Flawed (Ethan Frost 4)

“I try. We all have our burdens, after all.” I’m grinning like an idiot at this point, but then so is she.

It’s another first for me. I never knew relationships could be like this—full of banter and fun and fantastic sex. Before Tori, I always viewed relationships as distractions, as something I occasionally put up with (and resented) in exchange for regular sex with the same woman, since one-night stands got old years ago. Of course, those relationships never lasted long because I wasn’t interested in giving my attention to any of the women I dated for longer than it took to have dinner and get them off a couple of times a week. Which is why, for the last few years, I’ve tended toward friends-with-benefits situations. If there are no expectations, there’s no disappointment when I get lost in one project or another and forget to call.

With Tori, it’s different. So different that I have a hard time thinking of this in the same terms as any relationship I’ve ever had before. She is absolutely a distraction—I should be working right now, in fact—but unlike the other women I’ve been involved with, I don’t mind her taking my attention away from my work. I don’t resent spending time hanging out with her when I should be working on my desalinizer. And I sure as hell can’t compartmentalize what we’re doing—and what I feel for her—the way I’ve always done in the past. Hell, since she moved in here, I’ve struggled more with forgetting about her long enough to get some work done than I have with trying to remember her. Because the truth is, to me anyway, Tori is as unforgettable as she is irresistible.

The only problem is, I’m not sure what these new feelings of mine mean—for either of us. Especially considering how much she despised me just a few short days ago. Her life is a mess right now, everything topsy-turvy and inside out. It seems unfair to ask her for anything more than what we have going on, seems impossible to expect her to make a decision about being in an actual relationship with me when she has no money, no job, and nowhere else to go besides right here.

Just the thought of how vulnerable she is has my skin crawling with uneasiness. No, now is not the time to try to define anything about our relationship. Or to even decide that we’re in a relationship. Not when she’s so vulnerable and confused. The fact that I’m not—the fact that I feel like I’m thinking clearly for the first time in a long time—doesn’t matter. Not when Tori is so vulnerable.

She’s already accused me once of treating her like a whore. The last thing I want to do is pressure her into being with me because she feels like she has no other options. The idea grates, but then so does waiting when so much inside me is pushing me to take her, to claim her, to make her mine every way that I can.

But that’s the caveman talking, and I can’t afford to give in to that small, irrational part of my psyche. Not now, when Tori is sitting across the table and smiling at me like she means it. Smiling at me like I matter, and more, like this thing between us matters.

No, I can’t push her. Not now. Not until she’s back on steady footing. If that means waiting until she has a job, waiting until she’s confident again in who she is and what her place in the world is, then that’s what I’m going to have to do.

I won’t like it, but I will do it.

Which is why I spend the rest of dinner making Tori laugh, telling her embarrassing stories about Chloe and the numerous disasters I’ve had in my workshop as I tried to perfect one invention or another. I want to delve deeper, want to pull her into my lap and tangle my hand in her short, multicolored hair as I demand that she spill her secrets to me. But I don’t want to scare her away. And I sure as hell don’t want to hurt her, not this woman who has a dandelion on her shoulder to remind herself how impermanent everything is.

When dinner is finished, we clear the table together, then grab what’s left of the Chianti and wander into the family room to watch TV.

But we’re barely settled on the sofa when Tori turns to me and says, “I’m going to do an interview.”

“An interview?” I don’t know why I repeat the words, or why I make them into a question when there’s only one interview she could be talking about right now. Only one interview that would put that look on her face, that would have her wrapping her arms around herself in a weak attempt at self-preservation.

Maybe it’s because I want to protect her, too. And while the logical part of my brain knows giving this interview is the right thing to do, the rest of me wants nothing more than to wrap my arms around her and shelter her. To keep her safe.

“I called Chloe and Ethan when I was upstairs.” She’s not looking at me now. Instead she’s staring through the huge wall of windows and out at the roiling sea. A storm is coming in—I can feel it in the breeze blowing through the open doors—but it’s nothing compared to the storm I can sense brewing inside Tori.

I hate that she’s in this position, hate even more that some low-life scum like Alexander Parsons is the one who put her in it. I don’t say that to Tori, though. I simply ask, “So what’s Ethan going to set up for you?”

“An interview tomorrow afternoon at the local NBC station. They’ll put a piece together and it’ll run here and on MSNBC tomorrow evening—plus anywhere else that picks it up.”

“Which will probably be everywhere, considering the publicity push the studio is giving Parsons’s movie right now.”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“How do you feel about that?”

I know how I feel about it. I want to find Parsons and knock his fucking teeth down his fucking throat. I want to beat the ever-loving shit out of him until he figures out that he never should have fucked with Tori like this, never should have treated any woman the way he’s treated her.

I want to do more than that, though, want to do more than just fuck up that pretty face he’s so fucking proud of. I want to ruin the bastard. I want to fucking destroy him, want to hit him so hard and with so much shit that that precious career of his rips apart at the fucking seams.

It’s why he threw Tori to the fucking wolves, after all. To give his profile—and in turn, his career—a boost. Ruining that career the way he’s ruined Tori seems like poetic justice to me.

I’ve already got a bunch of bots scrolling the ’Net, looking for dirt on him. So far he’s come up clean. Too clean, in fact. It took about five minutes of digging for me to figure out that he’s had his online presence professionally scrubbed. Maybe he did it just because he’s an actor and in the public arena all the time. Or maybe he did it because there’s something to find…

Call me suspicious, but I’m betting on the latter. The guy is a total dick after all. So much so that I’m betting it isn’t new. I’m betting he’s been like this—self-serving and misogynistic and opportunistic—even longer than he’s been famous. Which means it’s only a matter of time before I can dig up a few skeletons on him. And when I do, I’m pretty sure they’ll be more than just skeletons. They’ll be full bodies with a hell of a lot of dirty secrets to tell.

I remind myself to be patient just a little longer, to give the bots time to do what I programmed them to do. But it’s hard when I can see how much Tori is suffering. When I know how much she’ll continue to suffer because of that bastard.

“I feel…I don’t know what I feel,” she finally admits. “The tape is bad enough, but this? Having to go on TV and talk about my sex life with that man, to tell the world that he recorded me without my knowledge and released it without my permission? To play the victim for the whole world to see? I’m not okay with that.”

“If you’re not okay with it, then you shouldn’t do it.”

She laughs, but it’s not a pleasant sound. “Yeah, easy for you to say.”

“It isn’t, actually.”