Now, he would be living with her, and his mother who detested her, and his sister’s grieving children and he had to find a way to make it all work, not only for them but also for his own peace of mind.
And this was a problem. A problem with no solution. And that made Douglas impatient. He had not encountered a problem he couldn’t solve and he didn’t like that feeling.
He had a half-formed plan. Of course, he always had a plan.
He would have to do something publically to demonstrate clearly to his mother exactly what place Julia held at Sommersgate. If left to her own devices, Monique would relegate Julia to nannydom in the expanse of a week. But Julia was about as much of a nanny as Grace Kelly was a wallflower. Unfortunately, part of being an Ashton meant they lived their lives relatively publically and Douglas had every intention of putting Julia in her rightful place as Tamsin’s children’s aunt, and thus a member of the Ashton family. And he intended to do it immediately.
As for the rest, he’d managed to control his impulses when it came to Julia for fifteen years, another fifteen would not be difficult. Douglas managed to control a great many of his impulses with very little effort. He was rarely home anyway and Julia would just be a woman, albeit a very alluring one, who happened to live in his house.
Nothing else, except Monique’s attitude, need change.
And that, he could, and would, also control, of this he had no doubt.
He drove down the lane and around the chapel, skirting the fountain. He left the Jaguar in the front drive, knowing that Carter would have heard him arrive and would take the car to the garages and put it away.
Douglas grabbed his briefcase and walked to the door. He noted the lights were blazing in Julia’s suite and the curtains were opened. He wondered vaguely why she was awake at this hour, it was well after eleven and she had to be exhausted.
He shoved open the heavy door, not bothering to lock it behind him. Carter would see to that as well.
He intended to go straight to his study. Even if Julia was awake, she would most likely not wish his company this late at night and, with the call from Japan coming soon, he did not wish hers. The last time he had seen her, he remembered her eyes were sunk in their sockets with heartache but she had been resolute in telling him she’d be moving to Sommersgate directly after she arranged things in Indiana. And she had been true to her promise.
He moved down the hall, his study was opposite the dining room and he was about to turn into it when a flash of white caught his peripheral vision.
Immediately on alert, he turned toward the dining room and saw Julia running directly at him.
Taken off guard at the sight of a woman running through his house in the dead of night, he wasn’t prepared and she crashed right into him, rocking him back on his heels. Then she pushed away, disengaging herself from the arm he’d automatically thrown around her waist.
“The children…” Julia muttered urgently before he could say a word and then she pulled away and ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time.
He stood there, staring up the stairs, wondering if this was some strange manifestation of jetlag or if he should follow her. The house was silent, save for her footsteps pounding down the hall. His keen sense of danger, bred in him through a lifetime of assessing his mother and father’s moods and honed through the secret life he had chosen, registered nothing.
He made his decision and walked calmly into the study, turned on the lights, deposited his briefcase on the desk, pulled his tie free, shrugged off his suit jacket and tossed them on the couch before he walked out to see what was happening.
By the time he exited the study, she was racing back down the stairs.
Regardless of the madness she seemed to be exuding, she managed, as ever, to do it in style. She wore a thin, fitted top and a pair of light blue pants that hung low on her h*ps and clung to the right places. She was barefoot, her toes painted a deep, rich red, and her thick, blonde hair was waving softly around her face and down past her shoulders. However flimsy her clothing, she looked like she could walk down the street in them and have every woman wanting the same outfit and every man staring at her just as Douglas was staring at her now.
She skidded to a halt in front of him.
“I heard a scream,” she told him, breathless.
That was not what he had expected to hear.
Before he could respond, she put her hand on his chest in that familiar way of hers, bent slightly at the waist and took in two shuddering breaths.
She pulled herself straight again and said, “The kids are okay, sleeping. But I heard this awful scream.”
He looked down at her hand on his chest and then at her, regarding her silently.
He could turn on his heel, walk into his study and close the door, leaving her to her bizarre moment of insanity. Or, a far more pleasant idea was to pick her up, carry her to her rooms and make her so exhausted she’d cease these ridiculous actions, go to sleep and let him get back to work.
He nearly had to shake his head to clear that unbidden and unwelcome but very interesting thought from his mind. Dragging her to bed on her first night and seducing her while she was displaying symptoms of temporary insanity was most likely not the best way to welcome her to Sommersgate House.
He couldn’t let this woman, who was letting jetlag, unfamiliar surroundings and a highly emotional situation the like of leaving everything near and dear to her behind and starting a new life in a foreign country, lead her to strange delusions, stand in a cold hallway.
“Come to the study, let me get you a drink,” he offered.
She didn’t move even as he did. “Did you hear me? Douglas, I heard a woman scream. A… woman… scream.”
He continued walking and, as he expected, after a moment’s hesitation, she followed him. He poured a whisky for himself, a sherry for her.
He handed it to her.
“Drink,” was all he said.
She took the glass but did not drink. He lifted his whisky to his lips and sipped from it, watching her over the rim of his glass.
She was staring at him as if it was he that had lost his mind, her lovely green eyes managing to look both rounded and narrowed at the same time.
“Douglas –”
“Julia, calm yourself. Sit down, drink,” he commanded and expected her, as he would anyone, to obey.
“Douglas! I heard… a woman… scream!”
He sighed. He’d lived at Sommersgate his whole life, he had, of course, heard this story before.
“You heard nothing. You have jetlag. You were probably asleep and dreaming.”