Ethan

Ethan was a past master at hiding his feelings, but the deep lines in his face spoke for themselves. Miriam had hurt him dreadfully. Arabella had tried to warn him, in her own shy way. They’d argued over Miriam and because of it, Ethan had shut Arabella out of his life with cold cruelty. She’d seen him in passing since then because she and his sister-in-law were best friends, and visits were inevitable. But Ethan had been remote and unapproachable. Until last night.

“You should have listened to me about Miriam,” she said groggily.

“We won’t talk about my ex-wife,” he said coldly. “You’re coming home with me when you’re able to get around again. Mother and Mary will look after you and keep you company.”

“How’s my father?” she asked.

“I haven’t found out anything new. I’ll check later. Right now, I need breakfast and a change of clothes. I’ll come back as soon as I’ve got my men started at home. We’re in the middle of roundup.”

“What a time to be landed with me,” she said with a deep sigh. “I’m sorry, Ethan. Dad could have spared you this.”

He ignored the comment. “Did you have any clothes in the car with you?”

She shook her head. The slight movement hurt, so she stopped. She reached up with her free hand to smooth back the mass of waving dark brown hair from her bruised face. “My clothes are back in the apartment in Houston.”

“Where’s the key?”

“In my purse. They should have brought it in with me,” she murmured drowsily.

He searched in the locker on the other side of the room and found her expensive leather purse. He carried it to the bed with the air of a man holding a poisonous snake. “Where is it?” he muttered.

She stared at him, amused despite the sedatives and the growing pain. “The key is in the zipper compartment,” she managed.

He took out a set of keys and she showed him the right one. He put the purse away with obvious relief. “Beats me why women can’t use pockets, the way men do.”

“The stuff we carry wouldn’t fit into pockets,” she said reasonably. She laid back on the pillows, her eyes open and curious. “You look terrible.”

He didn’t smile. He hardly ever had, except for a few magical days when she was eighteen. Before Miriam got her beautiful hands on him. “I haven’t had much sleep,” he said, his voice sharp and cutting.

She smiled drowsily. “Don’t growl at me. Coreen wrote to me last month in Los Angeles. She said you’re impossible to live with these days.”

“My mother always thought I was impossible to live with,” he reminded her.

“She said you’d been that way for three months, since the divorce was final,” she replied. “Why did Miriam finally give in? She was the one who insisted on staying married to you, despite the fact that she stopped living with you ages ago.”

“How should I know?” he asked abruptly, and turned away.

She saw the way he closed up at the mention of his ex-wife’s name, and her heart felt heavy and cold. His marriage had hurt her more than anything in her life. It had been unexpected, and she’d almost gone off the deep end when she’d heard. Somehow she’d always thought that Ethan cared for her. She’d been too young for him at eighteen, but that day by the swimming hole, she’d been sure that he felt more than just a physical attraction for her. Or maybe that had been one more hopeless illusion. Whatever he’d felt, he’d started going around with Miriam immediately after that sweet interlude, and within two months he’d married the woman.

Arabella had mourned him bitterly. He’d been the first man in her life in all the important ways, except for the most intimate one. She was still waiting for that first intimacy, just as she’d waited most of her adult life for Ethan to love her. She almost laughed out loud. Ethan had never loved her. He’d loved Miriam, who’d come to the ranch to film a commercial. She’d watched it happen, watched Ethan falling under the spell of the green-eyed, redheaded model with her sophisticated beauty.

Arabella had never had the measure of self-confidence and teasing sophistication that Miriam had. And Miriam had walked off with Ethan, only to leave him. They said that Ethan had become a woman-hater because of his marriage. Arabella didn’t doubt it. He’d never been a playboy in the first place. He was much too serious and stoical. There was nothing happy-go-lucky or carefree about Ethan. He’d had the responsibility for his family for a long time now, and even Arabella’s earliest memories of him were of a quiet, hard man who threw out orders like a commanding general, intimidating men twice his age when he was only just out of his teens.

Ethan was watching her, but his scrutiny ceased when she noticed him standing beside the bed. “I’ll send someone to your apartment in Houston for your things.”

“Thank you.” He wouldn’t talk to her about Miriam. Somehow, she’d expected that reaction. She took a deep breath and started to lift her hand. It felt heavy. She looked down and realized that it was in a small cast. Red antiseptic peeked out from under it, stark against her pale skin. She felt the threat of reality and withdrew from it, closing her eyes.

“They had to set the bones,” Ethan said. “The cast comes off in six weeks, and you’ll have the use of your hand again.”

Use of it, yes. But would she be able to play again as she had? How long would it take, and how would she manage to support herself and her father if she couldn’t? She felt panic seeping in. Her father had a heart condition. She knew, because he’d used it against her in the early days when she hadn’t wanted the years of study, the eternal practice that made it impossible for her to go places with her friends Mary and Jan, Ethan’s sister, and Matt, his brother whom Mary had later married.

It was astonishing that her father had called Ethan after the wreck. Ever since Arabella had blossomed into a young woman, her father had made sure that Ethan didn’t get too close to her. He’d never liked Ethan. The reverse was also true. Arabella hadn’t understood the friction, because Ethan had never made any serious advances toward her, until that day she and Ethan had gone swimming at the creek, and things had almost gone too far. Arabella had told no one, so her father hadn’t known about that. It was her own private, special secret. Hers and Ethan’s.

She forced her mind back to the present. She couldn’t let herself become maudlin now. She had enough complications in her life without asking for more. She vaguely remembered mentioning to Ethan that day she and he had gone swimming together, when she was eighteen. She hoped against hope that he’d been too worried to pay attention to the remark, that she hadn’t given away how precious the memory was to her.

“You said I’d stay with you,” she began falteringly, trying to make her mind work. “But, my father…?”

“Your uncle lives in Dallas, remember?” he asked curtly. “Your father will probably stay there.”

“He won’t like having me this far away,” she said doggedly.

“No, he won’t, will he?” He pulled the sheet up to her chin. “Try to sleep. Let the medicine work.”

Her wide green eyes opened, holding his. “You don’t want me at your house,” she said huskily. “You never did. We quarreled over Miriam and you said I was a pain in the neck and you never wanted to have to see me again!”

He actually winced. “Try to sleep,” he said tersely.

She was drifting in and out of consciousness, blissfully unaware of the tortured look on the dark face above her. She closed her eyes. “Yes. Sleep…”

The world seemed very far away as the drugs took hold at last and she slept. Her dreams were full of the old days, of growing up with Mary and Matt, of Ethan always nearby, beloved and taciturn and completely unattainable. No matter how hard she tried to act her age, Ethan had never looked at her as a woman in those early days.

Arabella had always loved him. Her music had been her escape. She could play the exquisite classical pieces and put all the love Ethan didn’t want into her fingers as she played. It was that fever and need that had given her a start in the musical world. At the age of twenty-one, she’d won an international competition with a huge financial prize, and the recognition had given her a shot at a recording contract.

Classical music was notoriously low-paying for pianists, but Arabella’s style had caught on quickly when she tried some pop pieces. The albums had sold well, and she was asked to do more. The royalties began to grow, along with her fame.

Her father had pushed her into personal appearances and tours, and, basically shy in front of people she didn’t know, she’d hated the whole idea of it. She’d tried to protest, but her father had dominated her all her life, and she hadn’t had the will to fight him. Incredible, that, she told herself, when she could stand up to Ethan and most other people without a qualm. Her father was different. She loved him and he’d been her mainstay when her mother had died so long ago. She couldn’t bear to hurt her father by refusing his guidance in her career. Ethan had hated the hold her father had on her, but he’d never asked her to try to break it.

Over the years, while she was growing up in Jacobsville, Ethan had been a kind of protective but distant big brother. Until that day he’d taken her swimming down at the creek and everything had changed. Miriam had been at the ranch even then, starting on a layout with a Western theme for a fashion magazine. Ethan had paid her very little notice until he’d almost lost control with Arabella when they started kissing, but after that day he’d begun pursuing Miriam. It hadn’t taken long.

Arabella had heard Miriam bragging to another model that she had the Hardeman fortune in the palm of her hand and that she was going to trade Ethan her body for a life of luxury. It had sickened Arabella to think of the man she loved being treated as a meal ticket and nothing more, so she’d gone to him and tried to tell him what she’d heard.

He hadn’t believed her. He’d accused her of being jealous of Miriam. He’d hurt her with his cold remarks about her age and inexperience and naiveté, then he’d ordered her off the ranch. She’d run away, all the way out of the state and back to music school.

How strange that Ethan should be the one to look after her. It was the first time she’d ever been in a hospital, the first time she’d been anything except healthy. She wouldn’t have expected Ethan to bother with her, despite her father’s request. Ethan had studiously ignored Arabella since his marriage, right down to deliberately disappearing every time she came to visit Mary and Coreen.

Mary and Matt lived with Matt and Ethan’s mother, Coreen, at the big rambling Hardeman house. Coreen always welcomed Arabella as if she were family when she came to spend an occasional afternoon with her friend Mary. But Ethan was cold and unapproachable and barely spoke to her.

Arabella hadn’t expected more from Ethan, though. He’d made his opinion of her crystal clear when he’d announced his engagement to Miriam shortly after he’d started dating the model. The engagement had shocked everyone, even his mother, and the rushed wedding had been a source of gossip for months. But Miriam wasn’t pregnant, so obviously he’d married her for love. If that was the case, it was a brief love. Miriam had gone, bag and baggage, six months later, leaving Ethan alone but not unattached. Arabella had never learned why Miriam had refused the divorce or why Miriam had started running around on a man she’d only just married. It was one of many things about his marriage that Ethan never discussed with anyone.

Arabella felt oblivion stealing her away. She gave in to it at last, sighing as she fell asleep, leaving all her worries and heartaches behind.

Chapter Two (#ulink_c7a9de9b-0598-5e44-9f82-bbc4083cd348)

When Arabella woke up again, it was daylight. Her hand throbbed in its white cast. She ground her teeth together, recalling the accident all too vividly—the impact, the sound of broken glass, her own cry, and then oblivion rushing over her. She couldn’t blame the accident on her father; it had been unavoidable. Slick roads, a car that pulled out in front of them, and they’d gone off the pavement and into a telephone pole. She was relieved to be alive, despite the damage to her hand. But she was afraid her father wasn’t going to react well to the knowledge that her performing days might be over. She refused to think about that possibility. She had to be optimistic.

Belatedly she wondered what had become of the car they’d been driving. They’d been on their way to Jacobsville from Corpus Christi, where she’d been performing in a charity concert. Her father hadn’t told her why they were going to Jacobsville, so she’d assumed that they were taking a brief vacation in their old home town. She’d thought then about seeing Ethan again, and her heart had bounced in her chest. But she hadn’t expected to see him under these circumstances.

They’d been very close to Jacobsville, so naturally they’d been taken to the hospital there. Her father had been transferred to Dallas and had called Ethan, but why? She couldn’t imagine the reason he should have asked a man he obviously disliked to look after his daughter. She was no closer to solving the mystery when the door opened.