Her Secret Husband

The air rushed out of her lungs in a loud burst. Thank goodness Dad was okay. Her heart was still racing in her chest from her sudden panic as she slipped back down into her chair. She took a large sip of the scalding tea and winced. After the day she’d had, she didn’t need Heath hovering nearby and the distracting hum of his presence in her veins. An hour after they had left the hospital, she could still recall the weight of his hand on her shoulder and the comforting warmth of his chest pressed against her. The contact had been innocent, but her eyes had fluttered closed for a moment to soak in the forbidden contact. She’d immediately snapped herself out of it and tried to focus on her father’s health.

“I’ll be okay alone,” she said.

Heath dropped his bag onto the wooden floor and flopped in the chair across from her. “No, you won’t.”

She sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and middle finger. She could feel a headache coming on and that was the last thing she needed. Of course, she could take one of her migraine pills and knock herself out. That was one sure way to get to sleep tonight, but what if something happened to Dad?

When she looked up at her guest, she found herself getting lost in the light hazel depths of his eyes. Heath was always happy, always ready with a joke or a smile. But tonight, his expression was different. There was a softness, a weariness, that lined his eyes. He looked concerned. Worried. But not for Ken. At least not entirely. He was concerned about her.

As always.

Julianne wouldn’t make light, even in her own mind, of Heath’s protectiveness of her. He had gone to extraordinary lengths to keep her safe. She knew that anytime, day or night, she could call him and he would be there. But not just because they were family and he cared about her. There was a great deal more to it than that and tonight was not the night she was willing to deal with it.

“Thank you,” she said at last. She wasn’t going to put up a fight and force him into the bunkhouse. She didn’t have the energy to argue and frankly, it would be nice to have someone in the big, creaky house with her. No matter what had happened between them over the years, she always knew she could count on him to respect her boundaries.

“It feels weird to be in the house without Mom and Dad,” he said, looking around at the large, empty kitchen. “Mom should be fussing at the sink. Dad should be tinkering with farm equipment outside.”

He was right, but she didn’t want to think about things like that. Those thoughts would require her to face the mortality of her aging parents. Dad would come home this time, but eventually, he wouldn’t. She’d rather pretend they were immortal, like she had believed as a child. “Would you like some tea?” she asked, ignoring his words.

“No, I’m fine, thanks.”

She wished he would have accepted the tea. That would have given her something to do for a couple of minutes. Instead, she had to sit idly and wait for the questions she knew were coming. They hadn’t been alone together and able to really talk since before she had left for college eleven years ago. That had been by design on her part. There were so many thoughts, so many feelings she didn’t want to deal with. Looking into Heath’s eyes brought everything back to the surface. The burning attraction, the anxiety, the overwhelming feeling of fear...

“So, what happened with you and Danny? That seemed kind of sudden.”

Julianne sighed. “We decided we wanted different things, that’s all. I wanted to focus on my art and building my career. Things have really taken off and I want to strike while the iron is hot. Danny wanted to take our relationship to the next level.”

A spark of interest flickered in Heath’s light eyes, his full lips pursing with suppressed amusement. “He proposed?”

“Yes,” she said, trying not to let the memories of the uncomfortable moment flood into her mind. She’d told him repeatedly that she wasn’t interested in marriage right now, and kids were far, far on the horizon. And yet he’d asked anyway. He seemed to mistake her hesitation as her playing hard to get or using reverse psychology with him. She wished she knew why. She’d given him no signals otherwise. “I refused, as politely as I could, but he didn’t take the rejection very well. After that, we decided if we weren’t moving forward, we were stagnating. So he moved out.”

Danny had been a great guy. He was fun and exciting and sexy. At first, he hadn’t seemed interested in settling down. Given her situation, he was the perfect choice. She didn’t want to get too serious, either. They wouldn’t have even moved in together if he hadn’t needed a new place on short notice. He must have seen that as a positive relationship step, when in fact it was simply practicality and economics. In time, it was just easier to stay together than to break things off and cause an upheaval.

“You didn’t want to marry him?” Heath asked.

Julianne looked up at him again and shook her head in exasperation. That was a ridiculous question. He knew full well why she’d turned him down. “No, I didn’t. But even if I did, what was I going to say to him, Heath?”

There was a long, awkward silence before Heath spoke again. “Jules?”

“Listen, I know I brought it up, but I really don’t want to talk about it tonight.” Julianne sipped the last of her tea and got up from the table. “With Dad and the stuff with Tommy, I can’t take any more drama.”

“That’s fine,” he said as he leaned back into the wooden chair and watched her walk into the kitchen. “But considering we’re going to be spending the next few months together, you need to come to terms with the fact that we need to talk about it. We’ve swept the issue under the rug for far too long.”

She knew when she made the decision to come home that this would happen. No matter how uncomfortable it might be, she knew they needed her help on the farm, so that was where she would be. There wasn’t anywhere else for her anyway. She had sold her house. Closing was next week, and then she was officially homeless. She had to come back here. And she had to deal with her past once and for all.

Julianne looked over at the funny, charming man that had stolen her heart when she was too young and messed up to know what to do about it. Even now, the soft curve of his lips was enough to make a heat surge through her veins and a longing ache in her belly. It took almost no effort at all to remember how it felt when he’d kissed her the first time in Paris. The whisper of his lips along her neck as they admired the Sagrada Família in Barcelona...

Her parents thought they were sending their two youngest children on an exciting graduation trip through Europe. Little did they know what freedom and romantic settings would ignite between their daughter and their youngest foster child. Heath wasn’t her brother. She’d known him before his parents died and had never thought of him like a brother. He was her best friend. But if she ever wanted him to be something more, she had to deal with the past.

“Agreed,” she said. “Once Dad is stable and we have some time alone to talk, I’m ready to deal with it.”

Heath narrowed his gaze at her and she knew instantly what he was thinking. He didn’t believe her. She’d been feeding him excuses and dragging her feet for years. He probably thought she got some sort of sick pleasure from drawing all this out, but that was anything but true. She was stuck between not wanting to lose him and not knowing what do with Heath if she had him.

A lifetime ago, when they were eighteen and far, far from home, he’d wanted her. And she’d wanted him. At least, she thought she had. She was young and naive. Despite the attraction that burned at her cheeks when he touched her, she’d found she couldn’t fully give herself to him in the heat of the moment.

“It’s been easy to ignore while both of us were in school and building our careers,” Heath said. “But it’s time. Your recent breakup is one of several signs we can’t disregard any longer. Whether you like it or not, eventually you and I are going to have to face the fact that we’re still married.”

Two (#ulink_3e925a11-734c-599a-acf1-8f15da6cbbd3)

He’d laid his cards out on the table. This would end, and soon. After several minutes spent in silence, waiting for her to respond to his declaration, Heath finally gave up. “Good night, Jules,” he said, pushing up from his seat.

With Ken’s attack, he understood if she couldn’t deal with this tonight, but he wasn’t waiting forever for her. He’d already wasted too much time on Julianne. He picked his bag up off the floor, and carried it down the hall and up the stairs to the guest bedroom.

The guest room was directly across the hall from Julianne’s room and next to the bathroom they would share. He could count on one hand how many times he’d slept in the big house over the years. It just wasn’t where he was drawn to. The big house was beautiful and historic, filled with antiques and cherished knickknacks. Most anyone would be happy to stay here, but Heath always felt like a bull in a china shop when he was in the house.

As kids, the bunkhouse was the ideal boy zone. They could be rowdy because the furniture was sturdy but old, there were no breakable antiques and downstairs was all wood flooring, so they could spill and not stain the carpet. There was a big television, video games, a foosball table and an inexhaustible supply of soda and other snacks to fuel growing boys. Things had changed over the years, but being there with his brothers again would make it feel just the same.

Tonight, he made an exception and would stay in the big house for Julianne’s sake, but it would be a mistake for her to confuse his gesture as weakness where she was concerned. Any love he had for her had fizzled away when she’d slammed her dorm room door in his face.

For years, he’d been as patient as he could stand to be. He knew now that he had been too nice. He’d given her too much space and let her get too contented. There was no incentive for her to act. That was going to change. He had no intention of being easy on her while they were here. Whatever it took, no matter how hard he had to push her out of her comfort zone, he would leave this farm a happily divorced man. Heath knew he shouldn’t enjoy watching Julianne squirm, especially tonight, but he did.

Eleven years of marriage without his wife in his bed could do that to a guy.

He opened the door to the guest room and put his bag down on the white eyelet bedspread. The room was intricately decorated, like the rest of the house, with antique furniture, busy floral wallpaper, lacy curtains and shelves filled with books and framed pictures. As he kicked out of his Prada loafers, he noticed a portrait on the wall in a carved, wooden frame.

It was of Julianne. One of her elementary school pictures, although he couldn’t be sure what year. Her golden hair was pulled up into a ponytail, a sprinkle of freckles across her nose. She was wearing a pink plaid romper with a white turtleneck underneath it. She looked just as he remembered her.

He had fallen in love with Julianne Eden the first time he’d seen her. They were in Mrs. Henderson’s fourth-grade class together. The cheerful blonde with the curly pigtails and the bright smile had sat right next to him. Whenever he forgot his pencil, she would loan him one of hers. They were pink and smelled like strawberries, but he didn’t care. He left his pencil at home on purpose just so he could talk to her.

He’d fabricated childish plans to marry Julianne one day. It seemed like a pipe dream at the time, but one day on the playground, she kissed him—his very first kiss—and he knew that she was meant to be his. He’d even made her a Valentine’s Day card to tell her how he felt.

He never gave her the card. The weekend before their class party, his parents were killed in a car accident. Heath had been in the car at the time, but his injuries, while serious, had not been fatal. When he was finally discharged from the hospital, both he and his brother, Xander, had found themselves in the care of Family Services. The next thing he knew, they were living at the Christmas-tree farm on the edge of town and the beautiful golden-haired girl of his dreams was supposed to be his “sister.”

He had outright rejected that idea right away. They might live in the same home, but not once in twenty years had he ever referred to her as “sis” or “my sister.” She was Jules, usually; Julianne when he was speaking about her to the uninitiated.

He’d given up the dream of ever marrying his childhood love soon after coming to the Garden of Eden. Julianne never kissed him on the playground again. They were friends, but that was all. It wasn’t until they were seniors in high school and the only kids left on the farm that things started to change between them. The trip to Europe had been the tipping point. Unfortunately, it hadn’t tipped in his favor for long.

That seemed to be Julianne’s M.O. Since they’d broken up, she had dated, but from what he could tell, never seriously and never for long. None of the brothers had ever met a boyfriend. She never brought one home to the farm. Danny had come the furthest, moving in with Julianne. She didn’t really let any man get close, but Heath wasn’t certain what was the cause and what was the effect. Did their marriage fail because she didn’t do relationships, or did her relationships fail because she was married?

He had unpacked a few things and was halfway undressed when he heard a soft tap at his door. “Come in,” he called out.

Julianne opened the door and stuck her head in. She started to speak, and then stopped, her gaze dropping from his face to his bare chest. He tried not to move, fighting the urge to puff up his chest and suck in his stomach. He liked to think he looked pretty good without all that, but it was such a reflex. He jogged the High Line every morning and lifted weights. As a child, he was always the smaller, scrappier of the boys, but no longer. He might be the shortest, at six feet, but he could take any of his brothers and look good doing it.

The dumbstruck Julianne seemed to agree. A crimson flush rose to her delicate, porcelain cheeks. Her full bottom lip hung, useless, until her tongue shot across it and her mouth slammed shut.

If Heath had known strutting around shirtless would get this kind of reaction from her, he would have done it a long time ago. Nothing made her more uncomfortable than the topic of sex. If he’d pushed the issue, perhaps he’d be happily single or happily married right now. Watching her reaction, he thrust his hands in his pockets. His Dolce & Gabbana slacks rode lower with the movement, exposing the trail of hair beneath his navel and the cut of his muscles across his hips.

Julianne swallowed hard and then shook her head and shifted her gaze away to the nearby armoire. “I’m s-sorry,” she stuttered. “I didn’t realize you were...”