Star of His Heart. Brenda Jackson
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his gaze to study her features.
But he had a feeling she would.
There had to be a reason, and the question rested on the tip of his tongue.
But he had no right to pry. This woman owed him nothing, had no reason to divulge her deep, dark secrets and innermost feelings. Not to him. They weren’t husband and wife. They weren’t even lovers. Nor would they ever be.
No, he reminded himself, he was trying out the friendship thing.
Chapter Five
Rachel could feel the power of Ethan as he walked beside her. And although it sounded strange, she could feel his strength. Not only did she feel it, she was drawing from it.
The very thought that such a thing was possible should be disconcerting, but instead the knowledge seemed to wrap her in some sort of warm embrace. That in itself was kind of weird since they’d decided to just be friends. She was fine with that decision. In fact, she refused to have things any other way. She didn’t mix business with pleasure and she had too much on her plate to become involved in a serious relationship.
The last guy she had gone out with that she’d truly liked had been Theo Lovett. That had been a couple of years ago. They had dated for almost six months before she’d found out the only reason he’d been interested in her was as a way into her family’s business. Luckily, she’d overheard him bragging to a friend on the phone when he’d thought she was in the shower and out of hearing range. Theo’s explanation that he’d only been joking with his friend hadn’t made her change her mind when she had kicked him out that day.
She stepped out of her memory and into the present. Apparently she’d missed some of what Ethan had said while she’d been daydreaming, because he’d changed the subject and was talking about his family.
“My older brother’s name is Hunter. There is an eight year difference in our ages.”
She glanced over at him. Despite the fact he was a lot taller than she, walking side by side they seemed to fit, and their steps appeared to be perfectly synchronized. How was that possible with his long legs and her short ones? He’d evidently adjusted his steps to stay in sync with hers. It was a perfectly measured pace.
“There is a nine year difference in me and my sister’s ages,” she said.
“Really? Was your sibling as overprotective as mine while you were growing up?”
Rachel made a face. “Boy, was she ever. She was ten when our parents were killed in a plane crash, and I was one. Our aunt and uncle became our legal guardians, but somewhere along the way my sister, Sofia, thought I became her responsibility. It was only when she left for college that I got some breathing space.”
“Are the two of you close now?”
“Yes, very. What about you and your brother? Are the two of you close?”
“Yes, although I would be the first to admit he was somewhat of a pain in the ass while we were growing up. But I can appreciate it now since he covered for me a lot with my parents.”
She could imagine someone having to do that for him. She had a feeling he’d probably been a handful. “Was your family upset when you decided not to enter the family business but to forge a path in a different direction?”
The corners of his lips lifted in a wry smile. “Let’s just say they weren’t thrilled with the idea. But I think it bothered Hunter more than it did them,” he said. “The Chamberses have been in the wine business for generations, and I was the first to pull out and try doing something else. He lay on the pressure for me to stay for a while but then he backed off.”
He placed his hand at the center of her back when others, walking at a swifter pace than they, moved to pass them. She could feel the warmth of his touch through her blouse. She breathed in deeply at the feeling of butterflies flapping around in her stomach.
“What about your family?” he inquired, not realizing the effect of his touch on her.
“Once I explained things to Uncle Jacob and Aunt Lily, they were fine with it. They wanted me to do whatever made me happy. But Sofia felt it was part of our father’s legacy, that I owed it to him to join her and Uncle Jacob at Limelight. I had made up my mind on how I wanted to do things with my future, so instead of letting there be this bone of contention between us, she backed off and eventually gave me her blessings to do whatever I wanted to do with my life.”
She chuckled. “As a concession, I am letting Limelight Entertainment handle my career. I’m one of their clients.”
They paused a moment when they reached the security gate. They had deliberately walked the expanse of the studio lot to avoid running into the paparazzi that made the place their regular beat. Now that they were no longer in safe and protected territory, she noticed Ethan had slid on a pair of sunglasses. He had kept on his medical scrubs and had a stethoscope around his neck, and she wondered if anyone seeing him would assume he was a bona fide doctor walking the strip on lunch break.
She pulled her sunglasses out of her bag, too, although it had been years since she’d had the paparazzi on her tail. When she was younger, they’d seemed to enjoy keeping up with the two Wellesley heirs. She’d always found the media’s actions intrusive and an invasion of her privacy. She could recall all the photographs of her as a child that had appeared in the tabloids. That was the main reason she much preferred not being the focus of their attention again.
She glanced over at Ethan when his hand went to the center of her back again. It was time for them to cross the street, and he was evidently trying to hurry her along before traffic started up again. Her pulse began fluttering, caused by the heat generated from his touch.
They increased their pace to make it across the street. She checked him out from the corner of her eye and saw how sexy the scrubs looked on him. They had agreed to be just friends, she reminded herself. And it meant absolutely nothing that they had a few things in common. Like the fact that they were both renegades. That they were both members of well-known families. That they both had siblings who’d chosen to go into the family business. Overprotective, older siblings who meant well but if given the chance would run their lives.
Rachel inconspicuously scanned the area around them and breathed a sigh of relief when she saw the paparazzi was nowhere in sight. But then they were known to bounce out from just about any place. Hopefully she and Ethan looked like a regular couple out on a stroll during their lunch hour.
A couple who were just friends, which was something she could not forget.
“You are such a good uncle.”
Ethan glanced at Rachel while accepting his change from the girl behind the counter at the Disney Store. Had he used his charge card his cover would have been blown. Even through his sunglasses, he could see the woman was looking at him, trying to figure out if he was a doctor or someone she should know.
He smiled at Rachel. “I’d like to think so, especially since I doubt very seriously that Hunter will have any more children,” he said, accepting the bag the cashier was handing him.
“Why is that?”
“He lost his wife in a car accident,” he explained as they headed for the exit. “He took Annette’s death hard and hasn’t been in a serious relationship since. It’s been three years now.”
“Oh, how sad.”
“Yes, it was. Hunter and Kendra were in the car at the time of the accident and survived with minor injuries,” he said. He paused a moment and then added, “Kendra was three at the time and very close to her mother. She felt the loss immediately and withdrew into her own world and stopped talking.”
The eyes that stared into his were full of sorrow and compassion. “She doesn’t talk?”
He released his breath in a long and slow sigh, wondering why he was sharing this information about his family with anyone, especially to a woman he’d only