Julianne clenched her hands into fists at her sides. “Stop making everything I say into a sexual innuendo. Yes, I will be staying out here with you, but that’s only because it’s the only place to go. If there were an alternative, I’d gladly take it.”
Heath chuckled, but she could tell by the look on his face that he didn’t believe a word she said. “You’re an awfully arrogant bastard,” she noted. “I do not want to sleep with you, Heath.”
“You say that,” he said, moving a few feet closer. “But I know you better than you’d like to think, Jules. I recognize that look in your eye. The color rushing to your cheeks. The rapid rise and fall of your breasts as you breathe harder. You’re trying to convince yourself that you don’t want me, but we both know that you hate leaving things unfinished. And you and I are most certainly unfinished.”
He was right. Julianne was normally focused on every detail, be it in art or life. She was an overachiever. The only thing she’d found she couldn’t manage was being a wife. Just another reason to keep their past relationship under the covers.
A tingle of desire ran down her spine and she closed her eyes tightly to block it out. Wrong choice of words.
“Were you this arrogant when we eloped?” she asked. “I can’t fathom that I would’ve fallen for you with an ego this large.”
Heath looked at her, the smile curling his lips fading until a hard, straight line appeared across his face. “No, I wasn’t this arrogant. I was young and naive and hopelessly in love with a girl that I thought cared about me.”
“Heath, I—”
“Don’t,” he interrupted. He took another step forward, forcing Julianne to move back until the knobs of the dresser pressed into her rear end. “Don’t say what you were going to say because you and I both know it’s a waste of breath. Don’t tell me that you were confused and scared about your feelings for me, because you knew exactly what you were doing. Don’t bother to tell me it was just a youthful mistake, because it’s a mistake that you refuse to correct. Why is that, I wonder?”
Julianne stood, trapped between her dresser and Heath’s looming body. He leaned into her and was so close that if she let out the breath she was holding and her muscles relaxed, they might touch. Unable to escape, her eyes went to the sensual curve of his mouth. She didn’t care for what he was saying, but she would enjoy watching him say it. He had a beautiful mouth, one that she’d secretly fantasized about kissing long before they’d gone to Europe and long after they came back.
“Maybe,” he added, “it’s because you aren’t ready to let go of me just yet.”
It was just complicated. She’d wrestled with this for years. She wanted Heath, but the price of having him was too high for both of them to pay. And yet giving up would mean letting go of the best thing that ever happened to her. “Heath, I—”
“You can lie to everyone else,” he interrupted. “You can even lie to yourself. But you can’t lie to me, Jules. For whatever reason, the time wasn’t right back then. Maybe we were just too young, but that’s no longer the case. You want me. I want you. It’s not right or wrong, black or white. It’s just a fact.”
His lips were a whisper away from hers. Her own mouth was suddenly dry as he spoke such blunt words with such a seductive voice. She couldn’t answer him. She could barely think with him this close to her. Every breath was thick with the warm scent of his cologne and the soap from his shower.
Heath brought his hand up
to caress her cheek. “It’s time for you to figure out what you’re going to do about it.”
Julianne’s brow drew down into a frown. “What I’m going to do about it?”
“Yes. It’s pretty simple, Jules. You either admit that you want me and give yourself freely and enthusiastically to your husband at last. Or...you get off your hind end and file for divorce.”
Julianne’s mind went to the last discussion she’d had with her attorney. He could draw up the paperwork anytime. It was a pretty cut-and-dried arrangement with no comingled assets. She just had to tell him to pull the trigger. It was that simple and yet the thought made her nearly sick to her stomach. But what was her alternative? Staying married wouldn’t solve their problems. And if marriage meant sleeping with Heath, there would just be sex clouding their issues.
“Why can’t this wait until we’re both back in New York and can work through the paperwork privately? Don’t we have enough going on right now? I’m not really interested in either of your options.”
A wicked grin curled Heath’s full lips, making her heart stutter in her chest. “Oh, you will be. There’s no more stalling, Jules. We’ve both lived in New York long enough to have addressed it privately, if that was what you really wanted. If you don’t choose, I’ll make the decision for you. And if I file for divorce, I’ll go to Frank Hartman.”
Frank Hartman was the family attorney and the only one in Cornwall. Even if Heath didn’t spread the news she had no doubt that their parents would find out about their marriage if he filed with him. That would raise too many questions.
“Your dirty little secret will be out in the open for sure. I’ll see to it that every single person in town finds out about our divorce.” His lips barely grazed hers as he spoke, and then he started to laugh. He took a large step back, finally allowing her a supply of her very own oxygen.
“You think on that,” he said, turning and walking out of her bedroom.
Four
Heath stumbled downstairs the next morning after pulling on some clothes. He could smell coffee and although still half-asleep, he was on a mission for caffeine. He’d slept late that morning after lying in bed for hours thinking about Julianne. After he’d walked out of her room, he’d shut his door, hoping to keep thoughts of her on the other side. He’d failed.
It would take a hell of a lot more than a panel of wood to do that. Not after being so close to her after all this time apart. Not after seeing her react to him. She was stubborn, he knew that, but she’d gotten under his skin just as he’d gotten under hers.
Part of him had enjoyed torturing her a little bit. He wasn’t a vindictive person, but she did owe him a little after what she’d done. He wasn’t going to get a wife or an apology out of all this. He’d just be a lonely divorced guy who couldn’t tell the people he was closest to that he was a lonely divorced guy. His brothers, whom he typically turned to for advice or commiseration, couldn’t know the truth. Poor Nolan would end up with the burden of his drama. He could at least watch her squirm a little bit and get some satisfaction from that. The whole point was to make her so uncomfortable that she would contact her lawyer.
But what had bothered him the most, what had kept him up until two in the morning, had been the look in her eyes when he’d nearly kissed her. He’d been close enough. Just the slightest move and their mouths would have touched. And she wanted him to kiss her. She’d licked her lips, her gaze focused on his mouth with an intensity like never before. It made him wonder what she would have done if he had.
He hadn’t kissed Julianne since their wedding night. Heath never imagined that would be the last time he would kiss his wife. They’d been married literally a few hours. Certainly things wouldn’t go bad that quickly. Right?