HER SECRET HUSBAND

by Andrea Laurence

  Heath wasn’t startled by her appearance. In fact, her appraising glance seemed to embolden him. He arched an eyebrow at her and then smiled the way he always seemed to when she was uncomfortable. “We’ve really got to stop meeting like this.”

  A flush rushed to her cheeks from a mix of embarrassment and instant arousal. She knew Heath could see it, so that just made the deep red color even worse. “I’m sorry. I’ve done it again.” Julianne backed toward the door, averting her eyes to look at anything but his hard, wet body and mocking grin. “I parked the moving truck out back and didn’t realize you were here. I was trying to figure out which room I should use.”

  “You’re welcome to use this one,” Heath said. He sat down on the edge of one of the beds and gave it a good test bounce. “That would prove interesting.”

  “Uh, no,” she said, slipping back through the doorway. “The other room will be just fine.”

  Her hands were shaking as she gripped the handle of her luggage and rolled it to the opposite bedroom. When she opened the door, she found it to be exactly the same as the other one, only better, because it didn’t have her cocky, naked husband in it.

  She busied herself hanging up clothes in the closet and storing underthings in the dresser. Putting things away was a good distraction from the sexual thoughts and raging desire pumping through her veins.

  Julianne was setting out the last of her toiletries in the bathroom when she turned and found Heath in her doorway, fully clothed.

  “Do you need help bringing more things in?”

  “Not tonight. Tomorrow, maybe we can work on clearing out the storage room and then I can unload the rest of my supplies there. There’s no sense piling up things in the living room. I don’t have to return the truck for a few days.”

  “Okay, good,” he said, but he didn’t leave.

  Julianne stood, waiting for him to speak or do something, but he just leaned against her door frame. His hazel gaze studied her, his eyes narrowing in thought. A smile curled his lips. She had no idea what he was actually thinking, but it was unnerving to be scrutinized so closely.

  Finally, she returned to putting her things away and tried to pretend he wasn’t inspecting her every move. There was something about the way he watched her that made her very aware of her own body. It happened every time. He didn’t have to say a word, yet she would feel the prickle of awareness start up the back of her neck. Her heart would begin pounding harder in her chest. The sound of her breath moving rapidly in and out of her lungs would become deafening.

  Then came the heat. What would start as a warmness in her cheeks would spread through her whole body. Beads of perspiration would start to form at the nape of her neck and the valley between her breasts. Deep in her belly, a churning heat would grow warmer and warmer.

  All with just a look. She tried desperately to ignore him because she knew how quickly these symptoms would devolve to blatant wanting, especially if he touched her. Eleven years ago, she was too frightened to do anything about her feelings, but she’d come a long way. There was nothing holding her back now. Whether or not Heath still wanted her, he seemed happy to push the issue. How the hell would she make it through the next few months with him so close by? With no brothers or other family here to distract them?

  “I’m surprised you’re staying in the bunkhouse,” Heath said at last.

  “Why is that?” Julianne didn’t turn to look at him. Instead, she stuffed her empty duffel bag into her luggage and zipped it closed.

  “I would’ve thought you’d want to stay as far away from me as possible. Then again,” he added, “this might be your chance to indulge your secret desires without anyone finding out. Maybe you’re finally ready to finish what we started.”

  Julianne turned to look at him with her hands planted on her hips. Hopefully her indignant attitude would mask how close to the truth he actually was. “Indulge my secret desires? Really, Heath?”

  He shoved his hands into the pockets of his gray trousers and took a few slow, casual steps into the room. “Why else would you stay out here? I’m sure things in the big house are much nicer.”

  “They are,” she replied matter-of-factly. “But Daddy will be coming home soon and there won’t be a room for me there. Besides, being out here makes me feel more independent. My studio will be downstairs, so it’s convenient and I’ll be less likely to disturb Mom and Dad.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “You can stay up late and make all the noise you want. You could scream the walls down if you felt inclined.”

  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?

  With a groan, he crossed the room, his gaze zeroing in on the coffeepot, half the carafe still full. He poured himself a cup and turned just in time to see Julianne shuffle into the kitchen with a giant cardboard box in her arms.

  Despite the chilly October weather outside, she had already worked up a sweat moving boxes. She was wearing a thin tank top and a pair of cutoff jean shorts. Her long blond hair was pulled up into a messy bun on the top of her head with damp strands plastered to the back of her neck.

  Heath forced down a large sip of hot coffee to keep from sputtering it everywhere. Man, she had an amazing figure. The girl he’d married had been just that—a girl. She’d been a tomboy and a bit of a late bloomer. She had still been fairly thin, a tiny pixie of a thing that he sometimes worried he might snap when he finally made love to her.

  Things had certainly changed since the last time he’d run his hands over that body. He’d heard her complain to Molly about how she’d gained weight over the years, but he didn’t mind. The tight little shorts she was wearing were filled out nicely and her top left little to his imagination. His brain might not be fully awake yet, but the rest of his body was up and at ’em.

  “What?”

  Julianne’s voice jerked him out of his detailed assessment. He was staring and she’d caught him. Only fair after her heavy appraisal of him over the last few days. “You’re going to hurt yourself,” Heath quickly noted. He tried leaning casually against the kitchen counter to cover the tension in his body.

  Her cool green gaze regarded him a moment before she dropped the box by the staircase with a loud thud and a cloud of dust. It joined a pile of four or five other equally dusty boxes. “I’m supposed to be helping you with that,” he added when she didn’t respond.

  She turned back to him, rubbing her dirty palms on her round, denim-clad rear end. “I couldn’t sleep,” she said, disappearing into the storage room. A moment later she came back out with another box. “You weren’t awake.”

  “I’m awake now.”

  She dropped the box to the floor with the others. “Good. You can start helping anytime then.” Julianne returned to her chores.

  “Good morning to you, too,” he grumbled, drinking the last of his coffee in one large sip. Heath put his mug in the sink and walked across the room to join her in the storage room.

  He looked around the space, surveying the work ahead of them. Clearing out the room would be less work than figuring out what to do with all the stuff. He plucked an old, flattened basketball out of one box and smashed it between his hands. Just one of a hundred unwanted things left behind over the years. They’d probably need to run a couple loads to the dump in Ken’s truck.

  “Is there a plan?” he asked.

  Julianne rubbed her forearm across her brow to wipe away perspiration. “I’d like to clear the room out first. Then clean it so we can move my things in and I can return the truck. Then we can deal with the stuff we’ve taken out.”

  “Fair enough.” Heath tossed the ball back into the box and picked it up.

  They worked together quietly for the next hour or so. After the previous night’s declarations, he expected her to say something, but he’d underestimated Julianne’s ability to compartmentalize things. Today’s task was cleaning the storeroom, so that was her focus. She’d used the same trick to ignore their relationship for other pursuits over the years. He didn’t push the issue. They’d get a lot less cleaning done if they were arguing.

  When the room was finally empty, they attacked the space with brooms and old rags, dusting away the cobwebs and sweeping up years of dust and grime. Despite their dirty chores, he couldn’t help but stop and watch Julianne every now and then. She would occasionally bend over for something, giving him a prime view of her firm thighs and round behind. The sweat dampened her shirt and he would periodically catch a glimpse as a bead of perspiration traveled down into the valley between her breasts.

  He wasn’t sure if it was the hard work or the view, but it didn’t take long for Heath to get overheated. As they were cleaning the empty room, he had to whip his shirt off and toss it onto the kitchen table. He returned to working, paying no attention to what was going on until he noticed Julianne was watching him and not moving any
longer.

  Heath paused and looked up at her. She had her arms crossed over her chest, suggestively pressing her small, firm breasts together. He might enjoy the view if not for the irritated expression puckering her delicate brow. “Is something wrong, Jules?”

  “Do you normally run around half-naked or is all this just a show for my benefit?”

  “What?” Heath looked down at his bare chest and tried to determine what was so offensive about it. “No, of course I don’t run around naked. But I’m also not usually doing hard, dirty labor. Advertising doesn’t work up much of a sweat.”

  Julianne was frowning, but he could see the slight twist of amusement in her lips. He could tell she liked what she saw, even if she wouldn’t admit that to herself.

  “It seems like every time I turn around, you’re not wearing a shirt.”

  Heath smiled. “Is that a complaint or a pleasant observation?”

  Julianne planted her hands on her hips, answering him without speaking.

  “Well, to be fair, you’ve barged into my bedroom twice and caught me in various states of undress. That’s not my fault. That’s like complaining because I don’t wear clothes into the shower. You make it sound like I’ve paraded around like a Chippendales dancer or something.” Heath held out his arms, flexing his muscles and gyrating his hips for effect.

  Julianne brought her hand to her mouth to stifle a giggle as he danced. “Stop that!” she finally yelled, throwing her dust rag at him.

  Heath caught it and ended his performance. “You’re just lucky I left my tear-away pants in Manhattan.”

  She shook her head with a reluctant smile and turned back to what she’d been cleaning. They finished not too long after that, then piled their brooms and mops in the kitchen and went back in to look around.

  “This isn’t a bad space at all,” Julianne said as they surveyed the empty, clean room. “I think it will make the perfect studio.”