“Now?” Julia whispered.
“Yes. Now. How do you feel?”
“You mean, now that I know you did it?” she inquired, her teeth bit her bottom lip again to stop it from trembling and she accidentally nipped his thumb. She just stopped herself from apologising but he ignored it except his eyes moved back to her mouth, his gaze directed there making both her lips tingle.
With his hands holding her face, she couldn’t look away and he didn’t answer her question.
“You wasted your energy. Sean wasn’t worth it,” she replied, trying to make her tone hard to change the mood.
Although her words were true, how she really felt was floored. Mostly because he was so nonchalant about it, being responsible for another person’s misfortune. But also the depth of feeling such an act showed that he had for his sister, she didn’t know Douglas had that depth of feeling in him for anyone.
“Julia.” His tone held a gentle warning that said he didn’t believe her.
She closed her eyes and licked her lips, pressing them together. Then, for reasons unknown to her, she whispered her darkest secret, “He wasn’t worth it but he deserved it.”
Douglas’s only response was to tighten his hands on her jaw and she felt somehow that response, however slight, was significant.
“And have you recovered from his behaviour?” His soft words caused her eyes to flutter open.
She stared at him, wondering what this was all about and tiring of true confessions.
Enough, she thought, really was enough.
“Why do you want to know this?” she asked, her voice sounding slightly curt.
“Just answer me.”
“No. Okay? No,” she snapped, tore her head away from his hands and leaned away from him, arching her back against the desk to do so. “I haven’t recovered. You don’t recover from something like that. I learned my lesson. I’m better off without him, without anyone,” she admitted with rancour.
“I see. This is why you didn’t remarry.”
“Yes,” Julia replied, exposing bitterness deep in that one word. “This”, how he put it, was why she didn’t do anything since Sean, no boyfriends, no lovers, no nothing. Sean had worked hard to teach her a lesson about men and added to that was her father’s betrayal of her mother. Between the two of them, she learned that lesson well. There were very few Gavin Fairfaxes in the world, indeed, only one and he’d been her brother and now he was gone.
Again, they were in territory that was none of his business and it was decidedly ticking… her… off.
“If you must know, and apparently you do, yes,” she informed him. “I won’t remarry and if by some miracle I do, it will be to a pudgy, short, bald man who worships the ground I walk on and doesn’t mind cleaning the bathroom.”
With that statement, Douglas threw back his head and roared with laughter as if this situation was of such comedic proportions as to delight all mankind.
This shocked her so much, Julia jumped.
Firstly, it was not an amusing moment and secondly, she’d never heard him laugh.
Perhaps a chuckle here and there but out and out laughter?
Never.
When he was finished he leaned into her and she was forced to arch further away. She couldn’t escape him, however, because, to her disbelief, his arms slid around her and he pulled her into his body.
“Douglas,” her voice was low, her pulse leaping madly, “what are you doing?”
“I’m going to kiss you,” he replied evenly as if this was the most natural thing in the world. As if he hadn’t just gone from accusing her of whatever it was he was accusing her of to demanding she bare her most personal, painful and illicit secrets.
His breath smelled pleasantly of whisky and his hard body warmed her and that was a heady combination.
“Oh no you aren’t.” She shook her head, tried to twist her body away and pushed against his chest all at the same time. These actions had no result except his arms tightened.
“Yes,” he whispered, his head was descending, “I am.”