of her in every possible way.
Once again he had to chastise himself sternly. He had merely hired her to perform a service. For which she would be paid very well. With that opportunity she would be able to find whatever she’d come to New York to get. She didn’t need him.
The agony of that shocked him. A reminder to guard and defend.
Holly handed him the carton of eggs. She gave him a bowl. “Four.”
Finding a cutting board and a knife, Holly sliced cheese while Ethan cracked eggs. They stood side by side at their tasks, each dependent on the other in order to get the job done. Ethan appreciated teamwork. That was what made Benton Worldwide, and every other successful venture work. It must be the same in a marriage.
Two bagels were halved and popped into the toaster.
“Frying pan?” she mused to herself, and quickly moved to his other side to find one.
His mind flipped back to the past. To Aunt Louise and Uncle Melvin. It had been almost ten years since they’d done the normal things that married couples did. Mel had died over five years ago. Before that recurrences of his cancer had often had him bedridden. But they’d had moments like these. Hundreds, even thousands of cozy day-to-day moments like preparing breakfast.
Those moments strung together added up to a life shared between two people.
In reality, with their success and privilege it was not as if Aunt Louise and Uncle Mel had often been in the kitchen frying up eggs. But they had always cooked Sunday supper together whenever they could. It had been one of their signatures.
Ethan had potent memories of the two of them together as a couple. The way they’d been with each other. Even if it they had just been at the front door on the way out, helping each other layer on coats, scarves and hats to brave the Boston winter. How they’d maneuvered around each other. With effortless choreography. Totally at ease with each other, aware of each other’s moves, each other’s needs, each other’s comforts.
He understood why Aunt Louise so wanted that same security for him. Why she was concerned with the way he jetted around the globe, working all the time, never stopping, never settling. The wisdom of age had shown her what might happen to a man who didn’t balance power and labor with the other things that made life worth living. Family. Love.
But his aunt should accept that after all Ethan had been through love wasn’t an option for him. He would never open his heart. Her destiny wasn’t his. Yet he couldn’t blame her for wishing things were different. That his past hadn’t defined his future.
In reflection, Aunt Louise had valued her relationship with Uncle Mel above everything else in her life. She’d had a love so true it had never let her down.
Unlike him.
This ruse was the best solution. If the knowledge that Ethan was engaged to be married made Aunt Louise happy, and put her mind at ease, then he’d have taken good care of her. Ethan was in charge of all decisions now, and he wanted them to be in his aunt’s best interests.
He and Holly sat down at the table with their breakfast. Just as she had with the pizza last night, she dug in like a hungry animal. She took big bites and didn’t try to disguise her obvious pleasure.
Ethan asked if maybe she had gone hungry as a child.
“My mother was...unpredictable.”
Something 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