Free IF YOU WANTED THE MOON by Mallory Monroe Page B

search out a local hotel room, move her luggage to it, and exercise that say.
    with whom she slept. And after lunch, she decided, she would search out a local hotel room, move her luggage to it, and exercise that say.

    The music in the diner changed from the easy listening sound of the Beach Boys to one of those hard rock bands, causing Tori to elevate her voice. Her goal was to behave as calmly as he always did, and then, without him having a clue about her plans, handle her business. “Is this one of your regular haunts, Mister. . . Ethan?”

    Ethan shook his head. “Never been here before. Brennan recommended it.”

    “Karl Brennan, your advance man?”

    Ethan hesitated. She sounded as if she might be interested in the good looking black man. And just the thought that she might be interested in another man, a young, good looking man, upset Ethan.
    “That’s right,” he said.

    “What’s an advance man?”

    “It’s just a figure of speech in my case. Karl had to take care of some matters for me and came early to get it done, that’s al.”

    “Wil he be working with us when we start scouting for land?”

    “He’s married, Tori,” Ethan said quickly and Tori, amazed that he would even go there, frowned.

    “Why would you say a thing like that?” she asked incredulously. “I wasn’t asking about him because of that .”

    “Sure?”

    “Yes, I’m sure!”

    “Then I do beg your pardon, Miss Douglas. I thought al of you ladies couldn’t wait to know a brother’s marital status.”

    “Apparently some of us can wait because I have yet to ask about yours.” Tori couldn’t believe she had said it, and she looked to Ethan for his reaction, but she wasn’t exactly upset that she’d said it either.

    Ethan smiled, to her surprise, and raised his glass of coke to her. “Point taken,” he said and she relaxed.

    He drank heartily from his soda, al of it, in fact, and then asked if she was ready.

    “Yes,” she said, rising, “before this loud behind music burst my big behind eardrums.”

    Ethan laughed, tossed a twenty on the table, and headed for the cash register.

    Tori waited outside, in the warm afternoon sun, and she tried to enjoy watching the townspeople go about their business up and down the town square, but she couldn’t pul it off. She felt letdown. She felt that al of this hope she had for Ethan, hope she didn’t even know why she would have, crumbled on his confession. She hurt him that day in that stairwel, and now he aimed to hurt her. Not physicaly, she wasn’t afraid of him that way at al, but probably by working her so hard until she wished he had knocked her out.

    And if she didn’t measure up, if she didn’t comply with his every little whim, she was out. No job, no mortgage payments for her parents, no meteoric rise in the corporate world for her. And the matter of their sleeping arrangements. What was he going to say when she found herself a hotel room? If you leave this house you’re fired, Miss Douglas? What if he said something like that? Such a statement, of course, would be tantamount to sexual harassment, but how would she prove it? Al he had to say was that she didn’t do the job and he fired her. End of discussion. Case thrown out. And on top of al of that, she thought, her head beginning to spin with worry, she was growing to like the joker! Every time he looked at her, every time he touched her with those big, strong hands of his, she was ready to get buck wild and let him have his way. The man who held her future in his hands, not to mention her parents future. She was in trouble, she thought.

    They began a slow walk along the sidewalk of the town square. Tori was surprised, expecting Ethan to immediately jump in his Lexus and get started with the torture. But he didn’t even mention work.
    He draped his suit coat over his broad shoulder and they began to cruise along, going nowhere slowly, trying to bask in the cool breeze coming off of the