Falling For Her Fake Fiancé (The Beaumont Heirs 5) (15 page)

Wasn’t it?

Ethan’s face froze. “Well?” he demanded in a quiet voice. “Frances.”

Say yes
, her brain urged.
Say yes right now.

“I...” She was horrified to hear her voice come out as a whisper. “I can’t.”

His eyes widened in horror or confusion or some unholy mix of the two, she didn’t know. She didn’t wait around to find out. She bolted out of the restaurant as fast as she could in her heels. She didn’t even wait to get her coat.

She ran. It was an act of cowardice. An act of surrender.

She’d ceded the game.

She’d lost everything.

Sixteen

“F
rances?”

What the hell just happened? One second, he was following the script because, yes, he damn well had planned out the proposal. It was for public consumption.

The next second, she was gone, cutting an emerald-green swath through the suddenly silent restaurant.

“Frances, wait!” he called out, painfully aware that this was not part of the plan. He lunged to his feet and took off after her. She couldn’t just leave—not like that. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.

Okay, today had not been his best work. He’d acted without all the available facts this morning and clearly, that had been a bad move. There were no such things as coincidences—except, it seemed, for right now.

Yes, he should have given her the benefit of the doubt and yes, he probably should have groveled a little more. The relief Ethan had felt when Chadwick had told him the only Beaumonts who knew of Zeb’s identity were him and Matthew had been no small thing. Frances hadn’t been plotting to overthrow the company. In fact, she’d been apologizing to Ethan. They could reset at dinner and continue on as they had been.

But he hadn’t expected her to run away from him—especially not after the way she’d dressed him down after they’d had sex.

If she didn’t want to get married, he thought as he gave chase, why the hell hadn’t she just said so? He’d given her an out—several outs. And she’d refused his concessions at every turn, only to leave him hanging with a diamond engagement ring in his hand.

This wasn’t right, damn it.

He caught up with her trying to hail a cab. He could see her shivering in the cold wind. “For God’s sake, Frances,” he said, shucking his suit jacket and slinging it around her shoulders. “You’ll catch your death.”

“Ethan,” she said in the most plaintive voice he’d ever heard.

“What are you doing?” he demanded. “This was the deal.”

“I know, I know...” She didn’t elucidate on that knowledge, however.

“Frances.” He took her by the arm and pulled her a step back from the curb. “We agreed—we agreed this
morning
—that I was going to ask you to marry me and you were going to say yes.” When she didn’t look at him, he dropped her arm and cupped her face in his hands. “Babe, talk to me.”

“Don’t
babe
me, Ethan.”

“Then talk, damn it. What the hell happened?”

“I—I can’t. I thought I could, but I can’t. Don’t you see?” He shook his head. “I thought—I thought I didn’t need love. That I could do this and it’d be no different than watching my parents fight, no different than all the other men who wanted to get close to the Beaumont name and money. You weren’t supposed to be
different
, Ethan. You were supposed to be the
same
.”

Then, as he watched in horror, a tear slipped past her blinking eyelid and began to trickle down her cheek.

“I wasn’t supposed to like you. And you, you big idiot, you weren’t supposed to like me,” she said, her voice quiet and shaky as more tears followed the first.

He tried to wipe the tears away with his thumb, but they were replaced too quickly. “I don’t understand how liking each other makes marrying each other a bad thing,” he said.

“You’re here for your company. You’re not here for me,” she said, cutting him off before he could protest.

An unfamiliar feeling began to push past the confusion and the frustration—a feeling that he hadn’t often allowed himself to feel.

Panic.

And he wasn’t sure why. It could be that, if the workers at the Brewery got it in their collective heads that he’d broken their Frannie’s heart, they might draw and quarter him. He could be panicking that his foolproof method of regaining control over his business felt suddenly very foolish.

But that wasn’t it. That wasn’t it at all.

“See?” She sniffed. She was openly crying at this point. It was horrifying because as much as she might have berated him for being lousy at the game when he dared admit that he might have feelings for her, he knew this was not a play on her part. “How long will it last?”

His mouth opened.
A year
, he almost said, because that was the deal.

“I could love you,” he told her and it was God’s honest truth. “If you’ll let me.”

Her eyes closed, and she turned her head away. “Ethan...” she whispered, so softly he almost didn’t hear it over the sound of a cab pulling up next to them. “I could love you, too.” For a moment, he thought she was agreeing; she was seeing the light, and they’d get in the cab and carry on as planned.

But then she added, “I won’t settle for
could
. Not anymore. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I want to be in love with the man I marry. And I want him to be in love with me, too. I want to believe I’m worth that—worth something more than a business deal. Worth more than some company.”

“You are,” he said, but it didn’t sound convincing, not even to his own ears. “You
are
, Frances.”

She gave him a sad smile full of heartache. “I want to believe that, Ethan. But I’m not a prize to be won in the game. Not anymore.”

She slipped his jacket off her slim shoulders and held it out to him.

He didn’t want to take it. He didn’t want her to go. “Keep it. I don’t want you to freeze.”

She shook her head no, and the cabbie honked and shouted, “Lady, you need a ride or not?” so Frances ducked into the cab.

He stood there, freezing his ass off as he watched the cab’s taillights disappear down the street.

When he’d talked to Chadwick Beaumont on the phone today, he’d barely been able to wait for Chadwick to get done explaining who the hell Zeb Richards was before asking, “Does Frances know about this?” because he’d been desperate to know if she was leading him on or if those moments he’d thought where honesty were real.

“Unless she’s hired her own private investigators, the only people who know about my father’s illegitimate children are me and Matthew. My mother was the one who originally tracked down the oldest three. She’d long suspected my father was cheating on her,” he had added. “There are others.”

“And you don’t think Frances would have hired her own PI?”

“Problem?” Chadwick had said in such a genial way that Ethan had almost confided in him that he might have just accused Chadwick’s younger sister of industrial espionage.

“No,” Ethan had said because, at the time, it hadn’t been a problem. A little lover’s quarrel, nothing that a thirty-thousand-dollar diamond ring couldn’t fix. “Just trying to understand the Beaumont family tree.”

“Good luck with that,” was all Chadwick had said.

Ethan had thanked him for the information and promised to pass along anything new he learned. Then he’d eaten his donuts and thought about how he’d make it up to Frances.

She’d promised not to love him—not to even like him. She’d told him to do the same. He should have listened to her, but he hadn’t lied. When it came to her, he couldn’t quite help himself. Everything about her had been an impulse. Even his original proposal had been half impulse, driven by some basic desire to outwit Frances Beaumont.

Their entire relationship had been based on a game of one-upmanship. In that regard, she’d gotten the final word. She’d said no.

Well, hell. Now what?
He’d publically proposed, been publically rejected and his whole plan had fallen apart on him. And the worst thing was that he wasn’t sure
why
. Was it because he hadn’t trusted her this morning when she’d said she didn’t know anything about Richards?

Or was it because, despite it all, he did like her? He liked her a great deal. More than was wise, that much was sure.

This morning she’d shown up at his office with the donuts he’d requested. She hadn’t had on a stitch of her armor—no designer clothes, no impenetrable attitude. She’d been a woman who’d sat down, admitted fault and apologized for her actions.

She’d been trying to show him that she liked him. Enough to be honest with him.

He’d thrown that trust back in her face. And then cavalierly assumed that a big rock was going to make it up to her.

Idiot.
She wanted to know she was worth it—and she hadn’t meant worth diamonds and roses.

He was in too deep to let her go. She
was
worth it.

So this was what falling in love was like.

How was he going to convince her that this wasn’t part of the game?

* * *

Frances was not surprised when no extravagant floral arrangement arrived the next day. No chocolates or champagne or jewels showed up, either.

They didn’t arrive the day after that. Or the third, for that matter.

And why would they? She was not bound to Ethan. She had no claim on him, nor he on her. The only thing that remained of their failed, doomed “relationship” were several vases of withering flowers and an expensive necklace.

She had taken off the necklace.

But she hadn’t been able to bring herself to return it. Not to him, not to the store for cash—cash she could use, now that the gallery was dead and she had no other job prospects, aside from selling her family’s heirlooms on the open market.

The necklace sat on her bedside table, mocking her as she went to sleep every night.

She called Becky but didn’t feel like talking except to say, “The funding is probably not going to happen, so plan accordingly.”

To which Becky had replied, “We’ll get it figured out, one way or the other.”

That was the sort of platitude people said when the situation was hopeless but they needed to feel better. So Frances had replied, “Sure, we’ll get together for lunch soon and go over our options,” because that was the sort of thing rational grown-ups said all the time.

Then she’d ended the call and crawled back under the covers.

Byron had texted, but what could she tell him? That she’d done the not-rash thing for the first time in her life and was now miserable? And why, exactly, was she miserable again? She shouldn’t be hiding under the covers in her cozy jammies! She’d won! She’d stopped Ethan in his tracks with a move he couldn’t anticipate and he couldn’t recover from. She’d brought him firmly down to where he belonged. He wasn’t good enough for the Beaumonts, and he wasn’t good enough for the Brewery.

Victory was hers!

She didn’t think victory was supposed to taste this sour.

She didn’t believe in love. Never had, never would. So why, when the next best thing had presented itself—someone who was fond of her, who admired her, and who could still make her shiver with need, someone who had offered to generously provide for her financial future in exchange for a year of her life even—
why
had she walked away?

Because he was only here for the company. And, fool that she was, she’d suddenly realized she wanted someone who was going to be here for her.

“I could love you.” She heard his words over and over again, beating against her brain like a spike. He could.

But he didn’t.

What a mess.

Luckily, she was used to it.

* * *

She’d managed to drag herself to the shower on the fourth day. She had decided that she was going to stop moping. Moping didn’t get jobs, and it didn’t heal broken hearts. She needed to get up and, at the very least, have lunch with Becky or go see Byron. She needed to do something that would eventually get her out of the Beaumont mansion because she was
done
living under the same roof as Chadwick. She was going to tell him that the very next time she saw him, too.

She’d just buttoned her jeans when she heard the doorbell. She ignored it as she toweled her hair.

Then someone knocked on her bedroom door. “Frannie?” It was Serena, Chadwick’s wife. “Flowers for you.”

“Really?” Who would send her flowers? Not Ethan. Not at this late date. “Hang on.” She threw on a sweater and opened the door.

Serena stood there, an odd look on her face. She was not holding any flowers. “Um... I think you need to get these yourself,” Serena said before she turned and walked down the hall.

Frances stood there, all the warning bells going off in her head at once.

Her heart pounding, she walked down the hallway and peered over the edge of the railing. There, in the middle of the foyer, stood Ethan, holding a single red rose.

She must have made a noise or gasped or something because he looked up at her and smiled. A good smile, the kind of smile that made her want to do something ridiculous like kiss him when she absolutely should not be glad to see him at all.

She needed to say something witty and urbane and snarky that would put him in his place, so that for at least a minute, she could feel like Frances Beaumont again.

Instead, she said, “You’re here.”

Damn.
Worse, it came out breathy, as if she couldn’t believe he’d actually ventured into the lair of the Beaumonts.

“I am,” he replied, his gaze never leaving her face. “I came for you.”

Oh.
That was terribly close to a sweet nothing—no, it wasn’t a nothing. It was a sweet something. But what? “I’m here. I’ve been here for a few days now.”

There, that was a good thing to say. Something that let him know that his apology—if this even was an apology—was days late and, judging by the single flower he was holding, dollars short.

“I had some things to do,” he said. “Can you come down here?”

“Why should I?”

His grin spread. “Because I don’t want to shout? But I will.” He cleared his throat.
“Frances!”
he shouted, his voice ringing off the marble and the high-vaulted ceilings.
“Can you come down here? Please?”

“Okay, okay!” She didn’t know who else besides Serena was home, but she didn’t need to have Ethan yelling at the top of his lungs.

She hurried down the wide staircase with Ethan watching her the entire time. She slowed only when she got to the last few steps. She didn’t want to be on his level, not just yet. “I’m here,” she said again.

He held out the lone red rose to her. “I brought you a flower.”

“Just one?”

“One seemed...fitting, somehow.” He looked her over. “How have you been?”