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They walked back up to the master suite. ‘Call Howard,’ Ethan said. ‘I’ve told him to expect you. He can help you with clothes and things.’
‘Clothes?’
‘You arrived withonesuitcase,’ Ethan pointed out, just as Merida found out that the master suite didn’t actually take up the entire top floor. Down the long hallway they came to a double door that Merida hadn’t seen before.
Behind it was a small set of stairs, which they climbed. They came to a large empty room, with skylights, and Merida looked around and admired the stunning space.
Ethan admired her.
The sun streaming in caught her hair, and she was clearly naked beneath the sheer slip.
‘It’s gorgeous, Ethan,’ Merida said. ‘How come it’s empty?’
‘I never quite knew what to do with it,’ he admitted. ‘I was thinking that the nanny and the baby can go up here.’
‘The nanny?’
‘Of course.’
‘Ethan, there’s no need for a nanny—’
‘Merida,’ he cut it. ‘When I’m not in the Middle East I have commitments four or five evenings a week. For at least half of them you’ll be expected to join me. And you’ll have lunches and functions to attend. Not too many at first, but the Devereux family supports a lot of arts and various charities. You’ll need a nanny. And,’ he added, ‘once you’re gone so shall I.’
He just dropped the fact that their marriage was temporary into the conversation as easily as that. As if she was a weather front passing through, strewing babies in her wake and then rolling on.
‘There’s more than enough room for a nanny and the baby up here,’ Ethan said, ‘as well as a decent-sized playroom. But I’ll leave it to you. And don’t worry,’ he added. ‘I shan’t be making the same mistake as my father.’
For the first time he addressed extensive rumours.
‘Nannies really aren’t my thing.’
His words were flippant and light, but Merida could see the tension in his jaw, and there was a flicker of muscle in his cheek.
‘Are you ever going to forgive him?’ Merida asked. ‘Ethan, it was years ago.’
‘Yes, my mother’s been in the ground fortwenty-fiveyears, to be precise.’
He would say no more than that on the subject, and turned the conversation back to the space in which they stood, waving a dismissive hand at the skylights. ‘Just enjoy yourself with it.’
‘What? Decorating your apartment and hiring your nanny?’
He didn’t react to her sarcasm. Instead he headed back down the stairs.
‘I’ll get some designers in,’ he said. ‘Whatever you think will work.’
They were back in the kitchen now, and he looked at her, at her knot of hair and at that slip that clung to her body. He walked over and held her by the arms, and for the second time in his life—and it only happened when Merida was present—he was tempted not to go to work.
Merida looked at Ethan as he held her, and she could feel the shift—not only in him but in her. She was so easily turned on by his gaze.
‘I’ve got to get ready,’ he told her, and Merida nodded.
His eyes asked if she was coming upstairs to join him in the shower, but Merida declined with two words. ‘Then go.’
She was hurting, bruised by his reference to her leaving and the fact that he simply didn’t care if she was here for the money or not.
Yet his dirty kiss and primed body turned her to liquid and, pressed against the bench, she was putty in his skilled hands.
He was so rangy and potent—so ready at any given moment to take her.
