Page 28 of Enemies Under One Roof

‘Come in and close the door. It’s like a fridge in the hall,’ he said, impatience oozing from his words.

The toasty kitchen and mouth-watering scents beckoned. That’s what she told herself. Except it was Ethan, and only him, that drew her forward as he watched her with an unnerving stillness.

Abruptly he scratched at his jaw, before picking up the old-fashioned kettle, placing it on the gas stovetop and turning on the element.

‘Would you like a hand?’ she asked, pointing to the simmering sauce.

‘No thanks.’ His brisk response was followed by a fresh burst of howling wind that shook the windows. Ethan shivered and rubbed at his arms.

‘Is everything alright?’ she asked. There was something off about this scene. Sure, they hadn’t replaced the cook by dual consent, but there was no reason for him to be in here at this hour, nor for the rigid set of his shoulders. There was something strangely vulnerable about the way he held himself. Was it what she’d told him yesterday? Had he guessed there was more than grief behind her creation of Ivy?

Her hands shook and she tugged at the sleeves of her wrap.

‘Yes.’ His lips flattened, and Ivy trusted her gut that his response was far from true. He was hurting, so she gathered her courage.

‘Is it what I told you yesterday? Is it being here at WillowGlen, with me?’

‘What? No!’ His gaze locked with hers, for a heartbeat, two. Then he spoke. ‘I… I don’t like the wind.’ Low and broken, it was like the words had been dragged from the depths of his soul, and ripped hers open at his obvious anguish.

‘The sound?’ she asked carefully.

He opened his mouth, then closed it and rubbed at his unshaven jaw. ‘It was like this the night my parents died.’

Goosebumps that had nothing to do with the cold broke out along her skin. She could remember with crushing clarity every detail of the night her parents had died. She detested the thought that Ethan had even an atom of similar memories.

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘They should have never gone out in the helicopter.’ He shrugged with a resigned helplessness that chipped at every one of her defences, as she understood only too well the horror of what ifs. ‘But they obviously did,’ he finished, his voice flat and strained.

‘Were you meant to go with them?’

* * *

Storms always transported Ethan to LA and the unusually freezing day and night he rarely allowed himself to recall. When the heavens had opened up, pummelling the coast and soulless mansion he’d grown up in. When his life had changed irrevocably.

‘I shouldn’t have asked,’ Ivy said with a gut-twisting concern that jolted him back to the present.

He’d come into the kitchen to escape the flashbacks this type of weather inevitably brought and the maddening attraction to Ivy he constantly fought. So much so that when she’d arrived in the doorway, he’d been sure he’d imagined it because he’d seen Annie, unaffected and natural, her lips opened in an O of surprise, her dark hair free and cascading over a shoulder. As soon as he’d whispered her name, he’d realised his mistake because Ivy was safer, even if she was dressed in a black robe with feathers down her arms and at her wrists. Ludicrous attire for a frigid night, yet she didn’t look like anything other than a vision of temptation.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. He especially didn’t want to notice how it moulded her figure and triggered an automatic, unwanted response from his body. What he should do was leave her to have her tea, while he waited outside and the cold knocked some sense into him. Except she was looking at him with such compassion it was like a pick had shattered the ice protecting his memories, and he wanted to share them with her, only her.

‘No, I was never meant to go with them. That day my parents had had an argument. It was the first time I’d ever heard my father raise his voice to her. I was in the next room, but you could have heard them throughout the whole property. Even at ten I knew my father was devastated.’

Ivy made a small sound of compassion.

‘I found out afterwards it was because she’d told him her latest lover was going to be at the same party, and he was refusing to attend. Naturally, he relented in the end. I don’t think he could ever turn her down. It was the last time I saw them, waving them off at the helipad with my father behind the controls.’ A scene scalded forever into his mind, his mother smug, his father grim. To this day he didn’t know what had caused the crash, the weather, his heartbroken father, or a combination of both.

‘Later that night I woke to pandemonium. The staff screaming and crying, the police in attendance. No-one seemed to notice the doorbell so I answered it, to the press…’ He swallowed, but even now it burnt like acid down his throat.

Her brow crinkled in dismay. ‘You didn’t know they’d died until you answered the door?’ Her horror evident in every syllable.

He shook his head. Up until then he’d never been a fan of the constant press attention, nor the way his mother had played up to it, but that night had altered everything. From then on, he’d hated them.

‘I’m so sorry. No-one deserves to find out that way, especially not a child.’

She would have seen the photo, although not when it had been first released, as she was seven years younger than him, but whenever anything was published about his mother or himself, it appeared in sickening technicolour. Like it had in the wake of their kiss. And even if he now understood why she’d become Ivy and behaved like she had that day, it didn’t change the pain he’d felt at the time, seeing his past dredged up yet again.

Suddenly exhausted by his inner turmoil, he jerkily turned away. Why had he lowered his guard with her? He gripped the benchtop in a white-knuckled hold and fought for composure. He hadn’t told anyone else all those details. Not Ruby. Not Cam. Not Luc. Only her. Why?