The Secret (Billionaire's Beach Book 6) Page 7

  As she straightened, his father spoke up. “Hey, do I get one of those?”

  She pretended not to understand. “There’s a whole selection of stuffed animals down in the gift shop. They stay open until nine.”

  Ethan rose and walked with her toward the door. “One thing.”

  It sounded serious. She stopped, her hand slipping off the metal lever. “What is it?”

  He glanced back at his son, then looked at her again. Despite the situation, he appeared gorgeous to Charlie. The rumpled state of his hair, the wrinkled shirt, the slight shadows beneath his eyes only made him more touchable. His austere good looks could intimidate her under some circumstances, but now she just wanted to move in to his body and lay her head upon his chest.

  The longing filled her with a reckless heat, and she groped behind her for the door’s handle again, needing to hold on to the cool metal. Damn it, being around the Archer men did make her mushy.

  Get out of here before you do something stupid, her common sense said.

  Like kiss him, and not on the forehead. Like lay all her cares at his feet.

  Or worse, the truth.

  Tightening her fingers on the metal, she stared up at him. “What is it?” she repeated.

  “Being in the hospital, seeing Wells in pain, my head’s a mess.”

  “That’s understandable.”

  He shoved a hand through his hair, disordering the disorder. “Shit, Charlie.”

  The urge to comfort him was almost overpowering. “We’ll get through this.”

  “Yeah.” He dropped his head, and his palm rubbed at his nape.

  Charlie swallowed, wanting so badly to do that for him.

  “I can’t stop thinking what might happen to Wells if something happens to me.”

  “Nothing will happen—”

  “None of us can know that.” He took in a long breath. “My parents are too old to take on a six-year-old. My best friend, John, couldn’t raise an alley cat because…well, because he is an alley cat.”

  Charlie smothered a laugh. John Packard was an incorrigible flirt and dedicated bachelor.

  “Anyway…” He hauled in another long breath. “Before I came to find you in the waiting room, I filled out paperwork that allows you to make decisions for Wells in the hospital if something were to happen to me.”

  “Death by cafeteria food?” she asked, trying to lighten the mood.

  He didn’t seem inclined to even smile. “I thought you should know.”

  “Okay. It’s not a problem for me.”

  “Yeah. Thanks. I was sure you’d be fine with it. And that made me think of something else…”

  “What?”

  Reaching out, he put his hands on her shoulders, then dropped them to his sides. He stared at the toes of his shoes, then hauled in a breath. “Someone should fucking shoot me,” he muttered.

  “I thought it was going to be the mac and cheese that would do you in,” she said.

  He glanced up, a quick smile flashing across his face. “It’s that,” he said.

  She puzzled over the non-sequitur. “Hmm?”

  “I want that. Your good sense and your good humor and the way you look at my boy when he’s in a hospital bed and when he’s not, too.”

  Charlie’s hand clenched on the door handle. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she whispered.

  “Yeah,” he said. “We can discuss it some other time.”

  “Okay,” Charlie replied, grasping the lifeline. Her heart was rattling in her chest, and she could sense trouble in the air—or something like it.

  Swinging open the door, she turned her back on Ethan.

  Of course, she should have known better, because a smart woman never turned her back on danger. A rogue wave could take you out that way.

  “Charlie,” Ethan said, in a low, sure voice, “you should marry me.”

  Chapter 5

  It had been a whim, Charlie told herself over the next few days. A proposition of the moment, when emotions were high and Ethan was only half-aware of what was coming out of his mouth. Neither one of them had mentioned the four words since he’d uttered them.

  Though you should marry me seemed to linger in the air every time they looked at each other.

  Which was why Charlie was happy to get away from the Archer’s beachside house this afternoon to spend some relaxing hours with her butler friends, Sara and Emmaline. They’d get her mind off the man and the ridiculous notion of wedding him.

  At their favorite restaurant, they sat on the patio with tall glasses of iced tea and the scent of ocean salting the warm air. The first order of business was a demand for a Wells report.

  “He’s doing great,” she assured the other women. “We’ve pretty much figured out how to keep him pain-free and entertained. We’re deep in plans for his upcoming birthday party.”

  Both women beamed. “And he loved that Venus fly-trap you gave him,” she said to Sara. “Thrills him to his bloodthirsty soul. And we’re doling out the brownies, Emmaline. You know he’d gorge on them if he could.”

  Their salads came next, and they ate in companionable silence for a few moments before Emmaline brought up Sara’s newlywed status. She and Joaquin Weatherford had run off to Las Vegas and married mere weeks before.

  “Is it hard transitioning from butler to wife?” Emmaline asked. Days back, her boss, Lucas Curry, had put a big rock on the fourth finger of her left hand.

  Sara shook her head. “Joaquin never wanted a butler in the first place. You know that. We’re finding our way through it all easily enough, and I’m getting more serious about my landscape design business too.”

  Emmaline sighed a little.

  Sara and Charlie traded concerned glances.

  “Problem?” Sara enquired.

  “I don’t have any outside talents,” she said. “Not like you, Sara. And Charlie could organize an army to invade several foreign countries all at once.”

  Sara smiled. “I think, um, Lucas appreciates your inside talents, goose, just as they are. You’ve made a home for the two of you, and you run it smoothly. He enjoys the care you show him in all the small ways, and he shows his care for you back, right?”

  Emmaline’s face turned pink. “There’s another thing. I’ve lost some of my usual efficiency. I don’t want to get up in the morning like I used to.”

  Sara nearly snorted up her swallow of tea. “Emmaline…” She shook her head. “You don’t want to get up in the morning because Lucas is right there in bed with you.”

  “He doesn’t want me to get out of bed,” she grumbled. “And I used to be a morning person.”

  “I suppose Lucas rewards you for your new laziness, hmm?”

  The two burst into laughter, and Charlie tried smothering the green fire of jealousy kindling in her belly. She should only be happy for them. It accomplished nothing to envy them the close physical bonds with a partner that came with regular sex.

  Though she might be able to organize an invasion, it didn’t give her body another to snuggle with. What Ethan had called “creature comfort.”

  You should marry me.

  Shoving that thought from her head, she returned her attention to the conversation at the table. When the meal ended, Emmaline had a mysterious next stop on their afternoon of leisure.

  She drove through an alley and took Charlie and Sara through the back door of a small bungalow, which at first revealed to them nothing. A tiny tiled kitchen, a bathroom the size of a closet, then the space opened into a boudoir-styled room. Hanging from various wrought-iron and wood stands set about were dresses—wedding gowns and bridesmaid’s frocks.

  Sara’s hands clapped together. “Did you set a date, Emmaline?”

  The other woman grinned. “Not yet. But Lucas’s sister Stella knew of this very private, very posh bridal salon. I thought we could spend the afternoon playing dress-up.”

  A thin, Parisian-looking woman glided through a doorway in a spare, ash-colored suit. “I pi
cked out some samples for you and your friends to try, Emmaline. Do you need my help…?”

  “No. We have this, thank you, Marie.”

  The woman nodded. “I’ll bring a tray of tea and champagne in about an hour.”

  As silently as she’d arrived, she exited.

  Emmaline squealed then threw her arms around herself. “Someone pinch me,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever been this happy!”

  “Even when Lucas kept you in bed this morning?” Sara asked slyly.

  Ignoring her, Emmaline rushed toward a cocktail dress in a frosted-lemon shade. She held it toward Sara. “I think this would look perfect on you.”

  A similarly styled dress in a delicate periwinkle was shoved at Charlie.

  “Hold this in front of you,” Emmaline demanded, then stood back. “Yes. It picks up the purple in your eyes.”

  Then she dropped onto a tapestry-covered loveseat and eyed them expectantly. “What are you waiting for? Try them on.”

  Charlie looked around for a dressing area while Sara began disrobing.

  “Don’t bother,” her half-English friend told her, with a faint sneer. “We’ve seen your nun-like cotton undergarments before.”

  “They’re serviceable,” Charlie protested, stripping down to pale-blue cotton. At least her bra matched her panties today.

  Emmaline hopped up. “Marie carries a few lines of luxury lingerie. I’ll be right back.”

  “See what you’ve done?” Charlie rolled her eyes at Sara. “The bride-to-be is going to try to bully me into frilly items I’ll have to wash separately and that no one else will ever see.”

  You should marry me.

  But that last thought was lost when she and Sara zipped each other up and turned to gaze in the floor-to-ceiling mirror.

  “Oh,” they said together, then glanced at each other and laughed.

  Charlie fingered the delicate fabric. “Silk organza,” she said.

  Sheer straps and a bodice with floral artwork in the same color as the dress led to a simple A-line skirt, with more embroidered flowers dropped here and there.

  “They’re beautiful.”

  Emmaline strolled in, stopped, tears springing to her eyes. “You two are beautiful. You will be my bridesmaids, right?”

  “Even in sackcloth,” Sara said, moving forward to hug their sentimental friend. “Do you want us to try another selection?”

  The bride-to-be shook her head. “I think they’re perfect.”

  “Agreed,” Charlie said. “But I demand you have a go at more than one wedding gown.”

  In minutes, the bridesmaids were helping their friend into a dramatic dress, princess style. They sighed as they fastened the back of the corset bodice.

  “Wow.” Charlie swallowed. “You look…”

  “Too busty,” Emmaline declared. “I might knock someone’s eye out.”

  Sara smiled. “On to the fit-and-flare.”

  It was the fifth choice, a lace dress, that made them all gasp. The bodice of nude mesh rose to her throat and ran over her shoulders, with strategic lace cut-outs affixed that covered her breasts in a manner both modest and sexy. More lace flowers decorated her shoulders and were strewn down the back of the dress along her spine. The effect was to appear as if Emmaline’s top half was sprinkled with flowers. A narrow jeweled belt wrapped her waist, then ivory skirts fell to the ground in delicate layers of netting, scattered with more lace flowers.

  “Oh, Emmaline,” Charlie whispered. “The whole room will fall to their knees, Lucas first.”

  “The very endorsement I’m looking for,” Emmaline said, smiling. Then she glanced around the room. “Oh, I didn’t get a chance to try that one.” She pointed at another gown.

  “We can do it next—”

  “No,” Sara decided. “She needs to keep this one as the last image in her head.”

  Emmaline frowned. “But I want to see someone wearing it.”

  “You give it a try, Sara,” Charlie said.

  “Nope. It’s bad luck for a married woman to put on a bridal gown. It’s up to you.”

  With her hands clasped together under her chin, Emmaline turned her pansy-soft eyes on Charlie. “Please. Just so I can be sure I didn’t make a mistake.”

  Grumbling the entire while, Charlie let Sara help her into the last dress. It was much plainer than the others—no lace, no flowers. Of eggshell-colored satin, it had narrow, off-the shoulder sleeves, fit tight to the waist, and then flared into a full, elegant skirt.

  They all three stared at her reflection.

  “Oh,” Emmaline said on a sigh. “It’s made for you.”

  “You could be another Middleton sister,” Sara added. “You know, along with Duchess Kate and Pippa.”

  Charlie, ever-practical, had never imagined herself in a wedding dress. But now her imagination took flight. The sound of violin strings, or maybe just the ocean. Flowers trembling in her hands. A man, waiting for her.

  The man. Ethan.

  She whirled to face her friends, and the words she’d been wanting to forget spilled out. “You should marry me.”

  Both women blinked. Sara recovered first, a hint of a smile on her face.

  “Already did the deed,” she said, lifting both hands, one to point to the sparkling engagement ring and wedding band. “So I’ll have to regretfully decline.”

  “It’s what Ethan said the night Wells stayed in the hospital—following his operation,” Charlie explained, feeling herself flush. “He told me, ‘You should marry me.’”

  Emmaline sank to the small couch, her eyes wide. “Because…”

  Charlie lifted a shoulder. “We’d been talking. He has fears about something happening to him and leaving Wells alone in the world. Understandably.”

  “How did that turn into a proposal?” Sara asked.

  “I told him about how I didn’t see myself ever, you know, marrying for romantic reasons.”

  Emmaline groaned. “Oh my God, you didn’t tell him about your stupid ‘practical partnership’ idea, did you? Your marriage-for-companionship?”

  “What’s wrong with it?” Charlie asked, getting huffy.

  “Because nobody does that,” she said.

  “People get married all the time for reasons beyond grand passion. For all of history, by the way.”

  “You deserve grand passion,” Emmaline said, stubborn.

  “That would probably end in a grand flame-out, like what happened with my parents.” Like had happened with the boy she’d fallen for at nineteen. “If I want to make a promise to someone, isn’t it sensible to choose someone whom I like and whom I can see as a life companion instead of relying on my hormones to guide me?”

  “Oh, save me.” Emmaline rolled her eyes in dramatic fashion. “She’s using ‘sense’ to choose a husband and forgetting her heart altogether. As an Italian and a woman and a…a human being, this offends me.”

  “I don’t know,” Sara said slowly. Tilting her head, she considered Charlie. “I think she should do it. Marry Ethan.”

  Charlie stared, appalled by the other butler’s approval of the idea.

  “I’m not going to marry Ethan!” But the traitorous longing to do that very thing shot through her, likely due to being swathed in yards of white designed by a woman with weddings on the mind and stitched by others who paid their rent by bridal delusions. “I’ve got to get out of this gown.”

  “He probably didn’t even mean it,” she continued, struggling to reach the buttons. “It was a slip of the tongue.”

  “Sure,” Sara said, walking up behind Charlie to unfasten the dress. “And even if it wasn’t, you’re probably right. You shouldn’t risk it. Ethan might end up falling for you and ruining your entire practical plan.”

  “He’s not going to fall for me,” Charlie said. “He’s adamant that the one love of his life was his late wife.”

  “And you’re not going to fall for him.” Sara returned the dress to the hangar as Charlie tugged her bra straps back
into place.

  “Wouldn’t I have done so already if it was going to happen?” Charlie demanded, suddenly bad-tempered. “He’s gorgeous, he’s sexy, he’s a great father. What’s not to love?”

  “Indeed,” Sara said, the crisp edges of her half-English accent giving the word additional emphasis.

  Charlie scowled at her, then, on general principle, turned it on her friend Emmaline as well.

  Who smiled sweetly and waved a lavender paper bag in her direction. “Maybe this will improve your mood. I bought you a pretty lingerie set.”

  Stomping over, Charlie snatched it out of her hand.

  “Thank you.” Softening, she sank down to the cushions beside her friend. “I’m sorry for hijacking your wedding dress appointment with my histrionics.”

  “Charlie having histrionics has made my day,” Emmaline said, smiling. “It gives me hope.”

  “Hope for what?”

  “The grand passion that every butler needs in her life beyond polishing silver and arranging furniture.”

  Charlie shook her head. “You’re not listening. I don’t want grand passion.”

  Emmaline nudged her with an elbow. “It creeps up on you. Or sometimes it hits you over the head. And face it, you already have a grand passion. You’re totally gone for Wells. You love that little boy.”

  Wells. Think of him.

  Yes. Wells.

  Think of the one person who should make even nebulous daydreams of bouquets and bridal gowns and Ethan Archer impossible.

  In the afternoon, Ethan drove from home to his son’s school, stewing over the situation with Charlie as he had every free minute since he’d blurted out the quasi-proposal. So far they’d managed to step around the elephant in the living room, but he didn’t think they could avoid it much longer.

  And he had no idea how to address the issue.

  Yeah, emotions had been running high those hours he waited to hear the outcome of the surgery. And the subject of marriage had been in the air because she’d disclosed to him that she wasn’t having one—or if she did enter into a partnership it would be the kind based on practical considerations, not love.