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.