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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 the staff at each were overjoyed to see Ethan. They reminisced about art openings and museum dedications. Holly felt completely out of place, with nothing to add to the conversations. But she held her own, making intelligent comments about the art on display.
Ethan didn’t mention anything about their upcoming nuptials. That announcement was for the gala. Instead he introduced Holly as a friend and painter from Florida whom he had been lucky enough to enlist for an upcoming commission.
Back in the town car again, they munched on the fancy sandwiches Ethan had had Leonard pick up from a gourmet shop. They discussed the paintings they had seen. Holly wanted two, and explained why she’d chosen them.
“If we had more time I’d have my brother send up some canvases that he’s storing for me,” she said. “If it was really our apartment I’d like to have my own work on the walls.”
“I would like that, too,” Ethan agreed, with such unexpected warmth it stretched at her heart.
He was masterful at throwing her off-kilter. When they’d been making breakfast that morning she’d had the feeling several times that he was going to kiss her. At one moment she had desperately hoped he would, while in the next she’d known she must turn away.
Ethan Benton was a bundle of inconsistencies.
Such a precise way he used a paper napkin to brush away imagined crumbs from the corners of his mouth. He was so definite about everything he did. Hobnobbing with gallery people or eating take-out lunch in the car—he did everything with finesse.
It wasn’t as if any crumb would dare stick to those glorious lips. Men who showered on planes didn’t get food on their faces.
Yet Holly knew there was something damaged underneath all Ethan’s confidence and class...
“Can I paint you?”
He contemplated the question as he slowly popped the seal on his bottle of artisan soda.
“You know those drab black and whites of the tree and the flower on the wall?” she went on.
Last night when they’d been critiquing those photographs, flickers had flown between them.
“Flat, corporate...”
“Impersonal,” she finished. “That’s where I’d hang a painting of you. It would bring personality to the whole room and really make it ours.”
“Yes...” he concurred with reluctance. “I suppose it would.”
In a flash, Holly understood his hesitation. People were often uncomfortable at the prospect of her painting them. It involved trust. They had to be reassured that she wasn’t going to accentuate their pointy nose or, worse still, the loneliness in their eyes.
A good portrait exposed someone’s secrets. What was it that Ethan was worried she would reveal to the world?
“Can I?”
“I doubt we could get a painting done in two days’ time.”
“Let me show you.”
Once people had seen Holly’s work, she was able to put them at ease. She pulled out her phone and thumbed to her website. “I don’t know if you saw these when you were on my site last night. But look. I don’t do a typical portrait.”
She showed him the screen. “I call them painted sketches. See how they’re a bit abstract? And not all that detailed? I would just catch the essence of you.”
He whipped his head sideways to face her. “What makes you think you know the essence of me?” he challenged.
Holly’s throat jammed at the confrontation. He was right. She didn’t know him. They’d met yesterday.
But she knew she could get something. Those big and expressive eyes. And, yes, there was some kind of longing behind them.
She might not know him, but she wanted to. This morning at breakfast he had been visibly shaken when she’d hinted at the hardships she’d endured. She had sensed some kind of connection there—a fierce similarity.
She hadn’t explicitly told him about the mother who had never consistently provided food for her children. She hadn’t mentioned the father who’d come around every couple of years with promises he’d never kept. How Holly had often had to fend for her younger brother and herself.
Yet the damage that dwelled behind Ethan’s eyes had made her want to lay her pain bare to him. And for him to lay all his beside hers. As if in that rawness their wounds could be healed.
But none of that was ever to be. They were business partners. Nothing more. Besides, she wasn’t going to make herself vulnerable to anyone ever again.
“Never mind.” She called his bluff. “I guess we won’t ever find out how much of the real you I could get on a canvas.”
One side of his mouth hiked. “I did not say no.”
“So you’ll let me paint you?”
“I will have you know right now that I have very little patience for sitting still.”
“You probably had to sit for family portraits with Aunt Louise and Uncle Mel, right? Dressed up in uncomfortable Christmas clothes by the fireplace? The dutiful family dog by your side? It was torture. You had to sit without moving for what seemed like an eternity.”
“I absolutely hated having to hold one position while a greasy bald man who smelled like pipe tobacco painted us.”
Flirty words tumbled out of her mouth before she could sensor them. “I promise I’ll smell a lot better than the bald man did.”
“No doubt.”
“And it won’t take long.”
“I think it might.”
Were they still talking about painting?
He lowered the glass separating them from the driver. “Leonard, we are going to change our next stop to Wooster and Broome.”
Leonard let them out in front of a painting supplies store the likes of which Holly had never been in before.
She ordered a lot of her materials online, because there were no shops in Fort Pierce that carried fine products like these. When she was low on money she’d make do with what was available at the local brand-name craft store, that also sold knitting yarn and foam balls for school projects.
She cowered at another memory of her ex-husband. As usual, Ricky hadn’t wanted to go shopping with her because he thought painting was silly and that she should spend more time going to motorcycle races with him.
Yelling at her to hurry up while she picked out some tubes of paint, Ricky had lost his patience. With a flick of his hand he’d knocked down a display of Valentine’s Day supplies. Heart-shaped cardboard boxes, Cupid cutouts and red and pink pompoms had crashed to the floor as Ricky stormed out of the store.
Humiliated, Holly had been left to make apologies and pay for his outburst.
It had been a few months later that she’d caught Ricky in bed with their neighbor. But she’d known that day in the craft store that she couldn’t stay married to him.
Now here she was, a million miles away in Soho, the mecca of the American art world, with another man who would never be right for her. Although in completely opposite ways.
Life had a sense of humor.
She chose an easel, stretched canvases in several sizes, new paint and brushes, and palettes and sketchpads, pastels and charcoals. All top-notch. This was the Holly equivalent of a kid in a candy shop.
At the checkout, Ethan opened up an account for her. “That way you can pick up whatever tools and materials you need for Benton projects.”
“My goodness...” Her eyes bugged out. “Thank you.”
“Of course, my dearest.” He winked. “And the next item on the agenda is buying my pretty fiancée some proper clothes.”
CHAPTER FIVE
“WHAT’S WRONG WITH my clothes?” Holly demanded as Leonard helped them out of the car in front of a Fifth Avenue shopping mecca.
“Not a thing. You do the artist with paint on her hands bit quite well. All you need is a French cigarette in your mouth and a beret on your head,” Ethan answered.
“Very funny.”
He laid his hand on the center of her back to guide her through the store’s revolving entrance door. Holly’s shoulders perked up at his touch.
“However,” he continued as they bustled through the busy sales floor, “there is the shareholders’ gala, and then there’ll be charity dinners and social occasions we will be attending. As we discussed, this arrangement necessitates an appropriate wardrobe.”
When they reached the Personal Styling department, an older blonde woman in a sleeveless black dress and pearls was awaiting their arrival.
“Are you Diane?” Ethan extended his right hand. “My assistant, Nathan, spoke with you earlier.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Benton.” Diane took his outstretched hand with both of hers.
“This is my friend Holly Motta.”
“Oh...” Diane gave her a limp handshake, taking notice of the paint under Holly’s fingernails.
“Hi!” Holly chirped.
She was going to have to get used to the surprise in people’s voices when they met her. Everyone probably knew Ethan as a wealthy playboy who dated fashion models and princesses of small countries. He’d have no reason to be with a mere mortal like her.
Ethan raised his eyebrows at Holly, which made her giggle and feel more at ease.
He peered straight into Holly’s eyes while he spoke to the other woman. “Diane, my friend will be accompanying me to numerous events. She is an artist, with little need for formal clothes. Can you help us outfit her in a way that stays true to her creative and unique self?”
Holly’s mouth dropped open. Could anyone have said anything more perfect? He wanted to buy her clothes but he didn’t want to change her.
Diane was stunned as well. “Cer...certainly,” she stuttered. “Can I offer you a glass of champagne?”
And thus began her trip to Fantasyland. While Ethan sipped bubbly on a purple velvet settee, Diane showed Holly into a private dressing room that was larger than all the fitting rooms in the discount shops she usually went to put together.
Six full-length mirrors were positioned to allow for a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view. The carpet was cream-colored, as was the furniture—no doubt chosen so as not to compete with the clothes. A vanity table with padded chair was ready for any primping needs. Hats, gloves, scarves and purses had been pre-selected and lay waiting in a glass display case. A collection of shoes stood neatly on a shoe rack. Jackets and coats hung from pegs.
Diane ducked away behind one of the mirrors.
Holly whistled out loud as she took it all in. And then laughed at her predicament. She’d overheard Ethan talking on the phone in the car about a Diane. And a Jeremy. He had prearranged the gallery visits and now this, too. And Holly had thought herself to be the taking-care-of-business type! She could take a lesson from him.
“We’ll start with daywear,” Diane announced as she wheeled in a rack of clothes.
Besides the fact that there hadn’t been any money when she was growing up, Holly had never been especially interested in clothes. She dressed functionally and comfortably, and ended up staining most everything with paint anyway. But if she had ever dreamt of wearing stylish garments made of luxurious materials these would be them.
The first ensemble Holly tried on was a white pantsuit. The slim line of the trousers made her legs look eight feet long. And the coordinating blazer with its thin satin lapels was both distinguished and chic. Worn with a navy silk shirt unbuttoned one notch past prim, the outfit delivered “sexy” as well.
Diane moved in quickly to pin the jacket’s waist for a trimmer fit.
She suggested Holly try a brown slingback shoe, then plucked the proper size from a stack of boxes waiting at the ready. Diane might be a bit snobby, but she sure as heck knew what she was doing.
“Perhaps you’d like to add a touch of lipstick?” Diane inquired—a polite way of reminding Holly that she’d need to attend to her makeup and hair.
Diane opened a drawer in the vanity table that contained a palette of options. Holly dabbed on some lip gloss, undid her ponytail and brushed her hair. Surveying herself in the mirror, she knew this was without question the best she had ever looked.
“Shall we show Mr. Benton?” Diane suggested.
When Holly stepped into the waiting lounge that seemed destined for wealthy boyfriends and mothers of brides, Ethan was busy typing into his phone.
He leaned comfortably back on the settee with one leg crossed over the other knee. Effortless elegance. Although the wavy reddish-brown hair that always had a bit of a tousle to it made sure hints of his untamed side came through.
Ethan glanced up. His eyes went through her and then right back down to his phone.
Holly was delighted as recognition gradually took hold. His jaw slackened. Eyebrows bunched. Nostrils flared.
Only then did his eyes rise up again for the double-take.
And take her in he did, indeed. Ever so slowly. From the tip of her head to the pointy toes of her designer shoes. His gaze was wicked. As if she was standing in front of him naked rather than dressed in this finery. The feeling thrilled and aroused her down to her core.
That smile made its way millimeter by millimeter across Ethan’s face. “My, my...”
“So you approve?” she flirted.
“To say the least.”
“Do you want to see more?”
Focused on the opening of her shirt, where perhaps that questionable button should have been closed but wasn’t, he sighed. “I would most definitely like to see more.”
She pivoted, and when her face was out of view from him let a satisfied grin explode. This was so much fun. She was long overdue for some harmless fun. Harmless, right?
Diane helped her into the next outfit and pinned it for alterations. Another silk blouse—this one black, with a square neckline and a gold zipper down the back—tucked into a tan pencil skirt. The look was dressy, but edgy.
Ethan’s reaction was all she could have hoped for as he lingered over the snug fit of the skirt across her hips.
Next, dark wash jeans tucked into boots and a flowing white blouse were complemented by Holly’s own black leather jacket.
“More,” Ethan demanded.
A crisp red dress with a pleated skirt, short sleeves and matching belt provided a timeless silhouette.
A silver satin cocktail dress draped her curves without being tight. At the sight of her in that one, Ethan shifted in his seat.
As a kid, Holly had sprouted up early and had always been the tallest girl in her class. She remembered feeling big and awkward. It had taken her years to train herself out of slouching her shoulders forward. Slim, but with hips wider than was proportionate to her small bustline, she’d never thought she wore clothes well.
Until today.
With Diane’s wizardry to pinch here and fold there, these clothes looked as if they’d been custom-made to flatter her perfectly.
In all, ten outfits were put together, ranging from casual to semi-formal. Extra pieces would be added to mix and match.
Ethan had promised that no matter what happened with their phony engagement the clothes would be hers to keep. That had meant nothing to Holly when he’d said it, but now she understood how important an offer that was.
In these outfits she was distinctive. They made a statement. The woman who wore them was someone to take seriously. These were clothes that were the epitome of good taste, that she could—and would—care for and wear for years to come.
But the pièce de resistance came when Diane brought out an evening gown for the black-tie shareholders’ gala. Tears unexpectedly sprang in Holly’s eyes at the artistry of it. She couldn’t fathom ever needing a dress so fancy.
It was a pearly sky-blue completely covered in hand-sewn crystals. Holly was surprised at how much the gown weighed. Sleeveless with a deep-scooped neck, it skimmed the floor until Diane had her step into coordinating high-heeled sandals.
Whether the dress complemented Holly’s icy blue eyes or her eyes enhanced the dress, it didn’t matter. There couldn’t be a more perfect gown.
She hoped Ethan liked it.
As she stepped into the lounge to model it for him, she wanted to be sure that she was wearing the gown rather than the gown wearing her. Standing up straight, with her shoulders back, Holly reminded herself of what she had learned from the posture correction videos that had helped her rid herself of her slump. Stand tall. Ribs over hips. Hips over heels.
She smiled demurely at Ethan as she approached.
He hiccupped as he almost choked on his sip of champagne.
Holly giggled. She high-fived herself in her mind. Mission accomplished.
She cooed, high on a unique rush of power she’d never known she had, “Do you still want to marry me?”
Ethan set his champagne flute down on the side table and cleared his throat. “You have no idea...”
“One more stop and then we will go to dinner,” Ethan said as he ushered Holly back into the car.
Leonard shut the passenger door, then went around to slide into his place behind the wheel. He deftly maneuvered them away from the curb to join the Fifth Avenue traffic.
Ethan was thinking ahead. “What else do you need for the gala? I assume you would like to have your hair and makeup done?”
“Please.”
“I will have Nathan book that.”
Holly held her hands up in front of her. There was often a rainbow of colors staining her fingers and nails, but today it was just the Cobalt Two Eleven leftover from last night’s spill. “And I think I need a manicure, don’t you agree?”