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).
Since their return that afternoon, she had gone from worrying about what Douglas would do next to worrying about what she would do if she was pregnant. Then she started to get angry about what Sean had likely done. Now, she was frustrated at Lizzie who seemed to want to convince Julia that Douglas was, at any moment, going to walk calmly outside and fly, such were his superhuman powers.
“He’s going to teach me to play polo,” Willie said through a mouthful of chilli.
Et tu, Willie? Julia thought, her eyes rolling to the ceiling.
“I’m gonna play polo too!” Ruby shouted, not wanting to be left out.
“Do you know how to ride, Julia?” Douglas asked, his deep baritone rumbling over her like a caress.
She ignored the caress and answered the question. “No.”
“You do too!” Lizzie accused. “We all went riding at Pokagon State Park.”