“Oh, it wasn’t wasted,” he affirmed. “I thoroughly enjoyed you in it.”
With hands propped on her hips and head tipped to the side, Harper offered him a wide grin that hit him straight in the heart.
But his heart couldn’t get involved. He hadn’t allowed his heart to get involved with anyone since he was a teenager. Whatever he was feeling had to do with the anticipation and anxiety surrounding the baby, the engagement and the reunion with Robert.
But there was a moment in the hallway, a sliver of a second when he’d nearly let his guard down. He couldn’t risk letting Harper in completely. Not until this entire mess was sorted out and all the lies dealt with. She deserved better, and he would make damn sure she got it.
He only prayed she didn’t want to completely leave him after this was all out in the open. Would she listen to his side? Would she understand why he’d gone to such great lengths for revenge and
why he’d kept the truth from her once he realized who she was?
“Tell me about your mother.”
Harper’s demand pulled him straight from his thoughts. “What brought that up?”
With a shrug, she crossed to the side of the bed he lay on and eased down next to his hip. Ethan shifted and settled his hand on her lap.
“You mentioned her passing, and you’re protective of me, of this baby. I just figure she must have been an amazing woman to raise such a caring son.”
Ethan wasn’t sure how to put into words how amazing his mother had been. There wasn’t a day that went by that he didn’t miss her or wish he had her back.
“She was a single mother who raised my brother, Dane, and me the best she could,” he started. “She inherited a good chunk of money from her father, and she invested it into opening two businesses. Her ultimate goal was to pass those down, one for Dane and one for me.”
“Sounds like a smart woman.” Harper rested her hand over his. “So how did you end up with the nightclubs? That wasn’t her business, was it?”
Looking back, his life was a complicated mess, and he couldn’t divulge the entire truth right now. Guilt pumped through him. He wanted to tell her, though. He wanted Harper to know the man Robert was.
Ethan was still trying to wrap his mind around the fact Harper was involved at all—even if it was by default. He didn’t like it, he wanted to somehow remove her from the equation, but that was impossible.
Robert would be here soon. He had to tell her.
It was still such a mind-boggling fact that Robert could produce anything good, yet here Harper was—the best thing that had happened to him in a long, long time.
“Ethan?” Harper patted his arm, pulling his thoughts back to the sexy woman at his side. “Are you going to tell me about your mysterious past?”
Which part did he start with? There were so many layers to him, so much he hadn’t divulged to anyone. But he was coming to realize that Harper was special. He hadn’t lied when he’d told her as much. Something churned deep inside him. He couldn’t put a label on the emotion and was terrified to even try.
“Like I told you before, after my mother passed, my stepfather stole our inheritance, and the businesses were transferred to his name by some slick, underhanded attorney. Dane and I had no idea until after all the legal paperwork had been signed.”
“I still can’t believe anyone would do that,” she replied. “Especially to grieving kids.”
If she only knew...
Damn it. He absolutely hated every bit of this. She was a victim, just as much as he had been. Harper was too innocent, too sweet to be wrapped up in this mess, and she had no clue the explosion that was on the verge of blowing up in her face.
Ethan didn’t know how, but he’d do everything in his power to block the pain from reaching her.
“We were seniors in high school, so we were almost graduated,” he went on. “We both ended up enlisting in the army. Something shifted with us when Mom died. I take the blame for that.”
Harper turned and lifted her knee up onto the bed as she leaned toward him. “You can’t take all the blame. Every failed relationship is two-sided.”
“We didn’t exactly fail,” he amended. “But I closed in on myself. I didn’t know how to handle all that grief, so I turned to liquor and sex as an easy escape. It hurt to look at my brother, because I didn’t want to see that mirror image of pain.”
Harper flatted her hand over his chest, the warmth of her tender touch giving him the courage to continue. Even nearly twenty years later, the ache of losing his mother and the tragic failure of his relationship with his brother all those years was almost unbearable.
“We drifted apart and I let it happen,” he continued, swallowing the lump of emotion in his throat. “But as time passed, we agreed on one thing. We wanted to take down the bastard who stole everything from us when we were most vulnerable. It took time, it took patience, but we knew once we were powerful and wealthy enough, nothing would stand in our way.”
“Good for you guys,” Harper cheered. “He deserves to pay. But how did you come to be a nightclub owner?”