The Three-Week Arrangement (Chase Brothers) (16 page)

Chapter Fifteen

Three days later, Ethan was
still
pissed, and he wasn’t even sure why. He wasn’t mad at Rue. He wasn’t even mad at himself, really. He was doing the right thing. Which pretty much left him mad at the world, and he’d been there before. No reason he shouldn’t be able to cope.

Only he couldn’t. Not by a long shot.

Every ordinary, mundane thing he did, from
peeling back his covers to walking the dog, made him miss Rue more. She had a brightness to her eyes and a zeal for crazy shit. On a nice afternoon when everyone else he knew had been at the park or hanging out at home, the woman had taken him up in a hot air balloon. While everyone else made sad faces at shelter animals, she went in there and made a goddamned difference. He was a better man for
having known her, but he was also a ruined man. He’d never see life the same way again.

His world had been turned upside down once before, and there hadn’t been anything he could do but mourn. He’d said good-bye to his beloved wife because she couldn’t live, and now he was stuck saying good-bye to his wild, beautiful, pretend girlfriend because she could. And there wasn’t a damned thing
he could do about it.

Was there?

Hell if he knew.

He wasn’t on the schedule the next morning, but he went to work anyway. He needed the distraction, and he needed four walls Rue hadn’t made herself a part of. When he walked through the door and unhooked Shaggy’s leash, Liam didn’t even look up.

“What’s on the schedule for the day?” Ethan asked.

“Not you.”

“Brilliant
observation.” The retort came automatically, but his heart wasn’t in it.

“I’m glad I didn’t fail on every level,” Liam said.

Ethan stilled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Liam looked up. Looked
pissed
. “You had me fooled. I thought you cared about her. Actually, at first I thought you invented her and then I thought you were just pretending, but then I saw you with her, and
I thought you might be falling in love. Hell, I thought that
last night
. But like I said, I was wrong.”

Ethan didn’t need this. Not now. Now when he was losing the woman he wasn’t sure he could live with or live without. “And you came by this conclusion
how
?”

A smug, albeit disgusted, look crawled across Liam’s face. “I notice you don’t argue with the validity of it. Just that I know
anything at all.”

“I don’t really care what you
think
you know.”

“I’m not the one you should be worried about,” Liam shot back, “but you knew that, too. You’re the one who told Crosby to take a chance on love, and then you told Sawyer the same goddamned thing, so it’s only fair that I warn you that if you ever come to me with that insincere bullshit, I’m going to put you on the floor.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” At his raised voice, Shaggy looked up and took wobbly steps to stand next to Liam, which made Ethan feel like shit. He’d scared his own dog.

Liam gave a slight shake of his head. Patting Shaggy, he said, “You broke her heart, man. I don’t know how or why she decided to give two fucks about you, but you broke her.”

And that broke Ethan even
more than Shaggy’s desertion. “I know. I had to. She started talking about a relationship, and I can’t do that to her.”

Liam snorted. “I can see how that would torture a woman.”

“No, you don’t understand.” Ethan forced a hand through his hair and immediately thought of when the fingers clutching at his head had been Rue’s.
Dammit
. “She has this amazing passion for what she does, and
she can’t do it in New York. I mean, she’s probably about to leave for the Galapagos, and then there’s some shark finning thing I don’t know where, and in the spring she’s going to the Arctic to photograph seal pups. And you know there will be something after that.”

Liam shrugged. “So what? So she travels.”

No
. Ethan kept the denial silent because it wasn’t something Liam would understand.
People who traveled still felt like they had homes. Rue had an empty house in Flatbush and the only thing that made it belong to her was the Starbucks in the fridge. She needed to go, and he needed her gone, and for life to go back to the way it was. “I told you before,” Ethan said, “it’s more than that. It’s like her entire life is out there. If she came back here because of me, I feel like
I’d be extinguishing some of that passion she has for life.”

“Ever consider that she might have as much passion for you as she does for sharks?” Liam asked, sounding pissed. For a minute, Ethan thought Liam might make good early on his promise to try to put him on the floor right then, but the hard exterior cracked. “Actually, didn’t she punch a shark?”

“They parted as friends,” Ethan
said. “I can’t explain it. I just know she belongs out there.”

Liam shook his head. “How many chances do you think you’re going to get?” When Ethan didn’t say anything, Liam rubbed his face and swore under his breath. “You had an amazing wife who adored you. Some people never get that—not even once—and there are no words for the way you lost her. But you’ve got a second chance. This woman,
for whatever reason, wants you, and you’re pushing her away. You can tell yourself it’s the right thing all you want, but it’s not right. It’s safe and boring and a little pathetic, and one day you’re going to wake up staring at that ugly dog and realize you blew it. And for what? Because you’re
scared
?”

“Don’t you think I get that?” Ethan said. He had to force his voice low. The last thing
he needed was to run off the dog, too. “The thought of losing her
terrifies
me. I can’t go through that again.”

Liam looked at him like he was stupid. Hell, he probably was.

“Then you need to grow a pair,” Liam said. “Because you’ve been scared for a long damn time.” He shrugged, the feigned nonchalance as stiff as a board. “Sometimes falling in love with someone, or at least moving
in that direction, is reason enough to take a chance, but suit yourself.”

Ethan stared at Liam, but he’d gone back to his computer screen. Conversation over. Except…

“How do you know so much about what happened?” Ethan asked.

“I talked to Rue.” The words were a little too casual. Something was up.

“Why the hell did you do that?” Ethan snapped.

Liam looked up then
and grinned. “She needed a model for her calendar.”

“And?”

“And you’re looking at Mr. July.”

Chapter Sixteen

Rue scrolled through her most recent shoot. The pictures were amazing. Men with bodies cut from granite holding tiny, mewling kittens and puppies so little they were nothing but bellies and feet. They were freaking adorable, and she was proud of her work. Really proud. There was only one model left to shoot. She could spend the rest of the evening putting the calendar
together, and after that, all that was left to do was email the files to the charity.

And pack.

She paused on one of the pictures. A firefighter, smudged with soot and glistening with sweat. He wore his turnout pants and nothing from the waist up. It was raw. Stunning, really, with the play of light making sharp edges out of every plane and ridge of his body, all of this made even
more dramatic by the forlorn-looking retriever pup, so tiny it fit in the palm of one rugged hand. The overall effect was devastating, in a loins-run-amok kind of way, but her loins behaved themselves perfectly.

Her loins wanted Ethan.

“Am I late?”

She glanced up as Liam walked in. “Right on time. Start stripping.”

“I love a woman who knows what she wants. You do realize
Ethan is going to kick my ass later, right?” His easy smile suggested he didn’t much care.

She shrugged. She
hurt
. “I’m sorry about your ass, but it was his choice.”

Liam snorted and yanked off his shirt.

Rue studied him for a minute, trying to figure out the best angle. The fact that she wasn’t sure the Chase brothers had any bad angles did nothing to help her decision. All
four men had a classic California surfer vibe going on—perhaps Liam more than the others, as his hair was more platinum with fewer of the dark undertones his brothers had—and she longed to capture him on the beach, but she didn’t dare risk any of the animals getting frightened and bolting, so she’d arranged all of the images inside, mostly against a white background. The artfully draped backdrop drew
an instant parallel to bedding. It was almost perfect.

She just needed a different brother and an actual bed. That would be great. But that wasn’t happening.

To Liam, she said, “You’re a lifesaver.”

“I’m sure you could have found someone to do this,” he said dryly. “Single man becoming the object of sexual desire for millions of women? Not a hard sell.”

“Thousands,” she
corrected with a smile.

He froze. “Damn. Really?”

She grinned, even though her heart wasn’t really in it. It wasn’t Liam’s fault his brother was a jerk. “Really. The preorders are in the thousands. I’m going to need to mess up your hair.”

His green eyes widened. “Wait, what?”

She rolled her eyes. “You can’t seriously be worried about your hair.”

“I just didn’t realize
I’d be manhandled,” he said, but then he ducked his head so she could reach him without standing on a bucket.

“Get the hell out of here,” said an unexpected voice from behind them, “and you won’t be.”

Ethan
.

She was afraid to turn around, because if she’d only imagined him, she’d fall apart. As it was, she was barely holding it together. Her life had become a countdown to liftoff,
because only then did she think she had a prayer of putting him behind her.

“Seriously,” Ethan said. “Beat it.”

Liam glared, though humor glinted in his eyes. “You want me to give up thousands of single women? Couldn’t you have come to your senses thirty minutes from now?”

Rue turned and drank in the sight of Ethan. Her heart spun and sputtered and dammit, he was
not
going to
walk back into her life like this. Not after the way he’d walked out of it, but some questions just begged an answer. “You came to your senses?” To say she was skeptical was an understatement.

“If my brother thinks I’m going to stand by while you mess up his hair,” Ethan said, “then I think he’s the one who needs to come to his senses.”

“Caveman Ethan is back,” she murmured. But that
didn’t mean he was welcome there.

“
Caveman Ethan
?” Liam burst into laughter.

Ethan glared. “Repeat that and die.”

Liam shot Rue a look. “
This
is what women want?”

“It’s what I want,” she murmured. And then she could have kicked herself a thousand times. Or Ethan once, assuming it was a solid hit.

“And on that note,” Liam said, “I’m outta here. And not a moment too
soon, you asshole. If I’d ended up in that calendar, I would have never heard the end of it.”

“Hey, wait a minute,” Rue protested. “You can’t chase off my model.”

“I’m not,” Ethan said. “If the invitation still stands, I’m in.”

“You are?” She fumed, and she wanted him and she loved him, but dammit, she still wanted to
kick
him. “Because I’m pretty sure you told me you were just
another one of my risks, and it was just too bad it hadn’t worked out for me.”

He eyed her clenched fists. “Do I need a cup for the rest of this conversation?”

“That would be one of your better ideas.”

He had the decency to wince. Then he took her hands with his and held on. “I need you to understand,” he said, “that I let you go because I was scared. I haven’t felt what I feel
for you in so long, it terrified me. But not as much as the thought of not having you in my life terrified me, once that really started to sink in. I’m sorry it took me so long.”

She blinked back tears, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. “If you’re going to do the calendar, I’m going to need you to take off your shirt.”

He opened his mouth, then closed it again. He dropped
her hands and took a step back. “I could just call Liam…”

She shook her head, unsure if he was serious. She didn’t deny him. If he was going to be there, it wouldn’t be because she’d begged. “Lose the shirt. And the shoes and socks. I don’t know if we’ll use a full-body shot, but if we do, bare feet are sexy.”

“Noted,” he said wryly. But he shrugged out of his shirt, and her heart
leapt.

Not that she’d let him off the hook and tell him that just yet.

“Are you sure I have to do this picture?” he asked.

She ignored the teasing tone. “No. You can leave.”

She turned away from him, but he grabbed her hand and brought it to his lips. “I don’t want to.” She looked at him for a moment, but he still hadn’t completely revealed what his intentions were, and
she was too bruised to make it easy for him. She got back down to business, adjusting the lighting.

For the most part, he behaved himself as she tousled his hair and told him where to stand.

She left him then and scooped up a kitten. The effect was what she’d hoped for. The tousled hair was a nice offset to eyes hooded with unchecked desire, and he even had a hint of stubble on his
jaw that made her crazy with need. He was raw. Feral.
Aroused
. Against the white backdrop, his green eyes were electric. What woman wouldn’t want him storming her bedroom? She handed him a tiny blue-eyed kitten and practically swooned.

It didn’t take long to get the perfect shot.

“I guess that’s it,” she said. “All done here.”

His face fell, and she realized her words could have
been taken a couple different ways.

“But,” she added quickly. “I do have one question.”

“Anything.” His open sincerity made her believe it. Ethan had come back. Ethan had said he
loved
her.

“What made you change your mind?” she asked.

He tugged on his shirt, immediately drying most of the wet look she’d painstakingly accomplished. “About you or the calendar?”

“The
calendar,” she said because she wasn’t sure she could handle the other part. What if seeing her again wasn’t what he thought it would be?

“Because you are life,” he said gently. “You live it. You embrace it. And considering I’ve never even posted a picture of myself to social media, let alone shared one with a rumored thousands of single women, I hope this proves to you that I’m ready to
get out there. With you.” He brushed back a lock of her hair, his fingertips caressing her cheek. “I’m in, sweetheart. All the way in. All of it. Everything you’ve got to give. I’ve got a lot to figure out and probably have no business being here, but—”

She stood on her toes and silenced him with a kiss. She’d only wanted to shut him up, but he quickly took over. Instead of a frantic, needy
pace, he wrecked her with a tender exploration. Sweet and quietly demanding, he kissed her until her knees gave out—holy cliché, batman—but he had her.

He had her.

“I want you,” he murmured against her lips. “I want you however you are and wherever you are. As long as you want me, too, there’s nowhere too far.”

“I won the internship,” she said, hoping it wouldn’t change anything.
But if it would, they both needed to know.

“I knew you would,” he said. He sounded proud. Of
her
. “And after that you’re going to play with the sharks, and then the seals. And then a dozen more adventures, and a dozen more after that. I got that. I
love
that. All I ask is that you let me join you for a few days here and there. I want to be part of your world. I want to tell you I love you
and not feel as if I’m holding you back.”

It was then she fell apart. Right into his arms, right where she belonged. A sobbing mess, but so wholly, completely at
home
. “Ethan, if you love me,
nothing
would hold me back.”

“Good.” He kissed away her tears. “Because I love you. Imperfectly, but with everything I have. And I want to go just about anywhere with you right now and prove it.”

“That’s an offer I absolutely cannot refuse.”

Once the equipment was put away and the animals had been cared for, she emailed the rest of the photos to the charity for the Von Adler graphic designers to do the layout.

Three days later, tangled in bed with Ethan and already running forty-five minutes late for check-in on the first leg of her trip to the Galapagos, she got the calendar
proof.

Ethan was on the cover.