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If Ethan thought it odd her basement was empty, he didn’t react. He took the steps at a normal pace, while she followed, distracted. She hadn’t given Boyd a second thought since she saw Ethan on the sidewalk, but the respite was over. Officially and then some. She sighed. Loudly.
She barely noticed as her impromptu guest tossed his clothes in the dryer. The low rumble of the machine sounded, and before she realized it, Ethan was standing directly in front of her, two steps down. The difference in elevation evened their heights, leaving her staring directly into his electric green gaze. Even somber, they were a sight to behold.
Her phone rang again, breaking her focus. She glanced at the display. Boyd. Again. Her annoyance with him edged into anger. She spun on the stairs, headed up, and accepted the call.
“What do you want, Boyd?” she snapped as she and Ethan reentered the kitchen.
“I need to know what you’re wearing to the gala.” Pompous, arrogant, like he hadn’t the slightest question she’d attend with him.
“I’m not going with you.” Her tone, harsher than she intended, had Ethan jerking his attention toward her, though he turned and crossed the room to the far corner, apparently to stare blankly at the wall.
“That’s not what was arranged.” Boyd’s voice broke through, more irritating than usual.
“I don’t know what you heard,” Rue said, her attention pegged on the shape of Ethan’s back, “but I never agreed to go with you, and no one arranges my life but me.”
Soft, misplaced laughter filled the connection. “You don’t understand. Your father is expecting to close a lucrative business deal with my firm.”
He left the threat completely unsaid, but the implication lingered, loud and clear.
And useless.
“Your alluded threat falls on deaf ears,” she snapped. “If that’s how you do business, my father isn’t missing much.”
“If that deal doesn’t go through, it’ll cost him millions,” Boyd boasted, clearly having planted his butt on his own father’s coattails.
She paused and counted to ten. Boyd’s father, as the head of his own team of investors, was poised to sink a fortune into some hedge fund with her father’s investment firm. She highly doubted the elder Von Adler would refuse to deliver because she didn’t arrive at a fundraiser on the privileged arm of his son, and she certainly didn’t expect her father to back out. She doubted many of them cared one bit about rainforests, considering the only ones in the continental United States were wedged on the opposite coast. Boyd was basically full of hot air, but that didn’t make him any less annoying.
“I’m not for sale,” she said tersely. She ended the call in the middle of whatever Boyd was saying next. She half expected him to call her back, but her phone remained silent.
Ethan was staring now, not even bothering to pretend otherwise.
“What was that?”
“A pasty, annoying creep who thinks money buys everything.”
“I got that part,” he said. “Except maybe the pasty.” Ethan’s grin eradicated most of her irritation, but no surprise there. The man was hot enough to leave her heartbeat rattling erratically in her chest.
Not the first time you’ve been near a man, she scolded herself. But definitely the first time she’d had a reaction like this. It was bone deep, almost needy, and that really wasn’t her thing. Had to be the pants. But when her gaze drifted lower, her focus didn’t land on the ugly clown faces. Instead it took a very pleasurable stroll along his happy trail and came to an abrupt stop at a bulge that didn’t look as if it had been anywhere near cold water. Like, ever.
Definitely time for a shift of focus.
Ordinarily, Boyd would be the last person she wanted to talk about, but if doing so kept her from panting over Ethan, she’d manage. She took a breath, surprised to find it wobbly. “He’s trying to get me to go with him to a charity event,” she said, “and as many times as I’ve told him no, he keeps asking. His grandmother is the founder, and my mom is on the committee, so there are some politics involved and, well…” She sighed. “I shouldn’t burden you with this.”
