Ethan

MILLS & BOON

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Contents

Cover

Title Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Copyright

Chapter One

Arabella was drifting. She seemed to be floating along on a particularly fast cloud, high above the world. She murmured contentedly and sank into the fluffy nothingness, aware somewhere of a fleeting pain that began to grow with every passing second until it was a white-hot throb in one of her hands.

“No!” she exclaimed, and her eyes flew open.

She was lying on a cold table. Her dress, her beautiful gray dress, was covered with blood and she felt bruised and cut all over. A man in a white jacket was examining her eyes. She groaned.

“Concussion,” the man murmured. “Abrasions, contusions. Compound fracture of the wrist, one ligament almost severed. Type and cross-match her blood, prep her for surgery, and get me an operating room.”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“Well?” The other voice was harsh, demanding. Very male and familiar, but not her father’s.

“She’ll be all right,” the doctor said with resignation. “Now will you please go outside and sit down, Mr. Hardeman? While I can appreciate your concern—” and that was an understatement, the physician thought “—you can do her more good by letting us work.”

Ethan! The voice was Ethan’s! She managed to turn her head, and yes, it was Ethan Hardeman. He looked as if they’d dragged him out of bed. His black hair was rumpled, apparently by his own fingers. His hard, lean face was drawn, his gray eyes so dark with worry that they looked black. His white shirt was half-unbuttoned, as if he’d thrown it on, and his dark jacket was open. He’d all but crushed the brim of the creamy Stetson in his hand.

“Bella,” he breathed, when he saw her pale, damaged face.

“Ethan,” she managed in a hoarse whisper. “Oh, Ethan, my hand!”

His expression tautened as he moved closer to her, despite the doctor’s protests. He reached down and touched her poor, bruised cheek. “Baby, what a scare you gave me!” he whispered. His hand actually seemed to be trembling as he brushed back her disheveled long brown hair. Her green eyes were bright with pain and welcome, all mixed up together.

“My father?” she asked with apprehension, because he’d been driving the car.

“They flew him to Dallas. He had an ocular injury, and they’ve got some of the top men in the field there. He’s all right, otherwise. He couldn’t take care of you, so he had the hospital call me.” Ethan smiled coldly. “God knows, that was a gut-wrenching decision on his part.”

She was in too much pain to pick up on the meaning behind the words. “But…my hand?” she asked.

He stood up straight. “They’ll talk to you about that later. Mary and the rest will be here in the morning. I’ll stay until you’re out of surgery.”

She caught at his arm with her good hand, feeling the hard muscle tighten. “Make them understand…how important my hand is, please,” she pleaded.

“They understand. They’ll do what can be done.” He touched her cracked lips gently with his forefinger. “I won’t leave you,” he said quietly. “I’ll be here.”

She grabbed his hand, holding it, feeling his strength, drawing on his strength for the first time in recent memory. “Ethan,” she whispered as the pain built, “remember the swimming hole…?”

His expression closed up. He actually flinched as her face contorted. “My God, can’t you give her something?” he asked the doctor, as if the pain were his own.

The doctor seemed to understand at last that it was more than bad temper driving the tall, angry man who’d stormed into the emergency room barely ten minutes ago. The look on those hard features as he’d held the woman’s hand had said everything.

“I’ll give her something,” the doctor promised. “Are you a relative? Her husband, perhaps?”

Ethan’s silver eyes cut at him. “No, I’m not a relative. She’s a concert pianist, very commercial these days. She lives with her father and she’s never been allowed to marry.”

The doctor didn’t have time for discussion. He settled Ethan with a nurse and vanished gratefully into the emergency room.

* * *

Hours later, Arabella drifted in and out of the anesthesia in a private room. Ethan was there again, staring angrily out the window at the pastel colors of the sky at dawn, still in the same clothes he’d been wearing the night before. Arabella was in a floral hospital gown and she felt as she probably looked—weak and wrung out.

“Ethan,” she called.

He turned immediately, going to the bedside. He did look terrible, all right. His face was white with strain and bridled anger.

“How are you?” he asked.

“Tired and sore and groggy,” she murmured, trying to smile at him. He looked so fierce, just as he had when they were younger. She was almost twenty-three now, and Ethan was thirty, but he’d always been worlds ahead of her in maturity. With Ethan standing over her, it was hard to remember the anguish of the past four years. So many memories, she thought drowsily, watching that dear face. Ethan had been her heart four years ago, but he’d married Miriam. Ethan had forced Miriam into a separation only a little while after they married, but she’d fought Ethan’s divorce action tooth and nail for almost four years. Miriam had given up, at last, this year. Their divorce had only become final three months ago.

Ethan was a past master at hiding his feelings, but the deep lines in his face spoke for themselves. Miriam had hurt him dreadfully. Arabella had tried to warn him, in her own shy way. They’d argued over Miriam and because of it, Ethan had shut Arabella out of his life with cold cruelty. She’d seen him in passing since then because she and his sister-in-law were best friends, and visits were inevitable. But Ethan had been remote and unapproachable. Until last night.

“You should have listened to me about Miriam,” she said groggily.

“We won’t talk about my ex-wife,” he said coldly. “You’re coming home with me when you’re able to get around again. Mother and Mary will look after you and keep you company.”

“How’s my father?” she asked.

“I haven’t found out anything new. I’ll check later. Right now, I need breakfast and a change of clothes. I’ll come back as soon as I’ve got my men started at home. We’re in the middle of roundup.”

“What a time to be landed with me,” she said with a deep sigh. “I’m sorry, Ethan. Dad could have spared you this.”

He ignored the comment. “Did you have any clothes in the car with you?”

She shook her head. The slight movement hurt, so she stopped. She reached up with her free hand to smooth back the mass of waving dark brown hair from her bruised face. “My clothes are back in the apartment in Houston.”

“Where’s the key?”

“In my purse. They should have brought it in with me,” she murmured drowsily.

He searched in the locker on the other side of the room and found her expensive leather purse. He carried it to the bed with the air of a man holding a poisonous snake. “Where is it?” he muttered.

She stared at him, amused despite the sedatives and the growing pain. “The key is in the zipper compartment,” she managed.

He took out a set of keys and she showed him the right one. He put the purse away with obvious relief. “Beats me why women can’t use pockets, the way men do.”

“The stuff we carry wouldn’t fit into pockets,” she said reasonably. She laid back on the pillows, her eyes open and curious. “You look terrible.”

He didn’t smile. He hardly ever had, except for a few magical days when she was eighteen. Before Miriam got her beautiful hands on him. “I haven’t had much sleep,” he said, his voice sharp and cutting.

She smiled drowsily. “Don’t growl at me. Coreen wrote to me last month in Los Angeles. She said you’re impossible to live with these days.”

“My mother always thought I was impossible to live with,” he reminded her.

“She said you’d been that way for three months, since the divorce was final,” she replied. “Why did Miriam finally give in? She was the one who insisted on staying married to you, despite the fact that she stopped living with you ages ago.”

“How should I know?” he asked abruptly, and turned away.

She saw the way he closed up at the mention of his ex-wife’s name, and her heart felt heavy and cold. His marriage had hurt her more than anything in her life. It had been unexpected, and she’d almost gone off the deep end when she’d heard. Somehow she’d always thought that Ethan cared for her. She’d been too young for him at eighteen, but that day by the swimming hole, she’d been sure that he felt more than just a physical attraction for her. Or maybe that had been one more hopeless illusion. Whatever he’d felt, he’d started going around with Miriam immediately after that sweet interlude, and within two months he’d married the woman.

Arabella had mourned him bitterly. He’d been the first man in her life in all the important ways, except for the most intimate one. She was still waiting for that first intimacy, just as she’d waited most of her adult life for Ethan to love her. She almost laughed out loud. Ethan had never loved her. He’d loved Miriam, who’d come to the ranch to film a commercial. She’d watched it happen, watched Ethan falling under the spell of the green-eyed, redheaded model with her sophisticated beauty.

Arabella had never had the measure of self-confidence and teasing sophistication that Miriam had. And Miriam had walked off with Ethan, only to leave him. They said that Ethan had become a woman-hater because of his marriage. Arabella didn’t doubt it. He’d never been a playboy in the first place. He was much too serious and stoical. There was nothing happy-go-lucky or carefree about Ethan. He’d had the responsibility for his family for a long time now, and even Arabella’s earliest memories of him were of a quiet, hard man who threw out orders like a commanding general, intimidating men twice his age when he was only just out of his teens.

Ethan was watching her, but his scrutiny ceased when she noticed him standing beside the bed. “I’ll send someone to your apartment in Houston for your things.”

“Thank you.” He wouldn’t talk to her about Miriam. Somehow, she’d expected that reaction. She took a deep breath and started to lift her hand. It felt heavy. She looked down and realized that it was in a small cast. Red antiseptic peeked out from under it, stark against her pale skin. She felt the threat of reality and withdrew from it, closing her eyes.

“They had to set the bones,” Ethan said. “The cast comes off in six weeks, and you’ll have the use of your hand again.”

Use of it, yes. But would she be able to play again as she had? How long would it take, and how would she manage to support herself and her father if she couldn’t? She felt panic seeping in. Her father had a heart condition. She knew, because he’d used it against her in the early days when she hadn’t wanted the years of study, the eternal practice that made it impossible for her to go places with her friends Mary and Jan, Ethan’s sister, and Matt, his brother whom Mary had later married.

It was astonishing that her father had called Ethan after the wreck. Ever since Arabella had blossomed into a young woman, her father had made sure that Ethan didn’t get too close to her. He’d never liked Ethan. The reverse was also true. Arabella hadn’t understood the friction, because Ethan had never made any serious advances toward her, until that day she and Ethan had gone swimming at the creek, and things had almost gone too far. Arabella had told no one, so her father hadn’t known about that. It was her own private, special secret. Hers and Ethan’s.

She forced her mind back to the present. She couldn’t let herself become maudlin now. She had enough complications in her life without asking for more. She vaguely remembered mentioning to Ethan that day she and he had gone swimming together, when she was eighteen. She hoped against hope that he’d been too worried to pay attention to the remark, that she hadn’t given away how precious the memory was to her.

“You said I’d stay with you,” she began falteringly, trying to make her mind work. “But, my father…?”

“Your uncle lives in Dallas, remember?” he asked curtly. “Your father will probably stay there.”

“He won’t like having me this far away,” she said doggedly.

“No, he won’t, will he?” He pulled the sheet up to her chin. “Try to sleep. Let the medicine work.”

Her wide green eyes opened, holding his. “You don’t want me at your house,” she said huskily. “You never did. We quarreled over Miriam and you said I was a pain in the neck and you never wanted to have to see me again!”

He actually winced. “Try to sleep,” he said tersely.

She was drifting in and out of consciousness, blissfully unaware of the tortured look on the dark face above her. She closed her eyes. “Yes. Sleep…”

The world seemed very far away as the drugs took hold at last and she slept. Her dreams were full of the old days, of growing up with Mary and Matt, of Ethan always nearby, beloved and taciturn and completely unattainable. No matter how hard she tried to act her age, Ethan had never looked at her as a woman in those early days.

Arabella had always loved him. Her music had been her escape. She could play the exquisite classical pieces and put all the love Ethan didn’t want into her fingers as she played. It was that fever and need that had given her a start in the musical world. At the age of twenty-one, she’d won an international competition with a huge financial prize, and the recognition had given her a shot at a recording contract.

Classical music was notoriously low-paying for pianists, but Arabella’s style had caught on quickly when she tried some pop pieces. The albums had sold well, and she was asked to do more. The royalties began to grow, along with her fame.

Her father had pushed her into personal appearances and tours, and, basically shy in front of people she didn’t know, she’d hated the whole idea of it. She’d tried to protest, but her father had dominated her all her life, and she hadn’t had the will to fight him. Incredible, that, she told herself, when she could stand up to Ethan and most other people without a qualm. Her father was different. She loved him and he’d been her mainstay when her mother had died so long ago. She couldn’t bear to hurt her father by refusing his guidance in her career. Ethan had hated the hold her father had on her, but he’d never asked her to try to break it.

Over the years, while she was growing up in Jacobsville, Ethan had been a kind of protective but distant big brother. Until that day he’d taken her swimming down at the creek and everything had changed. Miriam had been at the ranch even then, starting on a layout with a Western theme for a fashion magazine. Ethan had paid her very little notice until he’d almost lost control with Arabella when they started kissing, but after that day he’d begun pursuing Miriam. It hadn’t taken long.

Arabella had heard Miriam bragging to another model that she had the Hardeman fortune in the palm of her hand and that she was going to trade Ethan her body for a life of luxury. It had sickened Arabella to think of the man she loved being treated as a meal ticket and nothing more, so she’d gone to him and tried to tell him what she’d heard.

He hadn’t believed her. He’d accused her of being jealous of Miriam. He’d hurt her with his cold remarks about her age and inexperience and naiveté, then he’d ordered her off the ranch. She’d run away, all the way out of the state and back to music school.

How strange that Ethan should be the one to look after her. It was the first time she’d ever been in a hospital, the first time she’d been anything except healthy. She wouldn’t have expected Ethan to bother with her, despite her father’s request. Ethan had studiously ignored Arabella since his marriage, right down to deliberately disappearing every time she came to visit Mary and Coreen.

Mary and Matt lived with Matt and Ethan’s mother, Coreen, at the big rambling Hardeman house. Coreen always welcomed Arabella as if she were family when she came to spend an occasional afternoon with her friend Mary. But Ethan was cold and unapproachable and barely spoke to her.

Arabella hadn’t expected more from Ethan, though. He’d made his opinion of her crystal clear when he’d announced his engagement to Miriam shortly after he’d started dating the model. The engagement had shocked everyone, even his mother, and the rushed wedding had been a source of gossip for months. But Miriam wasn’t pregnant, so obviously he’d married her for love. If that was the case, it was a brief love. Miriam had gone, bag and baggage, six months later, leaving Ethan alone but not unattached. Arabella had never learned why Miriam had refused the divorce or why Miriam had started running around on a man she’d only just married. It was one of many things about his marriage that Ethan never discussed with anyone.

Arabella felt oblivion stealing her away. She gave in to it at last, sighing as she fell asleep, leaving all her worries and heartaches behind.

Chapter Two

When Arabella woke up again, it was daylight. Her hand throbbed in its white cast. She ground her teeth together, recalling the accident all too vividly—the impact, the sound of broken glass, her own cry, and then oblivion rushing over her. She couldn’t blame the accident on her father; it had been unavoidable. Slick roads, a car that pulled out in front of them, and they’d gone off the pavement and into a telephone pole. She was relieved to be alive, despite the damage to her hand. But she was afraid her father wasn’t going to react well to the knowledge that her performing days might be over. She refused to think about that possibility. She had to be optimistic.

Belatedly she wondered what had become of the car they’d been driving. They’d been on their way to Jacobsville from Corpus Christi, where she’d been performing in a charity concert. Her father hadn’t told her why they were going to Jacobsville, so she’d assumed that they were taking a brief vacation in their old home town. She’d thought then about seeing Ethan again, and her heart had bounced in her chest. But she hadn’t expected to see him under these circumstances.

They’d been very close to Jacobsville, so naturally they’d been taken to the hospital there. Her father had been transferred to Dallas and had called Ethan, but why? She couldn’t imagine the reason he should have asked a man he obviously disliked to look after his daughter. She was no closer to solving the mystery when the door opened.

Ethan came in with a cup of black coffee, looking out of sorts as if he’d never smiled in his life. He had a faint arrogance of carriage that had intrigued her from the first time she’d seen him. He was as individual as his name. She even knew how he’d come by the name. His mother Coreen, a John Wayne fan, had loved the movie The Searchers, which came out before Ethan was born. When Coreen became pregnant, she couldn’t think of a better name for her firstborn son than the first name John Wayne had been given in the movie. So he became Ethan Hardeman. His middle name was John, but few people outside the family knew it.

Arabella loved looking at him. He had a rodeo rider’s physique, powerful shoulders and chest that wedged down to narrow hips, a flat belly and long, muscular legs. His face wasn’t bad, either. He was tanned and his eyes were deep-set and very gray, although sometimes they looked silver and other times they had the faintest hint of blue. His hair was dark and conventionally cut. His nose was straight, his mouth sensuous, his cheekbones high and his chin faintly jutting with a slight cleft. He had lean hands with long fingers and neatly trimmed flat nails.

She was staring at him again, helplessly she supposed. From his blue-checked Western shirt to his gray denims and black boots, he was impeccably dressed, elegant for a cowboy, even if he was the boss.

“You look like hell,” he said, and all her romantic dreams were pushed aside at once.

“Thank you,” she replied with a little of her old spirit. “That kind of flattery is just what I needed.”

“You’ll mend.” He sounded unruffled; he always did. He sat down in the armchair next to the bed and leaned back with one long leg crossed over the other, sipping his coffee. “Mother and Mary will be in to see you later. How’s the hand?”

“It hurts,” she said simply. She used the good one to brush back her hair. She could hear Bach preludes and Clementi sonatinas in the back of her mind. Always the music. It gave her life, made her breathe. She couldn’t bear to think that she might lose it.

“Have they given you anything?”

“Yes, just a few minutes ago. I’m a little groggy, but I don’t hurt as much as I did,” she assured him. She’d already seen one orderly run for cover when he walked in. All she needed was to have Ethan bulldoze any more of the staff on her behalf.

He smiled faintly. “I won’t cause too much trouble,” he assured her. “I just want to make sure you’re being treated properly.”

“So does the staff,” she murmured dryly, “and I hear at least two doctors are thinking of resigning if I’m not released soon.”

He looked the least bit uncomfortable. “I wanted to make sure you got the best care possible.”

“I did, never fear.” She averted her eyes. “From one enemy to another, thanks for the T.L.C.”

He stiffened. “I’m not your enemy.”

“No? We didn’t part as friends all those years ago.” She leaned back, sighing. “I’m sorry things didn’t work out for you and Miriam, Ethan,” she said quietly. “I hope it wasn’t because of anything I said…”

“It’s past history,” he said curtly. “Let it drop.”

“Okay.” He intimidated her with those black stares.

He sipped his coffee, allowing his eyes to wander down the length of her slender body. “You’ve lost weight. You need a rest.”

“I haven’t been able to afford that luxury,” she told him. “We’ve only begun to break even this year.”

“Your father could get a job and help out,” he said coldly.

“You don’t have the right to interfere in my life, Ethan,” she said, staring back at him. “You gave that up years ago.”

The muscles in his face contracted, although his gaze didn’t waver. “I know better than you do what I gave up.” He stared her down and drank some more coffee. “Mother and Mary are fixing up the guest room for you,” he told her. “Matt’s off at a sale in Montana, so Mary will be glad of the company.”

“Doesn’t your mother mind having me landed on her?”

“My mother loves you,” he said. “She always has, and you’ve always known it, so there’s no need to pretend.”

“Your mother is a nice person.”

“And I’m not?” He studied her face. “I’ve never tried to win any popularity contests, if that’s what you mean.”