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‘Don’t bother with the “we”, Ethan,’ she cut in dryly. ‘My father may have been too lovestruck by your mother to have realised it, but I certainly know that it wasn’t in your best interests for me to be found.’
‘Another piece of your own unique logic?’
‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘Once I had been removed from the equation it allowed both you and your mother to move in on my father.’
‘Damn you—’
‘No doubt,’ Mia accepted ruefully.
‘Okay, I can see there’s no reasoning with you on the subject of my mother or me—but what about your father?’
‘What about him?’
‘How could you just turn your back on him in that way?’ Ethan gave an impatient shake of his head. ‘William searched for you for months. Years! No lead was too small for him to follow up. No possible sighting of you too ridiculous for him to investigate.’
Mia didn’t so much as glance at him. ‘And to think that I never left London.’
‘You—?’ Ethan gave a disbelieving shake of his head. ‘You were here in the city all the time?’
‘Yes.’ She gave a humourless smile. ‘Don’t look so shocked,
Ethan; haven’t you heard that the best way to avoid detection by the enemy is by staying right under his nose!’
‘None of us were ever your enemy.’
‘No?’
‘No!’ Ethan eyed her in frustration. ‘Damn it!’ He began to pace. ‘So where exactly were you in London?’
Mia’s cheeks warmed at his obvious disgust. ‘I stayed with friends for the first couple of months.’
‘We—William contacted all of your friends to see if any of them had seen or heard from you and they all said they hadn’t!’
She raised her brows. ‘They were my friends, Ethan, not his.’
‘With friends like that …!’ His jaw tightened. ‘Where did you go after you left these so-called friends?’
‘I bought an apartment, took some classes, and then a couple of years ago I opened the coffee shop.’
‘What sort of classes? William checked every year with all the universities to see if you were attending any of them,’ he added with a frown.
‘I enrolled in a very reputable cookery school right here in London, Ethan,’ Mia announced with satisfaction.
‘Cookery school …? You actually bake the cookies in Coffee and Cookies yourself?’
She almost laughed at the disbelief in Ethan’s expression. Almost. But even knowing she had managed to totally bemuse the arrogant Ethan Black wasn’t enough reason for Mia to feel like laughing today. Nor was it reason enough to tell him that she not only baked cookies for her coffee shop but also for a couple of very upmarket specialist food stores in London …
‘My maternal grandmother, as well as leaving me the hefty trust fund that my father so conveniently signed over to me on my eighteenth birthday, also taught me to bake. I’m good at it,’ she added defensively as Ethan just continued to stare at her.
‘I’m sure that you are.’ Ethan finally nodded slowly. ‘But it’s a drastic change from the economics you were studying before you dropped out.’
She grimaced. ‘That was always my father’s choice, not mine.’
‘Because he expected you to take over Burton Industries one day?’
‘Probably,’ Mia acknowledged. ‘How lucky for him that you came along so conveniently to fill the breach.’
Ethan drew in a hissing breath. ‘Bitter and twisted doesn’t suit you, Mia.’
Her eyes flashed a deep dark green. ‘This is me being a realist, Ethan, not bitter and twisted.’
‘You closed your bank account two days after you left. We all thought you must have gone abroad somewhere.’
Mia gave another shrug. ‘Because that’s what you were all supposed to believe.’
‘That was unbelievably cruel, Mia.’
Her eyes glittered. ‘You don’t know the meaning of the word!’
‘Oh, believe me, I’m learning fast,’ Ethan assured her grimly.
Mia fell silent, not looking at Ethan but at the people in the park—some walking their dogs, others taking their children home from school. All such everyday occurrences, sights and people Mia saw every day whenever she came to the park to eat her lunch, and yet Ethan’s presence here made this totally unlike a normal day for her …
She turned to look at him where he sat on the other end of the bench, her heart tightening in her chest at the bleakness of his expression as he stared straight back at her.
He was more attractive than he had ever been, Mia grudgingly admitted. Those outward signs of maturity gave him a dangerous edge and that aura of arrogant self-confidence only added to the impression of danger.
Her chin rose. ‘I forgot to congratulate you earlier. On your promotion,’ she explained at Ethan’s questioning glance. ‘It was announced in the newspapers several months ago that you were made CEO of Burton Industries.’
He looked at her through narrowed lids. ‘And did you also see in the newspapers the circumstances under which I became CEO of the company?’
Mia turned away from that piercing silver gaze. ‘Because my father had a heart attack.’
‘You knew William had been ill?’ Ethan stared at her incredulously.
‘Yes,’ she confirmed flatly.
‘And yet you still didn’t go to see him?’ Ethan made no effort to hide his disgust now. Mia had known—all the time she had known about William’s heart attack—and she hadn’t even bothered to telephone her father, let alone go to see him …
Her sighed heavily. ‘Obviously not.’
‘What if he had died, Mia, and you never saw him again?’
Mia tried not to shudder at the thought. As much as her father had hurt her badly, she still questioned whether she had done the right thing. But Ethan didn’t need to know that, so she shrugged. ‘I have no intention of ever seeing him again.’
‘And what if I were to tell you that it was another erroneous sighting of you that caused his heart attack?’
‘It’s been five years, Ethan—don’t try and lay that guilt trip on me!’
‘Five years or fifty—your father will never stop loving you. Never stop looking for you!’
Her expression remained unrelenting. ‘I’m not, nor have I ever been—obviously!—answerable for anything my father may or may not choose to do.’
Ethan looked at her for several long, tense seconds before standing up abruptly. ‘I’m wasting my time even trying to talk to you, aren’t I?’ It was more a flat statement than a question.
‘I’m glad you’ve finally realised that.’ Mia looked up at him unemotionally.
He gave a shake of his head. ‘Obviously the changes in you aren’t just on the surface, but go all the way to your selfish and bitter little heart!’
‘How dare you …?’ Mia gasped.
Ethan looked down at her as if he had never seen her before. ‘You were so beautiful, so sweet and trusting—’
‘Well, I certainly had that knocked out of me, didn’t I?’ She eyed him wearily.
‘Are you referring to me or to your father now?’
‘Both!’
‘Forget about me—’
‘Oh, let’s!’
Ethan gave an impatient shake of his head. ‘William did everything for you. Loved you. Damn it, he adored you—’
‘And then he betrayed everything I believed about him by having an affair with your mother!’ Mia finished heatedly as she stood up to face him. ‘And just because the two of them finally married each other it doesn’t make your mother any more my stepmother than it makes you my stepbrother! None of those things changes the fact that long before my mother died my father was involved in an affair with your own mother.’
‘It wasn’t like that. You make it sound so—’
‘Sordid?’ she suggested. ‘Maybe that’s because it was sordid. My mother was in a wheelchair for the last four years of her life, and all the time my father and your mother—’
‘I’ve told you—it wasn’t all the time.’ His eyes glittered. ‘They didn’t even know each other until after you started attending Southlands School.’
Mia gave an inelegant snort. ‘You really expect me to believe that?’
‘I’m telling you how it was—’
‘And beware anyone who dares to disbelieve the arrogant and powerful Ethan Black?’ She eyed him mockingly.
‘This isn’t about me, Mia. And it isn’t about you, either,’ he added grimly, cutting her off as she was about to speak. ‘Yes, your father and my mother made the mistake of falling in love with each other while your father was still married, but they didn’t do anything about those feelings until after your mother died. I know you would rather believe otherwise, but—’
‘My God, I can’t believe you actually fell for any of that sanctimonious rubbish they spouted after my mother died.’ She looked at him with pity. ‘That whole story of how the two of them fell in love but fought against their feelings! I always gave you credit for having more intelligence than to believe something so lame, Ethan.’
He eyed her derisively. ‘From what I’ve observed of the emotion, intelligence has very little to do with falling in love.’
‘The two of them were together on the day my mother killed herself, Ethan,’ she continued fiercely. ‘They were together at your mother’s house while my mother sat at home and downed a bottle of sleeping pills with a bottle of wine!’
He winced. ‘Your mother didn’t even know about their friendship.’
‘How can you possibly know that?’ Mia scorned. ‘She didn’t so much as leave a note, so how can anyone know what my mother was thinking when she swallowed that bottle of pills?’
Ethan hesitated, thinking of the promise William had extracted from both himself and his mother never to tell Mia of the real circumstances behind her mother’s death, or the letter Kay had left for him. It was a promise they had both kept for the past five years. But at what price …?
He bit back his frustration. ‘I’m sorry your mother did what she did, but you have to believe that it had nothing to do with the friendship that existed between my mother and your father.’
‘I don’t have to believe anything, Ethan.’ Her face had paled to a ghostly white.
Damn it, Ethan hadn’t come here to hurt Mia. Just like William, Ethan had never wanted to do that. ‘Mia, I know how you must have felt—still feel—’
‘You don’t know anything about me, Ethan!’ Mia shook her head. ‘Certainly not how I felt then. Or how I still and will always feel about the circumstances of my mother’s death.’
‘Maybe that’s because you refused all my attempts to see you after she died?’ Ethan reminded her harshly.
Of course Mia had refused to see Ethan again after her mother had died and her father’s affair with Ethan’s mother had made front-page headlines in every newspaper in the country. How could she have done anything else, behaved in any other way, when the knowledge of that affair had shown her all too clearly the unfolding of past events and the reasons for them? All of them. Including the reason for her own brief relationship with Ethan.
‘We had nothing left to say to each other, Ethan. You were just using me. Just—’ Mia broke off abruptly as she heard her the emotional break in her voice.
She would not do this! She didn’t care what Ethan thought of her now, what he accused her of—or how hurtful she found those accusations—she would not allow herself to be put through this emotional wringer a second time.
The worst part of it was that she had loved her father so much—worshipped him, almost. She had liked Grace Black too, for the two years she’d been a pupil at her school. Until she’d later found out about the affair.
As for her feelings for Ethan …!
She had worshipped him from afar for years too—already been crazily in love with him when he’d asked her out for the first time. She would have done anything—been anything that he wanted her to be. And all the time—all the time his mother had been involved in a relationship with Mia’s father.
She dropped down abruptly onto the bench, her face averted. ‘You’re right, Ethan. We’re done here.’
Ethan looked at the sharpness of her profile: pale and hollow cheeks, haunted eyes, the slenderness of her body poised as if for a fight.
He knew how much the past had hurt Mia. How much his own connection with the woman her father loved had and still did hurt her. But she would not believe—how could she, when she refused to believe everything else he told her?—how hurt and upset he had been about that friendship too, until William and his mother had explained the truth of the situation to him.
A truth that William had refused absolutely ever to confide in the grieving Mia, insisting that he had no intention of trying to win back his daughter’s love at the cost of damaging Mia’s memory of the mother she had loved.
Ethan thrust his clenched hands into the pockets of his overcoat. ‘I take it you still know where the offices of Burton Industries are? If you should change your mind and decide you want to talk to me after all?’
‘Yes.’ She didn’t even glance at him.
‘But you aren’t going to, are you …?’
Her mouth tightened. ‘No.’
Ethan clearly remembered the first time he had seen Mia. He had been twenty-two, about to start his PhD at LSE, and Mia had been sixteen years old—a new sixth-form pupil at the school where his mother was headmistress. Her father had decided that it would be better for Mia to attend a boarding school after her mother had been involved in a car accident the year before, resulting in Kay being in a wheelchair, with her face badly scarred, and quite unable to deal with the needs of her young daughter.
It had been Mia’s first time away from home, and she had obviously been very nervous at having tea, along with all the other new girls, at the home of her new headmistress.
She had stood silent and alone at the back of his mother’s private sitting room, nothing at all like those other self-confident sixteen-year-old girls vying for the attention of the headmistress’s son. Instead she had exuded all the vulnerability of a puppy taken too early from its mother: her eyes too big for her face, the corn-gold hair long and silky, a vulnerable curve to the delicacy of her chin.
Ethan had felt sorry for her—had realized that she couldn’t know any of the other new girls yet. Her sweet shyness had revealed how traumatised she was at leaving her parents and her home for the first time, and it had seemed the most natural thing in the world for Ethan to go and talk to her, to ease some of her nervousness, and for a friendship of sorts to develop between the two of them after that initial meeting.
An intermittent friendship, admittedly, with Ethan away at university most of the time, but he had always made a point of seeing and speaking with Mia at least once when he came home for the weekend or holidays.
It had seemed entirely natural too that Ethan should take the job offered to him with her father’s company when he finally left university, and it hadn’t been that big a step when he’d seen Mia again, looking stunningly beautiful and completely grown up in a figure-hugging red gown as she acted as her father’s hostess at the company Christmas party, for him to realise he was deeply attracted to this more mature Mia.
It had been an attraction she had seemed to more than reciprocate when she’d accepted his invitation to dinner, and the two of them had begun to see each other on a regular basis.
Ethan had dated often during his university years, and gone to bed with quite a few of those women, but his relationship with Mia hadn’t been like anything he had known in the past: emotionally intense, and physically satisfying in a way Ethan had never experienced with anyone else. Then or since …
The woman now sitting on the park bench wasn’t the Mia he had known. This woman wasn’t in the least shy, and as for that appealing sweetness that had once brought out such a protective instinct in him—this older, assertive Mia was more like a Rottweiler than a defenceless puppy! So much so that Ethan certainly wouldn’t have attempted to even take her in his arms, let alone make love with her.
Her expression was scornful now as she looked at him. ‘Goodbye, Ethan.’
He sighed heavily. ‘No matter what you may choose to believe to the contrary, Mia, my liking for you never had anything to do with my mother or my job at Burton Industries.’
Mia only heard the first part of that statement—Ethan had ‘liked’ her! When Mia’s naive and trusting heart had hoped that he would fall in love with her, as she had fallen in with him …
‘How fortunate for you that you got over the emotion so quickly!’
Ethan gave a shake of his head. ‘I don’t know enough about who or what you are any more to know how I feel towards you now,’ he acknowledged heavily. ‘The Mia I once knew was sweet and warm, utterly enchanting, and I don’t believe she would ever have deliberately hurt anyone, either.’
Her cheeks became flushed at the rebuke she heard in his tone. ‘I had to grow up some time, Ethan.’
‘So you did,’ he accepted huskily.
And he obviously didn’t like the way in which she had grown up! Well, that was just too bad—because Mia much preferred herself this way. Tougher. Stronger.
Ethan took a large brown envelope out of his pocket. ‘You might like to have this.’
‘What is it?’ Mia said stiffly, totally ignoring the envelope he held out to her.
‘Why don’t you take a look inside and see?’ He laid the envelope down on the bench beside her before turning and walking away.
Which was when the tears began to fall hotly, scaldingly down Mia’s cheeks.
Damn!
Crying was the last thing Mia wanted to do. Instead she wanted to scream and shout, to wail against whatever cruel fate had brought Ethan back into her life.
Most of all she wanted to stop the aching agony that washed over her in increasingly painful waves just from seeing him again.
Instead, she picked up the brown envelope Ethan had left for her, ripping it open to tip the contents out onto the bench beside her.
And instantly felt all the colour drain from her cheeks …
CHAPTER THREE
‘HOW dare you?’ Mia stormed into Ethan’s office on the top floor of the Burton Industries building the following morning, and threw the brown envelope down on top of the impressive oak desk in front of him, spilling the contents all over the papers he had obviously been signing when she’d burst unannounced into the room.
‘I’m so sorry, Mr Black.’ Ethan’s flustered secretary had hurried into the room behind Mia. ‘She just pushed her way in here before I had a chance to stop her—’
‘It’s okay, Trish,’ Ethan assured her smoothly as he slowly placed his fountain pen down on the side of the desk. ‘As this used to be the office of Miss Burton’s father she obviously doesn’t feel that she needs an appointment to see his successor.’
Mia heard the censure in Ethan’s tone, and grudgingly admitted it was merited; after all, no matter what her personal opinion of her father might be, this was still his company.
‘I apologise.’ She turned to smile at Trish. ‘I was just in such a hurry to see Ethan that I—well, I was obviously less than polite.’
‘It was my fault entirely, Miss Burton.’ The other woman looked even more embarrassed. ‘I haven’t been here very long, and I had no idea who—I’ll make sure and show you straight in next time.’ She smiled back tentatively.
As far as Mia was concerned there wouldn’t be a next time; once she had told Ethan exactly what she thought of him she hoped never to have to see him again!
‘Let’s not go that far, Trish.’ Ethan spoke dryly to his secretary, but that narrowed silver gaze was fixed steadily on Mia. ‘I would like at least a little prior warning of the invasion!’
‘I really am sorry, Mr Black. I honestly had no idea—’
‘It’s not a problem,’ he assured her again smoothly. ‘But thanks anyway. And could you call Jeff Bailey and tell him I may be a little late for the ten o’clock board meeting?’
‘Certainly, Mr Black.’ With a last apologetic smile in Mia’s direction the other woman turned to leave.
‘Just what do you think you were doing by—’ Mia broke off in surprise as Ethan raised a silencing finger. A surprise she recovered from as soon as she heard his secretary closing the door on her way out. ‘Don’t you dare shush me, you arrogant, overbearing, pompous—’
‘My, you’re in good fighting form this morning, aren’t you?’ Ethan sat back in his high-backed black leather chair to consider her fully. Once again he was wearing one of those designer-label suits—charcoal-grey today—with a pale grey shirt and meticulously knotted tie. ‘I had a feeling I might see you here some time this morning.’
‘Then you weren’t disappointed, were you?’ Mia snapped. ‘And you would have seen me last night if I had known where to find you.’
He nodded slowly. ‘I moved apartments a couple of months ago.’
‘No doubt you could afford to on a CEO’s salary!’
His mouth tightened at the scorn in her voice. ‘No doubt.’
Mia gave an impatient shake of her head. ‘Explain exactly what you thought you were doing by having someone spying on me—taking photographs of me—’ she lifted up the dozen coloured photographs that had fallen out of the brown envelope ‘—like some sort of pervert hiding in the bushes.’
‘How else was I supposed to find you?’
‘You weren’t.’ She stated the obvious.
He gave an unconcerned shrug. ‘Too late.’
‘You had no right spying on me, prying into my private life—’
‘I don’t consider locating the daughter of my stepfather to be prying into anything,’ Ethan cut in coldly.
Mia became very still. His stepfather. Much as she might have tried to forget it the previous day, that did also made him her stepbrother. Oh, God …!
Ethan took advantage of Mia’s momentary silence to take in her appearance. She was wearing a sweater in the same emerald-green as her eyes beneath a short black leather jacket, along with skin-tight low-rider denim jeans that left little to the imagination in regard to the taut roundness of her bottom and the slender length of her legs.
Not that Ethan needed to use his imagination where Mia was concerned; he knew exactly what she looked like naked. Or at least he had …
Mia was so much more slender than she’d used to be, but her skin—always the colour of ivory touched with a light rose, soft as velvet and begging to be touched—was just as appealing as it had always been. The fullness of her breasts would no longer be a snug fit in his hands, but the rounded curve of her bottom would, and he could imagine that softness as he pulled her into him and—
What the hell was he doing, fantasising about making love to Mia? Present tense, not past …
Damn it, wasn’t this situation complicated enough already, due to the limited amount of information he felt able to share with Mia, without clouding the issue by resurrecting his desire for this woman that had once been so unrelenting? A desire Mia had made it more than obvious she would never feel for him again …
Ethan stood up restlessly. And instantly realised his mistake as the pulsing of his erection told him that it wasn’t only his thoughts that had become wayward in the last few minutes!
He turned away to look out of the window rather than allowing Mia to see the evidence of his arousal. Yesterday he had been certain that he didn’t even like this new tough and forceful Mia. Now his traitorous body had decided something completely different!
Not just his body, Ethan acknowledged with a frown. He had caught a glimpse of a softer, more appealing Mia just now, when she’d apologised to Trish for her rudeness, and that glimpse, it seemed, had been enough to reawaken the desire Ethan had felt for Mia since he had looked across the room where the company party was being held and seen her in that snug-fitting red dress, her hair a glorious gold tumble down the length of her spine …
‘Who took those photographs, Ethan?’
Get a grip, Ethan, he instructed himself firmly. Stop thinking about taking Mia to bed and concentrate on the here and now. ‘I hired a private security firm six months ago,’ he revealed tautly.