An Inconvenient Obsession (3 page)

“It was my pleasure.”

She moved subtly away from his heat. “I imagine the hospital will want to name their neonatal unit after you now.”

He ignored her attempt to put space between them, reclaiming her arm and expertly leading her to the sidelines while the band launched into another number. “I didn’t purchase it for them,” he said once they reached the periphery of dancing couples.

She chose her words carefully as she withdrew from his touch. “Well, I sincerely hope you enjoy your new property regardless.”

“Oh, I intend to,” he said beneath his breath, piercing her with another inscrutable stare.

As he’d surely planned, the remark rattled her, filling her mind with visions of him exploring another woman’s body on the private beach while waves lapped gently at the shore. Pain lanced her heart, lacerating her cherished memories of the two of them, together. In love.

His eyes remained unreadable while his voice deepened to a silky hum. “It’s a marvelous location for creating memories, don’t you think?”

Her stomach dipped as she backed away. “It certainly is.”

He remained undeterred, following her despite her retreat. “Or reliving old ones.”

Stumbling back, she offered a bright, brittle,
dismissive
smile. “The dance was lovely, Ethan, but I really must circulate. I’m shirking my duties as hostess.”

“I’m sure they all will understand your distraction.”

“Yes,” she hedged. “But I can’t have someone walking off with the wrong item or forgetting to leave a check in the appropriate amount.”

“Let your assistant take care of it.” His gaze caught hers, daring her to lie to him again. “That’s why you pay her.”

Cate flushed, the need to escape clamoring hard against
her chest. “She’ll need my help.” She staggered back an additional step, colliding with another couple. After making her embarrassed apologies, she turned to Ethan. “I can’t thank you enough. Really. We all appreciate your generosity and I’ll be sure to send the island paperwork to your lawyers tomorrow.”

“No.” He tracked her withdrawal. “I want the paperwork tonight.”

Her steps stalled while her hand fluttered up to her throat. “What?”

“I’d think the twenty-five million I bid grants me a little special treatment, don’t you?”

Wild panic pulsed beneath the surface of her skin. “But I don’t have it here. I keep it at home, in the safe.”

“Then we’ll go there when you’ve finished up.” He checked his watch. “I imagine things will wind down in a few hours, right?”

She couldn’t take him to her Long Island home. She couldn’t bear it. Desperate, she whirled to search for her assistant. “I’ll send Janine to pick it up. She’ll return before the night is over and save you the trip.”

“No.” He stepped close, looming over her while she made another distressed visual sweep of the ballroom. His heat burned her exposed flesh, as if she’d stepped too close to a flame. He dipped his head and his breath skimmed her ear. “We’ll go together after we’re done here.”

A jolt of fear careened through her at the words. “No, Ethan.” She swallowed, ducking away from his nearness. “I can’t. Please don’t ask.”

His grip upon her upper arms halted her escape. He hauled her close, his intent expression daring her to defy him. “It wasn’t a question, Cate. You want my twenty-five million, we fetch the paperwork together. Tonight. Understood?”

Trapped, her heart clubbing frantically against its cage of ribs, Cate whispered, “Why are you doing this?”

His lips crooked in a lazy smile while his grip softened to a near caress, his triumph gleaming hot within his eyes. “Because I can.”

Twisting free of his touch, of the domineering promise of pain in his victorious expression, Cate lurched backward. “No, you’re not. You’re doing this because you hate me.”

E
THAN
watched the woman who’d nearly destroyed him ten years ago, her color high and her steps unsteady as she tried to regain her composure. Seeing that he’d unnerved her, he felt a frisson of satisfaction bloom within his chest. She wasn’t immune to him, no matter what she’d claimed, and he intended to use the fact to his full advantage. By week’s end, he’d have her in his bed, and he’d savor every minute of his triumph over her. “Hate you?” he asked with a bland stare. “How could anyone hate you?”

“Stop it!” she hissed on a strained whisper. “I know what I did to you.”

“Cate.” He waited until she met his eyes and then lowered his voice to its most placating tone. “It was ten years ago. I survived.” Offering her a mocking grin, he leaned forward to confide, “Some even say I’ve flourished.”

Her eyes widened with the implications of his words, her lips dropping open into the tempting O he’d spent far too many memorable hours tracing with his fingers and tongue.

“I’m willing to let bygones be bygones.” He probed her distrustful gaze, marveling anew at the juxtaposition of outer beauty and inner cruelty. “Aren’t you?”

“I don’t believe you,” she breathed, her cheeks flaming with a distressed pink. “I was there, remember?”

He smiled grimly and raised the backs of his fingers to her cheek. “I was a boy, Cate. A deluded, naive boy.”

Her emerald eyes misted with distress. “But you weren’t. You were—”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, cutting her off. “It’s over.”

“Then why are you here?” she insisted. “You could buy any island, flirt with any—”

“Cate.” He pressed two fingers against her lush, pink lips while desire percolated low in his gut. “Regardless of what you might think, this has nothing to do with you or our past. I purchased the island as a gift for my father. To repay him in some small way for all he has done for me over the years.”

Looking chastened, and maybe even a little embarrassed, Cate flushed. “Oh.”

“Yes. Oh.”

She withdrew, biting her lower lip while avoiding his eyes. “Well. That’s good, then. I’m glad it will be going to him.”

“As am I.”

“How is he? Your father, I mean?”

“The same as always,” he said. “A bit older, of course, but still crotchety as hell.”

The barest hint of a smile flirted with the corners of her mouth. “I always liked that about him,” she said. “There was never any pretense with him.”

“Still isn’t,” Ethan agreed. “Dad doesn’t talk much, but when he does, he tells you the truth as he sees it.”

The comment seemed to relax her, as her features softened even more. “I still remember how he used to scold me. You’d have thought I was
his
child instead of Father’s.”

“He took his caretaking duties very seriously.”

“Yes. But he was in charge of the horses and the grounds. Not me.”

“Well,
somebody
had to corral you to keep you safe. We all knew you ran circles around poor Mrs. Bartholomew.”

“What do you mean,
poor
Mrs. Bartholomew? She adored me.”

“Spoiled you rotten is more like it.”

She smiled without reservation then, feigned pique and humor blending within the green depths of her gaze. “I was
not
spoiled.”

A lifted shoulder refuted the statement. “Indulged, then.”

She hiked her little chin, just as she had as a child. “I prefer to think of it as loved.”

Oh, yes, Cate. You know all about that, don’t you?
“Either way, you were more than she could handle.”

“Your father seemed to supplement her capabilities quite well.”

“Can you blame him?” Ethan asked. “You nearly gave him a heart attack when you catapulted off your horse that first day.”

She gasped in mock outrage. “I never
catapulted.”

“No?” he asked with an arched brow. “What would you call it then, when you practically broke your neck cartwheeling off the back of that bucking mare?”

“Oh, I don’t know. An energetic dismount, perhaps?” she asked, looking as mischievous as she had at age nine, when she was nothing but a rambunctious bundle of bony knees, shiny eyes and unkempt braids.

“A dismount,” he repeated in a flat tone.

Her grin deepened. “A mutually agreed upon separation?”

“You always could spin it in your favor, couldn’t you, Cate?” Fighting a reciprocal smile, he tried to reconcile the memories of the girl who’d stolen his heart with the woman who’d so callously thrown it away. How was it that she, in the space of mere minutes, could resurrect the past so easily? How was it that instead of her calculated cruelty and his anger, he was remembering her guileless smiles, her unfettered joy and
the ease with which she’d befriended him despite the distance between their social classes?

“Is your father still working with horses?” she asked, drawing him back to the present.

“I haven’t been able to convince him to retire, no matter how many times I’ve told him he doesn’t have to work anymore.”

A soft smile played about her mouth as she cocked her head. “I can’t imagine your father living a life of leisure.”

“That’s why I bought the island. I figure I can fill the stables again, give him work to keep him busy, and provide him the freedom to come and go as he pleases without having to clear it with an employer first.”

“I’m glad you won the bid.” Genuine approval shone in her gaze. “I like to think of your father there, working on the grounds and caring for horses again.”

“Yes.” Between their caretaking duties and Carrington’s retired show horses, Ethan and his father had been kept busy working long, grueling hours in the heat. But it had all been worth it, knowing Cate would soon arrive for her annual summer vacation. “When’s the last time you visited?”

Her smile dissipated and she dropped her gaze. “I haven’t been back for a long, long time.”

“Why not?” Back when he’d loved her, he’d counted the days until her return, hoarding their time together like a miser hoards his coins. “I thought you loved it there.”

“Just too busy, I guess,” she said, her eyes shadowed by a sweep of dark lashes.

“With what? Your charities?” It had never mattered how busy Ethan was, he’d always made time for her. He’d gone without sleep, without meals, just to steal another minute with Cate. He remembered how, on moonlit nights, he’d gallop down the pristine white beach after her, watching as her hair twisted in the breeze. Ethan had always allowed her to win
their clandestine races. And after he lost, he’d always paid whatever forfeit she demanded. Despite the warnings of his father, he’d always, always paid.

“Among other things,” she admitted in a low voice.

At first, she’d demanded the shells he’d collected, pink and white like her skin, their smooth insides as soft and smooth as he imagined her lips to be. He’d watch her as she dipped her head to listen to the roar of the sea within their spiraled centers, his heart aching and his hands hungry to touch. To feel. “What other things?” he asked, equally softly.

“I really need to mingle with the other guests,” she said, backing away and looking as if she, too, remembered the way they’d charted their future beneath the island sky. As if she, too, were remembering the way they’d moved from chaste kisses to heated explorations of each other’s adolescent bodies. They’d skirted the tenuous boundaries of her virginity too many times to count while arousal roared hot and ravenous within his ears.
When we’re married,
she’d promised as she arched beneath him.
When we’re married, we’ll make love. We’ll make babies and I’ll be yours in every way.

He’d believed her. He’d believed in the future he saw through Cate’s eyes, and her faith in him had shaped his goals for his life and their future. A future that fashioned them into two halves of the same whole.

It had never occurred to him that the future he planned was made of the insubstantial cobweb of dreams.

It never occurred to him that she’d lie.

But she’d broken that promise, just like she’d broken every other promise she’d made him. And he’d be damned if he allowed her to back out of another. Not when it was
he
who held the upper hand. Not when it was
he
who held the power. So he snagged her arm before she could escape into the crowd. “You won’t forget about the paperwork, right?”

Her nostrils flared while her neck grew taut. Pleasure fired
his veins as he saw her wrestle with her decision. “No,” she acceded on a thready exhale. “I won’t forget.”

“Good.” He checked his watch. “Shall we meet up at two?”

A worried frown marred the ivory skin of her brow as she tugged free of his grip. “Perhaps.”

“Two it is, then,” he said, infusing the word with just a hint of seductive intent.

“Goodbye, Ethan.” She gathered her composure around her like a mantle and abandoned him with her typical grace.

He allowed her to retreat. For now. She couldn’t escape him, and he’d be content to watch her squirm from a distance.

Squirming was good.

He was going to enjoy luring her close enough to crush her, until he left her trembling, vulnerable and wanting, just as she’d left him so long ago.

Still reeling from her conversation with Ethan, Cate tried to resume her duties as hostess for the fundraiser with little success. As she circulated, she found she couldn’t concentrate on the conversational topics swirling about her. She didn’t hear the music, she didn’t taste the champagne, nor would she have noticed if the catering staff had opted to walk off with the weighty Carrington silver flatware and gold-encrusted china that had been in the family for generations.

Ethan’s presence consumed her thoughts, making her poor company and causing her to lose count of how many guests she’d abandoned in midsentence.

“Cate,” whispered her assistant, her eyes glinting with eager speculation. “If you need to leave early, I can finish up here.”

Heat climbed Cate’s cheeks. “Why on earth would I need to leave early?” Her tone, despite its bright cheerfulness, did little to disguise her jittery nerves.

Janine’s brows arched high. “Ethan Hardesty just bought your island for ten times its value.”

“I know. Isn’t it wonderful?” Cate affected a breezy smile while ignoring the tightness in her chest. “I never dreamed we’d get twenty-five million for it.”