Girl on a Diamond Pedestal (12 page)

It wouldn’t last. A fact that made his chest feel like it was filled with tiny shards of glass, evil and sharp, impossible to remove.

It couldn’t last. That was the one thing he was certain of. Because she would never be happy with him. His stomach suddenly felt too tight. It was very hard to breathe. It was a hard admission to make, but it was true.

He’d never managed to bring happiness to anyone in his life. There was no reason Noelle would be any different.

He would never be able to make her happy, not in the long term. He would ruin her.

No. That wouldn’t happen. He wouldn’t do that to her. They would have their affair, and they would both move on.

Even if there was a small, insidious part of himself that wished things could be different. They couldn’t be. And he would have to accept it.

N
OELLE
stretched, smiling when she felt a couple little aches in some very intimate places. Oh yes, Ethan had been amazing. Over and over again.

She had been well and truly introduced to sex.

Her smiled faded a little as she recognized a new ache, right around her heart. She was also being introduced to something else, something big and new. Emotions, a connection she’d never felt with anyone before.

She didn’t know what to call it. Or maybe she was too scared to call it anything.

Ethan saw her. More than that, he
wanted
to see her. Who she really was, not the veneer. No one, not her mother, not her piano teacher, not the flighty acquaintances who had sometimes called themselves her friends had ever bothered to do that.

“Good morning.” Ethan came into the bedroom holding a tray with coffee and muffins. He wasn’t wearing much more than a smile, his broad chest bare, powerful thighs on display. Only a very brief pair of briefs covered him. She wished he hadn’t put them on.

“You are every woman’s fantasy,” she smiled, sitting up.

“In my spare time.” He sat on the bed with her, raising
a mug of hot coffee to his lips, his eyes trained on her. “You’re most definitely my fantasy.”

“I probably have makeup smeared down my face.”

“There’s a certain debauched charm in that look.”

“Yeah, I bet.”

“You got a call.”

“I did?”

“Yes, Jacques D’ambois left a message on my phone for you.”

“The man that was at the engagement thing with Sylvie last night?”

“The same.”

She frowned and took a bite of chocolate muffin. “I wonder what he wants.”

“If he wants to seduce you, tell him he’s about twelve hours too late.” Ethan said it as a joke, but there was a hint of seriousness in his words.

“No worries there, Ethan. I’ll call him after breakfast. And I’ll be sure to let him know I’m no longer in need of seducing.”

“Now that the big engagement party is out of the way, we need to move on to the planning of the actual wedding.”

“Oh yes, that.” Her heart sank a little. Now it seemed … it seemed much more complicated, this whole wedding thing.

“Don’t look like that, Noelle. This,” he indicated the bed, “has to stay separate from the business arrangement we have. The wedding is still a business arrangement.”

“No, no, I know! I just … well, all right, it seems a bit more personal now, I can’t lie. But I get it, Ethan, I do. I don’t want a real marriage anyway.” Did she? She didn’t think she did. Marriage was …?.well, her mother had never been married to her father. And it seemed that to Ethan’s
father, marriage vows had been merely a suggestion. A suggestion he hadn’t taken. What was the point of it?

“You don’t?”

“No. Not now. Maybe someday.”

“Marriage is a crock anyway.”

“You think so?”

“What is it, really, Noelle? So, we’re getting married. And what do we have to do to get married? Love each other? Make vows we’ll keep? No. We just have to sign a legal form. Marriage never made my parents happy. It gave them both a new kind of status, and that was the point for them. My mother was able to spend my father’s money, my father had a beautiful trophy wife who walked red carpets and had her name up in lights. Until she didn’t, of course. And then he cared a lot less for her. Which was when he started finding other women.”

“That’s … well, that’s bad.” Noelle looked down at her coffee. “Love is real though,” she said softly. “Isn’t it?” She wanted to believe it was. That maybe someday … She ignored the sudden, deep tightening in her stomach, a kind of grief at the thought of a future without Ethan.

Ethan stared at a point beyond her. “I think so. I think it’s pretty sadistic though, to be honest with you. I think my mother loves my father, still, in spite of all he’s done to her. I think my father loved your mother. Even though he was married to mine. When my mother stopped getting invited to Hollywood events, he stopped bothering to take her out in public. That was when he started going with Celine Birch. When he let the world know he didn’t care enough for my mother to even try and shield her from his affair.”

Ethan’s lips curled. “I remember there was this big premiere my mother was desperate to go to, and your mother
got invited. The next day it was all over the tabloids how Celine and my father had been all over each other.”

“Oh. That’s awful.”

“There’s more. There’s a reason I can’t … there’s a reason I have to do this, Noelle.” He still didn’t look at her, his expression fixed, his dark eyes blank. “I came home from school that day, and, of course, all the kids had already seen the news. They were taunting me. And when I came home it was so quiet. The television wasn’t on, and she always had it on. I went to look for her. She was face down on the bathroom floor. I was fifteen, but I had learned some CPR in school. Thankfully the ambulance came quickly, because my skills weren’t really up to the task. It was the paramedics who found her pills. They were the ones who figured out she’d done it to herself.”

“Oh, Ethan …”

“That’s love, Noelle. That’s what it does. It’s one person trying and trying and never being able to be enough. I don’t want to be a part of it. And I sure as hell can’t let my father come out of it unscathed.”

Sickness weighed her down, enveloped her being. “I can’t believe they were both so selfish … I can’t believe …”

“It was a long time ago. And I’m not seeking any kind of sympathy. But now you understand why I feel the way I do, not just about love, but about my father getting his hands on Grey’s.”

“I understand.”

He was silent then and she knew he was done talking about his mother.

“So, the wedding, when is it?” she asked.

“I thought we might keep it low-key. Elope even. At this point, the scale of the wedding doesn’t matter. Only that there is one.”

“That’s … good.” A rush of relief flooded her. She didn’t
want to do the white and the cathedral and the priest. Elvis and the Vegas strip would be much more appropriate. It would be easier. It wouldn’t be so likely to trick her raw emotions into thinking it was anything more than what it was.

“Great. I’ll see about arranging all the legalities.”

She blew out a breath. “And they say romance is dead.”

Ethan looked at her, his dark eyes blazing. “I’ll show you romance, Noelle. It’ll just be separate from this.”

He turned and walked out of the room and she couldn’t help but watch his butt, barely covered by skin-tight black briefs. He was so hot. And what they had might not be the epitome of love and flowers but it made her feel alive.

More alive than she’d ever felt.

That had to count for something. That had to make it worth it. Whatever it was.

“Keep telling yourself that,” she said into the empty room.

She could angst about Ethan later. For now, she would get dressed and give Jacques a call.

An audition. She had an audition.

Auditions are beneath her. She’s Noelle Birch.

Her mother’s words rang in her head. Words that seemed meaningless when she hadn’t had a job in forever. Auditions most certainly weren’t beneath her. That attitude, fuelled not by snobbery but by a genuine desire to avoid the public discovering that she was a falling star rather than a rising one, was what had kept her down for the past year.

She was over it now. Over just sitting around and letting life happen to her.

Ethan walked into the large sitting area of the penthouse. He was wearing black slacks and a white button-up
shirt, open at the collar. His hair was wet from the shower. He looked delicious. And all she wanted to do was take that perfectly tailored outfit off of his body so she could taste all of his fresh clean skin.

“Busy this weekend?” he asked.

Not busy until next weekend.
“This weekend? As in … tomorrow? No.” She lifted her coffee cup to her lips and tried to look casual. She didn’t want to tell him about the audition. It was too new. And what if she screwed it up? What if Jacques ended up not wanting her to play either?

“Good. We’re getting married.”

She snorted into the hot liquid and it sloshed over the side of the cup. “A little warning please.”

“I told you I was going to arrange it. I think after the engagement party it will be romantic if we simply elope, don’t you?”

“You mean less of a hassle for us?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I mean, but I’m spinning the headline.”

“Right.”

“We just have to get through this part, Noelle. A few weeks of marriage, a few signed papers. And then you’re free. I’m free. We’ll both have what we want.”

Money. The audition. A chance at starting over, at grasping the fame she used to have. The luxury. She’d thought she’d find that with Ethan, and she had.

It didn’t really make her happy though, and she wasn’t sure why. She didn’t want to think about why.

“Great. Yes. Yay for met goals and all of that.”

“When I put my mind to something, it gets done.”

“Yeah, I uh … remember that. From last night.” She felt her face get hot and she cursed her pale skin, knowing she was wearing her embarrassment like a neon sign.
Ethan’s stomach tightened. Noelle’s face was flushed and she looked perfect. Perfect to take to bed and spend hours kissing, tasting, making love to. But he couldn’t afford that. He couldn’t afford the strange kind of attachment he felt for her.

He’d made the decision sometime during his shower as he’d dealt with a hard-on that refused to quit. She was sexy, no doubt. Compelling and amazing in bed. But he didn’t have time for a lover, especially not a lover who had such a strong effect on him. Not after Grey’s was signed over to him.

This relationship was on a very tight timetable. As soon as the ink hit the signature line on the divorce decree, that was the end. Because a new contract would take priority then, and Noelle … well, she would be taken care of, at least. He would make sure of that.

He breathed in deeply, trying to loosen the feeling in his gut. It felt as if someone had reached a hand inside of him and grabbed his stomach in their fist.

“I would love to push you back against the wall right now and go in for some hard and fast,” he said, arousal and the general direction of his thoughts making his voice rough. “But I think you might need some recovery time. And we have a plane to catch.”

Noelle looked uncomfortable with his choice of words, and he didn’t really blame her. He was being an ass because he wanted her, and he was contemplating never having her again at the same time his body throbbed with need of her.

“A plane?” she asked, pale eyebrows arched.

“Oh yeah, we really are getting married in Vegas.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“No. How tacky would you like it?”

He was rewarded with a smile. Maybe, just maybe things could get back on good footing. Maybe they could
have the next month together. Sating their desire for each other, and hanging out as companions. Because whether they were in bed or not, he simply liked having her around.

Bloody hell, that was complicated.

“Maybe not Elvis-tacky, but I feel like a leopard-print wedding dress might be pretty awesome.”

“Are you joking?”

She rolled her eyes. “Well, I can’t wear white, Ethan, and don’t pretend you don’t know why. You were there last night.”

“I’ll never forget it.” That part he said with absolute sincerity. Because he knew for a fact that he would never forget Noelle.

He knew it with a certainty he couldn’t recall ever feeling before. No matter how many women came after her, no matter how much time passed, the memory of her silken skin beneath his fingertips would linger. And it would always make him burn.

He wondered if she would think of him like that. Or if he would fade in her mind. That seemed to be the way most people felt about him.

He closed off that train of thought, tried to get his breathing steady.

“Right. Well, I guess we both need to pack.”

Their quick flight to Las Vegas had already appeared on some entertainment news websites by the time Ethan’s private plane had touched down in Nevada. Speculation about a wedding was already rampant, of course, because in Vegas, gambling or a quickie wedding was usually on the docket.

Either way, it was newsworthy.

Noelle looked pale, her blue eyes large in her face as he took out the keycard to the hotel suite and unlocked the
door. They were staying in one of Grey’s most famous resorts, a den of sin and sex that was infamous even on the strip, adding to the irony of his grandfather’s insistence on him marrying, being a family man before he took over the company.

“You all right?” Ethan asked.

Noelle looked up from the smartphone. “Just reeling. The speculation is intense. Frighteningly accurate.”

He took the phone out of her hands. “In what way?”

“Just that we came here to get married.”

“Nothing about a leopard-print wedding dress?”

She laughed, a high, kind of unnatural sound. “Uh, no.”

He took her hand in his, her skin so soft and tempting it made him ache. “Are you okay, really?”

“Do I look that bad?”

“You look nervous.”

“We’re getting married tomorrow. And I know it’s not
married
married, and I know it shouldn’t matter. But it’s kind of overwhelming.”

He wanted to kiss her. But he also felt as if resisting the impulse was important. He needed to get a grip on this … thing between them. Not that he wasn’t going to sleep with her again. He planned on it. But he needed to be in control. To rid himself of that shaky, wild feeling that overtook him when her tongue touched his.

That sensation of being a teenage virgin that he couldn’t quite seem to shake. Well, he
was
shaking it.

He pushed open the door to the hotel suite.

“Wow,” Noelle said, walking into the room, her eyes fixed on the crystal chandelier hanging low in the center of the massive entryway. “This is …”

“You said you wanted tacky.”

“Eek.”

She walked over to the transparent bar, built from thick
Plexiglas and fashioned into a kind of art-deco piece that seemed to transcend style. And taste. The walls were glossy too, and they seemed to be made from some kind of opaque, frosted glass. It was all extremely expensive, from the plush carpets to the rich drapes, it was just lacking in any kind of restraint.