Sweet Anticipation
The next three weeks found Julia experiencing complete emotional turmoil which she felt was a little incredible considering she already thought she was experiencing the height of emotional turmoil.
Clearly, Douglas realised what Julia had officially termed (in her own mind) “The Tender Onslaught Strategy (with Vague Tendencies Toward Arrogance)” was working beautifully so he kept right on using it.
The press had taken it into their head that Julia and Douglas were a couple and they were speculating wildly about her and Douglas leaving the ball so quickly. Not to mention Douglas was no longer appearing with his rail-thin, twenty-something starlets and models at every social gathering imaginable but instead squiring Julia and the children all over Bristol and Somerset.
Making matters worse, they all travelled to London to attend Charlie and Oliver’s Annual New Year’s Bash. Julia didn’t want to go so soon after Ruby’s outburst but she couldn’t let Charlie down. Sam arranged for the children to spend the night with her nieces and nephews at her sister’s house.
Julia took Veronika, saying she wanted the girl, who had no family close and no friends to speak of, to have a good time. If she admitted it to herself, she was really using her young friend as a shield.
Once in London, she found out Sam (or perhaps Douglas, she wouldn’t put it passed him) arranged for Veronika to attend a party with her rather than go with Julia and Douglas to the Forsythes.
This left Julia and Douglas together, alone.
Luckily, the New Year’s party was a mad crush and Julia easily lost Douglas. She made certain she didn’t drink too much; she needed all her faculties to utilise in her efforts to avoid him. Further, she didn’t want to do anything to let her guard down.
Christmas night was still fresh in her memory and she knew she was losing ground fast. She decided to nurture her irate frustration at the situation; it was the only thing she had left.
Eventually she found herself alone with Oliver and she decided to take that opportunity to pick his brain, subtly of course, about Douglas’s history. Douglas’s story about his childhood Christmases still had Julia feeling ill-at-ease. In fact, when she wasn’t avoiding Douglas, stewing over him or watching the children like hawks (after the Christmas night disaster), it was all she thought about.
Oliver knew him best and Julia felt that, maybe, he could be a font of information.
After a few questions, diplomatically worded (she thought), Oliver cut eyes to her that were not lit with his usual good-natured light.
“What are your intentions regarding Douglas?” he asked bluntly.
“I… well,” she spluttered. Her intentions with Douglas? She didn’t know what to say, so she said, “I’m just curious.”
Oliver surveyed her for a moment which probably lasted about a second but the intensity of his eyes made it seem like an hour.
“I’m afraid curiosity isn’t good enough, Julia. If you genuinely cared, I would tell you, but since you’re just curious…” He let that hang and when Julia said no more, he excused himself and, for some reason, this made Julia feel like an absolute heel.
She was caught in a mad crush of happy, drunken people as the clock struck down to midnight (and it was never fun to be an unhappy, un-drunken person in that kind of situation).
At “five” she felt a warm hand on the small of her back. At “four” it was an arm that wound around her waist. At “three” it was pulling her firmly around. At “two” it was hauling her against a hard body. At “one” another arm joined it to tighten around her. At the strike of midnight, a sexy, scarred mouth descended on hers in a hard, thorough, unmistakably possessive kiss that seemed to last forever and stole her breath away.
Anyone who saw it would have been in no doubt that Julia and Douglas were a couple.
Regardless how good the kiss was or, more to the point, because of how good it was, and the point it so publicly made, Julia seethed all the way home.
Monique was still (thankfully) in Munich meaning they were all alone at the Kensington house. As Douglas pulled the parking brake up on the Jag, Julia darted out of the car only to have to stand on the steps to wait for him to let her in the house because she didn’t have a key.
I really, she thought, have to think ahead.
Her blood pressure, already nearly at brain attack level, ratcheted up a notch.
Douglas politely, though not trying to hide his amusement, allowed her to precede him into the house. She practically ran up the stairs only to hear him chuckle.
She was beginning to detest his chuckle. For fifteen years she rarely heard it and now it seemed to ring in her ears on a daily basis. At the top of the stairs she whirled to wait for him and watched as he took his time ascending like he had all the new year.
“I want you to release a press statement that says we are not an item,” she demanded irritably when he was four steps away.
He completed his ascension and then stopped several inches from her. Towering over her, he looked down at her, not down the length of his nose, as used to be his wont, but directly at her, eye-to-eye.
“And why,” he drawled, “would I do that?”
“Because we’re not a couple!” She wanted to stamp her foot at having to point out what she thought was the obvious.
He quirked a brow.
She was a woman prone to dramatics but not to violence.
Not until that moment.
She was saved from doing something she would regret by the door opening below.
Visions of Monique drifting in, wafting malevolence and baring fangs, made Julia’s chest tighten painfully.
Instead, from their vantage point at the top of the stairs, they saw Veronika enter on a giggle and then lose her footing and crash to the floor.
Julia and Douglas both descended the stairs rapidly, Douglas (of course) made it to the bottom first. Julia was wearing high-heeled, strappy bronze sandals and couldn’t catch herself in time at the bottom and ploughed into Douglas. To steady herself, she grabbed his waist with both hands. Worried about Ronnie, she didn’t pull her hands away but she peeked around his body and saw Veronika sprawled on the floor, her legs out in front of her and a loopy grin on her face.
Ronnie slowly lifted a curled hand, thumb extended then jerked it toward herself and said gaily, “Drunk!”
“Oh dear,” Julia sighed, releasing Douglas’s waist and moving around him. “We need to get her upstairs,” she told him, all the time looking down on Veronika.
“Sham’s very nie-sh,” Veronika slurred to the approaching Julia.