Enchanted Seduction

Chapter 1

Ethan cursed under his breath as he slammed the phone down. The woman was impossible, pigheaded beyond reason. How could she not see that the couple was genuinely in love? There was nothing she could do to change that, no matter how much she schemed or how violently she reacted.

This emotion humans called love was baffling, a tangled web of contradictions that made no sense to him. Yet, once again, he found himself in the thick of it, meddling where he had no business. He wasn’t sure why he bothered why he continually interfered in the lives of others but whenever Delilah was involved, he felt a strange, inexplicable protectiveness. Something about her stirred him in ways he didn’t quite understand, but that didn't mean he would let her destroy lives for her selfish whims.

Max had warned him, threatened really, that he would have Leila arrested and thrown in jail for a very, very long time if she so much as breathed near him or his wife again. Ethan would have ripped out his heart for daring to threaten him, but of course he knew it would be no good.

He also knew his Delilah could be obsessively jealous, her envy capable of driving her to the brink of madness. If she stayed around the new couple, her inane jealousy would inevitably cause her to create havoc, although he would have enjoyed the drama, he couldn't quite afford to. Ethan wasn’t a man who often meddled in others' affairs, but he couldn’t sit by and let her ruin herself again. He needed a plan, something that would keep her away from Max and Anna while also keeping her out of jail.

When Max had spoken to him, the man's voice had been laced with venomous intent. There had been no room for negotiation, no space for understanding. Max was ready to do whatever it took to protect Anna, and Ethan couldn't blame him. Since the night of the party, Ethan had tried his best to stay away from Delilah. She was a mess, a shattered woman teetering on the edge of her own destruction, and he had believed that she needed space to heal, time to recover from the rejection. But when he heard about her latest escapades, the lengths she had gone to in order to torment Max and Anna, he had barely restrained himself from storming over to her house that night and dragging her out by the hair.

The next day, fueled by a mix of anger and concern, he stormed into her office, startling her so badly that she almost dropped the delicate china cup she was holding. Delilah’s face, usually an epitome of calm serenity, was a perfect mask of elegance. No one would believe that someone so poised could be capable of such deviousness, but Ethan knew better. He had seen the depths of her cruelty, the darkness that lay beneath that beautiful exterior.

“What the hell were you thinking?” he demanded, his voice like a whip crack in the silence of her office.

Delilah looked up at him, her cool, detached demeanor faltering only slightly as she took in the sight of him. The force of his entry had clearly rattled her, but she quickly composed herself, setting the cup down on her desk with deliberate grace.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Ethan,” she said, her voice a smooth, practiced melody. But there was a tremor there, a tiny quiver that gave her away.

“Don’t play games with me, Delilah,” he snapped, his green eyes blazing with fury. “I know exactly what you’ve been up to, and so does Max. You think you can get away with terrorizing his wife? You think you can just waltz into people’s lives and tear them apart because you can’t handle rejection?”

Her frigid mask broke then, shattering into a thousand pieces as she burst into tears. She sobbed, her delicate shoulders shaking with the force of it, but Ethan wasn’t moved by her display. He had seen this act before, the crocodile tears she used to manipulate people into giving her what she wanted. Not this time.

“Stop it,” he ordered, his voice cold and unyielding. “You’re not going to cry your way out of this one. You have two choices, Delilah. You can go to jail for slandering and terrorizing the new Mrs. Ramirez, or you can marry me.”