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And if she knew anything about Cristiano Cassara, it was that he was never a fool.
That didn’t make her feelings hurt any less, but it felt better to think about things practically. No matter how impractical she might feel on the inside.
Her mobile buzzed in her pocket and she pulled it out, not surprised to see that she’d missed a host of messages from Fleurette.
Did you tell him?
Was it terrible?
Are you okay?
She texted back.
I told him. He is confirming paternity.
And she slid her phone back in her pocket and muted it, because she knew too well what her sister’s response to that would be.
After what seemed to her like a very long time, sitting there in silence in a house that was no longer hers—and had never been hers, if she was honest, or ever felt like more than the gift it had always been that she’d tried so hard to earn—she heard a noise at the door.
Julienne knew all she needed to about herself when her heart leaped at the notion that it might be him.
It wasn’t.
“Have you booked into a hotel, Ms. Boucher?” the man who stood there asked with a certain level of calm deference, as if Julienne might not recall that this was Massimo, Cristiano’s secretary.
And Massimo was perfectly polite, as always. There was no reason for Julienne to interpret his question as aggressive. Or snide in some way.
Don’t go making intrigue when there is only inquiry,she cautioned herself.
She named the hotel she’d checked into this morning, feeling outside herself as Massimo nodded, then withdrew.
And she was staring at her hands again when she felt the air change.
Because he didn’t make a sound. Not one single sound.
There was that sense of some sort of disturbance, that was all. The hair on the back of her neck prickled. And Cristiano was there when she looked up, filling the doorway that led to the rest of the house and staring at her with that same raw fury making his dark eyes burn.
There were so many things she ought to have said. Julienne struggled to find the right words, but her tongue felt stiff. Heavy.
She realized then that she could still taste him on her tongue. That he could likely taste her, too.
Somehow, that made it all worse.
Her throat was tight. She couldn’t tell if it was a sob or a scream. Or merely his name again.
And she understood as she stared back at him mutely that she’d been wrong about him all this time. Because she remembered him across all those years before that night in his hotel room in Monte Carlo. She remembered how cold and remote she’d thought him then. Always.
But she realized that he had not been cold at all.
Because now it was as if he was a block of frozen granite encased in sheets of ice.
His dark, bittersweet eyes glittered, but that was the only suggestion of heat she could see in him.
Everything else was ice. And the tension between them.
Taut. Harsh.
Julienne almost wished that he would say something.Dosomething. Even if it was terrible. Anything had to be better than this horrible silence.
