“Tchaikovsky,” he said. “The Romeo and Juliet Overture.”
“I knew that.” She blinked and lowered her head. “Not really. But I’m impressed you did.”
“I’m a musician. I take it seriously.”
“I know you do.”
He smiled, then realized he was probably looking at her again exactly the way the camera had caught him looking at her in the video. Yeah, they’d slowed it down and added one of the most romantic songs ever written. But they couldn’t fake the look in his eyes when she’d come to stand beside him. And it wasn’t a one-night-stand or casual fling kind of look, either.
This wasn’t good. There was too much to lose if things between them went sideways.
She glanced up, caught him looking, and even though he quickly tried to change his expression, she’d seen it and her eyebrows bent in an analytical frown. He cleared his throat and looked away, toward the front where a pickup truck full of cousins had just pulled up. Thank the Lord.
“Well, at least it looks like everybody’s forgotten about your scandalous DNA,” Lily said.
“Yeah, but now you’re a target.”
“I’m a target of whom?”
“The press. The media. The fans. The?—”
“Honey,” she said, and not as a term of endearment, “As your cousin Maria reminded you recently, you’re not all that famous.” Then she winked at him. “Not yet, anyway.”
Lily wasn’t mortified by the rash of videos featuring her. She probably should’ve been, but she wasn’t. She was flattered, and frankly it was gratifying that the small part of country music fandom who followed Ethan Brand were as confused by him as she was. He looked at her like he adored her but refused to do anything about it.
And now his ever-present family was spilling in through the front entrance. And while she loved them, had adopted them as her own over the past year, it was awfully difficult to get any alone time with Ethan. They were always around.
She sighed too loudly. He heard it and glanced her way. “You all right, Lily Ellen?”
God, she loved when he called her that. Nobody else called her that, only Ethan, and it made her belly clench up every time.
“I just…we should talk about this, you know? Privately.”
He held her eyes, nodded. “Before the day’s out, okay?”
“Okay.” She pasted a big, fake smile onto her face, and welcomed the gang, who’d come to help in any way needed.
By lunch, the dining room had been cleared entirely, all the tables and chairs had been loaded on the back of the pickups in which the cousins had arrived. Orrin, Drew, and Trevor had taken the loaded trucks back to the ranch, where they’d found room to store everything in one of the outbuildings.
Lily had been making notes and even a few sketches on her iPad to keep herself distracted. Ethan kept an arm’s length between them all day, to the point that she felt it had to be obvious to everyone. No one said anything, though, so maybe she was being hypersensitive.
None of the cousins had mentioned the Ethan Brand’s mystery gal memes making the rounds on the internet. She’d checked social media multiple times, unable to stop herself. Nobody seemed to be talking about his father, the recently deceased criminal kingpin, having murdered his mother anymore. Everyone was speculating that his announcement of a two-month hiatus in his hometown had more to do with the mystery gal than with transforming a cantina into a honky-tonk.
She’d bookmarked the pieced-together video with the closeup of him gazing down at her. Someone had made a version where hearts were popping out of his eyes rather than pulsing over his head, but she didn’t like that, because they hid the real thing. She liked looking at him, looking at her. There was something there. He could deny it all he wanted, but it was plain as day. And that made her start hoping again, and that was the most self-destructive thing she could probably do.
Willow and Baxter left to get pizzas, Willow sending her a nod, like she knew there were things her cousin and cousin-in-law needed to discuss in private. The two of them got into Baxter’s Jeep Wrangler and bounded away.
Lily turned to face Ethan.
He looked down at her and smiled. “Okay,” he said. “It’ll be at least a half hour. You wanted to talk about the video.”
“No,” she said. “I wanted to talk about…you’re so dang tall, you know that?”
“I’m…sorry?”
“Could you sit down, please, so I can look you in the eye.”
His eyes widened, maybe in alarm, but he reached behind him for the three-rung stepladder and backed his butt onto the second rung. Then he said, “Better?”
