Sommersgate House (Ghosts and Reincarnation #2)(59)
Author: Kristen Ashley

If it wasn’t Patricia, then who would be calling, Julia couldn’t imagine and how she should answer the phone, she didn’t know.

She was in her room, the phone on her writing desk (which could be called by dialling number nine) ringing insistently. She grabbed it nervously and said, “Sommersgate House,” as she suspected the staff would do.

“Julia?” It was Douglas.

She felt a rush of warmth in her belly at the sound of his deep voice and just stopped from letting out a little, happy sigh.

Then she shook some sense into herself. What was wrong with her? For goodness sake, he’d just said her name!

She tried to make her voice sound detached when she replied, “Douglas. Where are you?”

She assessed her tone and thought it sounded aloof and was somewhat pleased with it.

“How are the children?” He, she noticed, didn’t answer her question.

“Fine, in bed, asleep. It’s late, is something wrong?” It wasn’t late, it was nine thirty but she was trying to strike a mood.

There was noise in the background, people talking, just one or two and then they were muffled. When the muffling was gone, she could hear no more voices.

“Nothing wrong,” he replied belatedly and didn’t deign to explain the delay in answer.

“Then why are you calling?”

“Did you start your consultancy?”

She wanted to growl with frustration. Again, he didn’t answer her.

“Yes, I did –” Before she could finish, he went on.

“How is it?”

“It’s good, fine. They’re in a pretty serious muddle but we think we can pull them through without any loss of staff,” she answered, trying to be short and to the point but really she wanted to talk about it. In fact, she was dying to talk about it. It was something entirely different than what she was used to doing and even though it was all familiar, everything was new. It was like starting from the beginning but instead of it being frustrating, it was a fascinating challenge and she was loving every minute of it.

But she didn’t tell him that (as much as she wanted to), instead she said, “I’m fine, the children are fine, the house is fine, everything is fine. When are you coming home?”

There was another pause, this one felt heavy with meaning but she couldn’t put her finger on what that meaning was.

“Home?” he asked and his voice was strangely husky.

Julia reacted to the strange tone in his voice and queried, “Are you all right?” And she couldn’t, even though she wanted to, completely hide the concern.

“No,” he answered, to her surprise and further to her surprise, continued. “I’m shattered and things aren’t going well here.”

“Is there…” she didn’t know why she said what she did, but she felt compelled at this unprecedented sharing of feelings and his announcement of being “shattered”. The very idea of Douglas shattered was incomprehensible. “Anything I can do?”

Again, he didn’t answer her question. “I’ll be back sometime during the weekend.”

“Okay,” was the only way she could think to reply.

“Sleep well,” he bid in a strangely gentle and equally strangely sweet, low tone and then he rang off without letting her say a word. Julia had stared at the receiver in her hand and only then became aware that her legs were trembling.

But that was then, and now it was the next night, much, much later than nine thirty and Julia was making lists. Tomorrow she wasn’t supposed to go to work but she’d been looking through the charity’s budgets for the last few years and she’d hit on a few places they could cut back so she thought she’d go in for a couple of hours. She was also making lists of Christmas presents she wanted to buy. And she was also delaying when she would go to sleep because to sleep was to dream and to dream was to dream of Douglas and she didn’t want to dream of Douglas anymore because she liked it too much.

She’d never dreamed so much in her life. Before Sommersgate, she would have the odd nightmare or wake up with a strange feeling and vaguely remember some images. Every once in awhile she’d recall dreaming of disjointed events that made no sense but weren’t entirely unpleasant.

But now her dreams were vivid and they were always about Douglas. Not things that had happened, not memories, but fantasy scenarios. Full-blown, romantic-movie-type fantasy scenarios that were ridiculous in the extreme but, at the same time, very much not.

Douglas walking toward her smiling, lifting her off her feet and whirling her around with his face in her neck whispering words she never could really hear. Or chasing her through the house, but not threateningly, playfully. She’d always be running from him, throwing smiles over her shoulder and laughing right before he caught her and pushed her against the wall and kissed her until she was dazed and shaking.

And then there were the ones where they were in bed. After those, Julia would wake up smouldering, her breath uneven, her body tingling.

She should let it go and enjoy it, since she wouldn’t allow herself to enjoy it in real life. It didn’t hurt to dream. But it was different, dreaming about movie stars or daydreaming about attractive acquaintances you know you’d never make any advances to, they were safe, because you didn’t live with them or see them all the time.

Dreaming about Douglas wasn’t safe. It was very unsafe because she could get mixed up, she could allow her defences to go down and then where would she be?

And where would she be? Married to a man who didn’t love her, who said she could just move on when Ruby was gone, just… like… that. A man who could have any woman he wanted and would most likely go looking for them once he tired of Julia. He said there would be fidelity but she’d known him long enough (and she knew men-at-large well enough) to know that wasn’t likely. And why did he want Julia in the first place? It just didn’t make sense.

The problem was, she was beginning to like him. She was seeing things about him that she thought were funny or sweet or kind or (the worst) damned sexy.

Douglas and all these things (except the last) were incomprehensible.

She shook her head again. She could like him but if she found herself sleeping with him, married to him, attached to him, then he could find his way into her heart and break it and she was simply not going to let that happen. Not again.

She had been glad, at first, that Douglas was gone. Her defences had gone down and she’d allowed herself to enjoy his presence a bit too much. Now she had time to get them back up again and she felt strong enough for him to come home. She would allow herself to like him, even for them to become friends, but the rest, well, the rest she had to put a stop to it.