“I’d like that.”
“Julia,” Gio said from the doorway. She thanked Rena one last time and crossed the office to Gio. He closed the door and locked it behind her, taking her mouth passionately as if they’d been apart far longer than the few hours they’d had been separated. She wrapped her arms around his neck and gave herself fully to the moment.
When he broke off the kiss, he touched his forehead to hers, still holding her in his arms. “I thought having you at my place would make it easier for me to concentrate, but I find myself watching the clock.” He claimed her mouth again and Julia shuddered against him with pleasure. “You’re one powerful addiction.”
She could have said the same. A moment in his presence and nothing else mattered. Want me on the desk? Let me scramble on up there. How about the couch? The carpet? I don’t care who knows what we’re doing or who walks in. I want you on me, in me, licking whatever you want to. Just don’t stop.
He raised his head, breathing as raggedly as she was. “Sorry, I lose my head around you. Did you come to see me for a reason, or just for this?” The lusty smile he gave her sent heat rushing through her. “Either is fine with me.”
Julia put a shaky hand up to her kiss-swollen mouth. Did I come here for a reason?
You know, besides this?
She shook her head to clear it. I know I’m forgetting something.
He looped his hands behind her and pulled her full against the evidence of his arousal. “I like that you get along with Rena, but you don’t need a dress for the wedding. I have no intention of going anymore.”
Julia pulled back. “Why?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me.” Julia realized that although they had spoken about many things over the last week, he had avoided all personal topics. “We said we were going. They’re expecting us. Maddy will be hurt if we don’t show up.”
“I’ve made my decision.”
“Without even talking to me about it?”
“It’s my family.”
“And none of my business,” she said, unable to keep some of the hurt she felt out of her voice.
His silence was his answer.
Julia stepped out of his embrace. He didn’t try to stop her, and that confused her even more. Was his mother right—at least when it came to how temporary their union was? Julia didn’t feel like the flavor of the month. What they had felt special. But maybe that’s how he makes every woman feel?
In that moment of resistance, she remembered part of why she’d come to see him. “About Paul.”
Gio frowned. “Why are we still talking about that man?”
She looked him in the eye and said, “I didn’t know you fired him. I understand that he went too far, but he was protecting me. I feel awful that he lost his job over me. He and Tom have been friends forever. I can’t be the reason they don’t work together anymore.”
Gio returned to his desk and sat down, a not-so-subtle act of dismissal. “Was there something else you wanted?”
Julia glared at him. “Sometimes I don’t like you very much.”
He was around his desk with a predatory swiftness and harshly pulled her against him. “You don’t have to like me.” He dug a hand into her hair and held her immobile before him. “You want me.” Julia wanted to hate the way he took her mouth in his as if she belonged to him, but the strength of him was heady. She welcomed his plundering kiss and reveled at how he also lost control. He lifted her and carried her toward the couch.
The intercom on his desk beeped, then his secretary’s voice filled the room. “I’m ready when Julia is. We have a car waiting for us downstairs.”
Gio groaned. “Why does she hate me? Do I not pay her enough?” He let Julia’s feet slide to the ground.
Julia adjusted her clothing and gathered her thoughts. Gio was a strong man and one who was painfully honest, but he wasn’t cruel. And he cared about her; she had to believe that. “I’m going out with Rena tonight. She said she had some dresses that might fit me.”
“Dresses for a wedding we’re not attending?”
Julia put a hand on one hip. “Yes.”
“Why borrow from her? I said she could take you shopping.” Julia met his eyes angrily and his expression darkened. “Because you don’t want anything from me.”
In that moment, Julia glimpsed the reason she couldn’t stay away from him. However he tried to hide it, she knew he felt things deeply. “I do want something from you, but nothing you could buy.”
He had a cornered look in his eyes that reminded her of the stray dog her family had once brought in during a snowstorm when Julia was twelve. The dog had paced and clawed at the door as if he were trapped in the shelter they had offered him. He’d responded to attempts to pet him with defensive snarls. Her mother had suggested that they call the dog warden. They didn’t need a dog and certainly not one who might be a danger. Her father had asked them both to give him a month. He said the dog didn’t become fearful in a day, and expecting him to trust them that quickly was unrealistic.
Her father had taken a bowl of food and put it on the porch. Before he opened the door to let the dog out, he’d bent and looked into the dog’s eyes and said calmly, “You’re a good dog, and this can be your home if you want it.”
She and her mother had expected the dog to run off into the snow.
Julia smiled as she remembered how her mother had gently teased her husband by asking, “Did he answer you?”
Her gentle giant of a father had merely shrugged and said, “His actions will be his answer.”
Rodin, as they’d come to call him, became her father’s loyal shadow. He never did sleep in the house, but he met her father on the porch each morning and went with him to his furniture factory. For her father, he’d allowed the vet to give him annual shots as long as the vet came to the house. When he died, the family had buried Rodin in a plot behind the factory, beneath the tree where he’d always spent the day waiting for her father to finish work so he could walk him home.
Julia wondered what Gio would think of the comparison. The more she got to know him, the more she sensed that he needed shelter from his own storm.
Just as much as he needed someone to believe in him.
He might pretend he didn’t care what she thought of him, but she wasn’t fooled. He’ll do the right thing. Julia went up onto her tiptoes and gave him a quick kiss before heading toward the door. She left him standing in the middle of his office shaking his head.
*
Gio dropped back into his office chair with a groan. As he always felt after Julia left, Gio felt off balance.