Chapter Thirteen
Ethan closed the lid of his laptop on his kitchen island and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. He had better things to do than argue with anonymous jerks on the internet, but he couldn’t help himself. Ever since he’d discovered the steady stream of vitriol directed at Hannah online, he hadn’t been able to stop himself from responding, from letting these trolls, as Tessa had called them, know how wrong they were about her. But it seemed like the more he responded, the more they doubled down on their schoolyard taunts, turning the same on him until he wasn’t sure if he was helping or just making everything worse.
Hannah had been gone all day, shopping with Tessa and their friends. He hoped that meant she’d been too busy to see the latest batch of vicious commentary online. They only had a week left before she’d leave for New York again, but he intended to make the most of every moment, to prove to her she deserved better than a fake relationship with a self-centered former pop star.
Those people didn’t know her, not like he did.
You hardly know her.
But he would know her. He just had to convince her to try.
The front door of his house opened and Hannah entered, weighed down with shopping bags. “Hey.”
She flashed him a timid smile as she tried to step out of her shoes, wobbling unsteadily. Ethan rushed to take the bags from her and did his best not to notice the bag from the lingerie shop downtown. “I thought you’d still be at work,” she said.
“It’s after five.”
“No!”
she gasped, spinning around in search of the clock hanging on the far wall. “I didn’t realize it was so late. I wanted to cook you dinner tonight.”
She held up one of the bags, the logo for the local mom and pop grocery store emblazoned on the brown paper.
“That’s okay. We can order in,”
Ethan said, setting her other bags down.
Hannah blew out a breath. “Are you starving? We could eat a little later than usual and I could cook it anyway.”
“Han, you don’t have to cook for me.”
He took the grocery bag from her, but she snatched it back.
“I want to. To apologize for yesterday.”
He startled. “There’s nothing to apologize for.”
“We were having a great day and then that thing happened with the woman and the camera—”
“Tisha.”
“Yeah, her. And I shut down and shut you out. That wasn’t fair.”
“You don’t need to apologize for protecting yourself,”
he said, reaching for her hand. The anxious itch in his chest settled when she allowed him to lace their fingers together.
Let me know you.
Hannah stared at their interlocked hands for a moment. “I’d like to make you dinner, if that’s alright.”
“As long as it’s because you want to, and not because you think you have to.”
“I want to.”
Ethan nodded, taking all but the grocery bag from Hannah and carrying them to her room. “It was a successful shopping trip, I take it?”
he called over his shoulder.
“Very.”
When Ethan returned to the kitchen, Hannah had gathered her hair into a loose bun, leaving the long line of her neck exposed as she unpacked her groceries. He wanted to track that line with his lips and bite the tender curve where her neck met her shoulder. But if this was going to work, if he was going to remind her how good they could be together, how good he could make her feel, he needed to choose his moment carefully. He suspected that the first time she’d spoken to him in twenty-four hours was not the time.
He unbuttoned the cuffs of his flannel shirt and began rolling up the sleeves. “Put me to work.”
She turned to look at him, her eyes snagging on his forearms as he rolled his sleeves to the elbow. Her pupils dilated and the corner of her bottom lip caught between her teeth. Ethan fought back a grin. Maybe he wouldn’t have to wait too long after all.
“What?”
she asked, blinking away.
He crowded her against the counter. “Put me to work, Hannah. Tell me what you want me to do.”
She blinked again, her eyes heavy as they roamed over his face. He reached past her and snagged a sugar snap pea from the counter, biting into it as he took a step away, the crunch breaking her from his spell.
This is going to be fun.
“I’m no chef, but I can follow directions,” he said.
“Right.”
She turned towards the counter, her hand hovering over the assembled ingredients. At last, she grabbed a small container of multicolored cherry tomatoes. “You can start by cutting these in half.”
When he took the tomatoes from her, he swore he could see a blush creeping up her throat. He grabbed a knife from the butcher block and settled at the island perpendicular to her so he could watch her as they worked. “Where did you learn to cook?” he asked.
“I watched a lot of cooking shows when I first moved to the City. It was more wish fulfillment than for educational purposes, but after a while, I realized I’d picked up a few things,”
she said as she worked her knife through a pile of fresh herbs on the cutting board.
“Wish fulfillment?”
She stilled, the barest hint of hesitation, before she began moving again, her eyes focused on her cutting board. “Mmhmm. You know, some people watch the Travel Network and dream about going to Paris. I watched cooking shows and daydreamed about eating carbs.”
She glanced at him, as though assessing how he had received this new information. “I didn’t eat carbs back then,”
she explained in a quiet voice.
“Why not?”
She shrugged, moving the herbs into a little bowl at the edge of the counter and carefully removing a cod fillet from its butcher paper wrapping. Her movements were methodical, precise, as though she was pouring all her focus into them rather than answering his question. She stared at the fish, her brow wrinkled, and he got the feeling she wasn’t thinking about the fish at all. “Do you have any wine? White?”
she asked at last.
“I own a vineyard. Of course I have wine.”
He set the bowl of cut tomatoes down by her elbow. “I’ll be right back.”
He took his time selecting a bottle from the rack in his basement, more to give her a minute to collect herself than anything else. When he returned, he held out the bottle of Vidal Blanc to her.
“Great, thanks.”
She sent him a tentative smile as she dropped shallots and butter into a pan on the stove. “You never told me what you were doing in Boston the night we met,” she said.
Ethan leaned against the counter at her side, popping a cherry tomato half in his mouth while he considered his answer. “I had a business meeting.”
“Do you do a lot of business in Boston?”
she asked, scraping crushed cloves of garlic from her cutting board to drop into the sizzling butter.
He ran his hand over his jaw, scratching at his beard. He’d told her about Steph and Tessa, and maybe it was because he’d had enough of sharing his secrets for the time being, but he wasn’t sure why this felt like the more vulnerable confession. What would she think when she found out that the voice she’d been listening to on all those AK Wild novels she loved so much was his? And what did it mean that she hadn’t recognized his voice? His British accent wasn’t that good.
“Occasionally,”
he said, turning to retrieve a loaf of Tessa’s sourdough from the breadbox at the other end of the counter. He held it up for her approval. “Bread?”
She nodded and he busied himself with slicing the loaf into even pieces and setting a fresh stick of butter in the antique milk glass butter dish. She watched him from the corner of her eye as she pushed the shallots and garlic around the pan, her lips pressed tightly together. He hated it. He wanted her soft and open.
“It’s more a hobby than a business,”
he said at last.
She lifted her head to look at him, waiting for him to continue.
Here goes nothing.
“I narrate audiobooks. Only for one author. She lives in Boston.”
He glanced up to find her staring at him, eyes narrowed and brow lowered as she tried to work through what he’d said.
“Audiobooks,”
she repeated.
“Romance audiobooks.”
He sighed, cuffing the back of his neck. “For AK Wild. I’m—”
Hannah gasped. She pressed her hands to her mouth and the spatula clattered to the floor, her eyes going wide. “You’re Slade Hardcastle!”
He gave a tight nod and bent to pick up the spatula. When he stood back up, she was blushing something fierce. He rinsed the spatula in the sink and held it out to her.
She snatched it from his hands and used the wide, flat end to hit him on the bicep. “Why didn’t you tell me yesterday?”
“Hey, now,”
he said, dodging another strike with a smirk. “I didn’t want to embarrass you.”
“Embarrass me? Are you kidding me? This is the coolest thing I’ve ever heard!”
It was Ethan’s turn to look confused. “Really?”
“Yes, really! You’re famous!”
“I am not famous.”
“Slade Hardcastle is,”
she countered, turning back to the pan on the stove. “Do you know how many times—”
She cut herself off with a shake of the head.
“What, Han?”
He moved behind her as she worked, not quite touching her but close enough to see the goosebumps rise on the back of her neck.
“I’ve listened to The Lady’s Knights at least five times.”
She dumped the bowl of tomatoes into the pan and glanced back at him, a smile tugging at her lips. “There are entire fan accounts dedicated to you on social media. Do you know how many women would kill to be staying at Slade Hardcastle’s house?”
His hand curled around her hip. “I only really care about one woman.”
She poured a healthy splash of wine into the pan, shaking the tomatoes around in it, ignoring his comment. “Do your friends know?”
“Only Baz.”
“And now me.”
If he wasn’t mistaken, there was pride in her voice. He set his other hand on her hip, tugging her gently back towards him. “Are we friends, sweetheart?”
“Well, I don’t usually cook dinner for people who aren’t my friends,”
she said, turning off the stove and spinning in his hold to face him.
He didn’t miss the way her breathing hitched when he pulled her closer. He hummed low in his throat as he considered her words. “I don’t usually want to kiss my friends.”
She drew her bottom lip between her teeth, as though that could hide her smile. “I don’t know. Baz seems very kissable.”
Ethan grunted and increased the pressure of his hold on her hips, but his reaction only seemed to delight her further. Her eyes sparkled, color dancing across her irises like ripples in the bay after a spring storm. “He’s got that broody, mysterious thing going for him.”
“You’re not kissing Baz.”
“Maybe Sabrina would share—”
She broke off on a startled giggle as he pressed his lips to hers. She melted against him, opening to his kiss as her hands wound into his hair. As he kissed her, the knots in his chest that had appeared when she arrived in Aster Bay slowly loosened, replaced by the restless need to hold her closer, to kiss her harder, to nip at her throat until she admitted she hated this distance between them as much as he did.
She doesn’t want more. She said as much in Boston.
So much had changed in the last week. Surely now, after the last few days…
But had anything really changed at all? He knew she was afraid of clowns, what she did for a living, how it felt to kiss her on the sidewalk in his small town and not care who saw them—but she hadn’t opened up to him. Not really. She was still keeping him at arm’s length. He just wished he knew why.
He pressed his lips to her ear, dragging the lobe between his teeth. “Tell me something real, Han,”
he begged.
She tilted her head, allowing him better access to her throat, and stammered, lust drunk, “I—I don’t—”
“Anything, sweetheart. Tell me anything.”
His hands slid under the hem of her shirt, fingertips digging into the soft skin of her lower back, as his lips moved down the long line of her neck. “Please.”