“I wanted to pick up a file to take to Ethan’s.”
He looked confused. “You’re going to Ethan’s house?”
“Yeah,” she said, walking across the room to the wall of wooden cabinets. Opening the top one, she flipped through the files inside until she found Donatello’s and pulled it out before shutting the cabinet again. Sure, they had all the files on computers and backed up by the cloud, and any number of other security measures. But they still kept hard copies, too. So much easier to read through.
“It’s a long story,” she said, “so I’ll let Ethan tell you about it. But bottom line, he’s been named guardian of a six-month-old girl.”
“Ethan?” Gabriel’s shock was understandable. Ethan wasn’t exactly father-of-the-year material. “My brother’s taking care of an infant?”
Sadie laughed a little. “With my help. But why are you guys here?”
Gabe looked at Pam briefly, then shrugged and said, “I wanted to show Pam around and Ethan’s office has the best view.”
It did. But not at night. Odd, but it wasn’t her business why one of the owners might be in the office after closing. After all, she was there, right?
“Okay. Well,” she said, waving the file, “I’d better get moving. I’ll see you tomorrow, Gabe. Nice meeting you,” she added to Pam, who smiled and nodded.
She was in the lobby, still wondering what was going on with Gabriel, when her cell phone rang. “Thanks, Joe,” she said, slipping out the door before glancing at the phone screen.
Grinning to herself, she answered. “Hello, Ethan.”
“Are you on your way back?” he demanded. “She’s making noises. I think she’s waking up.”
“On my way.” This situation was really far more entertaining than it should be. But Sadie couldn’t help enjoying seeing the man who was always calm, cool and in charge suddenly thrown off balance by a baby. She unlocked her car, slid in and fired it up. “Be there in twenty minutes, and don’t offer me more money if I can get there in fifteen.”
“Just get here.”
Still smiling to herself, Sadie shook her head and steered into the never-ending traffic on Pacific Coast Highway.
* * *
“She’s asleep again,” Sadie told him a half hour later. “I just patted her back for a while and she drifted off.”
“Good.” Ethan grabbed a beer out of the fridge. “Do you want anything?”
Oh, so many things, Sadie thought. Starting with, of course, that hot sex she’d been talking about with Gina. Looking at him now, she found it astonishing to realize just how sexy the man looked in a pair of jeans and an untucked blue dress shirt. She’d only ever seen him in one of the elegant suits Sadie had sort of assumed he had been born in.
God knew he was sexy as sin in one of his suits, but seeing him here, dressed so casually, put a whole new spin on her fantasies. Her mouth watered and her heartbeat kicked up a notch. Then she took a breath, pushed her fantasy aside and said, “Food, Ethan. I want food.”
He nodded. “I had Chinese delivered. It’s in the oven.”
“Perfect.” Sadie got it and set everything out on the table, then opened a half-dozen cabinets before she found plates.
Ethan found silverware, opened a bottle of wine and got each of them water besides. In a few minutes, they were sitting opposite each other in the soft, overhead light. The kitchen, like the rest of the house, was huge.
It was white—boring—with gray cabinets and a mile and a half of black granite counters. They were so tidy it looked as though no one used the room at all, and that was probably true. Alice had said herself she wasn’t a cook, and Sadie was willing to bet that though he could order takeout, Ethan wouldn’t have the first clue how to cook for himself.
The table sat in front of windows that overlooked the backyard and the ocean beyond. At night, though, like now, there were solar-powered lights shining beneath bushes, under trees and along a path that led down the slope toward the cliff’s edge.
As she thought of that, Sadie said, “You’re going to have to put a fence in at the end of the yard. Once Emma starts getting around, it won’t be safe the way it is.”