Surrender to the Past

‘How did you find me, Ethan?’

He looked at her from between narrowed lids. ‘When your father failed to do so in five years of searching?’ he taunted.

‘If that’s how long he looked, yes.’

Ethan grimaced. ‘We really should go somewhere more private to discuss this, Mia.’

Her mouth thinned. ‘I said no.’

Irritation darkened his brow. ‘We are going to talk, Mia.’

‘Whether I like it or not?’

‘Yes.’

CAROLE MORTIMER was born in England, the youngest of three children. She began writing in 1978, and has now written over one hundred and fifty books for Harlequin Mills & Boon®. Carole has six sons: Matthew, Joshua, Timothy, Michael, David and Peter. She says, ‘I’m happily married to Peter senior; we’re best friends as well as lovers, which is probably the best recipe for a successful relationship. We live in a lovely part of England.’

Surrender

to the Past

Carole Mortimer

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Peter

CHAPTER ONE

‘MIND if I join you?’

‘Please do. I’m finished here, anyway.’ The warmly polite words had already been spoken before Mia looked up, but the friendly smile curving her lips froze in place as she instantly recognised the man standing beside her booth in the crowded coffee shop.

How could she not recognise Ethan Black?

Big. Dark. Forceful. Arrogant. Magnetically attractive. Still …

Mia drew in a deep breath, chin tilting in challenge as she took in everything about him. It had been five years since she last saw Ethan, and his hair was still as dark as night, although it was styled much shorter than it used to be. Expertly so. His face was just as male-model handsome: wide, intelligent brow, penetrating grey eyes, sculptured cheekbones either side of a long straight nose, and a wickedly sinful mouth above a square and determined jaw. Although his mouth was unsmiling at the moment …

The same, and yet not the same.

Ethan would be thirty-one now, to Mia’s twenty-five, and that maturity showed in the cynical depths of his eyes that at the moment had all the colour and warmth of a bleak winter sky. His cheeks were thinner too, more hollow, and there were lines beside his eyes and mouth that hadn’t been there before either.

He was dressed in a black—obviously expensively tailored designer-label suit, with a black cashmere overcoat that reached mid-calf and drew attention to the handmade Italian shoes in soft black leather.

And he was nearly a foot taller than Mia’s own five feet four inches—she was getting a crick in her neck just from looking up at him!

‘Ethan.’ She nodded tersely, knowing her initial reaction would have been too obvious for her to even attempt to act as if she hadn’t recognised him.

Or realised that his presence at this particular coffee shop—the coffee shop Mia both owned and ran—couldn’t simply be a coincidence …

There was, Mia realised warily, a hardness about Ethan as he looked down at her—an unsmiling, haughty demeanour totally in keeping with those other changes she had noted in his appearance. A powerful arrogance that so reminded Mia of the man Ethan worked for. Mia’s father …

She raised her brows. ‘You’re supposed to buy the coffee and a cookie from the counter before you sit down.’

He shrugged, unconcerned. ‘And if I don’t want coffee or a cookie?’

Mia smiled ruefully. ‘Then you obviously made a mistake coming into an establishment called Coffee and Cookies!’

‘There was no mistake, Mia.’

‘Of course not,’ she accepted smoothly. ‘The omnipotent Ethan Black doesn’t make mistakes.’

Ethan eyed her coldly as he ignored the jibe. ‘Do you think we could go somewhere more … private and talk?’ He looked pointedly around the room, crowded with people laughing and chatting as they enjoyed their hot drinks and biscuits in the warmth of the cosy coffee shop.

‘’Fraid not.’ Mia’s light answer was completely bereft of apology as she closed the magazine she had been flicking through before his arrival. ‘My afternoon break is over and, as you can see, we’re a little busy right now.’

He didn’t move, effectively blocking her in the booth. ‘And I’m sure that as the owner you can take a break whenever you want to.’

‘Then obviously I don’t want to.’ Mia wasn’t in the least surprised that Ethan knew she owned the coffee shop; if he knew where to find her at four-thirty on a Thursday afternoon, then he would also have made a point of knowing she owned the coffee shop in which she could be found!

Ethan shrugged. ‘Then I’ll just sit here and wait until you finish work for the day.’

‘Not without buying coffee and a cookie, you won’t.’

‘Then I’ll do that,’ he retorted. ‘Or alternatively we can meet up somewhere once you’ve closed up for the day?’

Once upon a time—in another life!—Mia would have been delighted at the idea of meeting up with Ethan. Any time. Any place.

Once upon a time …

It sounded like the beginning of a fairytale. Probably because that was what her infatuation with Ethan had always been—nothing more than a complete flight of fantasy on Mia’s part!

She sighed. ‘How did you find me, Ethan?’

He looked at her from between narrowed lids. ‘When your father has failed to do so in five years of searching?’ he taunted.

Her mouth thinned. ‘If that’s how long he’s looked, yes.’

Ethan grimaced. ‘We really should go somewhere more private to discuss this, Mia.’

‘I said no.’

Irritation darkened his brow. ‘We are going to talk, Mia.’

‘Whether I like it or not?’

‘Yes.’

That was what Mia had thought! ‘Did my father send you?’

Ethan gave a hard smile. ‘No one “sends” me anywhere, Mia.’

‘Meaning you volunteered to come and talk to me, or that my father doesn’t even know you’re here?’ She eyed him sceptically.

‘Both.’ He was obviously not comfortable with the latter.

Mia eyed him warily. ‘If my father didn’t send you, then what possible reason could you have for being here, Ethan?’

‘I’ve already told you—because I want to talk to you,’ he muttered tersely.

‘And if I don’t want to talk to you?’

‘You appear to be doing so, whether you want to or not!’

Yes, she did. And Mia had no intention of continuing to do so. ‘I’m busy, Ethan.’ She stood up.

Ethan gave a glance around the café. It was designed to be as warm and cosy as someone’s sitting room, with comfortable armchairs grouped around low tables, and prints on the walls interspersed with plants trailing down from hooks fixed in the ceiling. The people sitting at those tables ranged in age from a mother and her young child—the latter obviously enjoying a hot chocolate with her cookie—several students from the university close by, who appeared to be working while they drank their coffee, to half a dozen or so older ladies, obviously meeting up for a chat in the late afternoon. Business, he noted abstractedly, was obviously thriving.

He turned back to look at the unmoving, grim-faced woman standing in the booth beside him. Mia had been twenty when Ethan had last seen her, with a prettily glowing face dominated by laughing green eyes, a nicely rounded body, and long straight hair the colour of ripe corn.

That softness was gone now. Her face was all hollows and angles, her body slim and toned—a fact only emphasised by the close-fitting black blouse and skin-tight black jeans. Her hair—that long and gloriously golden mane that had reached almost to her waist, and which Ethan clearly remembered falling softly, tantalisingly, across his bare flesh—was gone too. Although, he allowed grudgingly, the shorter, wispily feathered style certainly complemented the stark beauty of her face and emphasised the deep emerald colour of her eyes.

He gave a disbelieving shake of his head at the changes he saw in her. ‘What happened to you, Mia?’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘In what way?’

‘In every way!’ He scowled darkly. ‘You’re so changed in appearance that—’

‘My own father wouldn’t recognise me …?’ she finished dryly.

Ethan stilled. ‘I gather that was the point of the exercise?’

‘Of course.’

Ethan’s gaze raked over her critically. ‘William might not recognise you, but I do. With or without your clothes!’ he added.

Mia’s breath left her in a loud hiss. ‘That was uncalled-for!’

He gave a hard smile. ‘I take it you didn’t like my reference to the fact that we’ve been naked together?’

‘I want you to leave, Ethan.’ Her hands were clenched, her eyes glittering in warning. ‘Now!’

He looked down at her speculatively. ‘I never would have imagined you even working in a coffee shop, let alone owning one …’

‘And why is that?’ Mia bristled. ‘Did you imagine that the daughter of Kay Burton would be too frightened of breaking a nail if she actually worked?’

‘I never once confused you with your mother, Mia,’ he drawled softly.

Mia’s mother …

A beautiful and accomplished hostess. A social butterfly. Until the accident nine years ago that had not only robbed Kay of her beauty but the use of her legs …

Mia’s gaze fixed on Ethan. ‘If you don’t leave voluntarily in the next thirty seconds I’m going to call the police and have you forcibly removed!’

He looked at her in mock horror. ‘On what grounds?’

‘How about making a public nuisance of yourself? And I’m sure if I were to call the newspapers at least one of them would just love to come along and take pictures of Ethan Black being ejected from a coffee shop,’ she taunted.

His mouth tightened and his eyes drew into icy slits of grey. ‘Are you threatening me?’

‘Does it sound as if I am?’

‘Yes!’

‘Then I probably am,’ Mia confirmed.

‘You do realise that even if I agree to leave now I’ll only come back later?’

Oh, yes. Mia realised that … Having finally succeeded in finding her, she very much doubted that Ethan was now going to just walk away without saying exactly what he had come here to say …

It had been five years, for goodness’ sake. Five years during which—as Ethan had just pointed out so cuttingly—Mia had changed almost beyond recognition. And those changes weren’t just physical …

Five years ago she had been totally infatuated—in love with Ethan. An interest he had briefly—very briefly—seemed to reciprocate. That mutual interest had come to an abrupt end when Mia’s mother died suddenly and Mia became aware of the fragility upon which her world had been built. A world she had thought so bright with possibilities suddenly made bereft and uncertain …

‘Please yourself,’ she dismissed dryly.

‘I usually do.’

‘Why am I not surprised?’ Mia gave his own changed appearance another scathing glance. ‘Working for my father all these years has not only resulted in you looking and dressing like him, but also talking like he does too—as if you’re God Almighty!’

Ethan snorted his impatience. ‘Insult me all you wish, Mia, but let’s leave your father out of it.’

‘Fine with me. You have ten seconds of the thirty left, Ethan.’ Her expression remained unrelenting.

His mouth thinned, and he looked as if he would like to add more before nodding abruptly. ‘As I said, I’ll be back.’ It was more of a warning than a promise.

A warning Mia had no intention of heeding. ‘Obviously I’m not going to say it was good seeing you again.’

‘I remember a time when you couldn’t wait to see me.’ His hard eyes swept over her with slow deliberation. ‘All of me …’

The colour rose in Mia’s cheeks as she was reminded of just how well she had once known this man. ‘Just leave, will you, Ethan?’

He gave a mocking inclination of his head. ‘For the moment.’

Mia watched in frustration as Ethan turned on one leather-shod heel and walked confidently over to the door, turning briefly so his glittering silver gaze met Mia’s across the room once more in challenge, before he stepped outside and closed the door quietly behind him.

At which point all of Mia’s outward bravado left her like the air from a deflating balloon and she began to hyperventilate. She had to rest her hands supportively on the table-top as her knees began to shake …

‘Are you feeling all right, Mia?’ Dee, the nineteen-year-old Mia employed to help out with the serving, gave her a concerned glance as she cleared the neighbouring booth.

Was Mia feeling all right? No, came back the definitive answer. The last thing Mia was feeling was all right!

It had been five long years, damn it! And Ethan had just walked back into her life as if he had never left it. Worse—that last threat confirmed that he had no intention of leaving it again until he had said what he wanted to say to her.

‘I think I need to go outside for some air.’ She gave Dee a wobbly smile. ‘Can you and Matt manage here for a while longer?’

‘No problem,’ Dee assured her readily.

Mia stood up to move quickly through the coffee shop and out to the kitchen, grabbing up her short leather jacket and hurrying out through the back door to breathe in large gulps of the fresh September air before moving away from the coffee shop as if rabid dogs were at her heels. Or Ethan Black …

Ethan.

The man Mia had fantasised about for years until he had finally asked her out and every one of those fantasies had become reality.

The man she had once believed herself to be deeply in love with.

The same man Mia had just discovered was still capable of making her aware of every disturbing thing about him just by being in the same room with her!

CHAPTER TWO

‘I THOUGHT you were in a hurry to get back to work?’

Mia hadn’t even realised she was being followed as she hurried into the park at the end of the street, but she now came to an abrupt halt on the gravel pathway, eyes closing tightly, shoulders stiff, her jaw clenched, hands fisted at her sides, as Ethan spoke softly from just behind her.

All those years of silence. Of peace. And now she was being hounded by one of the very people she had so desperately needed to get away from. To the extent that Mia knew she would never be able to come to this park again without recalling Ethan’s presence here, too.

‘Mia …?’

She drew in a deeply controlling breath, smoothing her expression into one of mild uninterest before slowly turning to face Ethan.

‘I could add harassment to that list of charges.’ She eyed him defiantly.

To Ethan she had looked so very different inside the coffee shop. Not only looked different but acted differently too—like a distant stranger. But he could see traces of the old Mia in her now—in the depths of her eyes, the soft curve of her mouth, and the vulnerable tilt of her chin.

‘I’m sure the police would have no interest in a stepbrother visiting his long-lost stepsister.’ Ethan knew before he had finished speaking that it had been the wrong thing to say. Her eyes chilled over with obvious distaste at that connection between the two of them.

‘You aren’t my stepbrother, Ethan, because I disowned what was left of my family before your mother married my father four and a half years ago! And I wasn’t lost—I just didn’t want to be found. I still don’t,’ she added flatly.

‘Too late!’

‘Obviously.’ She continued to eye him coldly.

Ethan knew that it was going to be up to him to stop baiting her in this way if this wasn’t to develop into nothing more than a slanging match. Mia’s resentment about the past was still such that it wasn’t just going to evaporate during the course of one conversation. One conversation badly handled on his part, he acknowledged heavily.

He had been thrown slightly off-balance earlier, when he’d walked into the coffee shop and recognised Mia sitting in a booth at the back of the room reading a magazine. A Mia so changed, but at the same time so confident in the world she had created for herself, that for one heart-stopping moment Ethan had almost hesitated about disturbing her obvious contentment. Almost …

He gave a grimace. ‘Could we start again, do you think …?’

‘Where would you like to start from?’ Her eyes glittered like emeralds in the pallor of her face. ‘Perhaps when I first became a sixth-form pupil at the boarding school of which your widowed mother was headmistress? Or after your mother’s affair with my father, perhaps? Or when you conveniently got a job working for Burton Industries—my father’s firm—once you’d left LSE with your first-class master’s degree and a PhD? With hindsight you have to have realised the significance of that …?’

‘The possibility I was only employed at Burton Industries because of my mother’s … connection to your father?’ Ethan drawled dryly. ‘It crossed my mind, of course—’

‘I’m sure it did!’

‘And was as quickly dismissed,’ he bit out harshly. ‘I’m going to say this only once more, Mia—my mother wasn’t involved with your father before you went to Southlands School. Nor did their later friendship have anything to do with my getting a job at Burton Industries.’

She smiled humourlessly. ‘And “once more” I’m going to choose not to believe you!’

‘Why am I not surprised?’

‘Perhaps because to you at least I was always so predictable!’

He gave an impatient sigh. ‘I was head-hunted by dozens of companies when I left university, Mia. Burton Industries were lucky to have me.’

They probably were, Mia conceded grudgingly; Ethan’s qualifications had never been in question. Or his ambition. It was only the lengths he was willing to go to in order to achieve those ambitions that had become so glaringly questionable. Lengths which involved the once innocent and naively trusting Mia.

She had wondered five years ago—at the same time as she’d thanked her good fortune!—how she had ever been lucky enough to attract the attention of someone like Ethan Black. The epitome of tall, dark and handsome, he could—and usually did—have any woman that he wanted. Mia may have been the only daughter of multi-millionaire William Burton and beautiful socialite Kay, but beneath the fashionable designer-label clothes her mother had insisted on buying for her Mia had also been terribly shy, and merely pretty rather than beautiful, like the women Ethan was usually attracted to.

Once she’d learned of Ethan’s mother’s affair with her father, the reason for Ethan’s attraction had become obvious: Grace had made a play for the father, Ethan the daughter. One of them was sure to succeed.

‘And let’s call our parents’ past relationship the nasty little affair that it really was, shall we?’ Mia’s top lip turned back with distaste.

‘I told you it wasn’t like that—’

‘I’m really not interested, Ethan.’

‘No—because you prefer to twist events to suit your own warped take on what really happened five years ago.’

‘Nothing of what I eventually learnt about that situation suited me, Ethan,’ Mia assured him furiously. ‘Certainly not the realization that the only reason my father had chosen that particular boarding school to send me to in the first place was so that he had an excuse to visit his mistress. That’s quite a play on words, don’t you think? My headmistress was also my father’s mistress—’

‘Stop it, Mia!’ Ethan reached out to grasp the tops of her arms and shake her. ‘Just stop it!’

‘Let go of me, Ethan,’ Mia gasped. ‘You’re hurting me!’

His fingers tightened rather than relaxed, her leather jacket proving no barrier to the pain of his fingers biting into her arms.

‘I’m hurting you?’ He thrust her firmly away from him, his gaze raking over her mercilessly. ‘Do you have any idea—any idea at all—of the heartache you caused your father—have continued to cause him—by just disappearing in that way five years ago?’

‘But I’m sure my leaving didn’t affect you in the same way—did it, Ethan?’ she murmured scornfully.

‘Would you believe me if I were to say yes?’

‘No.’

His mouth tightened.

‘God, I was such an innocent. Such a fool!’ She gave a pained groan.

‘Because you were attracted to me?’

‘Because I was stupid enough to think that you were attracted to me!’

He frowned darkly. ‘I was attracted to you—’

‘Oh, please, Ethan.’ Mia gave a fierce shake of her head. ‘What you were attracted to was my father’s bank account and Burton Industries. You and your mother, both!’

‘I should be careful what you say next, Mia …’ Ethan’s tone was icy with warning.

A warning Mia had absolutely no interest in. ‘At least I had the good sense to get out. Whereas my father—’

‘I said stop, Mia.’

‘It’s really not important now anyway.’ She gave an uninterested

shrug. ‘Five years later you both appear to be exactly where you always wanted to be—your mother is married to my father and you’re running Burton Industries!’

Ethan’s face looked as if it had been carved out of stone. ‘You really do believe that’s all I wanted all along?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Mia assured him with feeling. ‘You’ve always done exactly what was in the best interests of Ethan Black! And—to set the record straight—I didn’t disappear five years ago. I left.’

‘You disappeared, damn it!’ Ethan grimaced. ‘Just dropped out part-way through your second year of university, dropped me, and left!’

‘I was twenty years old. And, unless I’m mistaken, in this country that’s classed as being an adult, capable of making your own decisions. Besides, I left my father a note—’

‘“Don’t bother looking for me because you won’t find me.”’ Ethan quoted disgustedly. ‘What the hell sort of letter is that to leave anyone—least of all the man who had loved and cared for you since the day you were born?’

Mia’s eyes narrowed. ‘Even that was more than he deserved!’

‘More than he deserved …?’ he repeated softly.

‘Yes!’ She didn’t at all care for the revulsion she could read in Ethan’s expression. ‘And I only left him that much so he wouldn’t decide to report me as missing to the police!’

‘And what about me, Mia? What did I deserve? The two of us were dating, sleeping together, when you decided to pull that disappearing act!’

‘It was the boss’s daughter you were sleeping with, Ethan. Not me,’ she dismissed scathingly.

‘That isn’t true.’ Ethan frowned.

‘Whether it’s true or not is unimportant—now as well as then. Just knowing of your connection to the woman who helped to make a fool of my mother was—and still is—enough reason for me never to want to see or hear from you ever again,’ Mia stated flatly.

Ethan drew in a ragged breath. ‘Okay, let’s forget about our own relationship if it makes you happy—’

‘Oh, it does!’

‘But William is your father—’

‘Something—along with you and your mother—I’ve been trying to forget for the past five years!’ She turned her back on him to walk away, and sat down on a wooden bench looking out over the parkland. She was hoping that Ethan wouldn’t follow her, but was not altogether surprised when, after a few seconds’ hesitation, he walked that same short distance and sat on the other end of the bench.

The two of them sat in uneasy silence for several long minutes.

‘He didn’t report you missing but he—we certainly looked for you.’ Ethan finally broke that silence, his voice huskily soft.