Free The Morning After by Sally Clements Page B

“It’s fully stocked with loungers and a barbeque.”
    Cara glanced up. “All that glass would keep a window cleaner busy.”
    Ethan nodded. “Well, there’s not much point to having a view if you can’t see it.”
    “From every room in the house, apparently.” Cara itched to see inside, to investigate the rooms beyond the wide balcony that stretched across the entire back of the house. But Ethan sat on the sand, stretching his long legs. He slipped off his shoes, dug his toes into the sand, and sighed.
    She dropped next to him.
    “So…” Ethan slung an arm over her shoulders. “No one will bother you here. The place is impenetrable.” He stared into her eyes. “How are you doing?”
    She opened her mouth to speak. His eyes darkened with a warning. “Really. Don’t tell me some line. I’ll know.”
    Cara swallowed. “I’m okay.”
    Ethan’s arm tightened. “I’m sorry that bastard broke your heart,” he murmured. “I know it had to hurt.” A shadow of pain flickered across his eyes, and he stared out to the ocean. His jaw tightened.
    “It wasn’t the same as you and Aoife,” Cara said. “You loved her.”
    Ethan stayed silent, but he didn’t need to confirm her words. They’d talked through Aoife’s desertion on the telephone two years ago. The fact that Aoife had treated him so callously had fired Cara’s blood red hot, back then. She’d seemed devoted when she packed in her job as a secretary and set off for a new life with the man everyone had thought she would marry. But she’d been wooed by the glamour of it all, and had her head turned when a bigger movie star turned his considerable charms her direction at a party. And had quickly switched allegiance.
    No one except Cara knew just how devastating Aoife’s desertion had been.
    Cara grasped Ethan’s hand, hanging from her shoulder. “Has there been anyone, since?”
    “Plenty of anyone’s,” Ethan’s voice was hard. “But no one special.”
    The murmur of the ocean was a backdrop to his words.
    “Michael and I…it wasn’t like that.” Cara needed to let him know that she wasn’t hurting the way he had, back then. “We’d been dating, but…” Her tongue swept over her lips, tasting salt. “I hadn’t really committed to the relationship, even after he proposed. Something just didn’t seem right.” She glanced at his profile. “You know?”
    Ethan’s gaze tangled with hers. “You went to bed with him. I know you don’t do that lightly.”
    “I didn’t.” All embarrassment at discussing her love life faded. She’d always told Ethan everything, had only held back from this revelation because she’d been sure he wouldn’t understand. Under the circumstances, relief flooded through her at the knowledge that deep-down, some part of her had known Michael wasn’t to be trusted with her heart. Or the rest of her body, for that matter.
    “You didn’t?” Ethan’s gaze dipped to focus on her mouth. “What— never? ”
    “Not even a little bit.” Cara felt her mouth tilt in a smile. “I guess I knew, somehow.”
    Ethan leaned close. Touched his lips to hers in a feather-light caress so brief, she almost thought she’d imagined it. “I’m glad,” he said in a deep voice, before standing up and holding his hand out to her. “Want to have a look inside?”
    ****
    Ethan pondered Cara’s words as he opened up the house. Sleeping with someone didn’t mean anything. Merely that both parties felt the tug of sexual attraction, and acted on it. But somehow the fact Cara hadn’t actually allowed such a level of intimacy with Michael sparked something deep inside.
    She wasn’t like him. Up until now, she hadn’t done casual. Her innate belief in true love was one of the things that made her Cara. And even as his body responded to her with only one look from those sky-blue eyes, he couldn’t—wouldn’t—be the one to initiate her into the joys of sex for sex’s sake.
    She gazed around the large living room. A