Chapter 7 #3
She took his phone from his hand and clicked again on the doctored video. “I mean, they’re exaggerating the moment.” Then she tapped the looped arrow and played it again.
“I was shaky,” he said. “And when you came up, I was relieved.”
“Right. You were just glad to see me. That’s all that look is. And you know, they slowed it way down, and then they put that Bugs Bunny music behind it, and?—”
“Tchaikovsky,” he said. “The Romeo and Juliet Overture.”
“I knew that.” She blinked and lowered her head. “Not really. But I’m impressed you did.”
“I’m a musician. I take it seriously.”
“I know you do.”
He smiled, then realized he was probably looking at her again exactly the way the camera had caught him looking at her in the video.
Yeah, they’d slowed it down and added one of the most romantic songs ever written.
But they couldn’t fake the look in his eyes when she’d come to stand beside him.
And it wasn’t a one-night-stand or casual fling kind of look, either.
This wasn’t good. There was too much to lose if things between them went sideways.
She glanced up, caught him looking, and even though he quickly tried to change his expression, she’d seen it and her eyebrows bent in an analytical frown. He cleared his throat and looked away, toward the front where a pickup truck full of cousins had just pulled up. Thank the Lord.
“Well, at least it looks like everybody’s forgotten about your scandalous DNA,” Lily said.
“Yeah, but now you’re a target.”
“I’m a target of whom?”
“The press. The media. The fans. The?—”
“Honey,” she said, and not as a term of endearment, “As your cousin Maria reminded you recently, you’re not all that famous.” Then she winked at him. “Not yet, anyway.”
Lily wasn’t mortified by the rash of videos featuring her.
She probably should’ve been, but she wasn’t.
She was flattered, and frankly it was gratifying that the small part of country music fandom who followed Ethan Brand were as confused by him as she was.
He looked at her like he adored her but refused to do anything about it.
And now his ever-present family was spilling in through the front entrance. And while she loved them, had adopted them as her own over the past year, it was awfully difficult to get any alone time with Ethan. They were always around.
She sighed too loudly. He heard it and glanced her way. “You all right, Lily Ellen?”
God, she loved when he called her that. Nobody else called her that, only Ethan, and it made her belly clench up every time.
“I just…we should talk about this, you know? Privately.”
He held her eyes, nodded. “Before the day’s out, okay?”
“Okay.” She pasted a big, fake smile onto her face, and welcomed the gang, who’d come to help in any way needed.
By lunch, the dining room had been cleared entirely, all the tables and chairs had been loaded on the back of the pickups in which the cousins had arrived. Orrin, Drew, and Trevor had taken the loaded trucks back to the ranch, where they’d found room to store everything in one of the outbuildings.
Lily had been making notes and even a few sketches on her iPad to keep herself distracted. Ethan kept an arm’s length between them all day, to the point that she felt it had to be obvious to everyone. No one said anything, though, so maybe she was being hypersensitive.
None of the cousins had mentioned the Ethan Brand’s mystery gal memes making the rounds on the internet.
She’d checked social media multiple times, unable to stop herself.
Nobody seemed to be talking about his father, the recently deceased criminal kingpin, having murdered his mother anymore.
Everyone was speculating that his announcement of a two-month hiatus in his hometown had more to do with the mystery gal than with transforming a cantina into a honky-tonk.
She’d bookmarked the pieced-together video with the closeup of him gazing down at her.
Someone had made a version where hearts were popping out of his eyes rather than pulsing over his head, but she didn’t like that, because they hid the real thing.
She liked looking at him, looking at her.
There was something there. He could deny it all he wanted, but it was plain as day.
And that made her start hoping again, and that was the most self-destructive thing she could probably do.
Willow and Baxter left to get pizzas, Willow sending her a nod, like she knew there were things her cousin and cousin-in-law needed to discuss in private. The two of them got into Baxter’s Jeep Wrangler and bounded away.
Lily turned to face Ethan.
He looked down at her and smiled. “Okay,” he said. “It’ll be at least a half hour. You wanted to talk about the video.”
“No,” she said. “I wanted to talk about…you’re so dang tall, you know that?”
“I’m…sorry?”
“Could you sit down, please, so I can look you in the eye.”
His eyes widened, maybe in alarm, but he reached behind him for the three-rung stepladder and backed his butt onto the second rung. Then he said, “Better?”
She moved right up in front of him and said, “Much.” Then she slid her fingers into his hair, right past his ears, until they met at the back of his head, and then she kissed him.
He jerked in surprise, but then his mouth softened, and his breath kind of whispered out of him.
He tilted his head a little, moved his lips against hers.
He moaned all soft and raspy. He closed his arms around her waist, pulling her between his legs until her chest was up against his, and so was everything else.
He was cupping her head with one hand, and the other was moving down her back, lower, toward her butt, and then he clasped one cheek and pressed her closer.
She was so surprised she broke the kiss, opened her eyes, had to back away to bring him into focus. And then she said, “I knew it! I knew you felt something for me.”
“No. Nonononono, this ain’t right. It can’t happen.” He rose, pushed a hand through his hair, and paced away from her. “You’re Harrison’s baby sister, Lily. You’re family.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“I can’t…you know…start somethin’ up with you. It’d be disrespectful. Harrison would hate me, probably try to kick my ass, and I’d have to let him. And Maria! She’d never forgive me.”
“For what, exactly?”
“For breakin’ your heart, obviously.”
She said, “Oh,” and raised her eyebrows. He turned to look at her, so she went on. “So you’re pretty sure that’s how it would go, then? You, breaking my heart?”
“Well, yeah. I’m not gonna stay here long term, you know. I have to get back on the road. My career?—”
“Yes, of course, your career.”
“So nothin’ can come of it.”
“Right.”
“It would just be a fling. And I can’t have a fling with Maria’s husband’s sister.”
“Because it would be disrespectful,” she said.
“Yes.”
“And you don’t find it at all disrespectful that what I want hasn’t even entered into your thinking?”
He opened his mouth, closed it again.
“My body, my choice.”
He shook his head like a dog shaking off water. “Well, no, that never occurred to me. I guess I just assumed you’d want…more.”
“Maybe I will. Or maybe I’ll want less. Hell, maybe I’m the one who’ll break your heart.” She picked up her tool belt from where she’d left it on a wall hook. “I’m done for the day. I’ll send you my notes. Do whatever you want with ‘em.”
She went right out the door into the bright, midday Texas sunshine, got into her car, and left without looking back.
As she went, she passed a big brown car that had to have been from the seventies, parked on the side of the road.
It was an odd place to just sit, so she tried to see inside as she passed.
The guy behind the wheel was vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t quite place him.
He had a shaggy blondish beard, sunglasses covering his eyes, and his hair was apparently pulled back.
Then she was rounding a bend and he was out of sight behind her.
On the way home, she relived every moment of that kiss. The way Ethan had wrapped her up tight in his arms, the way he’d held her pressed against him from collar bone to hip bone and everywhere in between.
Her stomach knotted up all over again with the memory.
Okay, okay, this was not a bad thing, she thought. Even though she had broken her own rule, and that wasn’t really fair, she’d learned the truth. He obviously wanted her as much as she wanted him. That was progress, she supposed. Toward what, remained the question.
The thing was, they had to work together, for a little while at least. And her bold move, while proving the attraction between them was real and reciprocal, had also ensured things would be awkward. She was going to have to come up with a solution for that.