Thankfully, her eyes hadn"t changed at all. They were the same melted milk chocolate he remembered. And her smile still had that girlish quality he"d noticed during their night together, even though she hadn"t had much cause to use it since he surprised her at her apartment door not twenty minutes ago.
He wasn"t sure there was a logical reason for his high spirits, but just seeing her again made the blood sing in his veins.
What the h.e.l.l was wrong with him?
And what was so special about this woman, that she seemed to invade his every brain cell?
She wasn"t his usual type, yet her face popped into his head the minute he woke up in the morning and was the last thing he saw before falling asleep at night. He spent his days wondering where she was, who she was, what she was doing, and if he"d ever see her again.
Now she sat across from him, her peach-tipped fingers drumming absently on the table while she perused her menu, and he couldn"t think of a darn thing to say. Not a single question that had been burning in his gut for days. He found himself just being grateful he"d stumbled upon her and that she"d agreed to have lunch with him.
The waiter returned then, and they each ordered a sandwich platter. After he left, they sipped iced tea and made insignificant small talk until their meals arrived.
"You"re right, the food is delicious," Gwen said, after taking a bite of her carved turkey on whole wheat. A drop of mustard dotted the corner of her mouth, and she lifted the cloth napkin from her lap to wipe it away.
He eyed his own club sandwich and the side of potato chips that had come with it. "I"m glad you like it."
Long seconds ticked by while they ate, until Ethan couldn"t stand it anymore. He"d never before been shy, so he didn"t see why the h.e.l.l he should start now.
"Look, Gwen," he finally muttered. "There"s something I"ve been wondering, so I"m just going to come out and ask."
He had the satisfaction of seeing her blanch as she struggled to swallow the chip she"d been chewing.
"The night we were together, why did you leave the next morning without saying anything? I mean, I got your note, but you didn"t need to run off like that."
And why, oh, why, for the first time in his life, did it bother him so d.a.m.n much?
She opened her mouth to speak, but the chip apparently went down the wrong way and she coughed instead. After taking a rather long sip of her iced tea, she inhaled deeply and raised her eyes to his.
He expected her to look away, but she surprised him by holding his gaze.
"I guess I was feeling uncomfortable, and thought it would be easier for both of us if I left before you woke up. You might not believe this, but I don"t make a habit of going home-or to bed-with men I barely know."
At that she looked away, and he watched one perfectly rounded nail, painted a pale peach, draw circle eights on the tabletop.
"I do believe you. In fact, that"s something else I"ve been wondering-why you would go home with me, a complete stranger, and ask me to make love to you."
He paused to take a sip of his own cold drink, letting his words sink in before adding what he knew to be true but wasn"t sure she wanted known. "That"s not something I"d have expected from a woman who had never been with a man before."
If she"d appeared uncomfortable before, she looked positively nauseated now. Her fidgeting finger stilled on the dark wood surface a moment, before she clasped her hands tightly in her lap.
"How did you know?" she asked in a strained whisper.
"There were some telltale signs," he answered frankly. "You seemed a little nervous at first, and it took you a while to warm up. You were also tighter than normal, and I felt the resistance when I got all the way inside you."
Color ranging from light pink to bright scarlet crept up her neck to stain her cheeks. Regret at his cavalier att.i.tude tugged at his gut and he reached out to pat her arm.
"I"m sorry, I didn"t mean to embarra.s.s you. And you shouldn"t be. Being a virgin is nothing to be ashamed of."
"I"m not ashamed," she responded.
The slope of her shoulders and lowering of her lashes told him differently, but he didn"t press the issue.
"Good," he said simply. "Actually, it"s kind of refreshing. Owning a nightclub, I come in contact with a number of women on a daily basis. I"ve even gone to bed with some of them," he told her matter-of-factly. "But I can"t remember the last time I was a woman"s first lover-if ever."
She glanced up, her Bambi-brown eyes anxious and wary. Ethan offered a small smile in an attempt to put her more at ease.
"Can you at least tell me why?" he asked.
"Why?"
"Why you picked me. Of all the men in Georgetown, and all the places you could have gone that night, why did you end up at The Hot Spot and with me?"
"Would you believe you were a birthday present to myself?" she asked softly.
He sat staring at her for a long minute, trying to absorb what she"d just told him. He"d known that night was her birthday, but hadn"t realized he"d been her biggest present.
Should he feel used or flattered? He wasn"t sure at this point. And he supposed he couldn"t be too upset, considering the size of the gift she"d given him that night.
"Are you angry with me?"
He automatically shook his head. He was a lot of things, but angry wasn"t one of them. "No, I"m not angry."
He wasn"t, though he"d have been hard-pressed to describe his current emotions. A dozen proverbs floated through his head, making him want to chuckle. What Comes Around Goes Around.... The Shoe Was on the Other Foot.... A Taste of His Own Medicine....
Yep, he"d had a good, long run of living a high, carefree life, and now this woman had come along to shake things up and make him doubt his whole existence.
Instead of making him feel better, however, her admission only raised more questions.
"Do you mind if I ask which birthday this was?" She didn"t look a day over twenty-five, but he wasn"t exactly an expert at pegging people"s ages.
"Or maybe I should ask how it is that a beautiful, captivating young woman such as you manages to avoid going to bed with a man for so long, regardless of how old you are. I would have expected you to lose your virginity in high school, maybe in the backseat of an old, beat-up car with the captain of the football team. Or on prom night with some frat boy you convinced your parents to let you date, even though you were still too young."
Gwen nearly choked at Ethan"s so-very-wrong a.s.sumptions. It was hard enough to sit here, listening to him talk about what they"d done that night and trying to form answers to questions she"d hoped never to be asked. But to hear him discuss her virginity as though it was as common a topic as the weather...Or for him to think she might have been popular enough in high school to even have a boyfriend, let alone go all the way with one...
The truth was the captain of the football team hadn"t known she existed, never mind being interested enough to try to get her into the backseat of his car. And there had been no prom for her. Only a night spent at home, reading and studying, as usual.
Most of her graduating cla.s.s probably wouldn"t even recognize her name. If pressed, maybe, possibly, a small portion might recall a thin, gangly girl with stringy brown hair and big, owlish gla.s.ses wandering the hall. But otherwise, they"d all been too preoccupied with their own social lives to notice her.
She was nothing like the person he obviously believed her to be, and no amount of new clothes or salon hairstyles was going to change that.
The question was, how did she tell him that, without ruining the one fun, exciting memory she had by admitting he"d gone to bed with a fraud?
"I grew up in a rather sheltered environment," she told him, which wasn"t far from the truth. "And after that, I guess I was just...picky."
"Picky," he repeated, rolling the word around in his mouth as if he was trying to discern its meaning. "And yet you walked into my club one Friday night and decided to go home with the first man you met."
She swallowed the lump of dread squeezing her esophagus and threatening to cut off her air. "Technically, you were the second man I met."
He raised a brow, and she thought she saw one corner of his mouth tick with suppressed humor.
"I guess you"re right. And you should be glad you didn"t wind up leaving with that first guy. He"s at The Hot Spot every night, it seems, hitting on unsuspecting women."
"And you aren"t?"
His smile revealed sparkling white teeth. "I own the place. I have to be there. Besides, women hit on me more than I hit on them."
She didn"t doubt that for a minute. Ethan was by far the most handsome man she"d seen at the club the night of her birthday.
Even now, she didn"t think there was another man in the restaurant half as attractive as he was. Aside from his dark good looks, there was an aura about him that begged for attention. The way he carried himself and his obvious self-confidence drew people-especially women-to him like moths to a flame.
"But that still doesn"t answer my question, does it?" he continued. "Why me? Why, after twenty-odd years, did you wake up and decide to get horizontal with a complete stranger?"
Tamping down a trickle of panic, she shifted in her chair, stiffening her spine. She didn"t correct him on the "twenty-odd years" comment, either.
"Does it matter?" she retorted, a bit of snap to her tone. "Do you grill other women you sleep with this way, or am I getting some sort of special treatment?"
Several seconds ticked by, while he stared at her and she stared back. Her heart was hammering a mile a minute, and a tiny voice in her head prayed he wouldn"t be offended or annoyed enough to get up and walk out on her.
She liked him so much, but she was making a royal mess of seeing him again. All because she was too afraid of blatant rejection to tell him she normally wore cotton instead of lycra, brushed her hair rather than teased it and had never been to a nightclub in her life before the evening they"d met.
"You"re right," he said finally. "It"s none of my business who you sleep with or why...whether it"s your first time or your four hundredth." With a wry twist to his lips, he added, "Though I am kind of glad I wasn"t your four hundredth."
Four hundred. Right. She hadn"t even begun to contemplate lover number two yet.
"How many women have you been with?" The query slipped out before she could stop it. "I"m sorry," she quickly apologized. "I shouldn"t have asked that."
"Hey, it"s no worse than what I was asking you."
He sat silently for a moment, absently stirring the long spoon in his gla.s.s of tea, making the ice cubes tinkle in reply.
"I guess the best thing for me to do here is come clean and say I honestly don"t have a clue. That doesn"t sound good or cast me in the best light, but it"s the truth."
"That many, huh?"
He shrugged. "I own a popular nightclub where beautiful, single women come looking for a good time, and I never claimed to be a monk. The funny thing is..." He paused a beat to drum his fingers on the tabletop, his eyes growing smoky and serious as he held her attention. "I was completely faithful to my wife. From the time we started dating, I never even looked at another woman."
Gwen"s mouth fell open, and she knew her eyes must be as wide as saucers. Of all the things she might have expected to hear from this man, that he"d had a wife wasn"t one of them. She"d have been less flabbergasted to hear he wore ladies" underwear or sang in an all-male revue.
"You were married?"
"For almost five years," he said with a nod.
"What happened?"
"She married me for my money," he answered succinctly and with a clear note of bitterness. "Or rather, for my family"s money. Of course, I didn"t know that until I struck out on my own to open The Hot Spot. When things got tight, and without my parents" money to keep her in the lifestyle to which she"d become accustomed, she divorced me and took off for greener pastures."
Ethan lifted the tea to his mouth for a sip before continuing. "Her loss, though. The club is a huge success and now I"m rolling in it. So much so that I"ve been looking into buying property at a second location."
"Congratulations. You should be very proud of yourself, doing it all on your own, even though your parents were wealthy."
"Thank you. I am."
He was also still hurting from his ex-wife"s betrayal. She could hear it in his voice and see it in the closed expression on his face.
"It probably isn"t my place to say this, but you should also be glad your wife left you when she did. It would have been terrible to be married to someone who cared only for your money and not know it until it was too late."
He blinked as he considered her words. "I never thought of it that way," he murmured quietly. "I guess you"re right."
Gwen glanced down, toying with the leftover slivers of potato chips on her plate.
"What about you?" he asked, causing her to lift her head. "Doesn"t my money and success impress you?"
"Of course," she responded immediately. "I think it"s wonderful that you had a dream and went after it, even if it meant leaving the financial security your family could have provided."
His gaze narrowed. "I meant my money. Doesn"t it make you want to flirt with me, latch on to me, see if you can squeeze a few expensive pieces of jewelry, or maybe a sports car, out of me before we go our separate ways?"
Her lips tightened in a moue of annoyance. "I don"t know what kind of women you"re used to hanging around with at that club of yours, but I"m not after your money. You came to my apartment today, remember? If you hadn"t, we probably never would have seen each other again. I make a fine income on my own and don"t need anyone else to support me. I certainly don"t need a man to buy me things. If there"s something I want, I"ll either buy it myself or do without."
Time ticked by after her fervent speech, with nothing but the clink of silverware and the muted voices of other diners to fill the taut silence. And then Ethan threw his head back and laughed.
At first she thought she might have sent him over the edge, but the longer he chuckled, the more she realized he was genuinely amused.
Heads turned toward them, people wondering what was so funny. But instead of feeling uncomfortable under their close scrutiny, she was simply glad Ethan appeared to be enjoying himself.
It couldn"t be easy coming to terms with the fact that the person you loved and had married-the woman you thought loved you in return-was really only interested in your family"s fortune and what it could buy.
"You know what, Gwen?" he managed, once he"d caught his breath.
"What?"
"I"m glad you picked me as your birthday present."
A ripple of delight-followed closely by pure, unadulterated desire-washed over her, raising the hairs on her arms and making her knees clench together.
She was glad, too, but would never admit to him how much.
Their waiter returned then, to take away their empty plates and offer dessert. Gwen pa.s.sed, but Ethan ordered a slice of key lime pie and a cup of coffee to wash it down.
"Will you do me a favor?" he asked while they waited for his order to arrive.
She studied him warily, not sure she wanted to agree to anything until she"d heard him out. "What kind of favor?"
"I"m having a small dinner party at the club next week and I"d like you to come."
"I don"t think that"s a good idea," she replied, after thinking it over for a couple of seconds.
"Please. You won"t feel out of place, I promise. My best friend and his wife are coming over, and if you aren"t there to act as a buffer, I"ll be alone with them. I love them like family, but ever since they got married, every time we get together Lucy tries to reform me. Before the wine has even been uncorked, she"ll start lecturing me on the error of my ways, and naming every decent, single female she knows who might make a good wife. If I have a date with me, though, Lucy will hold her tongue and give me a much-needed break from her efforts to see me settled down."