Sommersgate House (Ghosts and Reincarnation #2)(99)

Seconds before she wanted nothing but solitude and the time to plan her defence against whatever barrage on her senses and emotions would next come from Douglas. But now she strode to the chaise lounge and collapsed on it, unburdening herself entirely, honestly (and somewhat explicitly), to her friend.

When she finally finished, Charlie was silent.

Julia sniffed and wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her robe “Charlie? Are you there?”

“I’m here,” Charlie stated, uncharacteristically quiet.

“I think I need –” Julia started but Charlie interrupted her.

“What you need, Jewel, is to marry Douglas.”

“What?” Julia gasped.

“Listen to me, darling,” Charlie demanded urgently before Julia could get a word in edgewise, “you may never get Douglas to love you; he just isn’t built like that. I don’t know why but he isn’t. I have to tell you, though, what you have from him is more than I’ve ever seen him give anyone.”

Julia palpably felt these words go through her and was holding the phone to her ear like she intended to graft it there.

She searched desperately for excuses to defend her heart against the words it wanted to hear. “Charlie, I can’t settle for that. And anyway love turns to –”

“No, Jewel, not always, in fact, mostly never. You’ve had tremendously bad luck. I know you had some tough experiences but no matter what Douglas is, and he’s a lot of things,” she noted with her usual bluntness, “he isn’t the type of man who would hurt you.”

“How do you know?” Julia was thinking about the accident Douglas had ordered Sean to have, the gunshot wound he never explained, the two years when he’d disappeared. She remembered his words, “Because I need something warm and soft and alive beside me tonight. Something that smells good and feels good. After what I’ve seen…”

He had secrets, dark ones.

She had no idea what he was capable of and she figured Charlie didn’t either.

“Because he’d never hurt Tammy and to hurt you would hurt Tammy. He had great respect for Gavin too.”

Oh God. She had a point there.

“Charlie –” Julia tried to interject.

“Honestly, Jewel, don’t you understand from what you’ve just told me that even not having it all with Douglas is a damn sight better than anything you’d get from anyone else?”

Julia was struck silent at Charlie’s stunning proclamation. And before she let the truth of it edge into her mind, she shut it out completely.

“Think about it,” Charlie urged. “I’ll call you later,” and she hung up.

Miserable, Julia spent (hiding, she knew), the whole day in her rooms. She kept her mind obsessively busy by wrapping presents and making unnecessary lists and when the children came home, they rushed in to say hello and out again because Douglas was taking them horseback riding.

She wasn’t alone in the room, she knew. The Mistress was there with her, freezing her ankles, trying to tell her something Julia couldn’t understand, probably didn’t want to understand. Julia did her best to ignore her and she finally went away.

Much later, when the sun was setting, to her amazement, Julia saw The Master, clear as day, pacing, agitated, back and forth in front of Julia’s windows.

Julia shut the curtains.

When she became used to the impossibility of living with two ghosts, she did not know and she didn’t have the energy to worry about it.

It was Veronika’s shift at the house and Julia let her go early. She made a big vat of Texas chilli for dinner, spending the entire time she cooked mentally preparing for any upcoming confrontation with Douglas at supper.

The children screamed in, still jazzed from a day of physical activity and she met them in the hallway. She was wiping her hands on a dishtowel as the kids started to scatter this way and that. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Douglas saunter in but didn’t acknowledge him.

“Everyone get cleaned up. Dinner is in half an hour,” she announced.

The kids raced up the stairs and Julia turned to see Douglas standing in the hallway watching her, his arms crossed on his chest and his feet planted apart.

He looked exactly what he was, lord of the manor, master of all he surveyed. With that sexy scar on his lip and that even sexier glint in his eye, instead of looking like a man who was born to it, he looked like a man who had seized it.

This thrilled her, annoyed her and scared the living daylights out of her all at the same time.

He wore a soft suede jacket the colour of clay and a forest green turtleneck over faded blue jeans and boots. Slap a cowboy hat on his head and he was the GQ version of the damned Marlboro Man.

“Dinner is in half an hour,” she repeated tersely.

“I heard you,” he replied.

She walked away, hoping that he wouldn’t follow her.

He didn’t.

Then she hoped for the disappointment that came from him not following her would go away.

It didn’t either.

* * * * *

“And he sits the best horse ever,” Lizzie enthused with the fervour of a zealot.

Everyone was sitting around the huge dining room table eating dinner. Even though Julia loved chilli, she found she wasn’t hungry. This was probably because she was extremely aware that Douglas was sitting to her left side. Every time she looked at his hands, she thought of what they could do to her body. Every time she looked at his face, her eyes dropped to his lips and then she thought about what they could do (and, as if he could read her mind, those lips twitched at the corners which then made her want to crash the nearest, undoubtedly priceless vase over his head).