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Her lashes fluttered up to find his head propped on his hand, his eyes on her curved mouth.
Caught out, she blushed, but never thought of not telling him the stark truth. ‘That I’ve never been so uninhibited before.’
Her blush deepened as his silvered eyes darkened with arrogant satisfaction, his eyes smouldering as he looked at her rosy, well-suckled breasts, and the sheen of their exertions still burnishing her soft belly and thighs. ‘You’ve never made love with me before,’ he said lazily, his hand lying possessively on her hip. ‘We’ve still got a lot to discover about each other, but at least we know we make a hell of a combination in bed.’
He didn’t utter words of newly realised love, and so Emily didn’t either, suddenly less certain than she had been a few minutes before. She had told him she loved him in the throes of their passion, if he wasn’t going to reciprocate unprompted then she wasn’t going to embarrass herself by begging. She would sound too needy. At least his words bespoke a future. She would just have to wait, and hope…
‘What time do you want to fly back to Auckland?’ she asked, wondering how long she could make their precious idyll last.
His hand swirled on her hip, a strange smile crossing his lips. ‘Do you know what that sound is?’
She realised the once bright and airy room had got dim, even though sunset must still be some way away. She listened and heard the swirling patter of rain against the leaves outside a window, a distant crash of rolling thunder. The helicopter was obviously grounded for the duration.
‘Heaven?’ She smiled, a slow, sensual, inviting smile.
He laughed. ‘A predicted twelve-hour weather front,’ he confirmed, moving his hand somewhere far more intimate. ‘So…heaven, it is, then…’
And later, after he had shown her that she had many other ways to be joyously uninhibited in his arms, he had relented on his total rejection of the earthly world, and, tucked together like spoons, they had talked about Peter’s implacable conviction that she was Carol’s daughter.
Emily pushed her phone call with her mother to the back of her mind, but admitted with a sigh: ‘If it turns out I am adopted, I suppose it would explain a lot of things about my parents…’
‘Emotionally detached from you?’ he guessed, his chest sending vibrations all down her lax spine.
‘No, more that they’re just equally emotionally attached to everyone,’ she said, trying to find the words to explain. ‘When I was a child I always felt I was in a sibling rivalry with all poor unfortunates of the world. I felt I’d never get their full attention unless I was a traumatic victim of some sort. Once I was no longer a helpless baby, totally reliant on their care, they felt they’d done their job as parents and I was pretty much left to my own devices. It’s scary to be that free when you’re little—I much preferred my grandparents’ rigid rules—’ She faltered. ‘Or the people whom I think are my grandparents.’
‘They’ll always be that, adoptive or otherwise. In fact, you’re amazingly normal for someone with such a bizarre family pathology,’ he said.
‘Is that supposed to be reassuring?’ she giggled, wriggling her bottom more securely into the spoon of his hips. ‘Your family isn’t exactly turning out to be run-of-the-mill.’
‘Yes, Dylan does tend to rather run me through the mill for his own entertainment,’ he grumbled, gently nipping the tender rim of her ear. ‘I suppose he thought it was a great joke, taunting me with the fact he was smuggling you into my house.’
‘He never said. What was in the text?’ she asked curiously.
‘Well, it started off with “Once aboard the lugger the girl is mine.”’ he said, giving her another admonishing nip as her body jiggled with giggles. ‘Young idiot. What did he expect me to do?’
‘Probably precisely what you did do,’ she guessed. ‘He seemed awfully eager to hang around once we got here. He said it would be cool if I was his metaphorical sister,’ she added.
Ethan choked. ‘Good. Even metaphorically, Dylan wouldn’t sink to incest.’
But when she tried to talk to him about Peter’s will, as they ate barbecued steaks on the enclosed deck while the rain lashed around the shutters, he refused to get involved.
‘But I think for both your sakes you should go for a DNA test as soon as possible. Then let the cards fall how they may.’
She fretted at his reticence, her brow wrinkling. He had said the money didn’t bother him, but something did…She knew he was angry with Peter, but she wasn’t sure whether it was because of the old affair and its consequences, or his recent actions—or a painful combination of both. She didn’t want to get between Ethan and his uncle, but it seemed that she didn’t have any choice. And now, by becoming Ethan’s lover, she had complicated the tangle of conflicting loyalties even further.
She was wondering whether she should risk her new status by forcing the subject out into the open when he casually dropped his bombshell.
‘By the way, in all the toil and trouble I never got to tell you. I talked to Tremaine—and his boss—and his boss. If you give me your bank account number, the full indemnity value of your house as listed in your policy will be paid into your bank account by the end of the week. And there’s a construction crew ready to move in tomorrow and start rebuilding from the original plans. You should have your home back to a better-than-pristine state in six weeks, max.’
She stared at him with an open mouth. Just when she was having doubts about him he conjured a miracle that showed how much he really did care, working quietly behind the scenes to move mountains in her honour.
He leaned over and tapped her jaw shut. ‘Yes, I know. I’m a genius. That’s why you—you think I’m wonderful.’
That’s why you love me.
He wouldn’t even use the casual cliché, because he knew it was neither casual, nor a cliché as far as Emily was concerned. If he said it, and she agreed, then the next words would have to come from him, and Ethan didn’t use the word love lightly.
He couldn’t be bullied, seduced, or conned into saying it.
