Girl on a Diamond Pedestal Read online

  “You’re right, Noelle, it’s not my job to judge you. And I don’t. My comment was out of line.” His dark eyes blazed with an intensity that stood in direct opposition to his apologetic words.

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “I … you apologized,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t think anyone has ever apologized to me.”

  “I’m a confident guy, Noelle, and that means my ego can take it when I have to admit I’m wrong. That was wrong. It isn’t my business how many men you’ve slept with, or intend to sleep with. It was my sexual frustration talking there. A bit of jealousy, which, I’ll be honest, is unfamiliar to me.”

  “The … jealousy or the sexual frustration?”

  “Both.”

  “Oh.” She looked around at the people, moving around them now as though they didn’t exist, no more interesting than the pylons that divided the boardwalk from the sand.

  “You sound shocked.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever aroused either emotion in a man before. So, yes, I am a bit shocked. Maybe as shocked as you are.”

  “Not possible. I’m sure you make men feel like this all the time.”

  He looked at her, his dark eyes intense, his jaw shifting as he tightened it, his Adam’s apple bobbing.

  “I … I doubt it.”

  He stepped closer, the hand on her arm gliding up to her shoulder, around to the back of her neck, his thumb moving over her skin, fingers sifting through her hair.

  “I don’t. Not for a moment. You really are beautiful.”

  “Ethan, I thought we decided that … it’s a bad idea.” She hated that. Why was it a bad idea? Ethan felt good. And warm, so warm. Everything had been frozen over for so long, dead and dry. Ethan was like the sun.

  She wanted to bathe in his warmth, in the promise of new things that seemed to come every time he touched her.

  But it was a bad idea. They’d decided that. She’d agreed.

  She moved closer to him, her heart pounding. His hand was still on her neck, massaging her, spreading heat and fire through her.

  She didn’t want to move away. Didn’t want to break her connection with him. It was her life. And she had to live it.

  She wanted a little bit of Ethan in it. For as long as she could have it. Because he made her angry and happy and he turned her on. He made her feel, when for so long she’d simply been existing. He made her aware of things—needs, desires she’d never been mindful of before.

  It was like finding a new dimension to life. And that was more than just the beach and sand and ice cream. It was deeper, it made everything seem as if it had broader scope, more depth.

  She didn’t want to run from that. She wanted to dive into it head-first.

  She stood up on her toes and leaned in, brushing his mouth with hers, her entire body trembling as she increased the pressure of the kiss, as the shock of his flesh on hers fired through her, charging her like a bolt of electricity.

  It didn’t satisfy her. Not even close. She felt like he was water and she had been lost in the desert. She felt insatiable. She touched her tongue to the seam of his lips, explored the shape of his mouth, tasted his skin.

  They hadn’t kissed enough last night. He’d done the touching, he’d done the pleasuring. But she wanted more than that. She wanted it all.

  A short groan vibrated in his chest, and he locked his arm around her waist, pulling her to him, holding her against his hard, well-muscled body. She arched into him, could feel the heavy weight of his erection against her stomach.

  And that was when she realized they were standing on the boardwalk, in broad daylight.

  She pulled away from him, blinking hard. Pushing shaking fingers through her hair, she looked around, trying to see if they’d caught everyone’s attention. No, there were one or two people in line for ice cream who hadn’t noticed them. Great.

  “I … for someone who was trained not to draw the wrong kind of attention, I seem to be doing a pretty bad job at … not drawing the wrong kind of attention.”

  “You kissed me,” he said.

  “Not … not your attention. People are staring,” she hissed, lowering her face and walking back toward the hotel.

  “Isn’t that the idea? We are supposed to be an engaged couple.”

  “That wasn’t the idea … just now. For me I mean.”

  “I see, then what was it?”

  She stopped and put her hands on her hips. “If you were a gentleman, you wouldn’t ask.”

  “I didn’t say I was a gentleman.”

  “No. I guess you didn’t.”

  “You’re right.” He sighed. “This is a bad idea.”

  A bolt of panic hit her in the chest. “Not the whole deal, just the kissing, right? Because I need this, Ethan. I need my house. I can’t lose it.”

  He frowned and reached his hand out, brushing his thumb over her cheek. “Your cheeks are pink. You need sunblock.”

  “Please tell me you don’t mean the whole deal,” she repeated.

  “I think it’s all a bad idea, Noelle. But I’m not backing out of it. We have a deal, and we’ll stick to that. But it’s a business deal, don’t forget that.”

  “I … I won’t.” Of course, if she really felt like it was a business deal her heart probably wouldn’t be beating so erratically, and her lips wouldn’t still be stinging from the kiss. “We should probably go.”

  They were still standing in the middle of the crowded boardwalk, but even with so many people everywhere, she felt as if they were the only two people on the planet. At least, the only two who mattered. She wasn’t sure what that meant, or why he could make her so mad, and then make her want him, then make her nearly melt inside with the things that he said, all in the space of a few moments.

  “Yeah, I’ve got some work to do this evening,” Ethan replied.

  “Oh. Good.” That meant they wouldn’t have time to spend together and maybe she could figure out what was happening inside her. Newfound feelings, along with life-changing revelations, needed to be examined after all. “I mean … I’ll have a chance to play around with that song I started working on last night.”

  A spark crackled between them. The shared memory of what had interrupted her songwriting. His lips on her throat, his hands on her breasts …

  “You should wear this.” He reached into the pocket of his shorts, took out a small velvet box and handed it to her without opening it. She curled her fingers around it, holding it firmly closed like there was a great hairy spider inside, instead of what she knew was a giant heirloom engagement ring. Actually, at that moment, the ring seemed scarier than a spider.

  “You going to open it?”

  “Later,” she said. Not now. Not on the boardwalk with people all around. Not while she felt scrubbed raw from everything that had happened over the past week.

  He nodded once. “We’ll fly back to the States tomorrow. Things will settle down. Get back to normal.”

  She nodded in agreement and tightened her hold on the box. She didn’t ask him what he meant by normal, because she was starting to wonder whether she’d ever experienced normal. This wasn’t normal. Kissing a man in public, then screaming at him, then having him give her a ring. Marrying him for a house. No, this wasn’t normal.

  And what she felt for Ethan had even less to do with normal than their marriage farce did.

  She’d been expecting that performing, playing for crowds again, being famous and staying in posh hotels would make her feel like herself again. Now she wondered if that had ever been the case. She was starting to wonder if she’d ever figure out what it was she wanted.

  She looked at Ethan’s strong profile and tried to ignore the tightening in her stomach. All right, so there was one thing she wanted. But it was the one desire she should probably ignore.

  Ethan had been wrong about New York bringing normality back. Waking up in the soft, luxurious bed was still too good to be her normal
. Having Ethan to talk to every day, even if it was about mundane things, was better than normal too.

  It was like having a companion, if not almost a friend. Someone to share things with. The details of her day. Three days a week she went to work with him and shadowed his assistant, learning different, somewhat menial office tasks. But she made a mean pot of coffee now and her typing was getting a lot faster than it had been that first day.

  And yesterday, Ethan hadn’t come by the suite to pick her up in his car, so she’d simply called his assistant and asked her to come and share a cab. It felt … good. As if she was building a life. A real life—her life—not just the broken remains of a life that had never been hers in the first place.

  Ethan was due to arrive, and she was pacing, trying to shake off her nervous energy, fairly certain it was futile. Even after a month with him, even though it had been three weeks since he’d kissed her, she just couldn’t relax around him.

  She crossed the room to the piano and slid her fingers across the length of the keyboard. Excitement fired through her veins, her stomach tightened in that way that it did when Ethan touched her. Desire. A thrill. She’d been working on the song that had grabbed hold of her in Brisbane, but it hadn’t progressed easily. It was still harder to write music now than it had been.

  She sat down on the bench and put her hands into position, flexing her fingers for a moment before pushing down on middle C. She added E and G and let the chord fill the empty room, let it fill her.

  Then she followed the feeling. She saw Ethan, remembered how he had stood behind her that night back in Australia. How he’d touched her. She hadn’t let herself think of it, if at all possible, since their return to New York. But she opened her mind up to it now.

  It was easy to put the feeling into her music, effortless. This wasn’t like the songs she’d written a year or more ago. Those songs had been born out of technical ability, mostly because she’d had to tame her creativity to make her teacher happy with the structure of a piece.

  But this one held her. Her as she was, not beaten into submission, into a shape and form that her teacher deemed salable. Here and now, she was pouring out her feelings, dissonant and minor, filling the room. Uncertain but powerful, deep and all-consuming.

  It didn’t empty her of the emotion, but made it stronger, growing inside of her, flowing from her fingertips.

  She didn’t know how long she played, how many times she went through the piece so she could cement it in her mind. When she stopped she sat frozen, before letting it all overtake her.

  She felt one tear slip down her cheek, then another. She put her hand over her mouth to cut off the sharp sound that was trying to escape. And then she stopped. She let it all happen, because she’d never done that before. She’d been trying to hold on. To her past, to a life she wasn’t certain she would have chosen for herself, but one that she’d been comfortable with.

  And she’d never let herself truly grieve the loss of it. She’d never moved on. She’d cut off everything inside of her instead, and she’d lost her music. Not the crowded auditoriums and the CDs, but the music that had always lived in her, coloring the way she saw and heard the world.

  It had been quiet in her when before it had always been filled with a rich, layered sound. Music.

  She was finding it again. But different. On her terms.

  “Are you all right?”

  She turned around on the bench and wiped her cheeks, trying to hide the evidence of her crying jag. “I’m great.”

  “You don’t look great.” Ethan, who did look great in his custom-made suit, stepped further into the room.

  “Gee thanks, Ethan.”

  “Why were you crying?”

  “I have a song,” she said. And it sounded lame. It made sense in her head, but she imagined that Ethan probably wouldn’t get it.

  “Did you finish the one you started back in Australia?” he asked, his voice rough. That pesky, shared memory again. She knew he was thinking exactly what she was thinking.

  “Kind of. It was sort of a take-off from that. But it was … different too. I think I might really have something though. It’s been such a long time since … I’ve been able to do drills, songs I knew, but there was nothing new and … that made me feel like part of me had been cut off. Music has always been in me. That’s how it all started. I was composing music from such an early age and … my mother saw potential that needed to be capitalized on.”

  “So it was lessons for you then?”

  “With the very best instructor. Neil was—is—a genius. He was my support system until … until my mom ran off with all the money and it was clear I couldn’t … pay him anymore.”

  “After so many years?”

  “He gave up everything, every other pupil, for me. And it turned out my mother hadn’t paid him in two years. In the end, he just couldn’t stay anymore. I mean, after so many years of training it isn’t like I needed a teacher, but he was a coach. A mentor. The closest thing I had to a friend. He understood me. My mother was with me nearly twenty-four hours a day, traveling with me, making sure I did what I had to do to keep the money coming in. To keep the spotlight on us. But she never really tried to know me.”

  Ethan moved to the piano, his palm flat on the glossy black surface. “It was her loss, Noelle.”

  Noelle’s throat tightened. “You do know how to say some nice things, Ethan.”

  “It’s a gift.”

  He looked down at her hand. “You still aren’t wearing the ring.”

  “I don’t … No. I can get it. It’s the bathroom.” Still in the box.

  “You’ve got to put it on eventually. I’m planning an engagement party for us, you know. And we still don’t look engaged.”

  She swallowed. “That won’t work.”

  He leaned in and her breathing stalled. “No. It won’t.” He turned and walked from the room. Normally, the distance between them would let her breathe a bit easier, but not now. Because she knew what was coming next.

  He returned with that blasted box in his hands, the one that had stayed closed since he first handed it to her on the boardwalk.

  She stood up from the piano bench and locked her hands in front of her, trying to keep them from trembling. Trying to keep her expression neutral. It didn’t mean anything. This was part of the show. The problem wasn’t the ring, it was the importance she’d assigned to it. She just had to remember that it was just a prop.

  He didn’t get down on one knee, not that she’d thought he would, but she was relieved anyway. He held the box out, and this time, he opened it.

  She could only stare at the ring, an antique platinum band with a large, square-cut diamond at the center. She didn’t want to touch it. Didn’t want to take the final step of putting it on her left hand. It was all well and good to say she was marrying him to get her house, but this made it so much more real. It forced her to face what she was doing.

  “Wear my ring, Noelle?”

  She lifted her hand, and there was no disguising the trembling in her fingers as she plucked the ring from its satin nest and slid it on. She made a fist, acutely aware of the thick band digging into the sides of her fingers.

  “It’s lovely,” she said, trying to swallow around her heart, which seemed to have taken up permanent residence in her throat.

  His Adam’s apple bobbed and he took a step back. “It will be over soon.”

  She was supposed to feel relieved by that, but she didn’t. She felt a little bit sick. “I know.”

  “I’ll be pretty busy the rest of this week, but we’ll get an engagement announcement in the paper. Party’s on Friday.”

  She nodded. “Okay. I’ll see you then.” Five whole days without seeing Ethan. She should have felt relieved by that too. A chance to have space. A chance to get her thoughts in order.

  But the stupid thing was, she missed him already.

  CHAPTER NINE

  IT had been five days since he’d seen Noelle by the time
the engagement party rolled around. Five days since she’d put his ring on her finger. It had been twenty-six days since he’d kissed her. Not that he was counting.

  He shouldn’t be counting anyway. Hard not to though, when just the thought of her was enough to tie him in knots. He couldn’t remember ever wanting a woman more. Worse, he hadn’t been able to force himself to look at another woman since the first day he’d seen Noelle.

  It didn’t change the fact that she was off limits. It was a joke, considering he had to hold and caress her like a lover for the entire evening.

  He pulled Noelle closer as they walked into the hotel ballroom. He could feel her vibrating with energy beside him. Something in her was different, changed. She was alive. Not like the time they’d gone to see his grandparents, not like their first public appearance.

  But then, this was about her.

  He looked at her, at her broad smile and shining blue eyes. She was wearing red lipstick again, but this time, it made her glow with color, not appear more pale. It matched her scarlet dress, so bright against her alabaster skin, skimming her slender curves, flowing down over her body like a glimmering scarlet waterfall that caught the light with every step she took.

  This party was about her. It was for her in a way. Everyone in the room was looking, and she was soaking it in like rays from the sun.

  He recognized this, because it was what his mother had done. His mother, who was never satisfied, always needing more. Never getting enough from her family, from the ones who loved her. And there had been a time when it had become too much … when his father had twisted the knife too far.

  He swallowed and tightened his hold on Noelle. He didn’t think she would reach the lows his mother had. But the similarities were eerie enough. Strange that he’d initially been so determined to compare her with her mother, the woman who had caused so much pain in his life, and had ended up identifying her much more closely with his own.

  “Noelle Birch!” Sylvie Ames, professional shopper and born socialite, approached them with a broad smile on her face.

  He felt Noelle stiffen beside him. Going to Sylvie’s party had been a pretty big source of stress for her, and he didn’t know how she would feel actually having to talk to the woman.