blue eyes intent on his, an impact he felt all the way through his body. “Now … now I don’t even want things to go back to normal. But I just … I felt burned out. I was just so tired. This, having a chance to hold onto something, this at least makes me feel like I can fight. Like I have something to fight with.”
His chest felt strange. As if it had gotten smaller, or his heart had gotten larger. He didn’t like it. “You could learn something else.”
Her frame slumped. “I don’t know if I have the energy anymore. To devote myself to mastering something other than music, I mean. I’ve done that. Practicing, improving, every day without stopping since I was a child. It didn’t really get me anywhere, did it?”
He didn’t know why he felt compelled to try and offer her … something. Comfort maybe? He only knew that he did. “Very few people live their lives that way, Noelle. With drills and practice for eight hours a day, in addition to performing and promoting and traveling.”
“Are you telling me you work any less hard?” she asked.
“No, I work a lot. But I choose to. There are plenty of people who go nine to five, five days a week.”
She looked down, her throat working. “What if I can’t do anything else?”
Everything about his carefully laid plan, her being in the office, her being anywhere near him, suddenly felt wrong. Like he was joining in the queue of people who’d used her.
A bit too late to feel that way.
Much too late. And she was walking in with her eyes open.
“Of course you can. Here,” he slapped his palm on the leather back of the chair, “get in the chair.”
She sat back down, her expression confused. Damn, but she made him feel every inch the Big Bad Wolf to her Little Red Riding Hood. He didn’t really like the feeling.
He shoved his conscience to one side. He’d deal with it later. “Do you type?”
She grimaced. “Not really. Not fast.”
“Well, you’re going to learn.” He pulled out a stack of papers he’d set aside for his PA. “I want you to enter this into the computer. These are specs for different building plans. If you enter the numbers in these cells, the computer will do the math for you. You just enter it in.”
“I can do that.”
“Okay, do that. I’m going to go down the hall and make some phone calls, and I’ll be back to check on you.” Distance was definitely necessary.
He walked out of the office and closed the door behind him, his chest still tight. He didn’t know why it mattered, but he wanted to show Noelle that she could do something. Something other than doing drills every day for a career that had crumbled to nothing right in front of her.
More than that, he didn’t like what he saw in her eyes. That look that said she saw herself as a failure. He’d watched his mother go through that. Watched her pin her self-worth on 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.”