“Mmm?”
He wanted to tell her she had never looked more beautiful to him. Instead, he lifted her hand and placed a soft kiss on the back of it, tipping her chin encouragingly with his other hand. “We’ve got this,” he murmured, and her instant smile wrapped around his heart.
Hand in hand, they entered the gleaming foyer of the two-story mansion, where a harpist welcomed them with a slow, haunting tune. The gathering consisted of a small group of friends and family and of course Landon’s enormous mastiffs, who were plopped on the rug at the far end of the living room.
Molly had told Julian earlier that Kate and Beth’s business, Catering, Canapés and Curry, was handling tonight’s party.
So at least the food would be good.
As soon as Julian and Molly were spotted, they were split apart. Kate and Beth sequestered Molly for interrogation while his mother, in an evening dress and a pair of bed slippers, flew over to Julian before he could even find a server with a wine selection. “My dear son! My dear, dear son!” she called from afar, crossing the room toward him. “What’s this I hear about you and Molly, JJ?”
“Mother, why did you give me two names if you did not plan to use them?” he said, exasperated.
“All right then, Julian John—answer me now and don’t test me. My nerves are frazzled as it is without any help from you these days!”
A fond smile played on his lips as his mother stopped an arm’s length away, regal and elegant even in slippers and panting for her breath—something only a matron like Eleanor Gage could pull off.
Julian could already taste the satisfaction of watching the “news” affect and disgruntle his overprotective mother. She, who had sent him to Spain, France, Russia and Africa to separate him from his best friend. She, who had warned him if he ever touched the only girl he’d ever truly cared for, he might as well not consider himself a part of the Gage family anymore.
Yeah, it gave him pleasure, perverse pleasure, to see if she would make good on her threats. A part of him savored the fight with her even though he loved her. It had hurt him, incredibly, to be judged and condemned by his entire family for a sin he hadn’t yet committed.
He’d been punished since he was just an adolescent, and he’d been suffering ever since.
Yes. It felt good to rebel against them. To give them the exact thing they were afraid of. Because soon they would see how wrong they’d been about him. Dead. Wrong.
So now that she was narrow-eyed and thrusting her chin out in warning, Julian ducked his head to her height and kissed her cheek smoothly, unperturbed by her bravado. “If you heard that Molly is with me, then you heard the truth, Mother. Now you can finally make good on your threat and disown me.”
Eleanor drew back with a shocked little breath, genuinely traumatized by his suggestion.
Julian wanted to assure her he didn’t need the trust his father had left anymore. He could live lavishly with his savings alone, plus he already had a promising business ready to launch, with several billion-dollar companies lined up as clients for his PR services. Instead, he smiled at her to defuse the tension and tucked a wisp of ebony hair behind her ear.
“You knew this would happen, Mother,” he said softly. “Just as I knew someday I’d have to prove to you how much I want her and how far I’m willing to go.”
Her eyes, the only ones in the family that were green like his own, flared wide with accusation. Julian waited for her comeback, but words seemed to be failing her at the moment.
He really wished that if his mother was staring at him as if he were a monster, it was because sweet, lovely Molly was crazy about him, couldn’t keep her hands off him and was letting him have his way with her in bed, in the shower, in the car, in the kitchen and in every place he could think of. And not because of this idiotic little lie.
He needed her to be his.
He didn’t know how much longer he could wait, or what it would take for her to realize she and Garrett weren’t compatible in any single way that she and Julian were.
“If you think I’m going to let you use that girl like all those Janes you go out with, you’re sorely mistaken, Julian John. I’m like that girl’s mother.”
He nodded in agreement. He had definitely understood the position his mother had been placed in two decades ago when the Devaneys had been brought to the house. She had been a recent widow with three young sons, feeling responsible for the death of an employee who left two young daughters orphaned. His mother, always stern but nonetheless a loving woman, had taken them in, but hardened her position with her sons in the process.
It was too much on her nerves to ever think the boys would harm the girls in any way; after all, they owed them their father. And yet nobody had ever understood that Julian did not want to hurt Molly. Just as he did not want to hurt his mother now. It just was what it was.
He wanted Molly. And no one was going to stop him from having her anymore.
In feigned aloofness, he grasped one of her jeweled hands and indolently patted it between both of his. “Why don’t you have a little more faith in me as well, Mother? And let us be happy together, for once.” Before he left to greet Landon and his wife, he grumbled, “I’d never hurt Molly. Ever. And it hurts me that you even think I would.”
* * *
Molly stood at the other end of the living room with Kate and Beth, who was being brought up to speed on all the excitement.
“I can’t believe this. Landon and I leave for two months, we come back and you and Julian are dating?”
Molly waved a hand excitedly. “We’re actually way past that, Beth. I’ve moved in already.” She nodded proudly, then added, “But you know, that’s exactly how shocked I felt when I emerged from a long creative streak in my studio to find out Landon had remarried. I didn’t even have a clue he’d met someone. Julian should’ve kept me up-to-date all those nights he brought Chinese food!”