Hope lured Annabelle away at the end of the meal, and he lost sight of her while he talked with a few of the guests, most of whom wanted to talk about his Army days. Finally, when everyone had left, he was free.
“Where’s Annabelle?” he said when he found Hope talking to her fiancé.
“She said she wanted to get something from her room and would be back soon.”
“I’ll go find her. She might be lost.” Lifting a hand in a general farewell, he made his way out of the room and headed back to theirs. There was no sign of her there, so he backtracked, and headed up the stairs to see if she’d gone somewhere else. Her raised voice reached him first.
“You’re selling your son short if you believe I’m with Ethan simply because he has money, Mr. Gelderman.”
They were in his father’s study. Ethan felt his temper climb at her words. What the hell was she doing in there, when he’d told her to stay away from E.G.?
“You don’t fool me, Ms. Smith. Like most women of your kind, you’re only after one thing, and it’s not his brains. So to stop you from wasting any more of your time with my son, I’m telling you that he’s not getting a cent from me when I die.”
“Okay, so I see where you’re going wrong, sir. You’re confusing me with one of Brad’s girlfriends. You see, I’m not one of those types of women, but one who works extremely hard at her career, a woman with enough brain cells to function without the support of a man. God’s truth, Mr. Gelderman, this may come as a bit of a shock for you, but there are plenty of us in the world, and plenty right here in the old U.S. of A.”
God, she was a mouthy woman. Ethan shook his head as he entered the room.
“You’re just a slut, like all of them.”
It was unfortunate for Brad that Ethan heard those words, despite being slurred, and even more unfortunate that he was pretty fucking angry about it.
“Ethan, don’t!” She tried to stop him, but he just stepped around Annabelle and planted his fist in his brother’s face, knocking him to the ground.
“You’re lucky I know you’re drunk, Brad,” Ethan said as he stood over him. “Because if you weren’t, I’d tear you apart for talking about my woman that way.”
“He hit me!” Brad clutched his jaw as he staggered to his feet, shocked.
Ignoring him, Ethan faced his father across his desk.
“You created him.” Ethan pointed to his brother. “Turned him into what he’s become, a drunken, useless man who respects no one, least of all himself. He can’t think for himself because you won’t let him. The idiot’s just your puppet.”
“I’ll have you charged with assault,” his father said from behind the safety of his desk. “And your behavior just shows me the man you’ve become, Ethan. It is most disappointing to see.” E.G.’s face was tight with the anger he was battling to keep hidden.
“It really gets to you that you couldn’t mold me, doesn’t it, Father? That I wouldn’t be brought into line by your brand of manipulation, that you couldn’t break me like one of your horses.” Ethan looked his father in the eye as he spoke.
“I’ll fucking kill you!” Those words were from Brad, who was charging at Ethan.
“Brad you’re an idiot,” Annabelle said. She stuck out her foot to trip him, and he landed face-first on the carpet. “Now stay down before you get hurt any more.”
“You should have been the one to stand in my shoes, but you chose not to. Therefore I have nothing further to say to you,” his father said slowly.
Ethan looked at the man who had sired him and felt no pain, only sadness. “Tomorrow is Hope’s wedding, and we will both behave for her, Father. Then I will leave and in all honesty I will probably never come back.”
“Just so we’re clear, Ethan, you will receive no part of this empire when I die.”
“Well, hell,” Ethan said in his best Texas drawl, “I’m damn pleased I don’t need it, then.”
He grabbed Annabelle, wrapping his fingers around her wrist, and took her with him out of the room with a little more force than was strictly necessary. They walked in silence while Ethan sorted out the emotions rampaging through him. Anger, relief, and exhilaration at finally confronting his father, and fury that Annabelle had put herself in front of his father and Brad, and it was the latter that was building inside him.
When they reached their rooms, he opened the door and pushed her inside ahead of him, then slammed it shut behind him.
He shrugged out of his jacket and threw it at a chair, but it fell short.
“What the hell were you doing in my father’s office, when I told you to stay away from him and Brad?” He tried to keep his words calm, but they still came out as loud as a thunderclap.
“A maid said your dad wanted to see me, so I went.” She kicked off her shoes, then picked them up and fired them through the open doorway to her room. Her aim was off, so they both hit the wall with a thud. “So you can drop the attitude, big boy, because I’ve just about had my fill of testosterone-loaded males for one day. Your brother groped me and then called me a slut, your father questioned my brain capacity—”
“Brad groped you?”
