Bachelor Untamed - Brenda Jackson [49]
He glanced over and saw that Ellie had resumed eating her food. Uriel was about to go back to eating his as well, when he happened to glance across the table and saw his godbrothers all staring at him.
He stared back and read the message in their eyes. Like him, they were all bachelors on demand, which meant that they knew whatever was going on between him and Ellie was short-term. He could tell they weren’t particularly overjoyed at the thought of that. Although they understood and supported his desire to remain single, and that it meant he would sow wild oats from time to time, he knew they weren’t crazy that the recipient of those oats was Ellie.
Hell, he refused to let them try to make him feel guilty about anything. As he’d told them, Ellie was no longer the twelve-year-old they remembered. She was twenty-six, and old enough to make her own decisions about what she wanted to do.
“How long do you all plan to stay?” he decided to ask them.
It was York who responded. “Probably until tomorrow. Why?”
He smiled, but the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes, or his lips for that matter, when he said, “No particular reason. Just asking.”
They knew there was a particular reason, just like he did. At the silence, Ellie, who’d been concentrating on picking bones out of her fish, glanced up. She looked first at Uriel and smiled, before glancing over at Virgil, Winston, Xavier and York. She smiled at them, too, and they smiled back. When she resumed what she was doing, they dropped the smiles off their faces and glared back at Uriel.
He shrugged and continued eating, refusing to let their attitudes bother him. Moments later, Ellie interrupted the quietness that had once again descended around the table to ask, “Where’s Zion?”
It was Xavier who spoke. “Z has been living in Rome for a couple of years now. You do know that he’s that well-known jeweler, Zion, right?”
Ellie nodded. “Yes, I know,” she said, smiling proudly. “I’ve seen a few of his pieces, and they’re simply beautiful. When the president presented the first lady with a Zion bracelet for her birthday, I knew it was just a matter of time before everyone discovered what gorgeous jewelry he designs,” she said.
Uriel took a sip of his lemonade. For some reason, he could picture her wearing her own Zion bracelet, one specifically designed just for her. He could also envision a Zion ring on her finger. He blinked, and then frowned, when he realized just where his thoughts were about to go, and he outright refused to let them go there.
He gave himself a quick mental shake, and for the rest of the meal he ate in silence, deciding it would be safer to just listen to the conversation and not add anything to it…and to keep all those foolish thoughts out of his head.
“It was so nice seeing your godbrothers again, and spending time with them, Uriel. They’re as nice as I remembered,” Ellie said, as Uriel walked her home later that evening. He didn’t have to bother, but he’d insisted because it had gotten dark.
After they’d eaten dinner and dessert, everyone had sat around talking about basically everything. The guys had brought her up-to-date on what had been going on with them and about the different businesses they owned. When she’d teased them about them getting married one day, all four of Uriel’s friends rebuffed the very thought of doing anything like that.
She wondered what they had against settling down with the right person, and was tempted to ask Uriel, but figured it was none of her business. Still, she couldn’t stop wondering if Uriel felt the same way they did. Was he as dead-set against the idea of marriage as they were? Was that the reason he had stipulated they would share nothing more than a short-term affair?
“I won’t be coming over tonight, Ellie.”
She glanced up at him, saw the tenseness in his jaw, the firmness of his lips, and knew he didn’t like the idea of not spending the night with her. In a way, she felt good that he was regretting it. “That’s okay, I understand. It wouldn’t look right