Page 46 of My Enemy, My Obsession

“I’m right there with you,” he promises, his voice low and silky, and it’s as if we’re on an island of our own. The way he’s pushed Anna away and pulled me close without ever moving from where he sits, steals my breath. I was right back in the hotel room. There’s something happening between me and Ethan, something warm and wonderful, and oh, so seductive.

The waitress chooses that moment to return Ethan’s card. His gaze lingers on mine a moment before they shift to our server, and he thanks her, reaching for the ticket she’s set on the table. Anna chooses to do the same, and their hands collide. She laughs. “Sorry. I was trying to help.” She rotates toward him, exposing her cleavage.

Grant stands up, and he’s beside Anna, yanking her to her feet, and none too gently, either. “Enough,” he bites out in a low voice, but not low enough for me and Ethan not to catch his reprimand. It’s embarrassingly obvious, and I feel my cheeks heat at the inappropriateness of their exchange and our witness to it happening.

Grant rotates to face Ethan. “Father wants to speak to you and me before you leave town. Today at three o’clock.” With that, he turns and hauls Anna back to their table.

Ethan signs the check and then slides out of the booth, moving to my side of the table and offering me his hand. I steel myself for the impact of his touch, not even a little shocked when the connection vibrates through me with the force of a rock song. Our eyes collide, and he says, “You couldn’t have handled that better.”

The compliment is surprising, and I’m shocked at how much his approval means to me on a personal level. But I’m also appreciative of how he treated me, how he protected the growing bond between us, which is why I say, “I feel the same way about you.”

Something flickers in his eyes I do not understand, and he runs his hand over my hair, captures my hand, and guides me through the restaurant and right by Grant and Anna’s table. I try not to look at them, but I can feel the pull of their attention, and when my eyes meet Anna’s, there is pure hatred in the depths of her stare. Hatred so intense it’s almost nauseating.

We exit the restaurant, and Ethan guides me right and then pulls me into the enclosure of an abandoned office space, the brick wall sheltering us from the world behind. His hand presses to the wall by my head, his other hand a branding on my waist. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“He hates you, and she hates me. Why?”

His gaze lifts skyward, torment radiating off of him, punching at me before he levels his stare at me, the lines of his face all shadows and anguish. “Grant and I have a complicated relationship. He always wants what’s mine.”

I digest this, but the puzzle pieces still don’t quite fit together. “Who is Anna to Grant?”

“His wife.”

“But Anna doesn’t hate you like Grant does,” I say, a bad feeling burning like acid in my belly. “Who is Anna to you?”

“My ex-fiancée.”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

My heart leaps intoa tap dance against my chest, but my mind is absolute mush, unable to process what I’ve just been told. “Your fiancée?”

“Ex-fiancée,” he corrects.

“But she’s married to your brother,” I say, and it’s not a question. Impossibly, I know this statement to be true.

“Half-brother,” he amends.

“She’s in love with you,” I say, a wall crawling up between us. What is this? What am I in the middle of right now?

“She’s in love with the family money, and she means nothing to me.”

“You were going to marry her.”

“And I was saved from that bullet, Sofia. The only reason I’m telling you any of this before your meeting is I know you read the room. I do not want her between us, and I do not want that encounter to impact your decision when you attend this meeting.”

“Understood,” I say, and I try to duck under his arm.

His hands capture my waist, the heat of his touch and the intimacy of the small alcove are as alluring as they are intimidating at present, andmy hand flies up in stop sign fashion. “I don’t know why this bothers me as much as it does, but it does, Ethan. It does. I’m probably what you would call vanilla and basic—a good girl from Colorado who loves her father and is loyal to her dreams. I don’t know how to dothis.”

“This?” he challenges. “What is ‘this,’ Sofia?”

“I don’t know, and that’s the point.”

“Good,” he replies. “That’s what it is. We feelgood,Sofia.”

There’s a tight ball in my chest of emotions I cannot explain, a wall climbing between us, that sense that I’m going to end up crushed and emotionally bleeding over this man expanding inside me. “I know,” I whisper. “I don’t know why I’m reacting to this the way I am. I just—am.”

“She means nothing to me.”

---