Page 36 of My Enemy, My Obsession

“Problem?” I ask when he sets his phone on the table.

“My brother wants to meet.”

“Oh, well, I can go back to my room, Ethan.” I start to get up, and he catches my leg.

“No,” he says. “I don’t want to see Grant. I do want to see you.”

“I didn’t even know you had a brother.”

“Half brother. My father was married to his mother for about thirty seconds.”

There’s agitation beneath his surface I wish I could wash away. “Did you grow up together?”

“She raised him. He didn’t move in with my father until I was in college.”

“Are you close to him?”

“No. Not at all.”

That was a fast answer, I think. And a firm one, at that. “And your father?”

“No one is close to my father, which is what all the women in his life never seem to understand until it’s too late.”

I curl my legs to the side on the couch and face him, thinking of how young he was when he lost his mother. “That must have been a lonely life growing up. Did you have a nanny?”

“Boarding school in London, which is how I became comfortable in Europe and why I spearheaded all of our international growth.”

I’m reminded of the apartment I thought Ethan had here in the city, but my gut says that is wrong. “And where do you work?”

“Paris.”

My heart begins to race, and I sit up straight, placing him in profile. He isn’t having it, though. He moves closer and turns me to him, dragging my leg to his hip. “Yes, I want you to come to Paris, where I live, Sofia.”

“Because it’s what the board wants?”

“It is what the board wants,” he agrees. “But it’s what I want, too. I’m not letting you run away from me this time.”

Chapter Thirty-One

Ihave no ideawhy Ethan’s declaration over Paris and me running, creates a flight reaction in me, but it does. It so does. I’m so vulnerable and exposed with him, and too involved, too quickly, and I’m not even sure what that means. He’s overwhelmingly present, and I’m overwhelmingly absorbed in him to the point I’ve not processed what is really happening between us, beyond sex. Great, amazing sex, but it’s created a mind-numbing effect, as well.

He owns me when I’m with him, and I’m not sure that’s a good thing.

With my legs still draped across his lap, I try to pull away, but he holds onto me. “Already trying to run again?”

“I didn’t run.” My cheeks heat with the stupidity of that reply. “Okay, I ran, but you know why.”

“Because you had something to hide,” he counters.

I bristle. “Are you insinuating that I still do?”

“No. I’m not talking about your name, Sofia. I think you were afraid then, and you’re afraid now. Why?”

I don’t even try to deny the truth. I am afraid. In Hawaii, it was about my name, and just not wanting to feel awkward and foolish the morning after our fling. Now, I’m not sure. I think…I think it’s about not getting hurt. I think I could fall for him and end up devastated, and then I’d have the work thing with him, and that would be complicated.

So very complicated.

Why doesn’t he see that?

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