The guy who’d owned every one of her desires for weeks.
The guy whom he very much wanted to kill right now.
He replayed the scenes over and over in his mind, recalling the hurt in Molly’s eyes when he’d set her little head straight this evening. When he’d told her that he was the man who had kissed her that night, touched her so intimately and made her go off like a hot, beautiful firework in his arms. Goddammit, she’d almost seemed disappointed he hadn’t been Garrett!
He gritted his teeth at the thought, deeply regretting not confronting her about it the day after the masquerade. All this time she’d been hunting for his brother thinking of Julian’s kiss. To hell with whether she wanted to talk about it or not! If he’d done things right, he might have been holding her in his arms all this time—and not under false pretenses—and kept her from noticing Garrett. All these sleepless nights. Nights she’d wanted to have a friendly sleepover with him—yeah, right. As if he could stand being in the same bed with her without turning into some ravenous, sex-starved maniac.
Did she not see he’d been crazy about her for twenty years?
He had thought he could screw Molly out of his head, but clearly that had not worked. Okay, so he’d kissed her when he was drunk and hadn’t talked to her afterward. Not suave. She’d expected better of him? Yeah, well, that made two of them. He wasn’t too pleased to find out that she’d thought all along that it was his brother who’d kissed her.
Now they both felt like fools.
Groaning in despair, he plopped down on the bed, full of rage and agony and disgust. He couldn’t stand the impotence he felt. Restless, he changed into his pajama pants and yanked back his bedcovers, but all he did was toss and turn restlessly on the bed.
So maybe he should’ve talked to her about that evening. Except he’d thought it best to forget about one drunken night’s kiss and continue with his plans until he could do things the right way.
Well, he sure as hell was mucking it up right now, wasn’t he?
No way was he going to stand for it. Suave Julian, they used to call him. How he was so cool, aloof. Yeah, right. Clearly not where Molly was concerned. His Achilles’ heel. But also his greatest strength. If he had become someone and done something with himself, it was all because of that incredible redhead in his life and his desperation to show his family that he was worthy of her.
Shoving the covers aside, he stalked across his bedroom and out to the hall, where moonlight streamed through the living room windows and across his apartment.
He found the door to her bedroom ajar. He rapped his knuckles on the wood, waited a second, then pushed the door open wider.
Her bed sat empty. It hadn’t been slept in.
Scowling, he stalked the entire apartment, every square foot, and found it empty.
Heart pounding seriously hard now, hard enough to crack one of his ribs, he jammed the elevator buttons and rode up to the penthouse, his mind racing with a thousand thoughts per minute, shouting out its conclusion: she left, she left, she left, you idiot!
But when the elevator doors opened, he saw her.
She lay on the marble floor of his new offices, dressed in nothing but a giant button-down shirt, her hair a pool of red fanning behind her as she slept with her hands tucked under her left cheek. He drank up her image as he approached her, drinking up her image, the perfect image of this woman he’d loved since they’d first met.
She should not be sleeping on the floor. God, never on the floor.
She deserved a bed, pillows, satin sheets and a man to love her with all the passion that she unfailingly conveyed in each of her artworks.
His eyes glued to her moonlit face, he knelt at her side—she was just so damned beautiful his eyes hurt. A streak of green paint crossed her forearm to her elbow, and he ached to trace it with his fingers, then with his lips. He noticed the empty paint tubes scattered around her sleeping form and glanced up at the colorful wall before him. His heart wrenched with regret when he realized she’d been trying to finish the mural.
So she could leave.
Leave him for good.
Now, when JJG Enterprises was almost ready for his final walk-through and just days away from opening to its employees. Now, when he had grown accustomed to her being here as he met with contractors, architects, painting her heart away on a wall that had been empty before she’d made it come to life with little playful flicks of her dainty hands.
She wanted to leave now, when Julian was days away from fulfilling one of his dreams and ready to focus on the next one—the possibility of sharing the rest of his life with her.
Throat dense with emotion, he stro
ked the curve of her cheek with the back of one fingertip.
She sighed contentedly at that, relaxed in her sleep. Shoving aside his hesitation, he reached out, gently scooped her up and carried her back to the elevator. She was as light as a feather and as warm as a little chicken, and his chest swelled when she sought out his heat and snuggled closer. But when the audible chime signaled their arrival on his apartment floor, Molly grew heavy in his arms, and he saw her spiky titian lashes flutter open.
Their eyes clashed. Her gaze was dewy, sleepy, and Julian’s muscles tensed as he waited for her to speak up, praying her first words weren’t “Put me down!”
He tightened his grip as he waited for the inevitable, but instead of kicking or screaming and demanding he release her, Molly hugged him even tighter and buried her face into his neck, where she quietly started sobbing.