Chapter Ten

The house perched on the hill was a gorgeous bed and breakfast, decorated with delicate gingerbread lattice and Victorian peaked roofs. Its wraparound porch boasted a handful of rocking chairs staring out over the valley view. Just breathing in the air loosened the tension in her shoulders.

“Beautiful,” she said, closing the car door.

Julian tossed her a smile. “Judy calls it her little piece of heaven.”

Together they left the busy gravel parking area and climbed the painted steps to the front door.

While he might appear relaxed to a casual observer, to her there was no hiding the clench of his jaw and the stiffness of his spine.

Is he afraid of what these people will think of me?

Her own peace drained away. She’d thought there was nothing to lose on this trip, but maybe she was wrong.

Do I care if they like me?

She glanced at the wooden door, afraid of what it would mean if she did.

“Lillian, this might—” he said right as the door opened.

“Julian!” Bright light flooded from the house as a small, gray-haired woman appeared in the entrance. She threw her arms around Julian without hesitation, forcing him to stoop to catch her.

Holly shuffled back a step as the scene unfolded. The woman wore a smile a mile wide while Julian accepted the affection with a soft expression on his face.

“How are you, Judy?” he asked when he finally straightened.

“A hell of a lot better now that you’re here,” she replied. “You know how Pete gets with the numbers.”

“I’ll get everything cleared up,” he promised.

“I knew you would. And I’ve got your favorite room all made up as a thank you.”

“Sorry, Judy. We can’t stay. I’ve got some appointments tomorrow.”

Judy’s face fell for a second before her attention swung to Holly.

“You can’t rush a girl off when she’s only just arrived,” Judy said. “It’s a long drive up here.” She stepped closer and took Holly’s hands. “And who might you be, my dear?”

“My fiancée, Lillian,” Julian answered before she could.

Judy dropped her hands, a delighted gasp escaping her. “I’ve wanted to meet you ever since we got the wedding invitation in the mail. I never dreamed my Julian would settle down.”

“Er, it’s not what you think,” Holly said, glancing at her companion for help. But he just watched her with an inscrutable expression on his face.

“My father is going into business with Julian,” she said, shifting from foot to foot. “We’re uniting the families.”

Judy nodded. “I heard,” she said. “Well, no matter. Let’s get you two inside. Pete’s in his study, Julian. Why don’t you go get business out of the way, and I’ll give Lillian the tour?”

Julian pinned her with a hard stare. “Just go easy on the childhood stories.”

“Who me?” Judy asked. “You know I can be trusted.”

He just shook his head in reply, pressing a kiss to Judy’s forehead before heading off down the hall, passing a few smiling guests on his way.

“Come on, lamb. Let’s get you something hot to drink.”

Dutifully, she trailed after her hostess.

“This place is incredible,” she said as they drifted through elegant sitting rooms. Warmth vibrated from every nook and cranny of the building. Children’s laughter floated in from the living room as Judy paused to check on two older women drinking tea by the window.

“Aren’t you kind,” she said when they continued on their way. “Keeping this place in order has been my mission for over ten years.”

“It looks like a very successful business,” she complimented.

Judy looked over her hotel with pride. “It wasn’t always, you know. But I suppose that counts as telling tales.”

“I won’t tell if you don’t.”

Her guide laughed, ushering her into a cozy kitchen. The scent of cookies lingered in the air, and mixing bowls filled the old farm sink. But still, the room was bright and welcoming with its large wooden table taking up the center of the space. It was easy to imagine families gathering around it to share a meal.

“That boy never wants anyone to know about his good deeds,” Judy said.

“What do you mean?” she asked as she took a seat at the table.

Judy bustled around brewing pot of tea. “If you’re his fiancée, you must know how humble he gets. Never wanting the credit for being kind.”

She leaned forward and crossed her arms on the table. “He doesn’t talk about his past much,” she said.

Judy smiled. “Hard man to get to know, isn’t he?”

“You have no idea.”

That won her a laugh. “Oh, trust me. Pete and I understand exactly what you mean. We took in kids for years, but there was always something about Julian. He kept himself apart even as a child.”

“Sounds familiar.”

“He always knew his own mind, even when he was too young to do anything about it. When he first got here, I kept running out of apples. Couldn’t figure it out until I realized he was stealing them to give to the other kids. Didn’t trust where his next meal was coming from in those days.”

Her heart cracked.

“It’s probably why he helps keep some of the food shelters in the city stocked.”

She blinked. “He does what?”

Judy swung around. “Surely he told you that.”

She shook her head.

“That boy.” Judy sighed. “How does he expect you to fall hopelessly in love with him if he won’t give you a reason?” She walked over to the table with two cups of tea and held one out.

“Thank you,” she said as she accepted the cup. “But I don’t want to give you the wrong impression. I’m not in love with him.”

“Of course not, pet,” Judy said as she sat. Reaching over, she patted Holly’s hand. “But if you’d give him a chance, you might find that can change.”

That’s what I’m afraid of.

The more she learned about Julian, the more she wanted to know. In hindsight, coming out here with him might not have been the best idea she’d ever had.

But something was changing. This wasn’t about buying Lillian time anymore. If she was honest, it wasn’t all about the companies, either. She’d just…

Wanted to spend time with him.

And she didn’t know what to do about it.

“We got Julian when he was sixteen. By then, he was just running down the clock to adulthood. He didn’t want a family and didn’t want us bothering him.” Judy chuckled. “Unfortunately for him, I’ve never met a nut I couldn’t crack.”

“Is that why he helped you with this place?”

A soft smile curved Judy’s lips as her eyes unfocused at the memory. “Pete and I always loved being around people. It’s why we took in kids with nowhere else to go. But we were getting too old to provide the best care, so we looked to the next chapter of our lives. This place was our dream.” She sighed. “But what did we know about running a business? It wasn’t open six months before we started to struggle.”

“And that’s when you asked Julian for help?”

“Lord, no. I would never lay my problems at someone else’s door. Especially not one of my kids.”

She frowned. “Then how…”

“He showed up on our doorstep one night, deed in hand. He’d bought it for us without a word and handed it over without even asking to come in.” Judy clutched her cup tighter. “We hadn’t seen him in years, but he’d been keeping track of us, you see. And when he figured out we were in trouble, he stepped in without any hesitation.”

Her heart clenched. It wasn’t hard to imagine a younger Julian seeing a problem and fixing it without expecting anything in return.

Because that’s what he does.

For all his bluster about being unsentimental, he looked after those he cared about.

And to someone who had always been a shadow, that devotion was alluring.

“He would have disappeared from our lives again,” Judy said. “I knew that the second he handed me the deed. There was no way Pete and I would let that happen.”

“So you made him be an investor,” she breathed.

Judy smiled. “We all knew what it was about. Julian is too sharp to fool, but he agreed, and that decision kept him in our lives this past decade.”

Too sharp to fool.

The words were like daggers into her chest. Here was a man who’d had to fight for everything he had. And what she was doing? Tricking him.

“He’s a good man under all that armor,” Judy said, pulling her back to the conversation. “You just have to find your own way to pull him in.”

She took a sip of tea to wet her dry throat. “I know he’s a good man,” she said softly.

That’s the problem.

…

“You brought a woman with you, eh? Bad idea leaving her unsupervised with Judy.”

Julian grinned at the white-haired man sitting behind his desk in the messy little office. Bookshelves lined the walls, but even they weren’t enough to contain the volumes scattered around the room. Stacks of books waited in all the corners while more crept toward the edges of the desk.

Pete had always been this way, hoarding as much knowledge as he could. Julian remembered when he was a teenager every bedroom in the house had been given up to some unfortunate kid like him. There’d been no room for Pete’s books, so he’d stored them under every piece of furniture in the place. Geography in the cupboards, Shakespeare under the ottomans. Seeing that some things never changed brought a smile to his face.

“It wasn’t my idea to bring her. Lillian volunteered.”

“Ah. She couldn’t stand to be away from you.”

He laughed. “Not exactly. We’re trying to get to know each other. Clock’s ticking here.”

“Yeah, your invite is on the fridge. Just a few weeks to go, right?”

“Right.”

Pete leaned back in his chair. “Is that good or bad?”

He rolled his eyes. “I’m here to fix your books, not dive into my relationship.”

“The day I married my Judy was the best one of my life,” Pete said, ignoring him. “You should have seen how impatient I was in the weeks leading up to the wedding. I was done with living on my own. I wanted her with me every minute, and waiting for our future to begin drove me crazy.”

“Our situation is different,” he pointed out.

“Bah. You’ve achieved everything you ever wanted. Marriages should be about more than money or gain.”

“You’re wrong. I will achieve everything I’ve ever wanted. Once I marry Lillian.”

“That makes for a cold life, my boy.”

“The world is a different place than it was when you met Judy.”

“That, at least, is true. In my day we weren’t obsessed with taking pictures of our food before we ate it.”

He chuckled, taking a seat beside the only man who’d ever given a damn about him. “I told you, social media is an important marketing tool.”

“We use it.”

“Your last post was of snowy trees. It’s August.”

“We try to use it.”

He shook his head. “You know I’ll cover the salary of a marketer if you want one.”

“We do just fine. Don’t you worry about us. You’ve helped more than enough as it is.”

“At the very least, I could hire you an accountant.”

“And then what would I do with my days?” Pete clapped a hand on Julian’s back. “Sometimes you don’t need more. You can be happy with exactly what you have.”

“I’ll have to take your word for it.”

Pete chuckled. “You’ve never been satisfied with anything in your life. Always wanting something else.”

I don’t want another fiancée.

There was no escaping the truth. When he’d hatched this plan, it didn’t matter who walked down the aisle with him.

But now?

It has to be her.

Logically, another heiress would work for his ambitions, but the thought of approaching one of them left a bad taste in his mouth.

For better or worse, he was in this with Lillian and no other.

It should have felt like a noose tightening around his neck.

So why doesn’t it?

Because somehow, with her quiet words and simple touches, Lillian was changing everything. “You’re thinking too hard again,” Pete said, glancing up from his calculator.

The familiar words brought a smile to his face. “I’ve told you for years, that’s impossible.”

“I know. When you were a teen you used to tell me I was wrong, and you were thinking just enough. Considering where your life ended up, I guess you were right. But while I couldn’t help you with your company, I can help you with this. Don’t over complicate things.”

He patted Pete on the back. “You always have the best advice.”

Too bad it was impossible to take it.

Lillian, and her effect on him, wasn’t a topic he could just forget.