Ethan Read online

  "We're too old for all that," he chided as he put her in the car. "Tin cans and soaped windows—my God."

  She made a face at him. "Some of us sure grow up too fast," she muttered.

  "Not quite fast enough, in your case." He started the car and took off around the back of the church, glancing with amusement at the rear-view mirror where he could see a few friends were just staring af­ter them with astonished faces. "I could very happily have married you at the age of sixteen, but I had a guilty conscience about robbing the cradle."

  She was faintly shocked at the admission, not sure if she should even take the remark seriously. But he wasn't smiling.

  "Don't believe me?" he asked with a quick glance. "Wait until we get to Galveston. You've got a lot of surprises coming."

  "Have I?" She wondered what they were. She had a feeling the biggest one was going to be the wedding night she'd secretly dreaded. Love on one side wasn't going to be enough to get her through that, and she knew it.

  He kept music playing until they reached the lovely brick hotel on the beach and checked in. Their room overlooked the beach and Galveston Bay, and it was a remote spot, for all its closeness to town. Sea gulls dipped down on the beach and she watched them wistfully.

  "Change into some jeans and a top and we'll walk down the beach," he suggested, sensing her discom­fort. "It's a bit cool today for swimming."

  "Okay." She hesitated, wondering if he was going to expect her to undress in front of him.

  "You can have the bathroom. I'll change in here," he said easily.

  She gave him a grateful smile and got her things out of her suitcase. By the time she'd changed into her jeans and a gray pullover shirt, he was wearing jeans and a blue-and-white striped shirt.

  "Let's go." He didn't give her time to be self-conscious about sharing the big room with its two double beds. He led her out onto the beach and they spent the afternoon looking for shells and talking. Later they had a seafood supper in a restaurant lo­cated in an old lighthouse, and sat on the big deck af­ter dark and watched the ships pass.

  By the time they went back into their room, Ara­bella was relaxed and so much in love that she didn't even protest when Ethan took her in his arms in the doorway and began to kiss her with fervent hunger.

  He didn't turn on the light. He closed and locked the door in the dark and picked Arabella up, carrying her to the first of the two beds.

  She was lost in his hard, deep kisses, in the caress­ing movements of his lean hands as he undressed her with slow delight, discovering her body with his lips first, then his hands. She stretched like a cat while he undressed and when she felt the first touch of his na­ked skin against her own, she gasped with shocked pleasure.

  His mouth covered hers then, gentling her. As the minutes began to move faster, as the heat began to burn inside her, as the kisses grew endless and his hands made her shiver and cry out, she forgot her fear and gave him what he wanted. When he moved over her, she welcomed the hard thrust of his body with trusting abandon.

  He pushed down and she clung to him. There was a flash of pain, and then it was feverish movement and growing pleasure that finally exploded into an ecstasy that bordered on pain in its sweeping fulfillment.

  "No," he groaned when she made a hesitant move­ment, aeons later. His hands swept her back, hard against him, and he shuddered as he held her there, against his sweat-dampened body. "Stay here."

  "Are you all right?" she whispered into his throat.

  "Now, I am," he replied. His lips brushed tenderly over her face. "You love me. We couldn't have made love like this out of desire alone," he whispered hus­kily. "Not with this kind of tenderness."

  She closed her eyes. So he knew. It wasn't surpris­ing. That had probably been her biggest fear, that when he made love to her, he was going to realize how much she cared.

  Her fingers moved gently in his thick, damp hair. "Yes," she confessed then. "I love you. I always have. I don't think they've invented a cure for it."

  "God forbid that they ever should," he whispered back. He cradled her intimately in the curve of his legs with a long sigh. His hand smoothed over her waist, her breast, with slow possession and he laughed. "You're mine," he said with gruff amusement. "I'm never going to let you go now. You're going to live with me and bear my children and we're going to be everything to each other for the rest of our lives."

  "Even though you only want me?" she asked sadly.

  "I want you, yes," he replied. His hands smoothed her back against him, so that her body could feel the urgent press of his. "I want you to the point of mad­ness and beyond. If it were only desire that I felt, any woman's body would do. But that isn't the case." He held her hips to his. "Not only was there no Miriam, there was no other woman for four years. Is that enough proof of love?"

  Her breath caught. She turned in his grasp, her eyes trying to see his through the moonlit darkness. "You love me?"

  "My God, with all my heart," he said huskily. "You little blind fool, didn't you know? My mother did. Mary and Matt did. Everyone knew what I felt, including Miriam, so why didn't you?"

  She laughed, on fire with the first daring certainty of shared love, belonging. "Because I was a blind lit­tle fool! Oh, Ethan, I love you, I love you, I love. . .!"

  That was as far as she got. He rolled her into him and his hands grew quickly urgent, like the hard mouth that had cut off her hasty admission. He moved against her and she moved to accommodate him, and for a long time, they said nothing while their bodies spoke in a new and intimate language of love.

  "God knows how I'll share you with the stage," he groaned much later when they were propped up to­gether sharing a soft drink he'd retrieved from the re­frigerator in the room. "But I'll manage."'

  "Oh. That." She grimaced and laid her face against his warm, bare shoulder. "Well, I sort of lied."

  "What?"

  "I sort of lied," she repeated. "I will be able to use my hand again, and play again, but not like I did be­fore." She sighed, nuzzling her cheek against him with a loving sigh. "I can teach, but I can't perform. And before you say it, I'm not sorry. I'd rather have you than be as great as Van Cliburn."

  He couldn't speak. If he needed proof of her love, that gave it to him. He bent and kissed her eyes with breathless tenderness. "Truly, Arabella?" he asked softly.

  "Truly, Ethan." She nibbled at his lips and simul­taneously set the ice-cold bottom of the soft drink on his warm, flat belly.

  His voice exploded in the darkness and he jumped. Arabella laughed with endless delight, anticipating a delicious reprisal.

  "Why, you little. . ." he began, and she could see the smile, hear the loving threat, see the quick movement in her direction.

  She put the drink on the bedside table and reached out to him, drawing him to her, accepting her fate with arms that would accept everything life had to offer for the rest of her life. Ethan in her arms. Heaven.

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