They lived a life completely foreign to what I’d known as a kid. Affluence and influence came with that hyphenated name. The excess that comes with fame and celebrity was a companion to the laughter, the love that has always existed under that lake house roof.
Ethan had shown me a different sort of excess—tenderness, ease, and a glimpse into a world Keira and Kona tended to steer clear of; one that included social standing and country clubs. Celebrity was one thing. New Orleans society was something altogether different. Even when Ransom and I moved to Miami, when the pomp and circumstance of being with an NFL player brought a decadence reminiscent of New Orleans, we’d still hadn’t subjected ourselves to the kind of wealth that Ethan had always known.
Like tonight, with his sister and her husband toasting us, under the watchful eyes of Ethan’s law partners and clients who shook his hand when we walked to our table, and the well-connected folk that nodded at him anytime they caught his eye. New Orleans excess was on display.
“To the happy couple,” Micah, Ethan’s brother-in-law said, clinking his glass to Ethan’s as we all returned the greeting.
My smile was so wide, so fake, and a small twitch worked across my cheek as I held it, hoping like hell no one, not Ethan or his sister Steph or her husband or any of the curious gazes watching us, could tell that I had never been so unsure of anything in my life.
“Let me see the ring again.” Steph pulled my hand across the table before I could even set my glass down. “Oh, Ethan, it’s just so lovely.”
It was. All of it: the ring, the wine, the beautiful lawyer who wanted to give me everything, anything, the one who swore he didn’t expect a thing from me. Just my love. My loyalty.
The soft jazz music from a quartet playing out on the courtyard filtered into the large restaurant, past the bar and right toward us at the table fitted with white linen and elegant, silver flatware. Ethan took his sister’s compliment, relaxed against the burgundy leather back of his chair as she held the ring up to the chandelier light. She guessed it was Tiffany’s. She guessed the carat size. All the while, Ethan nodded and kept his hand on the back of my neck, absently stroking his thumbnail against the baby hairs that had fallen from my clip.
“More wine?”
A small prayer flitted around my thoughts as the waiter refilled our glasses and I took the interruption to pull back my hand, to rest it in my lap so that Steph wouldn’t see my fingers shaking. So Ethan wouldn’t.
“Twenty minutes more, I promise,” he whispered against my ear. There was a trace of humor in his words, the smallest seduction and my fingers shook worse knowing what he’d ask of me tonight. My head was muddled, filled with warring thoughts of confusion and desperate desire. I wanted him but wasn’t sure I should. I’d given Ransom so much, sacrificing my happiness, my dreams just to be with him, hanging onto every broken promise he gave, crushed when he never kept one. What if I got into this, really gave myself to Ethan and ended up right where I’d been when I left Miami? Flighty and confused were things I never wanted to be. I’d slap myself silly if it wouldn’t have made me look like a loon. I knew what Ethan wanted. Especially since he’d put that ring on my finger.
“It’s fine.” My glance was quick, and hopefully convinced him that I was only tired, not nervous. Still, when Ethan tilted his head, when he moved so close that I could smell the bourbon truffles we shared on his breath, I worried that he’d finally learned to read me.
“What is it?” His cologne had faded, but still lingered on his skin—another form of excess; his warm scent reminding me of leather and sandalwood soap and something purely male.
As always, I was able to pass off his worry, distract him with the small brush of my fingertips resting in his palm. “Long damn day, cheri.”
At my endearment, Ethan forgot his question. He forgot that I was not solely tired, that there might be some worry I didn’t share with him and he moved in closer, kissing my neck just below my ear.
“There is nothing sexier than your Creole sweet talk.” His lips against mine, the pressure of his fingers in my hair, my vanilla reaction seemed enough to satisfy him. “Well,” he said, inching back to stare at my mouth. “I imagine there are far sexier things where you’re concerned, beautiful. But…”
He let that hang, as though I didn’t know what he wanted from me. As though I had not spent the past nearly four months rejecting his advances, laying one excuse after another in front of him when his kisses became too heated, when his hands roamed too surely over my body.