Some Like It Charming - By Megan Bryce Page 0,57
only one who can break my composure, so maybe that’s the difference.”
He sat back, satisfied at her confession. “Will your father stick around? Try and get to you again?”
She nodded. “If he tries contacting you, don’t talk to him. Give him nothing that he can use. Don’t let him into the OC.”
He nodded. “I only have one more question. How good were you at wringing? If you wanted everything from me, could you get it?”
She looked into his clear green eyes. “You’d be a tough nut to crack.”
But she knew what he wanted. He wanted to find that woman who was worth half his fortune. Who he could be sure of and who would make him sure of himself.
She was her father’s daughter, no matter how much she wished otherwise. She knew what Ethan wanted, how much he wanted it. She could get everything from him.
But she was pretty sure it would take everything she had.
He wiggled his eyebrows. “Could you crack me?”
She was smiling when she said, “I could crack you.”
He pulled her closer, tucking her head under his chin. “I’d like to see you try.”
“No, you wouldn’t.”
“I would. I’d like to see who’d come out on top.”
“You remember WarGames? No one left to be on top. The only way to keep from losing is not to play.”
“We’re not talking about annihilation here.”
“That’s because you’ve never lost before. You don’t know what it really feels like.”
He ran his hand down her back. “I hate your father.”
She listened to his heart beat, the anger in his voice. Felt his strong arms around her and thought for a moment she might hate her father for the exact same reason Ethan did. For taking away her desire to play with everything she had.
But she said, “Seems fair. I hate your mother.”
He chuckled. “Let’s do something both of them will hate.”
She smiled up at him. “I’ll play that game with you.”
He toppled them to the bed and said, “Good. We can see who comes out on top.”
Ethan had been quietly fuming the last few days and hadn’t been sleeping well. He decided he might as well get out of bed and let Mackenzie sleep. While he did enjoy waking her up, she hadn’t had a full night’s rest since her father’s ambush.
He headed for the gym. A quick workout before work would help get whatever was bothering him out.
It wasn’t buried too deep, a fact he realized as he headed straight for the punching bag.
He took a long, slow breath. He methodically wrapped his hands, pulled on his gloves, and then he wailed into the bag.
Right into Luke Holden’s smiling face.
He thought of Mackenzie that night. Pale-faced, teary-eyed. Broken.
And how she’d been ever since. A little closed. A little wary.
Of Ethan.
Ethan smashed his fists into the punching bag again and again and again.
Hate. Hate. Hate.
He’d never hated anyone before.
He’d never loved anyone before.
He stopped, stood still while the punching bag swung and his breath bellowed.
What was he thinking? He loved everyone. Loved people’s foibles, their idiosyncrasies. Loved brightening their day, getting them to step outside themselves for just one minute. He loved giving people a reason to remember that one moment in that one day because most days were lost. Unremembered. Unworthy of being remembered.
And Mackenzie wasn’t wrong that usually those people then gave him whatever he wanted. He prided himself that what he wanted wasn’t harmful. He wasn’t like her father, dammit.
He punched the bag again, but his heart wasn’t in it, and he wandered away, ripping the gloves and wraps off his hands, and leaning against the mirrored wall.
Was he like her father?
He closed his eyes as he remembered the trail of tabloid articles his last breakup had spawned.
He thought of using Mackenzie as a buffer to keep other women away from him. Always using someone to get what he wanted.
Fucking hell.
Ethan smashed his ungloved fist into the mirror, the glass shattering and ripping into his skin. His blood squirted onto the mirror and he stared at it. He looked at his hand, watched blood drip down his fingers and onto the floor.
He grabbed a thick, white hand towel, wrapping it around his hand, focusing on the pain so he wouldn’t have to think about all the people he’d hurt. All the women he’d left pale-faced and teary-eyed.
He pictured Mackenzie broken and crying over him. When their six weeks was up and he put her on a plane back home. Another woman left to wonder what had happened when the problem