haven’t married yet.” He chuckled darkly. “My family is far too dysfunctional to inflict on anyone else. Of course, it may be me. If they’re as bad as all that, I can’t be much better.”
“You seem nice to me.”
“Well, that’s the thing, Noelle, you don’t really know me. If you did, you might feel differently. And you aren’t marrying me, not really. Not forever.” The look that flashed in his dark eyes was strange, pain-filled. It made Noelle’s stomach tighten.
“It’s
