The Cinderella Mission (Family Secrets #1)(18)
Author: Catherine Mann

Okay, that might not be so bad since it had been an element in her welcome candle.

Eugenie clasped her hands together. “Yes, ylang ylang, for euphoric union.”

Kelly willed herself not to wince. Apparently the guy did have some kind of insight into her psyche. “Thanks, Peter.”

“Kelly, dear,” Aunt Eugenie called, halting her at the door. “Why don’t you enjoy the hot tub or have a swim?”

Kelly smiled without actually agreeing. Somehow she suspected her tense muscles wouldn’t be cured by any amount of massages, hot tub stints or ylang ylang.

Standing beside his smirking aunt, Ethan planned to flush every ounce of Peter’s ylang ylang straight back to Indonesia.

He did not need images of Kelly in a scented hot tub.

Judas-freaking-priest. He was already more frustrated than a sixteen-year-old-boy watching cheerleader tryouts. Thank you very much, Aunt Eugenie and Peter.

Ethan led his aunt into the privacy of the supply room, all the while trying his damnedest to stifle fantasies of Kelly wearing a heated blush and nothing else. He shut the door. “How’s it going with Kelly?”

Eugenie strolled from shelf to shelf, her fingers trailing over stacks of bleached towels and industrial-sized jugs of antibacterial hand soap. “You tell me. How do you think she looks?”

That loaded question held more firepower than his 9mm. “The clothes look…nice.”

Understatement of the year. Every day, Kelly sported a new adjustment, minor alterations that sent his head spinning.

Pierced ears one day, with tiny pearls drawing attention to delicate skin he’d never noticed before. Another day, the arms of her sweater tied around her waist, leaving a silky shirt out there for him to see and want to touch. But the white robe was his favorite, hands-down. Or hands-on would sure as hell be nice.

Aunt Eugenie was a serious masochist.

“I’d like to introduce her around a bit, give her some familiar faces for the night of the gala.” Eugenie adjusted the sash on her kimono without looking at him. “Nothing fancy. Just some friends of yours around the pool.”

Ethan leaned back against the refrigerator stocked with sports drinks. “You remember this isn’t real, don’t you?”

“Of course. A dinner will smooth her way at the ball since she’ll know more people.”

“So you think she’ll be ready?”

“Tomorrow we have an appointment with the hair-dresser.”

Panic kicked him at the thought of all that magnificent hair on the floor. “You’re not going to cut it?”

A Cheshire-cat smile creased her round face. “No.”

The woman knew him too well. Damned good thing she wasn’t the enemy or his ARIES status would have been busted long ago.

Something he wouldn’t let happen, especially not now. He wanted that information on his parents.

“What really happened the day my parents died?” The question fell out of his mouth.

His aunt blinked, just once, but enough to surprise him with how a single question had shaken her.

She turned to the shelf of bottled oils and nudged them in line. “What do you mean?”

“It was an open-and-shut case, right?” He waited, not that she seemed inclined to offer anything up before she had those bottles in regimental order. “My au pair sold me out to kidnappers. The actual attempt went to hell when my father tried to evade the car chasing us and my parents died.”

Long-ago echoes pounded through his memory, sounds of crunching metal, screaming tires. The burn of the seat belt digging into his waist as the car slung to the side. The betrayal of seeing his au pair, Iona, watching from the car beside.

Finally, Eugenie faced him, eyes sheened with tears now as they had been when she’d picked him up in Switzerland after the accident thirty years ago. “Thank God the authorities had already been alerted so we didn’t lose you, too.”

“How did they know to come?” Ethan shot straight for the hole in the story that had niggled at him through a sleepless night. “There wouldn’t have been a ransom request yet.”

She didn’t blink. Didn’t move. Didn’t answer, not right away. Not more than four or five seconds passed, but more than enough to make Ethan wonder.

Then his aunt patted his face. “Your parents were late with a promised call. I was worried, so I called the authorities.”

“That makes sense.” So why the hesitation?

“Of course it does, since that’s what happened. Why all the questions now after so long?” She tucked her trembling hands into her robe pockets.

Those shaking hands shut him down faster than any anger or frustration. This woman had been through enough grief for two lifetimes.

“No reason.” He slung an arm around her shoulders and dropped a kiss on her silver head. “Go enjoy your massage.”

When had her shoulders started to curve forward? She was growing older, sixty-five now. She deserved to be bouncing grandchildren on her knee…or taking them kayaking in Alaska.

He felt damned bad that he couldn’t be the son she deserved. He would do just about anything for his aunt.

Except that.

He couldn’t pull off the family gig, even for her. Memories of the childhood kidnapping attempt dogged him as Ethan tried to piece together childhood impressions of speed, his mother’s screams, his father’s hoarse shouts—and blood, so much blood.

How could he subject a wife and kid to that possibility? A very real possibility, given his career choice and bank balance. He’d give away all the money in a heartbeat if it would make a difference. But there were people who would always believe he’d secreted it away.

None of it mattered anyway since he wouldn’t be marrying. He understood the fragility of life too damned well.

Hell yes, he intended to make sure Kelly Taylor was in tiptop condition before that gala. He trusted that her sharp mind could wrap around anything that came their way. But physically, she would be at a disadvantage and that, Ethan couldn’t allow. He would continue to be her personal trainer nonstop, whatever it took to turn a desk jockey into a primed and ready agent.

Kelly’s feet pounded the sidewalks in day nine of Ethan Williams’s Operative Training School of Torture. With forty-degree weather melting away the snow, Ethan had insisted on an outside run. The man was a machine.

She saw another massage in her future. Adding Aunt Eugenie’s formal dancing lessons on top of all the other physical fitness training left Kelly with muscles twisted in more knots than were on that hundred-year-old oak in her path.