Chapter Twelve
Hannah retreated to the guest room as soon as they’d gotten home, but she’d started pulling away from Ethan the second Tisha had shown up, taking pictures of Hannah like it was a totally normal thing to do to a stranger. It didn’t matter that he’d gotten Tisha to delete them. The damage had already been done. Hannah hardly spoke a word through the rest of their lunch, and on the drive home, she couldn’t have gotten any further from him if she tried, curling herself up against the passenger side door of his truck, her arms wrapped around herself as she stared out the window.
He knew it wasn’t about him—it was about that asshole, Jackson Hayes, and the fucking photographers, and even Tisha White with her lack of personal boundaries. But knowing that didn’t make it any easier. Earlier, in the Museum, and again in Plot Twist, it had felt like they were turning a corner. Like they were actually understanding each other. Like maybe they could be more to each other than the occasional weekend hookup.
Ethan finished unloading the dishwasher, closing the lid a little harder than necessary, and braced his hands on the counter, hanging his head. He’d told her things—about himself, about his past—and it has been nice, goddammit. He’d wanted to tell her more, and have her tell him things in return.
But she didn’t.
Well, she sort of did.
She told you she’s afraid of clowns and she doesn’t like to be alone with her thoughts. Nothing substantial. Nothing real.
The muffled sound of her moving around in her bedroom floated down the hall and he fought the urge to go to her, to demand she tell him something—anything—that might prove she was as mixed up about him as he was about her. But he couldn’t do that, at least, not when she’d just had her privacy invaded in such spectacular fashion.
He also couldn’t stay in the house, straining to hear any sound coming through her closed door and waiting for her to come out. If she wanted space, he could give her space. A little space would do him good, as well.
Ethan rapped his knuckles against the door to Hannah’s bedroom. “Hey, Han, I’m going to work for a bit. Text if you need anything.”
“Okay. I’ll be fine,”
she called back through the door.
He hesitated for a moment, then turned on his heel and left.
The shed on the property line between the vineyard and Ethan’s yard once housed rakes and weed whackers and other tools the grounds crew used to keep the Nuthatch property looking its best. But as the vineyard acquired more riding lawn mowers and giant snow blowers, their needs had outgrown the shed and Ethan had a new, modern barn built closer to the vineyard’s main building to house the equipment they needed. Ethan dug out the key to the padlock holding the old shed closed and quickly undid the lock, slipping inside.
From the outside, the small outbuilding looked abandoned, the windows covered and the paint fading. But inside it was an audiobook narrator’s dream. All four walls were covered with heavy soundproofing panels to keep the ambient noise of the vineyard and nearby street from bleeding in while also keeping his narration from seeping out. A high-backed, leather desk chair and simple farmhouse table took up most of the floor space. His custom-built desktop computer with the extra-large monitor that allowed him to have multiple windows open at once occupied the desk. His microphone was mounted on the wall, and a pair of over-the-ear headphones hung from the metal arm of the microphone stand. He barely knew how to use the pricey equipment; another narrator friend of Angie’s had helped him pick it out and taught him the basics. After he recorded the files, he sent them off to the production team that edited everything together.
Ethan sank into the chair and cued up the audio for the scene he’d been recording before Hannah arrived. The Dragon Duke was a departure from his typical projects, but he loved all of AK Wild’s—Angie’s—books. More than that, he liked narrating for her. He liked becoming Slade Hardcastle, a man with a smooth British accent who spoke aloud the dirtiest fantasies he’d ever seen written in black and white.
Hannah listens to your books.
His cock kicked behind his zipper at the idea of her listening to some of the scenes he had recorded. Had she touched herself to his voice?
She doesn’t know it’s you.
He couldn’t decide if he liked that fact or hated it.
It didn’t matter. He had a job to do.
Ethan put the headphones on and hit play. His own voice in a low, aristocratic British accent filled his ears.
“You will submit to me, mea dulcis, on your knees, on your back. Any way I desire you. Every way. You will know what it is to be mated to the dragon duke, to surrender your body and heart to my keeping. And when you have done that, little one, oh how I shall reward you.”
Ethan paused the recording and dug the heels of his hands into his eyes. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, because now all he could think about was Hannah on her knees, Hannah with her plush mouth and her soft curves and the tight clench of her body around his. Hannah, opening herself to him in every way possible, and all the ways he could reward her for that gift.
All day he’d been thinking about finishing what they started in the bookstore. He pulled off his headphones and closed out the recording software with one hand as he worked the fly of his jeans open with the other. He was already hard and leaking at the thought of her, at the memory of sliding between her thighs and feeling her come apart beneath him. As he took himself in hand, stroking roughly, he let himself imagine, just for a moment, what it would be like to have Hannah for real—not passing moments in hotel rooms, but all of her.
I want to know you, Ethan Hart. Even the messy, sordid parts.
Her words came back to him like a punch to the chest and his hand moved faster. What would it be like to be known like that, to peel himself open for her and have her do the same? What would it take for Hannah to surrender not just her body, but her heart as well?
The images came faster now: Hannah against a bookshelf grinding against his thigh. Hannah spread out before him in the hotel room, waiting for him to taste her. The scrape of her nails along his back as he pistoned into her. The quivering in her thighs when he found the right angle. The way she cried out his name when she came.
Hannah listening to his audiobook, her fingers working her clit, but this time, knowing it was his voice.
He wanted hazy Sunday mornings spent in bed and rainy afternoons wrapped in each other’s arms. He wanted to be the man who made her come, to help her see how goddamn gorgeous she was, to fill her with his release and fall asleep still inside her.
He came with her name on his lips and visions of Hannah reaching for him in the night, trusting him, choosing him. As the orgasm receded and he hastily cleaned himself up, he tried to hold on to that vision of a life he’d been afraid to want for so long, one he thought he’d already missed out on. His eyes fell on the open script on his screen. Body and heart… oh how I shall reward you.
Hannah may not trust him with her heart—not yet at least—but she’d never had any trouble trusting him with her body. Maybe it was time to remind her, to give her a taste of how sweet surrender could be.
∞∞∞
“There are no new pictures of you online,”
Micah said for the third time at least. Even through the phone, Hannah could sense his growing impatience. “It was probably just a Storm Chaser.”
“Jackson hates when they call his fans that,”
she said without thinking.
“I don’t really give a damn what Jackson hates right now,”
Micah said. “The premiere is in a week. Keep laying low until then. No one knows you’re in Rhode Island, I promise.”
“You’re right. I’m sure you’re right.”
“I’ve made you a reservation at a hotel near the theater for the premiere,”
he continued.
“Why? I’ll just stay—”
She broke off, remembering the photograph snapped through her living room window. “Right. A hotel it is.”
“You’ll need a date to walk the carpet with you and play nice with Jackson, to show you’ve both moved on but are still friendly.”
Hannah glanced across the mall food court to where Tessa, Kyla, and Sabrina sat finishing their lunch. Kyla tried to wave her over. They’d taken her to the mall in Providence to help her find a dress and so far, all she’d done was talk on her phone, but Hannah held up a finger and turned her back on the group as she spoke to Micah. “I guess I could ask Leonard if he wants to go together,”
she said, referring to another member of the Bridget Jones’ Musical cast.
“Leonard is bringing his husband,”
Micah replied. “It’s their first appearance since the wedding.”
“Of course,”
Hannah said, “I forgot.”
“And bringing a gay man as your date doesn’t exactly send the message you’ve moved on. You need someone the press can reasonably assume you might be dating.”
Someone like Ethan.
Micah continued, “I can make a few calls, see if any of my other clients—”
“No. I’ll find someone,”
Hannah said. She didn’t need to add the humiliation of her manager calling in his other clients to take her to her own premiere. She’d had enough fake dates to last her a lifetime, thank you very much.
Micah promised to send over the details of her hotel reservation before they hung up. By the time Hannah rejoined the other women at their table by the taco stand, they were deep in a debate about whether the bourbon chicken from the Chinese place in the food court was superior to the fried chicken and waffle bites from the soul food place next to it.
“Hannah! We need your vote,”
Sabrina said, pushing a plate covered with miniature samples from every vendor in the food court towards her. “Chicken and waffles or bourbon chicken?”
Hannah eyed the plate, her fork poised and at the ready. Finally she speared a thin, rolled tortilla, bright yellow cheese oozing from the seam, and bit off an end. “Neither. Buffalo chicken taquito.”
“A last-minute entry,”
Tessa said, grinning.
“Never count out the buffalo chicken,”
Hannah said, finishing off the taquito.
“Everything alright?”
Kyla asked, tilting her head towards the little alcove where Hannah had retreated to take Micah’s call.
“Great,”
she said, stabbing something that looked like a mini corn dog. “Who’s ready to help me find a dress?”
“Not just any dress,”
Sabrina said. “The dress.”
“The one that will make Jackson Hayes rethink his life choices,”
Tessa said.
Hannah laughed. “I’ll settle for one that fits over my hips and doesn’t cost a fortune.”
Kyla hooked her arm through Hannah’s. “I know the perfect place.”
Peach Please was a small shop on the third floor of the mall tucked between a Godiva store and a pet boutique. The mannequins in the window were full-figured and dressed in rhinestone-covered gowns that must have weighed a ton. “Best formalwear place for women with curves like ours without having to go to Boston. This is where I bought most of my dresses for Once Upon a Town,”
Kyla said, referring to the reality TV show where she and her husband had gotten together.
“And those were stunning gowns,”
Tessa said.
They were immediately met by a saleswoman who was uncharacteristically disinterested in them. She pointed out the rack of new arrivals before retreating to her magazine behind the sales counter. Within a few minutes, they had more dresses for Hannah to try than she could have dreamed of—strapless gowns with gathered skirts, sweetheart necklines on A-line masterpieces crafted from heavy satin, a short lace number with a one-shoulder asymmetrical top.
She ruled out the short lace dress first, not particularly wanting to worry about making sure her legs had an even application of self-tanner before the premiere. There was a red Grecian-style gown with off-the-shoulder straps that made her waist look super tiny but she worried the red would clash with the carpet. Rhinestones chafed under her arms, and silk showed every lump and bump when she walked.
“I think I found it,”
Kyla said, appearing at the dressing room with a royal purple confection of a dress. Hannah eyed the corseted back skeptically. “Just try it. I’ll help you lace it up.”
“Okay, but no laughing if I look ridiculous.”
“You will not look ridiculous,”
Sabrina said to the closed door of the dressing room as Hannah put on the gown.
The gown was unlike anything Hannah had seen before. The strapless bodice featured a plunging V at the center of the sweetheart neckline, the dress hugging her curves through her waist. A deep slit ran up the side of the dress from the floor-length hem to her upper thigh, the scandalous cut tempered only by the gauzy panels falling from her hips, adding movement and shimmer when she walked.
When Hannah was ready, Kyla slipped in to pull the laces tight. Before she even touched the first lace, though, Kyla gasped, clapping her hands over her mouth. “You look amazing!”
she squealed.
“It’s not too costume-y?”
Hannah asked, tugging on the skirt.
“It’s just costume-y enough. Trust me. This will pop on camera.”
“Hurry up! We want to see!”
Tessa called through the door.
A few moments later, Hannah was cinched and laced into the dress. Kyla opened the dressing room door and Hannah stepped into the store to the sound of her new friends’ gasps. “That’s the one,”
Sabrina said. “It’s perfect.”
Hannah ran her hands over her hips, twisting to look at herself from every angle. She didn’t love the way the fabric clung to her belly, how wide her hips appeared, the way her arms looked pressed to her side. If she had a cape, something to cover her arms and—
No. Hannah looked away from the mirror. She couldn’t trust her own evaluation of how she looked, but that didn’t change the fact she needed a dress. And Sabrina, Tessa, and Kyla seemed to like it...
Find one thing. That’s what her therapist had said. When it was hard to love every part of herself, she should find one thing she could love, and one thing would be enough.
She made herself look back in the mirror, scanning her reflection. The color looked great with her eyes and skin tone, and the corset was doing amazing things for her breasts.
“Yes?”
Hannah asked, turning away from the mirror and back towards her new friends.
“Yes!”
they chorused back at her.
“It will for sure make Jackson Hayes lose his mind,”
Tessa said.
Kyla shot a smirk Tessa’s way. “It might make your dad lose his mind too.”
Comment section of Encores.com post with caption “Jackson Hayes spotted with Victoria’s Secret model at an LA nightclub”
StrmChsr92: So glad to see our boy Jackson THRIVING since he dropped that Broadway chick.
XOJxsnsGurlXO: Same! Hannah Matthews was weighing him down—literally!
User182734: @XOJxsnsGurlXO That’s a shitty thing to say about someone. She is a beautiful woman. How would you like it if someone went on the internet and made jokes about your body?
Here4theDrama: I took a class on body language in college and if you look at their pictures together it’s super obvious he was never into her.
User182734: @Here4theDrama One college psych course does not make you an expert in body language.
StrmChsr92: She probably paid him to date her.
User182734: @StrmChsr92 How does that make sense? Jackson Hayes doesn’t need any more money.
Here4theDrama: Who the hell is @User182734?
StrmChsr92: Oh my God, what if it’s her DAD?
User182734: I’m not her dad.
XOJxsnsGurlXO: That’s what her dad would say.
RealGirl6969: Live! Hot girls in your area are waiting to chat. Click here to connect with real, local, h0rny girls
StrmChsr92: I bet those “hot girls”
are hotter than Hannah Matthews
User182734: That is clearly a fake post. And you’re being disrespectful. I should report your comments to the moderator.
Here4theDrama: It’s definitely her dad.