really giving a damn.
“Twenty minutes into the party and I have two potential clients flying to Minneapolis next week for meetings,” he said, brushing a kiss to her ear. “You’re amazing.”
He looked calm, relaxed and deadly handsome in white pants and black polo shirt, and Mary felt a strange sense of pride, as if they were actually together. “It’s not me, it’s the mojitos,” she joked.
“No, it’s you,” he insisted, his blue eyes flashing with admiration. “Or maybe it’s me around you.”
“That’s a nice thing to say,” Mary said a little shyly, trying to ease her hand from his in case anyone was watching them. She didn’t want to give anyone the wrong idea, especially Ethan. She had never been the kind of woman to have expectations, and no matter how much she wanted to curl into this man and whisper her feelings against his chest, she wasn’t about to lay that kind of pressure on him. She may have come to a realization last night about what she had been missing, what she wanted now and how they’d both been stuck in a past that had ruled their actions. But Ethan might not have come to any realizations except that the two of them had just had great sex.
Whatever his beliefs, Ethan held firm to Mary’s hand as they walked over to the bar, greeting guests along the way. It was odd. In all the years Mary had been one of NRR’s partners, she’d never felt like an actual wife to a client, or wanted to be, until today. For brief moments she even caught herself imagining that she and Ethan were a couple as they circled the crowd.
“I should go and speak with the chef,” she told Ethan after about twenty minutes of crowd watching. “We’re running low on a few things.”
Ethan nodded but didn’t release her hand immediately. “Before you go, I have to ask you something.”
“Okay.”
“I feel like an ass-a romantic ass.”
“A whole new thing for you?”
“You bet.” Chuckling, he drove a hand through his hair. “Will you stay with me tonight?”
Pleasure circled her belly, and she grinned at him. “I seem to remember us agreeing to something…after the party ended.”
He gave her a mock scowl. “No idea what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you do. Should I refresh your memory?”
“If you say one word about that conversation, I’ll have to take drastic action.”
Biting her lip to keep from laughing, she said, “After the party ended we were both supposed to-”
Before she could say another word, Ethan hauled her into his arms and kissed her hard and quick. “Don’t make me take this to an obscene level in front of all these people,” he warned against her mouth. “I’ll ruin my reputation.”
Mary laughed, a warm, rich sound that totally conveyed how happy he was making her in that moment. “Wasn’t I supposed to take off just as soon as the last guest departed?”
“Oh, you asked for it,” he said wickedly, taking her hand and slipping behind the bar where it was shady and devoid of party guests.
In seconds Mary had her arms around his neck as he kissed her with all the passion of the night before. When they finally came up for air, Ethan’s eyes were glazed and hot and his voice was ragged with emotion. “Whatever we have going here, I want more of it.”
All she could do was kiss him, passionately and without holding back.
He held her face in his hands. “Tell me you want that, too.”
“I want that, but I’m a little scared.”
“Of what?”
“All that’s happened.”
“That’s over, Mary. Can’t we decide to forget about it and leave it in the past?”
“I think we’ve both left too much in the past. Don’t you think it’s time to deal with it?”
His brow furrowed with frustration just as a loud trill erupted from Mary’s pants pocket. With a quick look of apology, she grabbed her cell phone and flipped it open. “Hello.”
“Mary, it’s your grandmother.”
“Grandmother, how are you?”
“Your grandfather has died.”
Her heart sunk into her stomach. “What?”
“The funeral is Tuesday. You’ll be here?”
“Yes, of course,” she said quickly, uncomfortable with her grandmother’s unemotional way of giving news. “How did it-”
“I will see you Tuesday,” Grace continued brusquely. “St. Agnes, downtown. 10:00 a.m.”
She hung up almost immediately after Mary said that she would see her at the church. Still in shock, Mary gripped the phone in her fist and stared at the sand.
“What’s wrong?” Ethan asked gently.
“My grandfather died.” Why was she feeling so blown away? She and Lars Harrington had never been close, but for some reason the news of his death reminded Mary of her mother’s death, and of how short life really was.
“I’m sorry,” Ethan said soberly. “How did it happen?”
“I have no idea.”
He didn’t push her for more. “When are you leaving?”
“Right away. Tonight.”
He nodded. “I’m going with you.”
“No,” she said quickly, not sure why she didn’t jump at the offer, but sensing in her gut that Ethan Curtis around her family right now might not be the greatest idea. “You have business to finish up here, people to see and deals to make. It’s the reason why we came to Mackinac Island in the first place.”
“All of that can wait a few days.”
She eased away from him, from his embrace and the intimacy they’d shared only moments ago. “And lose momentum? No way. It was our plan, anyway, that I was going to leave today and you were going to stay. Let’s stick with the plan, for now anyway.”
Ethan wasn’t a mysterious man; he said what he thought and didn’t apologize for it. With an understanding but not altogether amused grin, he said, “You’re almost as good at this as me.”
“Good at what?”
“Pretending you don’t give a damn.”
They said nothing further as they walked back into the eye of the party.
The cemetery looked like an English garden, with buckets of daisies and vases of tulips and roses everywhere you looked. The woman next to Mary at the grave site had been nervous about what to say to Lars Harrington’s granddaughter. She had bypassed the usual offers of sympathy and instead had gone on to explain that Sunday was the heaviest day for visitors to the cemetery, and that all the guilty relatives brought flowers. After a quick, tight- lipped smile to the woman, Mary had moved to the opposite side of the grave, to stand alongside her grandmother, aunt and cousins.
As the priest spoke, Mary gripped the stems of her lilacs-a flower her grandmother had always called “peasant flora” as they grew in just about anyone’s backyard-recalling the day that she and her father had buried her mother. The weather had been far better than today, full sunshine and a heavy breeze, but the mood felt similar and, Mary noticed, some of the same crowd was there. But no one except Mary and Hugh had shed a tear that day, no one had left that cemetery broken the way they had.
Staring at the casket as it was lowered into the ground, Mary wondered if she’d actually healed from that whole ordeal: the illness and the loss. She’d always been so worried about fixing her father and helping him to get over his grief that she hadn’t even looked at her own. No wonder she’d allowed herself to take that deal of Ethan’s-she’d been a little out of her mind.
Ethan. Warmth spread through her and she wrapped her arms around herself. She missed him, missed sparring with him, lying in his arms, feeling alive. It had been a few days since she’d spoken to him, since he’d kissed her goodbye at the ferry and returned to the island.
Mary glanced up and spotted Tess and Olivia standing next to the woman who’d voiced the inappropriate cemetery comment. The two women looked quiet and sad, and even though she hadn’t asked them to attend, Mary
