by Nina Lane
Especially after a failed deal had left her in tears.
He studied her darkened expression, his insides clenching. She’d had plenty of setbacks in her company, just like he had. None of them before had made her cry.
He picked up the wine and refilled her glass. His gaze fell on the crumpled paper. “What’s that?”
“Oh, lord.” Julia rolled her eyes with disdain. “I found it in an old box behind the Christmas decorations. I’d forgotten about it.”
Warren picked up the paper. Things To Do Before I Turn Fifty.
“When did you write this?”
“When I was nineteen. Back when fifty felt like a thousand years into the future.”
He scanned the list, which was numbered from one to fifty items.
Finish a 1000 piece puzzle.
Dye my hair blue.
Own a piece of La Perla lingerie.
Set a red balloon free.
Make mulled wine.
A strange feeling tightened his chest. He set the list down.
“Mulled wine?”
“Some sort of medieval Christmas tradition. I have no idea why I wanted to learn to make it, but there you go. The ambitions of a nineteen-year-old.”
“You’ve done some of these.” He tapped his finger on the page. “You must have dyed your hair blue at some point. And there’s no way you don’t own dozens of pieces of La Perla.”
“Well, most of that list contains the musings of a girl who clearly had no direction in life.” She shook her head, her lips compressing. “Bake a perfect carrot cake. Solve a Rubik’s Cube. Make vodka gummy bears. I don’t even know what those are. Buy Wonder Woman underwear. Clearly I wrote that list when I was high.”
“Or when you were a nineteen-year-old who believed that life should be fun and spontaneous.”
“Whatever.” She pulled in a breath, composure snapping into place around her. “That list just proves how utterly flakey I was. I couldn’t even get most of the things done in thirty years.”
“It’s not like this was meant to be a road map for your life,” Warren said. “The nineteen-year-old you probably never imagined you’d be as successful and accomplished as you are today.”
She acknowledged that with a slight nod. He scanned the second page of the list, his gaze landing on #26, which had a blue checkmark. Love the right man.
His jaw tightened. “What does the checkmark mean?”
She looked to where he was pointing and read the item. Regret shone in her eyes. She bit her lip.
“That means it was completed. I wrote the list when I was with Sam. Obviously that one was a mistake.”
Old anger cut through him. He took a breath, unsurprised that his dislike of the other man still boiled like acrid smoke. He hadn’t liked Sam Craven the first time they met, and his animosity had grown after he’d dumped Julia in an act of pure cowardice.
She set her wineglass on the table. Goosebumps prickled the bare skin of her arms. Warren shed his suit jacket and draped it over her shoulders. She slipped her arms into the sleeves, her gaze still on the valley.
“Even though it’s just a silly list, it should have been easy,” she said, almost to herself. “Thirty years to accomplish fifty things. It does make me wonder…”
Her voice trailed off. Warren’s shoulders tensed even before he asked, “Wonder what?”
“What else I missed out on.”
Missed out.
An image of Theo appeared in Warren’s mind. His chest knotted. The Matterhorn was the soaring, rough-hewn manifestation of his own urge to not miss out. To face challenges now. To push himself as far as he could.
Julia would understand that. Wouldn’t she? He was struck with a sudden urge to tell her about the climb. Maybe he wouldn’t even need to explain why he had to do it.
“Now I’ll stop being so maudlin,” she rose to her feet, tossing him a wry half-grin, “and get my shit together. I’ll do a little more decorating, then head home. Thanks for the wine.”
“There’s more.”
“Oh, I know.”
She went back inside, stripping off his jacket. He watched her go, his mind shifting from the mountain back to the thought of wispy little pieces of La Perla lingerie. On Julia. His eyes tracked over the curves of her waist and hips clad in a tight red T-shirt.
He picked up her wineglass and took a swallow. The rim of the glass was still warm from her lips. 2000 Hermitage Syrah. She knew how to choose good wine. She knew how to choose good everything—clothes, investments, fundraising sources, furnishings.
He studied the Before Fifty list, the big, looping letters and swirls that were so different from Julia’s neat, precise penmanship of today. He rarely let himself remember the gypsy girl she’d once been, the wild child who had been the exact opposite of her perfect older sister.
Because if he went down that path…
Warren folded the list in half, tucking it into his pocket before bringing the wine bottle and glass back inside.
Chapter
THREE
“You forgot this.” Warren set Julia’s wineglass on the coffee table in the great room.
“I never forget wine.” She was standing on a stepladder, positioning a fresh wreath over the fireplace. Her raised arms elongated her body and caused her breasts to round the front of her T-shirt.
Not the first time Warren had noticed them. Or imagined what they looked like naked. What she looked like naked. Slim, pale curves, long legs, breasts that would fit just right in his hands. Despite his reluctance to date, he hadn’t been a monk the past thirteen years, but his affairs had never stopped him from thinking about Julia.
He didn’t feel guilty about it either—she was a beautiful woman, and he was a man with a strong sex drive, and one plus one still equaled two. His curiosity about her had become as familiar as their relationship. But he knew—had always known—he’d never discover the reality of what Julia Bennett concealed beneath her flawless appearance.
“I’ll help you with that,” he said.
“No, I’ve got it. Stand over there and tell me if it’s straight.”
“It’s a wreath.” He moved away from the fireplace. “Any way you hang a circle, it’s going to be straight.”
“Do you see this bow?” She tapped the red velvet bow. “This needs to be centered at the top.”
He cocked his head. “It’s centered.”
“You’re not looking at it.”
“How do you know?”
“I can feel you looking at my ass.”
“Which is right at my eye level, so who could blame me?”
Julia threw him a derisive scowl over her shoulder. “This is going to take forever unless you cooperate.”
“The wreath is straight,” he assured her. “And your ass is perfect.”
Her eyes narrowed, even as a faint blush rose to her cheeks. Warren winked at her and headed over to open one of the boxes.
“Where did you pick this wreath up?” Julia climbed off the stepladder. “It’s nice and fresh.”
“From the guy near the place in Santa Cruz where we went that time.”
“Oh, the café with the eggs benedict. We should go there again with Hailey.”
“Tell me when you want to go, and I’ll clear my schedule.” Warren held up several glass snowmen from one of the boxes. “Where do you want these?”
“Over there.” She waved a hand, and he brought them to an end table in the vicinity of her wave.
They put out Julia’s frosted vases, snowflake table linens, and a lighted Dickens’ village. On Sunday, as usual, they’d trek into the Santa Cruz Mountains to pick out the tree—an event that would generate a lot of good-natured bickering and end with hot chocolate and a tree-decorating party.
Just one other Stone family tradition that had taken root only because of Julia. Though she could be abrasive and fiercely overprotective where the Stone siblings were concerned, Warren’s respect and gratitude toward her knew no bounds. He
would never be able to thank her for keeping his family together when they’d all been on the verge of falling apart.
She pulled the stepladder over to the doorway and climbed up to pin a ribbon of mistletoe to the frame. Again he let his gaze skim over her body, lingering on the pale seam of skin exposed at her midriff where her T-shirt rode up slightly.
“I’m thinking one sprig of mistletoe is enough this year,” she remarked. “Or Tyler will catch Kate in every doorway just so he can plant one on her.”
She tossed Warren a smile and climbed off the ladder.
“She’s the best thing that ever happened to him,” he said.
“Like Polly is to Luke. And Hannah to Evan.”
And you to me.
Julia was unquestionably the best thing that had happened to Warren in the past thirteen years.
She studied the mistletoe hanging right over her head. “Is it centered?”
“Looks great.” He was suddenly seized with the desire to close the distance and plant one on her. The mistletoe was a great excuse.
He smothered the urge, unsurprised by the strength of it. Knowing she’d been hurt had all his jealous, protective instincts clawing to the surface. Where Julia was concerned, those instincts were always there, but usually Warren kept them somewhat contained.
The mention of her ex-husband Sam had also pushed Warren’s thoughts in a direction he never let them go—to a Christmas Eve night when he’d had a sudden, shocking taste of Julia Bennett and discovered that she was wild honeysuckle and ripe cherries.
He clamped down on that memory, pushing it back into the box where it needed to stay. Seeking a distraction, he tilted his head toward the kitchen.
“Come on, let’s make mulled wine.”
“What for?”
“To see what it’s like. I’ll help you.”
Julia gave him a wry smile. “You mean you’ll make it while I watch.”
“I’m good with you watching.”
She raised an eyebrow but picked up her wineglass and followed him into the kitchen. Warren searched on his phone for an “authentic” recipe, then went to the wine cellar to retrieve a few good bottles of cabernet.
“Hot wine with spices sounds rather awful.” Julia hitched herself onto a stool at the counter. “If you take it to Sugar Rush, no one will drink it.”
“I’m not doing this for Sugar Rush,” Warren said. “I’m doing it for you.”
She blinked, her cheeks appealingly pink. Warren poured the wine into a clean pot, and added measured amounts of brandy, cinnamon, orange zest, honey, cloves, and ginger. He lowered the heat to a simmer and ladled some of the brew into her glass.
“Try it.” He set the glass in front of Julia. “It needs to simmer for a while to reach its full flavor, but this is a start.”
She took a sip and lifted her eyebrows. “Not bad. Weird and a waste of excellent wine, but not bad.”
“It’s called glögg in Nordic nations and Glühwein in Germany.”
“How do you know that?” Julia asked.
“I get around.”
“I know you do.”
A teasing warmth crackled between them. Warren took the list out of his pocket and handed it to her. “Now you can cross it off your Before Fifty list.”
“Oh.” She looked disconcerted. “I didn’t keep the list so I could finish it. I don’t even know why I didn’t just throw it away.”
He shrugged. “Then at least you know how to make mulled wine.”
“Why would I have ever thought that would be a useful skill?” She gave a humorless laugh. “I mean, thanks for doing it, but it’s not as if knowing how to make mulled wine would ever have gotten me anywhere in life.”
“You don’t always have to do something just because it will get you somewhere,” Warren said. “Sometimes it’s okay to just want it.”
“Yes, but the things I wanted at nineteen are very different from the things I want at fif—forty-nine.”
“So what do you want at forty-nine?”
She hesitated for half a second before sliding off the stool without a response.
She took the wineglass and list back to the great room. Warren turned off the stove and put the dirty pots in the sink. When he joined her, she was searching on her phone.
“I have to spend most of the week working on Deck the Halls,” she said without looking up, “but I can stop by in the evening to finish up the entryway and the other rooms.”
“You don’t need to do all of this.” He sat beside her as she checked her calendar. “Let the kids do it.”
“No, I’d like to have it done before Hailey arrives.”
Despite his belief that Julia was taking on too much this Christmas, warmth spread through Warren’s chest. He appreciated everything she’d done for his sons, but her relationship with Hailey was special. Julia hadn’t stepped into Rebecca’s maternal role, instead navigating her way between being Hailey’s aunt, advisor, and confidante. The fact that his daughter had become such a smart, well-adjusted young woman after what she’d endured was due in no small part to Julia’s influence.
“Hailey won’t mind if you scale back the decorations,” he said.
“I’ll get it done. By the way…” She gave him a narrow sideways glance, her nostrils flaring slightly. “You smell like cheap perfume.”
“Yeah?” He lifted his sleeve to his nose.
“I guess you didn’t go to Lotus after all,” Julia said dryly, placing her phone back in her bag.
“I went to the Troll’s House. Got hit on by a girl who wasn’t born when I graduated from college.”
“Nice.” Julia sniffed in contempt and reached for her wineglass. “She must have daddy issues.”
He grinned at the snide tone to her voice. “Are you jealous?”
“Of course not. I just don’t think getting hit on by a girl half your age is anything to brag about.”
“Not bragging, just stating a fact. You ever get hit on by younger men?”
She arched an eyebrow. “What do you think?”
A stab of jealousy caught him off guard. He didn’t often admit how much he disliked the idea of Julia with another man—younger, older, or her age. He’d avoided the dates she’d brought to social events over the years and never speculated about what she did with them. Because if he did, he might explode with frustration. Not that he needed to think about that either.
His jaw clenched. He grabbed the wineglass from her and took a swallow of the warm, spicy wine, deeply regretting having started this line of conversation.
“I don’t think about it,” he said. “Why would I?”
“Well, you asked,” Julia reminded him. “And the answer is yes. There’s a lot of cougar bait running around out there.”
Warren scowled. “You’re not a cougar.”
“I could be. Just like you could be a sugar daddy.”
“Christ.” He gave a disparaging snort. “The president of Sugar Rush becomes a sugar daddy. I’d be a caricature. Hey, baby. You like your sugar raw, powdered, or refined?”
Julia laughed. “Personally I like it raw, but as long as it’s sweet, I’m not fussy.”
The husky tone to her voice added fuel to his already hot blood. Against every ounce of his better judgement, he asked, “So do you take the boy toys up on their offers?”
She shrugged and didn’t respond—clearly a ploy to make him wait. Time stretched. While they occasionally mentioned their respective dates to each other, their sex lives had never been a topic of conversation. His simmering jealousy rose to a boil. No kid could satisfy a woman like her. No other man could either.
Warren didn’t have to wonder how he knew that. He just did. He knew her.
“Once,” Julia finally admitted. “A few years ago, a… young man was an assistant on a photo shoot I was styling.”
His neck tightened with irritation. “Young man, huh?”
“He was twenty-two.”
“You sure?”
“I asked to see his ID when we went out for drinks with the crew. I ended up going home with him. More out of curiosity than anything else.”
Warren swallowed the last of the mulled wine and refilled the glass with Syrah.
Don’t ask. Don’t ask. Don’t fucking—
“And?” he asked.
Dickwad.
“Oh God.” She took the glass from him, bringing it to her lips. “He was so nervous and overeager, which I guess was sort of flattering, but I felt like such a teacher. It wasn’t terribly sexy. Or satisfying. Or… um, long.”
He needed a scotch, not another sip of her wine. He rubbed his hands over his face and blocked an unwanted image of Julia naked with a twenty-two-year-old.
“That surprised you?” he asked.
“I might’ve had some hopeful ideas about youth and stamina.” She rolled her eyes with amusement. “I was wrong.”
Warren grabbed the glass back from her and drained it. He was having an imaginary pissing contest with an unknown twenty-two-year-old kid. What the hell was wrong with him?
“You don’t like giving orders, huh?” He tightened his fingers on the glass.
She made a little hmm noise in the back of her throat. She’d make the same sound if she were spread out under him, her wrists trapped in his grip, her legs wrapped around his—
His dick twitched. He was usually decent enough to fantasize about her only when he was alone in his bedroom. Except this conversation, which he’d started, had fired him with more than he knew what to do with.
“I do enough of that at work,” she said, her mouth twisting.
She took the empty glass from him and set it on the table. She had fine-boned features—dark blue eyes, high cheekbones, a straight nose, full rosebud mouth. With her lovely face, long, tapered fingers, and slender figure, she looked like a princess. But she had the heart and soul of a gladiator, one who rarely let others see past her elegant ferocity.
A hard rush of protectiveness and jealousy filled him. He hated the thought of another man, no matter his age, putting his hands on Julia. He hated that she’d been hurt, that someone had blindsided her to the point that she’d cried.