Choosing You Page 18

  “It wasn’t just you, Joey. I’m responsible too. I was unhappy and instead of trying to fix us, I turned my back, told myself that it was normal, that marriage was hard. And it is hard. But in the end, I don’t think either of us felt a strong enough bond to make it worth fighting for.”

  “We’re different people now, Ethan. I like to think we’ve learned from our mistakes. And it’s not just us anymore. We have a daughter. I don’t want her to grow up in two single-parent homes. I don’t want to celebrate her birthdays separately or sit on opposite sides of the aisle when she gets married.”

  He didn’t want that division either. The idea that all of his daughter’s milestones would be tainted by divorce left a gaping hole in his heart. But did he want to live a lie? Did he want his daughter to grow up in that lie?

  Her eye caught the clock on the wall. “Shit, I have to be at a meeting at four.” She hurriedly got to her feet. “Ethan, think about what I said. We could love each other again. I know we can.”

  He looked away, wondering whether it was crueler to respond that no he couldn’t, not in the way a married couple should love each other. Or just leave it alone and let the silence speak for itself.

  She didn’t wait for his reply. Upstairs in Roni’s room, he heard her tell their daughter goodbye.

  “Don’t go, Mommy. Stay the night.”

  “I have something I have to do in Reno, baby. But I will see you on Saturday. We’ll make cookies together.”

  He couldn’t make out the rest of their conversation. But judging how long it took Joey to come down the stairs, Roni must’ve pitched a fit. The gap in his heart deepened.

  “I’ll walk you out.” Ethan shrugged into his jacket.

  Joey slid into her driver’s seat and before shutting the door said, “Since when do you get involved with your patient’s mothers?” There was no animosity in her voice, just that same wounded look he’d seen in her eyes the day she’d found Brynn and him standing together at the horse corral.

  He didn’t answer because he didn’t want to lie. While he wouldn’t call what he and Brynn were having a relationship, it was something. Something that he couldn’t seem to let go of.

  “Are you willing to risk your career for something that in the long run won’t mean anything?”

  “A little rich coming from you, don’t you think?” She flinched and he felt like a mean bastard. “Go to your meeting, Joey.”

  * * * *

  By eight, Roni crashed and Ethan was restless. He sat with Alma in the family room and absently listened to how her weekend went. Apparently, it had been better than his.

  He toyed with his beer, which had gone warm. “I think I’ll catch up on paperwork.”

  As he made a beeline for his office, he heard Alma flick on the TV. The house still smelled of onions and peppers from the frozen bag of fajitas he’d made for dinner.

  He started to boot up his computer but picked up his phone instead and tapped out a text.

  Can we meet? I need to get your permission for something.

  Griffin was a handy excuse. And a ridiculously thin guise. But Ethan clung to it like religion. All day he’d wanted to see Brynn. Joey’s words had met their mark as she surely intended for them to do. But they hadn’t stopped him from thinking about Brynn. From obsessing over her. It had only been one day since he’d seen her last but it felt like an eternity.

  Not five minutes after he hit the send button, she texted him back.

  “Henry’s out like a light. How about the horse barn so we don’t wake him up?”

  “There in five,” he wrote as he took the stairs two at a time and grabbed a penlight on his way out.

  Brynn was waiting at the wooden corral in her red woolen coat. Seeing her with her dark hair loose and her cheeks rising with color from the cold took his breath away. For a moment he stood back so he could drink her in. Then she caught sight of him, a smile lighting her face, and she waved.

  Something in his chest clenched and he hurried toward her. Without a thought, he swept her up into his arms and covered her mouth with his. It was as if he needed to inhale her.

  She twined her arms around his neck and his hands moved over her coat, searching for the buttons. He wanted to touch her skin, feel her breasts, taste them, and bury himself in her warmth.

  Suddenly, he was carrying her inside the barn, his lips still pressed against her, tasting. Devouring. His tongue slid inside her mouth and tangled with hers. She was kissing him back with a desperate fervor.

  He laid her on a mound of straw and came down beside her. Undoing her buttons, he pushed open her coat and slid his hands inside her sweater, letting them rest on her ribcage. Her skin was soft and warm to his touch. He could smell a hint of her perfume, the same floral scent that filled the cottage.

  Her blue eyes held his, pleading. She unzipped his jacket. And in one fluid motion he yanked it off, then pulled his shirt over his head. Her hands glided over his chest and he sucked in a breath.

  He rolled her under him, pressing his arousal into her groin. She whimpered and he kissed her again. This time, deeper, until they were fused together as one. He wrestled her sweater off, leaving her in a gauzy black bra. With his finger he edged the lace, loving the sounds she made every time he touched her.

  He moved to her neck, kissing that tender spot behind her ear. She reached for his belt and fumbled with the buckle. Pushing her hands away, he unzipped her jeans and pulled them down her legs where they bunched up around her boots. She kicked them off and wiggled out of her pants.

  He wanted to lift up on his elbows and gaze down on her, take in her beauty. But his need for her overrode his desire to look. He pushed one leg of her underwear aside and felt her with his fingers.

  She was wet and ready. The knowledge that he could arouse her that way, that quickly, made his chest swell with pride.

  He reached up with one hand to fondle her breasts and she moaned, continuing to ride his finger. She shoved down her panties, giving him better access. But he wasn’t finished with her breasts yet.

  He unclasped her bra so he could give them his full attention, taking each perfect globe in his mouth. Her body arched up, letting him have his fill as she rubbed against him, silently begging for him to fill her.

  He hurriedly unfastened his belt and opened his fly just enough to free himself. And in one powerful thrust he entered her. She clung to his shoulders as her legs came around his hips, allowing him to go deeper.

  Enveloped in her tight warmth, he plunged into her faster and harder. She matched each one of his strokes, running her hands over his bunched muscles. Both were so consumed in their primal dance that nothing outside of it, or them, existed.

  He caged her face in both his hands and kissed her until they were both breathless. Then he

  spread kisses down her neck, her clavicle, her chest, and her breasts. He combed his hand through her silken hair as her breath quickened and she started to clench. He reached down and worked her with his finger as he continued to thrust inside of her. Then her body began to quake as he felt her let go.

  He followed her a short time later with a climax so intense that for a few seconds he saw stars.

  They laid there, trying to catch their breath, their limbs tangled together. Despite how wrong it was, he’d lost himself in her and thrown all ethics to the wind. He’d never done anything like that before. Ever. It showed how caught up he was in Brynn Barnes.

  An unwelcome picture of Joey drifted into his head and made him question whether he could give up the kind of passion he’d just had with Brynn for mere companionship to hold his family together?

  Brynn wiped a piece of straw from his hair.

  He buttoned his fly and cinched his belt. “Brynn, we need to talk about this.”

  She rolled onto her side and touched her finger to his lips. “No we don’t. Let’s
just enjoy it.”

  “First off, we didn’t use any protection.” A hell of a doctor he turned out to be.

  “I’m on the pill and I don’t have any diseases. How ‘bout you?”

  “Not on the pill but healthy.” He sighed. “But there’s the small matter that I’m your son’s surgeon.”

  She leaned over and kissed him. “I’m okay with that. So we’re all good.”

  “That’s the thing, Brynn, we’re not all good. This shouldn’t have happened. You trust me to care for your son and I took advantage. I could lose my license for what we just did . . . You’re a vulnerable mother of a patient. While it is true that Henry’s procedure is completed, I’m still technically supervising his recovery. He’s still part of the clinical trial.”

  “We’ve been over this before. You didn’t take advantage of me. I slept with you because I wanted to. And I won’t tell, if you don’t.” She found her sweater and dragged it over her head, then wriggled into her jeans. “Are you saying you’re sorry that you slept with me?”

  “Come here.” He crooked his finger at her and pulled her into his arms. “I love what we just did. The fact is I’d do it again in a heartbeat. But it’s wrong. It’s wrong for a very good reason. I want you to know that it’s never happened before. That I don’t do things like this.” He scrubbed his hand down his face because now he just sounded like an asshole. I don’t do things like this. Well, he just had. And he was already thinking about when they could do it again. This time on a bed.

  “You don’t do things like what?” She was laughing at him. “Can you grab my boots for me? I should get back home in case Henry wakes up.”

  He handed her her shoes. “These aren’t boots. They’re some kind of fashion weirdness masquerading as boots.”

  “First you’re sorry that you slept with me and now you’re criticizing my footwear.” She imitated his finger crook and kissed him again.

  “Listen,” he said. “There’s something else I need to tell you. About a year ago my license was nearly suspended.” He paused, then waved his hand between them. “Not for this. For opioid analgesic prescribing offenses.”

  She froze, her boot midway on her foot. “What does that mean? Like Oxy? To children?”

  “Yes, like oxy. Not to children, to my wife. Now my ex-wife.”

  He waited for her to process the information, then continued, “I don’t want to get into details because it’s a privacy issue but I didn’t do it. I eventually cleared everything up with the Medical Board. I just wanted you to know.”

  She handed him his shirt and jacket. He could see the wheels spinning in her head.

  “Your ex-wife did it, didn’t she? She wrote scripts under your name for herself. That’s what you meant when you said she was sick. She was hooked on opioids.”

  He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to; she’d figured it out.

  “Oh, Ethan. That’s just awful.”

  He got dressed, rose to his feet, and gave her a hand up. “Let’s go check on Henry.”

  They walked to the cottage together. Neither spoke but both were cognizant of all the things that were going unsaid. Henry was still asleep, so they sat out on the patio, even though it was too cold.

  “Is she still addicted?”

  “No, she’s clean. She’s a good person, a good mother.”

  “She seemed lovely to me. But writing those prescriptions . . . Oh, Ethan. You’re a little bit of a saint, aren’t you?”

  He laughed. “You’re kidding, right? I’m your son’s surgeon and I just seduced you in a barn. I’m a regular Mother Teresa.”

  She blushed, clearly remembering every detail of what they’d done on that bail of straw. He took her hand. And for a while they just sat there, staring into each other’s eyes.

  Then in a low voice, not quite a whisper, she asked, “Is that why you left her? Because of the prescriptions?”

  He shook his head. He’d stood by her for that. It had been the carjacking with Roni that had broken him. “No, it was later. There was an incident . . . it scared the shit out of me. I had to think about Roni. And the truth was even before the pills, we’d grown apart. After Roni was born we were barely hanging on.”

  “I’m sorry. I know how hard that is.” Her eyes darted to the cottage’s window, checking to see if Henry had stirred. “Before the accident, Mason and I had grown so far apart that we hardly talked to each other. We were basically roommates who weren’t even friends. Except when he needed my help with an account. Then he happily . . . confiscated my ideas and pitches.”

  “He stole your work?”

  “I wouldn’t say stole. We owned the company together. His success was my success and vice versa. And that success supported us. Lavishly.”

  Ethan remembered the two-million-dollar donation to his foundation.

  “But he allowed people to believe that he’d come up with taglines or jingles that were in fact my creations,” she continued. “While it’s not anything close to what happened to you with your ex-wife, I can relate to some extent. Part of it was my fault. I should’ve spoken up. I should’ve played a larger role in the business. But I’d committed to being a full-time mother and I tried to convince myself that it didn’t matter who got the credit. There is no ‘I’ in team, right?” She rolled her eyes. “And later, I despised myself for becoming”—she made quote marks in the air—“the woman behind the man.”

  “Why didn’t you leave him?”

  She shrugged. “For Henry. For all the reasons people don’t split up even though they should.”

  He drew in a breath, knowing first-hand what that wrenching dilemma was like.

  “Taking credit . . . it happens all the time in academia,” he said. “Unfortunately, more to women than men. I’m sorry, Brynn. A husband should prop his wife up. Always. But it’s your time now. My hunch is that the world will soon know that Brynn Barnes is the real king of advertising.”

  “Thank you for saying that. I don’t ever really talk about it . . . about Mason I mean. I only told you about us because you confided in me about Joey. For the most part, he was a good man. A good father when he wasn’t racing down mountainsides with his son in tow. He did love Henry with all his heart and would be devastated to know that he’d hurt him. And I don’t think he meant to overshadow me. He was just caught up in his own myth.” She smiled sadly. “But I’m back to steer the ship now. So, hey, Madison Avenue, watch out.”

  Madison Avenue.

  The words were a wake-up call, almost identical to what Joey had said.

  “Are you willing to risk your career for something that in the long run won’t mean anything?”

  This thing between him and Brynn was transitory. They were here now, living in the moment. Even though, for all the obvious reasons, they shouldn’t be. But it had happened and he knew it would continue to happen. And in April, she and Henry would leave.

  He was a realist. Her life was in New York and his life was here. Hell, they hardly knew each other. And they both had a lot to unpack. He was still trying to sort out his divorce and she was grieving the loss of a husband.

  Yet, the reminder had inexplicably been like an ice bath.

  “I better get back to the house before Alma calls out a search party,” he said.

  “What was it you wanted to ask me permission for?”

  He shook his head, confused. Then it came back to him. Griffin. He’d almost forgotten.

  “Griffin Parks stopped by last night, looking for you. Sounds like word got out about you and the Barnes Group and now he wants to hire your ad agency. I told him I’d run it by you and get your permission to give him your contact info. Or if you’d prefer, someone at your firm.”

  “I have his business card. I’ll call him tomorrow.”

  “Okay.” He leaned over and kissed her, wishing he could stay. But if he wasn’t
careful, he could fall even deeper. As it stood, he was already in over his head.

  Chapter 16

  Brynn wandered around the aisles of the Gas and Go convenience store while Henry perused the candy shelves. Today was the first time he’d been out since his stem cell injection.

  The headmaster from his school had emailed Brynn homework assignments so Henry wouldn’t fall too far behind. She’d granted him one more day of freedom and then they were hitting the books. To celebrate, she told him he could have a chocolate bar and he was taking his time choosing from the wide variety on display.

  The store was about half the size of a 7-Eleven. A counter in the center of the store held a self-serve hot dog machine, a nacho cheese dispenser, coffee maker and soda fountain. Next to it, sat the chip and candy aisle. A refrigerator section filled with bottled waters, soda and beer covered the back wall. Near the cash register was a few racks of magazines, maps, and sundry items. And there was an ice cream freezer by the door.

  A sign on the wall advertised bait and tackle but Brynn didn’t see any.

  Griffin came through the garage. He was wearing blue coveralls stained with grease. It was hard to reconcile him with the owner of a luxury planned community like Sierra Heights.

  “Hey, Barnes family. Sorry to keep you waiting. I thought my morning was clear then things sort of blew up. But Skeeter’s here now. He’ll hold down the garage while we talk.” He eyed Henry’s wheelchair and scratched his chin. “It’s a flight of stairs up to my office.”

  “That’s all right, we can talk in here.”

  There was a nice gust of heat blowing through the vents and no one had come in the store since Brynn had gotten there. Henry could keep himself occupied with one of the magazines.

  Griffin grabbed a chair from behind the cash register. “You take this one. I’ll be right back with another.”

  A short time later, he returned with a desk chair he must’ve gotten from his office.