So here we are now, Molly thought as she rode the elevator up to the top floor of the San Antonio Daily building the next day.
At last Garrett seemed to be ready to do something about her situation with Julian. The question was: What was he going to do?
And how was Molly going to react to it?
She honestly didn’t know. Whatever happened today, though, she wore her largest earrings and her thickest bangles and her sassiest attitude to the meeting. It was a trick she used when she needed the extra security boost. There was just something about big jewelry that made her feel better no matter how dreary things looked or how anxious she felt. So now it was one minute until noon, and she was every bit the confident lady as she marched down the long hall that led to the executive offices.
“Molly!” Julian’s assistant exclaimed with obvious warmth, glancing up at her through her spectacles from behind an enormous desk. “I didn’t know you were paying a visit! He went out to lunch....”
Smiling, Molly greeted the older woman with an affectionate hug. Ms. Watts had been with Jules forever and sometimes conspired with Molly to pull Julian out of important meetings. Just for fun.
“I’m actually here for Garrett today, Ms. Watts.” But her stomach felt queasy, and suddenly she very much wished she was having lunch with Julian instead.
She was led directly into his office by Garrett’s assistant, a younger woman who sat at an identically enormous desk not too far away. Molly couldn’t help but straighten her spine when she was announced. “Miss Devaney to see you, Mr. Gage,” the assistant intoned, and then quickly shut the doors behind her.
Over six feet tall, with dark hair and broad shoulders, Garrett stood by the window with his hands in his jacket pockets, radiating intimidation. Her knees felt knobby as she walked forward, somehow expecting to catch a glimpse of something telling in his expression. But his face revealed nothing at all when he turned around and gave her a brief, almost businesslike smile.
“Molly, I don’t think I need to tell you why you’re here? Or why Kate—” he signaled to her sister, whom Molly just now noticed sitting behind Garrett’s desk, pretty as you please “—and I want to talk to you today.”
Molly sat down across the desk from Kate, still absorbing the fact that he had not meant to have a “private” conversation with her at all. Private had merely meant without Julian present.
The realization made her scowl at him, her blackest, angriest scowl.
She couldn’t help noticing Garrett seemed so detached today, unlike the passionate lover of that magical evening. Of course, the man had excellent control, so you never knew with him. That night, he’d sure as hell surprised her, too. Now Molly looked into his eyes but try as she might, she detected no special heat as he looked at her.
Had she completely misread him? Had he been so drunk that just...any “wench” would have done? How could he stand there, so lamplike, after he’d caught her in a dark room with Julian? Even Julian, who was known to be the cool and aloof brother, looked at her with much more... Actually, Julian’s looks set her on fire. But enough of that.
They were just different, the two men—and she had to stop comparing them.
She had to get it through her thick skull, once and for all, that those kisses with Julian last night had been pure error. She’d gotten carried away and she wasn’t even certain why she’d done something so reckless as to tempt a lion like Julian. Except maybe she knew that he would never take things too far with her.
Or would he?
Because last night in bed, she’d been so tormented and confused. The things he’d whispered, the things he’d made her feel as he’d kissed her had been the most intense she’d ever felt in her life, even more than on the night—
No. It couldn’t be.
How could anything top what she’d felt that night at the masquerade? Was it right to feel all this excitement and passion when just any guy kissed her? No. She knew it was impossible, it was too overpowering, too special.
So then what was the matter with her?
“Can you please explain to us what’s going on between you and Julian?” Garrett queried, breaking into her reflections.
Completely disbelieving his tone, Molly leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms, her bangles making a clanking noise.
Wow.
She’d really made up that whole masquerade soul-mate kiss, hadn’t she?
Garrett didn’t seem jealous at all, and now her silly thoughts of marrying him were quickly being dashed. She’d thought she was luring him in with her plan and now she wondered if he was even hungry for the hook she’d tossed him. Apparently, Garrett only had a weakness for Molly in a wench costume and while he was inebriated out of his ever-loving mind.
Wow. Really. She was such a dope.
“Are you two seriously going to pretend you don’t know? Or do I need to spell it out to you?” Molly asked him, getting supremely irritated by all this. Where was the man who’d kissed her at the masquerade? Where was the hunger that awakened hers? The passion that had ignited hers? Had it all been a joke? A dream? A ruse?
When neither Kate nor Garrett answered and her masquerade man refused to make an appearance, her irritation increased tenfold. So they were going to drill her and intimidate her. Did they interrogate Julian like this, too?
“We’re together, Garrett,” Molly suddenly said, thrusting her chin out defiantly and sounding damned proud. “I moved in with him. I’m his gi—lover. And I’ve never been so happy.” The last was true. She’d always had the most fun with Jules, had loved him beyond loving anyone else, protected him beyond anyone else. They covered for each other, laughed with each other, fought with each other....
This morning they’d had breakfast together, and they’d laughed. Even after the debacle of last night. They’d laughed.
“Did you know,” Garrett said softly, his eyes kind, “this is exactly what we feared would happen all these years. My mother, Kate, Landon and I. We feared Julian and you would dive headfirst into each other and one of you, especially you, Molly, might not make it out.”
With a painful frown, Molly wondered why Garrett didn’t just drop the mask already and step into his sexy black masquerade boots. He’d had guts that night, taking what he wanted, which had clearly been her. Today? He merely seemed concerned, like a brother would be, and that had definitely not been Molly’s plan from the start. “Why would you think that about me and Julian?” she challenged, wanting to scoff at the accusation.
His dark eyes widened in surprise, as though Molly were lacking in brainpower to have overlooked something so obvious. Kate stepped in to explain, “Because when you were teens you were infatuated with each other, Molls. You cried when I told you he was like your brother. You cried for days and when I demanded to know why, you told me it was because of what I’d said. Because you wouldn’t be able to marry him now.”
Molly groaned and rolled her eyes. “I must have been ten, Kate.”
“You never cry, Molly. Never. The only times I’ve seen you cry in your life have been all about Jules.”
“Because they sent him away and it sucked!”
“There you go,” Garrett said.
She scowled. “I just don’t see how our relationship concerns any of you. We’ve had a bond since the beginning.”
In fact, Molly knew the story by heart, for it had been related to her not only by Eleanor Gage, his mother, but later by Landon, Kate, Garrett, even Julian himself.
On the day the Devaney sisters had come to live at the Gage mansion, Molly had been a mere three years old.
She’d been introduced, along with Kate, to all the family members and staff, but she’d hardly paid any attention because she had a lollipop stuck in her mouth and she was gladly sucking it. Embarrassed by this, Kate had tried to convince her to hand over the lollipop, since she’d been the one who’d given it to her in the first place, but it was all to no avail. And yet while they proceeded to do the introductions, Molly’s attention had fixated on the blond, green-eyed boy who looked at her in amusement. She toddled over to him, took her lollipop out of her mouth, and graciously offered it to him with a cheeky grin.
Julian had been six at the time, and even when his mother had beamed a silent command at him to refuse the germ-filled offering, Julian had shoved it into his mouth and smiled down at Molly. Just like that, they’d been instant friends.
Now Molly looked pointedly at Garrett and cocked a brow, wondering if he even remembered that story. They’d only told it about twenty times or so, if she recalled correctly. The family laughed about it, joking that what the other brothers accomplished with force, the younger brother accomplished with a grin.
“Molly.” Kate clasped her hands before her in a silent plea. “I just need you to assure me that you know what you’re doing. Julian’s relationships don’t last. In fact, he’s never even had one, only one-night stands and weekend flings. You’re in way over your head here, Moo!”
“I’m not his weekend fling, Kate,” she defended, suddenly fierce, determined to show them she was at no risk and meant more to Julian than that, even though what she was defending was a fake liaison intended to make Garrett jealous. “What makes you think Jules would ever hurt me? He’s the only guy I know that would give me a kidney if I needed one! In fact, he’s so good to me I’ll bet he’d even give me two!”
The worry creases on Kate’s forehead only seemed to double. “You’ve really fallen for him, haven’t you?”
It killed Molly not to be able to tell her sister the truth, so she could at least wipe that worry off her pretty face, but then how could she assure her what a lie her relationship with Julian was, when she herself couldn’t understand why she’d even kissed him yesterday?
Since she’d moved in with him, she’d been bombarded with strange feelings and emotions, hardly getting any sleep as she lay in her bed, wondering about all the what-ifs and could bes in her life.
Saying good morning to him in his sexy pajamas with his six-pack abs showing was torture. Bantering with him, wanting to be close to him...
She didn’t even know what she felt anymore.
She’d wanted to find love in her life, because she’d already found success in her profession. Wasn’t it normal to always want something? But this time she sensed that what she wanted was nearby, but she couldn’t put a name to it, and that frustrated her out of her mind.
She’d been counting on Garrett to reignite the spark in her today, not leave her feeling cold and empty. She’d been counting on this meeting where he could help her straighten out her head, and more importantly, her emotions.
Instead, she and Julian were being attacked, and it made her want to stick her claws out for him. For them. For what they had, which nobody had ever really understood in the first place.
“Julian would never hurt me,” she said as she rose, fighting to keep from shouting. “I promise you if you ever see me cry because of him, I give you permission to shoot me.”
“I’d actually prefer to shoot him,” Garrett said drily.
Whipping around to face him, Molly stared at this large, handsome man, thinking he’d always been a great influence in her life. He’d always felt responsible for her father’s death. Even though the Devaney sisters had never blamed him for what had happened, it seemed as if Garrett would never forgive himself.
Which sometimes made his smiles seem sad. And made him try too hard to make things right for Kate and Molly, protect them. But...protect Molly from Julian? Oh, puleeze! Julian had been as crucial as sunshine to her since she was a toddler. He’d been her hero before she even heard of the word or understood its meaning.
Garrett was a good man, a great man, in fact, and Molly knew he would be a faithful and giving husband if he could only give himself a chance. But did he need to be drunk to let go the way he had at the masquerade?
Whatever the reason, she feared that the man who’d kissed her that night was an illusion. And if she’d ever, ever doubted whether she would have to choose between Garrett and Julian, it was an easy choice now that she was faced with it.
Her hero won outright.
“What is your problem with Julian anyway?” Molly asked, aghast and affronted. “Both of you—you’re always riding him about something. If I were him, I’d...never talk to you again.”
She pivoted for the door, but Garrett’s voice stopped her.
“That little toad is my brother. Of course I love him. We merely feel responsible to protect you.”
She grabbed the knob and turned. “If I need protecting from anything, I will tell you, but the last person on this earth I need protecting from is Julian.” She yanked the door open and then added, “And if you love your brother so much, then I suggest you try to make things work around here before he leaves the Daily for good—Lord knows I would! Who the hell can even work in peace with this sort of constant criticism? I’m glad he’s ready to move on!”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me!” she shot back.
She gave Kate a look that said don’t do this to me again, and with that, she stormed outside.
“Molly!” Garrett followed her, stopping her a couple of feet from where his secretary was busily tapping her computer keypad. “Where’s my brother going? Is he leaving the Daily?”
“I want to go now, Garrett,” she grumbled, trying to pull her arm free.
He drew her closer. “He’s leaving the Daily, isn’t he?”
Hating herself for having spoken so rashly, Molly dropped her face. “I think you misunderstood,” she hedged.
“No, I didn’t. I know he’s not happy here, Molly. I’ve been suspecting for a time now. But if you aren’t telling me when he’s leaving or where, then at least answer me this. Do you love him?” he asked.
Molly stared up at the man she’d once thought she loved and wondered why her throat closed up in a tight little ball. Why she wanted to wail her heart out to him over that question alone.
Because of course the answer was yes, a thousand times yes.
She loved Julian in so many ways, she hadn’t even begun to discover them all. And she feared that loving him as a friend was only one of them.
* * *
Halting just a few feet from his own office door, Julian saw them. Molly and the “love of her life,” together at last.
He saw them say goodbye. Saw his brother pat her back. Saw her take a little sob and drop her face into his jacket. Saw him put his arm around her.
His blood simmered. His heart caved in on itself. And suddenly red-hot anger coursed through his veins and his eyes blurred with the force of his fury. Maybe this was what Molly had wanted all along. She had practiced with Julian last night so she could get out here and make Garrett jealous, make him see her as the lovely, sexy, grown woman that she was.
Perhaps Julian should’ve stepped back and let his best friend be coddled by the man she wanted to be coddled by.
He should laugh it off, not care. But it mattered very much. Too much.
Body shaking, he was amazed he could speak so calmly, so softly, as he walked up to them. “I hate to break up your tête-à-tête, but if you don’t take your hands off Molly, I’m going to beat your face until our own mother won’t recognize you.”
Garrett stiffened, but his arms instantly dropped as his head whipped toward his. “What the hell is wrong with you, Jules?”
Julian gritted his teeth as Molly swung around in surprise. Ignoring Garrett, he stretched out his hand to her, palm up, and gazed intently into her red-rimmed eyes. She’d been crying, or about to cry. Dammit, why? He pursed his lips in anger. At her, at himself, at this entire mess he’d gotten himself into.
He’d wanted time to let things unfold naturally.
He didn’t want to pull all the stops he used with other women and seduce the hell out of her. Because this was the only girl who knew him, respected him, admired him—he was real with her. He wanted it to be perfectly natural with her. No bull. And it just wasn’t happening that way, dammit. “What day is today, Molly?”
She sniffled, then wiped the corner of her eye with one fingertip. “Um?”
“What day is it?”
She told him the date, and he nodded gravely and bent to whisper in her ear so that nobody would hear his words but Molly. “Exactly. You’re still my girl. Aren’t you? We said a month. Didn’t we?”
She blinked as he drew back to survey her reaction, and when her gaze strayed to Garrett, Julian’s chest tightened with rage.
Garrett, his brother.
Whom he suddenly, profoundly abhorred.
Her tear-streaked blue eyes came back to him, and she nodded and mumbled, “Of course. Take me home, all right?” And to Garrett, she said almost placatingly, “Thanks for the chat. Think about what I told you before I...stepped out, okay?”
Garrett nodded before Julian led Molly by the elbow toward his assistant’s desk. He barked a dozen orders, then led Molly with him to the elevators.
Neither spoke on the drive home.
“So tell me,” Julian finally said as they entered his apartment, his emotions having fermented during the drive. He was close to exploding now. “Tell me what he did to make you cry like this.”
Molly stared at him with wide, shining eyes that made him want to wrap her up in his arms and keep the world from so much as looking at her, she looked so damn lost and so damn vulnerable. Her voice was a soft, puzzled whisper. “What’s wrong with you today?”
He drew a deep breath, then let it all out. “He doesn’t deserve you, Molly! I know a guy who’s so crazy about you, he would do anything to be with you—anything. He’d lie for you, cheat for you, steal for you—”
She scoffed, everything sounding more ludicrous to her by the second. “Are you getting high on my paint supply? Who are you talking about? Who would do such a thing?”
“Take a wild guess, Molls.”
“I have no clue what you’re talking about!”
“I could kill him for making you cry like this.” Julian sat down on the living room sofa and threw his shoes off with a bang. “This obsession with my brother just pisses me the hell off, Molly. Like nothing in my life has ever pissed me off before.”
She crossed her arms, suddenly glaring. He might have been pissed off, but he had no idea what was wrong with her. That she cried because she realized the entire masquerade night had been a stupid illusion in the first place. That the man she’d thought she loved...just wasn’t the Garrett she knew. And like all the other men she’d ever met in her life, he would end up paling to Julian in every possible way she could imagine.
But how could she admit to this man, whose respect she craved and wanted above all others, that she just might have screwed it all up and was not really in love with Garrett? That the man she wanted was...unattainable. And that his brother and her sister had been warning her away from him because he would hurt her?
Oh, how she’d wanted to tear their eyes out when she heard them! Even if they might be right.
She gnawed on her lower lip and said nothing, focusing instead on getting ready to vent her frustrations on the only person she could vent with.
Julian.
“Just tell me what you see in him all of a sudden that you find so irresistible. Tell me why you’d go cry on his shoulder and not with me.”
Oh, God, what was happening to her?
Her legs went flaccid with a mere look into those stormy green eyes. He was so handsome, his jaw square and rigid, his eyebrows two sharp, bleak slashes. He was more enraged than she’d ever seen him before. She could even think he was jealous, and the thought summoned a deep, dark stirring in her that she’d been feeling more and more frequently lately—at the most inconvenient times. A powerful little ache in her body that craved for him to wrap his arms around her and... She didn’t know what she wanted him to do.
She ached for closeness with him, almost trembled with the need. She wanted to smell his scent all around her and to feel his hands everywhere and enjoy the hardness of those big, big biceps bulge as he held her imprisoned against his body. She wanted him so close, closer, closest. As if mere friendship was no longer enough with him. As if revealing every intimate detail of her life to him, her fears, her desires...
Was. Not. Enough.
Anymore.
“Are you planning to answer me, Molly?”
Molly’s throat seemed to be working extra hard to get the words out. She didn’t know why her nipples were beaded under her cotton turquoise sundress, why the way Jules was shooting fire at her with his eyes made her breathless and shaky and strange. She fought against the sensations, struggling to focus on his question.
She threw her hands up in the air in frustration. “I don’t know, Jules! All right? Maybe I hated when he was overly protective of us, the way he took it upon himself to chaperone you and me. He never let us have fun together, like we were doing something wrong, and we weren’t. You may be hot for anything that walks but he never realized that we were always just friends. But I truly don’t think he was being deliberately mean. Maybe he was just trying to do the noble thing out of caring and respect for me and out of respect for my father, who protected him.” She softened her voice as she tried to save the last remains of her hope.
Julian’s glare could have melted all the ice in Alaska. “Garrett pulled you away from me because he knew that— He knew I—” His face darkened, and Molly’s nipples pricked with wanting as she watched his fingers curl into fists at his sides. An image of those fingers clutching her breasts when he’d whispered sexy confessions into her ear returned to her, and she swallowed. This was so not the time to get worked up about that.
Jumping to his feet, he plunged a frustrated hand through his hair and thoroughly ruffled it. “And what about him and Kate? Hell, Molls, have you not seen the way your sister looks at him? You’re both pining away for the same man.”
Molly blinked in stupefaction, her eyebrows pulling low when she registered what he’d said. “You’re lying. You—you can’t mean that— Kate doesn’t feel that way about him.”
“Kate is like a sister to me. I know lust when I see it, Molls.”
Horrified, Molly gaped at the thought of her sister loving Garrett. So quietly? And for how long? It couldn’t be.
Fiddling with one enormous hoop earring, she shook her head several times. “Jules—you don’t understand. Garrett and I have done things. We kissed one night and it was...magical, like it was meant to be.”
Freezing in place as though she’d said something monumental, Julian openly gawked at her until his expression emptied into such a blank look that it might have been comical if she didn’t find it thoroughly alarming. “He kissed you?”
Molly offered him an embarrassed little nod, then groaned in self-pity and buried her face in her hands. “I’ve never felt such a connection in my life except with you. What I felt that night seemed so real, it was like we recognized each other, like we knew we were soul mates...”
But it was all an illusion, and I can’t understand it and I’m so confused.
Julian stalked a short distance away as though he didn’t know what do with himself, and then he returned, his jaw muscles working restlessly. “You’re kidding me, Molly. Say it now, Molls. Right. Now. Tell me you’re kidding me, Moo.”
She could only imagine how it looked to him, the guy she had been devouring with her lips yesterday, that she’d let his brother do that, too. What was wrong with her? Why had she felt nothing when she’d looked at Garrett today?
But it had happened.
Hadn’t it?
“I’m not even sure it was real anymore,” she admitted as she fell on the couch and covered her face with her hands. “It all happened at that loathsome masquerade, when I was wearing that stupid wench costume you dared me to wear! He...he was wearing all black. I was outside and thought it was you, and then he kissed me, and we did some intimate things, and I noticed the ring he was wearing as he held me, and I knew that it must be him.”
The deafening, tomblike silence that followed stretched so long and taut, she sat up in confusion and studied Julian in growing alarm.
Suddenly, he stormed down the hallway like a man possessed, and Molly sighed and rubbed her temples to ward off a headache. She just hoped he hadn’t gone to fetch a gun or something, for what was she going to do now? She was usually the impulsive one and always counted on Jules being the one with a cool head.
She considered following him, talking some reason into him, explaining that it was just a kiss and all that, but then he returned less than a minute later and produced something shiny from his pants pocket.
He sounded livid now. Livid.
“You mean this ring, Molly?”