He looked at her and realised his mistake.
Weeks ago it occurred to him that she was innately damaged, not only by her ex-husband’s treatment but at the hands of her father.
But again, he’d been wrong.
He’d never been wrong so many times in his bloody, f**king life as he was with Julia.
She wasn’t innately damaged.
She was destroyed.
His challenge was far bigger than he expected. To have her, he’d have to gather the shattered pieces of her and put them back together.
He vaguely noticed she was speaking. “It’ll take some time but we’ll get passed this…”
He heard her talking but he wasn’t listening.
Instead he was thinking exactly how very much he liked a challenge.
“I’m not the others, Julia.” He cut her off and she just looked at him. “I’ll simply have to prove it to you,” he declared.
Her mouth opened slightly but no words came out. He didn’t wait for a reply; he walked toward his bedroom to take a shower.
“Don’t you ever give up?” Her exasperated voice sounded from behind him.
His answer was to close the door.
Chapter Eighteen
Alone
Julia heard the beeping in her room after she came out of the shower.
After that scene with Douglas, she was shaken and frightened half out of her mind. She wanted to pack and leave but couldn’t because of the children. Wouldn’t, because of her promise to Tammy and Gav.
She was stuck in a nightmare.
And it was all her own damned fault.
She saw her evening bag lying on the bed. She must have left it in the Bentley and Carter found it. She opened it to find that her mobile was telling her she had a missed call.
Or, to be precise, eleven.
And all from Charlie.
She was considering turning it off when it sounded in her hand.
She jumped, nearly dropping it and before she could think what she was doing, she flipped it open and put it to her ear.
“Thank God, Jewel! I’ve been worried sick, I thought he’d killed you!” Charlie shrieked and any other time Julia would have laughed at her dramatics.
“I’m all right,” Julia lied, not wanting to talk to Charlie, not wanting to talk to anyone.
Charlie failed to read her mood. “You just have to tell me what happened! Oliver spent the entire drive home to London, two hours, mind, lecturing me about interfering so I hope it’s good.”
“Charlie…” Julia started and then she couldn’t stop herself, she burst into tears.
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.