The movement pressed the most intimate parts of their bodies together, and she could feel his desire.
This was the point of no return. She knew that, as she gazed up at him, searching his face, his eyes, his lips, looking for answers to questions that were becoming increasingly less important by the second. Until finally they were snuffed out altogether as he pulled out of her grasp and enfolded her with his body. He ravished her mouth, bold and hungry—there was nothing tentative between them as there’d been a moment ago or that day in St. Michel when they’d tasted each other for the first time. It was as if every glance, every word, every brush of fingertips today had been leading to this moment.
Without taking his mouth off hers, he backed her down the hall into a room—his bedroom, she guessed, and tugged her down onto the bed that suddenly appeared underneath her.
He tugged her blouse over her head, then pulled her bra down so that her breasts were naked in the moonlight. When he took a nipple into his mouth, need coursed through her hot and ready.
How long has it been?
She was surprised she didn’t melt in his hands. It was the feel of those hands—the touch of his rugged fingers on her smooth skin—that kept her cognizant, though just barely, and made her arch under him, demanding more.
As if they were suspended in time, the world seemed to fade away. Exploring her body with his mouth and hands, he kissed and teased and tormented her, taking her to the brink of places she hadn’t visited in a long time.
Her fingers worked his zipper and tugged away his pants until all the barriers between them were gone.
Then he reached into a drawer in the nightstand and pulled out a condom.
As he lowered himself on top of her, her legs parted, greedy for the feel of him, wanting every masculine inch of him to cover her, to weigh her down, to make her body thrum with the pleasure of him. As if reading her mind, he thrust his hips forward and with one bold stroke he entered her.
She gasped from the sheer pleasure of feeling him inside her.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Never been better,” she whispered, barely able to get the words out.
His breathing rasped against her temple. He pulled out then thrust a little deeper.
Her body clung to him sliding, grabbing, pulsing and releasing over and over until the weight and force of waves of pleasure crashed inside her.
His breath was labored and hot against her cheek until he gave a final thrust and a long, anguished groan erupted in this throat. He collapsed on top of her, kissing her tenderly, possessively as she reveled in their spent pleasure, in the feel of how his broad back narrowed at the waist, at the sheer masculine width and breadth of him. Until he pulled back a little, his lips still brushing hers.
“Marry me,” he whispered.
She froze, sure that she’d heard him wrong, but petrified that she hadn’t.
“What?” Her hands retreated from his back.
“Marry me,” he said again.
She pulled back reclaiming as much personal space as she could and studied him, wondering if he was simply caught up in the moment or if he’d truly lost his mind. Or if he knew how she felt about him, because she was only just beginning to admit those feelings to herself.
He looked a little disoriented, obviously not having had the benefit of the gravity of the shock that had pulled her back down to earth.
“Why?” she asked.
She knew it wasn’t romantic to ask Why? after having received a marriage proposal, but then again, she had the sickening feeling that this was not a real proposal—and if it was, it wasn’t for the right reasons.
Alex blinked and propped himself up on his elbow gazing down at her. His eyes searched her face, as if trying to form exactly the right explanation.
“Because…” he started, but his gaze darted away. Julianne watched his expression change until he ended up looking more horrified than like a man in love who was so enraptured he’d proposed. “I think we’d make a good team.”
She suddenly felt very exposed lying there and pulled the sheet up to cover herself.
A good team? That was not a reason to get married. A good team. Really?
They were not choosing up sides for kickball. This was for life, and the only reason you got married was because you loved someone.
Oh, this was wrong on so many levels, and for a moment she was paralyzed by the sobering magnitude of it.
Of course he didn’t love her. Even though they’d just made love.
And he had a history with her sister about which he hadn’t been very forthcoming.
All that Alex and she had between them was a couple of kisses and one night in Paris that was turning out to be a disaster.
“Julianne, think about it.” Now he was lying on his back, with his palm resting on his forehead. “We could make it work. We could be a family—you, Liam and me.”
“There are a couple of small problems here,” she said.
“What?”
“Number one—We’re not in love. And two—My sister still lives between us like a ghost.”
He winced. “Your sister was a fine woman, but I never loved her.”
“I guess that seems to be a pattern with you, huh? You didn’t love her. You don’t love me. You’ve taken us both to bed.”
“It’s different between you and me.”
“How is it different, Alex?” She sat up and hugged her knees to her chest.
“You and Marissa are… I could never see myself with her, but from the first day that you walked into my office, I sensed that we’d…”
“What?”
“That we could work.”
She squinted at him for a moment, trying to figure out exactly what he was talking about.
“Think of all the people who get married for love,” he said, “only to wake up one morning to discover too late that they can’t stand each other. At least we like each other for who we are. We get along. That’s more than I can say for most marriages.”
“Really?” she asked. “Are you telling me you don’t believe in love?”
“Not in the fairy-tale, happily-ever-after kind that people delude themselves into believing.”
She kept herself covered with the sheet as she got up and searched for her clothes. She felt a little sick.
“I thought I knew you, Alex. The real you, but obviously, I don’t. I’ve already been in one loveless marriage. I’m not doing it again.”
Chapter Twelve
He couldn’t have messed that up any worse if he’d tried. Julianne had slept in the guest room and had insisted on leaving early in the morning, despite Alex’s trying to talk her into staying.
He needed to fix things, but it seemed as if the more he tried, the worse things got. On their way to the private plane he’d realized the only thing that would help was to allow her to have a little distance. So he’d obeyed her wishes and let her return to Liam without him.
The funny thing was, he would’ve thought that after making such a mess of things that he would’ve been wracked with regret for having ventured into territory into which he’d sworn he’d never enter. But he wasn’t sorry that he’d proposed. His only regret was that he wished he’d had the clarity last night that he possessed this morning.
Truth be told, last night he hadn’t been one-hundred-percent positive that marriage was the right thing. But watching Julianne walk out of his bedroom without even a backward glance at him, he’d known that he wanted her more than was rationally possible in a man.
He missed her and his son.
He missed them—the two of them; and them as a family. He had to figure out a way to convince her that she wanted them, too.
Alex finally let his mind and his heart work together to come up with a plan to do just that.
What had she done?
When Alex had first brought up going to Paris with him, she’d had the right response: no. But she’d been an idiot not only going back to Paris, b
ut also sleeping with him.
She’d deluded herself into believing that she knew him, but how could she know him if she’d missed the small fact that he didn’t believe in love?
He was Liam’s father. He would be in Liam’s life and therefore he would be part of her life, too. There was no getting around it. If she knew what was best for all of them, she’d keep things friendly and platonic.
Period.
The problem, she decided, as she paced around her palace suite, was she felt like a caged animal. Even though she’d kept up with her daily practicing—except for a lapse during the time she spent in Paris with Alex—she needed to be doing something to get her career back on track.
She’d spent too much time at Maya’s shop. While friendship was a good thing right now, it was time to focus and get her career back on track. She sat down with a legal pad to prioritize a to-do list.
She’d already met with the director of the St. Michel National Symphony as Henri had arranged, but Maestro Fernand Leroy wasn’t auditioning flutes at the moment.
Henri was in the middle of bringing in a huge exhibit of Renaissance painters. He assured her that as soon as the exhibit was up and going that they’d meet with Sophie to talk about the fundraiser for A World of Music.
She called Graham and learned that there was no news to report—the reorganization was still in a holding pattern, waiting for confirmation of grants and donors.
“Isn’t there anything I can do on this end to help?” she asked.
“Keep your eyes and ears open for sponsors. Other than that, try to get paying gigs with smaller ensembles to keep yourself afloat in the meantime.”
Easy for him to say.
She could make some calls on this end, but the likelihood of her finding European patrons for an American orchestra were slim to none.
Her hands were tied.
She felt as if she’d been rendered utterly useless in her St. Michel ivory tower.
More than a week had gone by since the Paris debacle, and Alex still wasn’t home. He’d called to check on Liam, but her own emotions had clouded her perspective, keeping her from being able to even guess at how he felt. They’d simply been ludicrously, frigidly civil to each other, talking about nothing other than Liam.
Had he really asked her to marry him?
It seemed like a distant bad dream.
The most curious part was that she found herself missing him at the oddest times: like when she passed the sailboats at the yacht club; when she looked at the beat-up Bundy case that was still sitting on the entryway table, stuck in the same holding pattern that she was in.
There was no need to mail it home because there was no one in her one-woman office to receive it; and because of that, it would make more sense to carry it home rather than mail it.
Most strongly, she longed for Alex’s conversation and companionship at night when she found herself sitting on the couch in front of the fire holding Liam. In silence.
So much time alone gave her too much time to think—time that until now had been scarce.
When she wasn’t thinking of Alex, the riddle that had taken over her memory of Marissa occupied Julianne’s mind.
What was the real story behind the story told by the sister Julianne had loved and admired?
Now that she knew Alex as well as she did, the one conclusion she kept coming back to was that Marissa hadn’t told Alex about the baby because she hadn’t wanted to change her life—not even for the good of her own son. Marissa had stuck her newborn baby with a nanny in a war-torn country while she did her fieldwork in a dangerous place. Alex would never have agreed to let his baby stay with a paid babysitter in a war zone. While Julianne couldn’t let herself believe that Marissa was a neglectful mother, the fact remained that Liam hadn’t had any of the basic vaccinations and medical screenings most three-month-old American children received. Maybe her sister hadn’t gotten around to it. Julianne had to believe that because she still loved Marissa, loved her sister’s sense of daring and adventurous personality, but she had to accept the fact that deep down, the sister she loved so much had been selfish. She put herself first, not caring how her decisions affected Alex, Julianne or even Liam.
Sometimes the truth was a bitter pill to swallow.
A small clearing of the clouds happened two days later when Julianne got a call from the artistic director for the Wallansky Orchestra, a regional orchestra for which she’d auditioned before the Continental Symphony Orchestra’s European tour. Since the situation with the Continental Symphony Orchestra had seemed shaky, many of the musicians were auditioning, trying to secure stable positions.
Initially, she hadn’t won the spot with the Wallansky, but apparently the flutist they’d chosen had been hired away by another orchestra—the subtext being there was a larger, better paying, more stable orchestra.
The spot was open again, and they were inviting the musicians who’d ranked in the top four under the initial winner to come back to reaudition. That would happen in two weeks; the decision would be handed down immediately after that.
It certainly wasn’t a spot with the New York Philharmonic, but it was something. If she got the job, she and Alex would be forced to make a decision about where Liam would live.
Of course, who knew if the Wallansky came with a an angel like Anita Collins. Julianne might have been naive when it came to Alex Lejardin, but she wouldn’t give herself false hope when it came to a new position with a new orchestra. The chance of the added bonus of free child care was slim.
Musical families like she had with the Continental Symphony were few and far between. She’d have to seriously weigh the pros and cons before she auditioned for the new position.
She thanked the artistic director over the phone and promised to let him know within forty-eight hours whether she’d audition.
Alex didn’t want to give Julianne any warning that he was coming home, mainly because he hadn’t wanted to scare her away. Not that he thought she’d leave St. Michel—but he was being extra cautious in the wake of last week’s disaster.
This time, unlike during the trip to Paris, he had a plan. He was going to win her heart.
He knocked on the gilded door of her suite.
When she answered and saw him standing there he could have sworn her initial reaction was a flash of you’re-back happiness that was too quickly veiled by cool reserve.
“May I come in for just a moment?” he asked.
“Of course.”
“I’m not going to stay, but I wanted to say hello, and see Liam, and tell you that I missed you.”
She looked down after he said the last three words, and her long lashes hid the expression in her eyes.
“Liam is sleeping right now, but feel free to go in and take a peek at him if you’d like.”
He hesitated a moment in the foyer. “The other reason I’m here is to ask you if you’d please have dinner with me tonight. I’ve missed you. Savannah will watch the baby.”
Her eyes clouded. “Alex, I don’t think that’s a good idea given what happened last time.”
“We’ll be fine. I’ll be a perfect gentleman. I have some things I need to tell you.”
When she hesitated, looking as if she might decline, he added, “It’s important.”
That night, a limo took Alex and Julianne to the yacht club. The ride was a little strained because she was nervous about seeing him and about hearing the things he wanted to tell her. It sounded so serious. But during the ride Alex poured champagne and made conversation about his work in Paris, and asked questions about Liam and what they’d done since he’d seen them last.
“I have a callback audition for the Wallansky Orchestra, a regional orchestra based in Connecticut.”
Alex seemed taken aback for a moment, but then he finally raised his champagne glass in toast to her. “Congratulations.”
As she clinked glasses with him, he smiled, but somehow the sentiment didn’t quite reach his eyes.
&nbs
p; She waited for him to go on the defensive to tell her she couldn’t take Liam, but he didn’t. That left her feeling anxious and off kilter.
“When is the audition?” he asked instead.
“In two weeks, but I haven’t committed to going…yet.”
His face brightened a little, but then he returned his gaze to his glass.
“Well, anything we can do to help you…”
As they entered the restaurant and followed the maître d’ to a table overlooking the water, Julianne pondered Alex’s offer to help. She didn’t really know what she wanted him to say instead of that, but it felt as if he were offering to help to pack her bags or—
“In Paris you said you wanted to know the real me,” he said suddenly breaking the silence. “The real me isn’t happy that you might go. Okay? That’s the real me. I’m sorry, I want to be happy for you, but the real me thinks the possibility of your being an ocean away is unbearable.”
He paused as if he were waiting for her to react, but she just sat there watching him.
“The real me wants you to know that I understand how you could have doubts about my relationship with Marissa. That’s understandable since we made Liam. But I don’t know how to convince you that Marissa and I really were just friends.
“I guess I could dig up old friends of hers to corroborate my story—to tell you that over the two years I knew your sister, we were not romantically involved, except for that one night.
“One night.”
There was such earnestness on his face. Julianne didn’t know what to say—and she didn’t want to say much, because she didn’t want to stop Alex from saying more.
“Having Liam, I can’t say that I wish it had never happened,” he said.
“Because you love him.”
Alex closed his eyes and drew in a ragged breath, looking like a man who was trying to steady himself. “The real me wishes he could tell you that I love you, but honestly I don’t know if I’m capable of that emotion. I don’t want to lie to you, Julianne. When my mom died, something inside me shut down. Or maybe it died with her, I don’t know. Maybe it’s a genetic defect or because through my job I’ve seen too much ugliness.
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