Surrender to the Past Read online

  They probably were, Mia conceded grudgingly; Ethan’s qualifications had never been in question. Or his ambition. It was only the lengths he was willing to go to in order to achieve those ambitions that had become so glaringly questionable. Lengths which involved the once innocent and naively trusting Mia.

  She had wondered five years ago—at the same time as she’d thanked her good fortune!—how she had ever been lucky enough to attract the attention of someone like Ethan Black. The epitome of tall, dark and handsome, he could—and usually did—have any woman that he wanted. Mia may have been the only daughter of multi-millionaire William Burton and beautiful socialite Kay, but beneath the fashionable designer-label clothes her mother had insisted on buying for her Mia had also been terribly shy, and merely pretty rather than beautiful, like the women Ethan was usually attracted to.

  Once she’d learned of Ethan’s mother’s affair with her father, the reason for Ethan’s attraction had become obvious: Grace had made a play for the father, Ethan the daughter. One of them was sure to succeed.

  ‘And let’s call our parents’ past relationship the nasty little affair that it really was, shall we?’ Mia’s top lip turned back with distaste.

  ‘I told you it wasn’t like that—’

  ‘I’m really not interested, Ethan.’

  ‘No—because you prefer to twist events to suit your own warped take on what really happened five years ago.’

  ‘Nothing of what I eventually learnt about that situation suited me, Ethan,’ Mia assured him furiously. ‘Certainly not the realization that the only reason my father had chosen that particular boarding school to send me to in the first place was so that he had an excuse to visit his mistress. That’s quite a play on words, don’t you think? My headmistress was also my father’s mistress—’

  ‘Stop it, Mia!’ Ethan reached out to grasp the tops of her arms and shake her. ‘Just stop it!’

  ‘Let go of me, Ethan,’ Mia gasped. ‘You’re hurting me!’

  His fingers tightened rather than relaxed, her leather jacket proving no barrier to the pain of his fingers biting into her arms.

  ‘I’m hurting you?’ He thrust her firmly away from him, his gaze raking over her mercilessly. ‘Do you have any idea—any idea at all—of the heartache you caused your father—have continued to cause him—by just disappearing in that way five years ago?’

  ‘But I’m sure my leaving didn’t affect you in the same way—did it, Ethan?’ she murmured scornfully.

  ‘Would you believe me if I were to say yes?’

  ‘No.’

  His mouth tightened.

  ‘God, I was such an innocent. Such a fool!’ She gave a pained groan.

  ‘Because you were attracted to me?’

  ‘Because I was stupid enough to think that you were attracted to me!’

  He frowned darkly. ‘I was attracted to you—’

  ‘Oh, please, Ethan.’ Mia gave a fierce shake of her head. ‘What you were attracted to was my father’s bank account and Burton Industries. You and your mother, both!’

  ‘I should be careful what you say next, Mia …’ Ethan’s tone was icy with warning.

  A warning Mia had absolutely no interest in. ‘At least I had the good sense to get out. Whereas my father—’

  ‘I said stop, Mia.’

  ‘It’s really not important now anyway.’ She gave an uninterested

  shrug. ‘Five years later you both appear to be exactly where you always wanted to be—your mother is married to my father and you’re running Burton Industries!’

  Ethan’s face looked as if it had been carved out of stone. ‘You really do believe that’s all I wanted all along?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Mia assured him with feeling. ‘You’ve always done exactly what was in the best interests of Ethan Black! And—to set the record straight—I didn’t disappear five years ago. I left.’

  ‘You disappeared, damn it!’ Ethan grimaced. ‘Just dropped out part-way through your second year of university, dropped me, and left!’

  ‘I was twenty years old. And, unless I’m mistaken, in this country that’s classed as being an adult, capable of making your own decisions. Besides, I left my father a note—’

  ‘“Don’t bother looking for me because you won’t find me.”’ Ethan quoted disgustedly. ‘What the hell sort of letter is that to leave anyone—least of all the man who had loved and cared for you since the day you were born?’

  Mia’s eyes narrowed. ‘Even that was more than he deserved!’

  ‘More than he deserved …?’ he repeated softly.

  ‘Yes!’ She didn’t at all care for the revulsion she could read in Ethan’s expression. ‘And I only left him that much so he wouldn’t decide to report me as missing to the police!’

  ‘And what about me, Mia? What did I deserve? The two of us were dating, sleeping together, when you decided to pull that disappearing act!’

  ‘It was the boss’s daughter you were sleeping with, Ethan. Not me,’ she dismissed scathingly.

  ‘That isn’t true.’ Ethan frowned.

  ‘Whether it’s true or not is unimportant—now as well as then. Just knowing of your connection to the woman who helped to make a fool of my mother was—and still is—enough reason for me never to want to see or hear from you ever again,’ Mia stated flatly.

  Ethan drew in a ragged breath. ‘Okay, let’s forget about our own relationship if it makes you happy—’

  ‘Oh, it does!’

  ‘But William is your father—’

  ‘Something—along with you and your mother—I’ve been trying to forget for the past five years!’ She turned her back on him to walk away, and sat down on a wooden bench looking out over the parkland. She was hoping that Ethan wouldn’t follow her, but was not altogether surprised when, after a few seconds’ hesitation, he walked that same short distance and sat on the other end of the bench.

  The two of them sat in uneasy silence for several long minutes.

  ‘He didn’t report you missing but he—we certainly looked for you.’ Ethan finally broke that silence, his voice huskily soft.

  ‘Don’t bother with the “we”, Ethan,’ she cut in dryly. ‘My father may have been too lovestruck by your mother to have realised it, but I certainly know that it wasn’t in your best interests for me to be found.’

  ‘Another piece of your own unique logic?’

  ‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘Once I had been removed from the equation it allowed both you and your mother to move in on my father.’

  ‘Damn you—’

  ‘No doubt,’ Mia accepted ruefully.

  ‘Okay, I can see there’s no reasoning with you on the subject of my mother or me—but what about your father?’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘How could you just turn your back on him in that way?’ Ethan gave an impatient shake of his head. ‘William searched for you for months. Years! No lead was too small for him to follow up. No possible sighting of you too ridiculous for him to investigate.’

  Mia didn’t so much as glance at him. ‘And to think that I never left London.’

  ‘You—?’ Ethan gave a disbelieving shake of his head. ‘You were here in the city all the time?’

  ‘Yes.’ She gave a humourless smile. ‘Don’t look so shocked,

  Ethan; haven’t you heard that the best way to avoid detection by the enemy is by staying right under his nose!’

  ‘None of us were ever your enemy.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No!’ Ethan eyed her in frustration. ‘Damn it!’ He began to pace. ‘So where exactly were you in London?’

  Mia’s cheeks warmed at his obvious disgust. ‘I stayed with friends for the first couple of months.’

  ‘We—William contacted all of your friends to see if any of them had seen or heard from you and they all said they hadn’t!’

  She raised her brows. ‘They were my friends, Ethan, not his.’

  ‘With friends like that …!’ His jaw tightened.
‘Where did you go after you left these so-called friends?’

  ‘I bought an apartment, took some classes, and then a couple of years ago I opened the coffee shop.’

  ‘What sort of classes? William checked every year with all the universities to see if you were attending any of them,’ he added with a frown.

  ‘I enrolled in a very reputable cookery school right here in London, Ethan,’ Mia announced with satisfaction.

  ‘Cookery school …? You actually bake the cookies in Coffee and Cookies yourself?’

  She almost laughed at the disbelief in Ethan’s expression. Almost. But even knowing she had managed to totally bemuse the arrogant Ethan Black wasn’t enough reason for Mia to feel like laughing today. Nor was it reason enough to tell him that she not only baked cookies for her coffee shop but also for a couple of very upmarket specialist food stores in London …

  ‘My maternal grandmother, as well as leaving me the hefty trust fund that my father so conveniently signed over to me on my eighteenth birthday, also taught me to bake. I’m good at it,’ she added defensively as Ethan just continued to stare at her.

  ‘I’m sure that you are.’ Ethan finally nodded slowly. ‘But it’s a drastic change from the economics you were studying before you dropped out.’

  She grimaced. ‘That was always my father’s choice, not mine.’

  ‘Because he expected you to take over Burton Industries one day?’

  ‘Probably,’ Mia acknowledged. ‘How lucky for him that you came along so conveniently to fill the breach.’

  Ethan drew in a hissing breath. ‘Bitter and twisted doesn’t suit you, Mia.’

  Her eyes flashed a deep dark green. ‘This is me being a realist, Ethan, not bitter and twisted.’

  ‘You closed your bank account two days after you left. We all thought you must have gone abroad somewhere.’

  Mia gave another shrug. ‘Because that’s what you were all supposed to believe.’

  ‘That was unbelievably cruel, Mia.’

  Her eyes glittered. ‘You don’t know the meaning of the word!’

  ‘Oh, believe me, I’m learning fast,’ Ethan assured her grimly.

  Mia fell silent, not looking at Ethan but at the people in the park—some walking their dogs, others taking their children home from school. All such everyday occurrences, sights and people Mia saw every day whenever she came to the park to eat her lunch, and yet Ethan’s presence here made this totally unlike a normal day for her …

  She turned to look at him where he sat on the other end of the bench, her heart tightening in her chest at the bleakness of his expression as he stared straight back at her.

  He was more attractive than he had ever been, Mia grudgingly admitted. Those outward signs of maturity gave him a dangerous edge and that aura of arrogant self-confidence only added to the impression of danger.

  Her chin rose. ‘I forgot to congratulate you earlier. On your promotion,’ she explained at Ethan’s questioning glance. ‘It was announced in the newspapers several months ago that you were made CEO of Burton Industries.’

  He looked at her through narrowed lids. ‘And did you also see in the newspapers the circumstances under which I became CEO of the company?’

  Mia turned away from that piercing silver gaze. ‘Because my father had a heart attack.’

  ‘You knew William had been ill?’ Ethan stared at her incredulously.

  ‘Yes,’ she confirmed flatly.

  ‘And yet you still didn’t go to see him?’ Ethan made no effort to hide his disgust now. Mia had known—all the time she had known about William’s heart attack—and she hadn’t even bothered to telephone her father, let alone go to see him …

  Her sighed heavily. ‘Obviously not.’

  ‘What if he had died, Mia, and you never saw him again?’

  Mia tried not to shudder at the thought. As much as her father had hurt her badly, she still questioned whether she had done the right thing. But Ethan didn’t need to know that, so she shrugged. ‘I have no intention of ever seeing him again.’

  ‘And what if I were to tell you that it was another erroneous sighting of you that caused his heart attack?’

  ‘It’s been five years, Ethan—don’t try and lay that guilt trip on me!’

  ‘Five years or fifty—your father will never stop loving you. Never stop looking for you!’

  Her expression remained unrelenting. ‘I’m not, nor have I ever been—obviously!—answerable for anything my father may or may not choose to do.’

  Ethan looked at her for several long, tense seconds before standing up abruptly. ‘I’m wasting my time even trying to talk to you, aren’t I?’ It was more a flat statement than a question.

  ‘I’m glad you’ve finally realised that.’ Mia looked up at him unemotionally.

  He gave a shake of his head. ‘Obviously the changes in you aren’t just on the surface, but go all the way to your selfish and bitter little heart!’

  ‘How dare you …?’ Mia gasped.

  Ethan looked down at her as if he had never seen her before. ‘You were so beautiful, so sweet and trusting—’

  ‘Well, I certainly had that knocked out of me, didn’t I?’ She eyed him wearily.

  ‘Are you referring to me or to your father now?’

  ‘Both!’

  ‘Forget about me—’

  ‘Oh, let’s!’

  Ethan gave an impatient shake of his head. ‘William did everything for you. Loved you. Damn it, he adored you—’

  ‘And then he betrayed everything I believed about him by having an affair with your mother!’ Mia finished heatedly as she stood up to face him. ‘And just because the two of them finally married each other it doesn’t make your mother any more my stepmother than it makes you my stepbrother! None of those things changes the fact that long before my mother died my father was involved in an affair with your own mother.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that. You make it sound so—’

  ‘Sordid?’ she suggested. ‘Maybe that’s because it was sordid. My mother was in a wheelchair for the last four years of her life, and all the time my father and your mother—’

  ‘I’ve told you—it wasn’t all the time.’ His eyes glittered. ‘They didn’t even know each other until after you started attending Southlands School.’

  Mia gave an inelegant snort. ‘You really expect me to believe that?’

  ‘I’m telling you how it was—’

  ‘And beware anyone who dares to disbelieve the arrogant and powerful Ethan Black?’ She eyed him mockingly.

  ‘This isn’t about me, Mia. And it isn’t about you, either,’ he added grimly, cutting her off as she was about to speak. ‘Yes, your father and my mother made the mistake of falling in love with each other while your father was still married, but they didn’t do anything about those feelings until after your mother died. I know you would rather believe otherwise, but—’

  ‘My God, I can’t believe you actually fell for any of that sanctimonious rubbish they spouted after my mother died.’ She looked at him with pity. ‘That whole story of how the two of them fell in love but fought against their feelings! I always gave you credit for having more intelligence than to believe something so lame, Ethan.’

  He eyed her derisively. ‘From what I’ve observed of the emotion, intelligence has very little to do with falling in love.’

  ‘The two of them were together on the day my mother killed herself, Ethan,’ she continued fiercely. ‘They were together at your mother’s house while my mother sat at home and downed a bottle of sleeping pills with a bottle of wine!’

  He winced. ‘Your mother didn’t even know about their friendship.’

  ‘How can you possibly know that?’ Mia scorned. ‘She didn’t so much as leave a note, so how can anyone know what my mother was thinking when she swallowed that bottle of pills?’

  Ethan hesitated, thinking of the promise William had extracted from both himself and his mother never to tell Mia of the real circumstances
behind her mother’s death, or the letter Kay had left for him. It was a promise they had both kept for the past five years. But at what price …?

  He bit back his frustration. ‘I’m sorry your mother did what she did, but you have to believe that it had nothing to do with the friendship that existed between my mother and your father.’

  ‘I don’t have to believe anything, Ethan.’ Her face had paled to a ghostly white.

  Damn it, Ethan hadn’t come here to hurt Mia. Just like William, Ethan had never wanted to do that. ‘Mia, I know how you must have felt—still feel—’

  ‘You don’t know anything about me, Ethan!’ Mia shook her head. ‘Certainly not how I felt then. Or how I still and will always feel about the circumstances of my mother’s death.’

  ‘Maybe that’s because you refused all my attempts to see you after she died?’ Ethan reminded her harshly.

  Of course Mia had refused to see Ethan again after her mother had died and her father’s affair with Ethan’s mother had made front-page headlines in every newspaper in the country. How could she have done anything else, behaved in any other way, when the knowledge of that affair had shown her all too clearly the unfolding of past events and the reasons for them? All of them. Including the reason for her own brief relationship with Ethan.

  ‘We had nothing left to say to each other, Ethan. You were just using me. Just—’ Mia broke off abruptly as she heard her the emotional break in her voice.

  She would not do this! She didn’t care what Ethan thought of her now, what he accused her of—or how hurtful she found those accusations—she would not allow herself to be put through this emotional wringer a second time.

  The worst part of it was that she had loved her father so much—worshipped him, almost. She had liked Grace Black too, for the two years she’d been a pupil at her school. Until she’d later found out about the affair.

  As for her feelings for Ethan …!

  She had worshipped him from afar for years too—already been crazily in love with him when he’d asked her out for the first time. She would have done anything—been anything that he wanted her to be. And all the time—all the time his mother had been involved in a relationship with Mia’s father.