Page 24 of Come Away With Me (The Andrades 1)
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.
He called his friend Kane and told him that it was time for him to repay him for all the years that Rena had worked for him. He gave Kane Paul’s name and information and asked him to hire him. He also explained that Paul might come as a package deal with another man. Both had good work histories with his company, but for personal reasons he preferred they work elsewhere. He called down to Tom and explained the offer to him. Although he refused to hire Paul back, he wanted Julia to be happy.
One woman’s opinion shouldn’t matter so much to him.
But there was no denying that it did.
His cell phone rang. He checked caller ID and his mood soured more. “Mother,” he said coolly.
“George, tell me you’re not attending the Andrade wedding on Isola Santos. I’m surprised your uncles have the nerve to invite anyone there.” Her dislike of the possibility was clear in her tone.
He almost reassured her he wasn’t. Having Julia in his life had brought him a sense of contentment he had decided not to let ancient history threaten. Why look for answers in the past when he had everything he needed right there beside him every night?
Some doors were better left closed.
His mother hadn’t hidden her concern when she’d heard he and his brothers had attended a function with the family over the summer, but she’d settled down when nothing came from it.
Patrice Andrade, or, as she was once again known, Patrice Stanfield, daughter of one of the wealthiest oil families in the United States, wasn’t known for being an emotional woman. She had even less tolerance for dramatics in others.
Which made her escalating agitation over the wedding difficult to dismiss. It begged the question: Why?
Is it the island she hates, or the idea that we may reconcile with our father’s family?
He answered vaguely, “I told them I would.”
“How could you, Gio? With everything you know?”
“It’s a wedding. Nothing more.”
“But why are you going? They’ve invited you to weddings before. You’ve never gone. Are you hoping things will be different? They won’t be. Remember what they’ve taken from you.”
She’d voiced that sentiment a hundred times before. He’d thought himself immune to it, but this time it brought back anger he hadn’t known was still within him. “How could I forget with you around to remind me?”
His mother’s voice softened. “You’re better than them, George. They did you a favor when they showed you how they really felt. You don’t need them.”
Gio let out a relieved breath. “Is this the only topic you called to discuss? Because I have a meeting waiting for me.” Which was partially true. Somewhere in the world some executive was waiting for him to return his call.
“I saw you in the papers chasing after some woman. Making a fool of yourself in public undermines the company’s image.”
“Good-bye, Mother.”
Just before he hung up, she said, “Watch your b
rothers on the island, George. Don’t let your uncles manipulate them. They lie as easily as they breathe.”
How many times had they had this very conversation? Looking up at the ceiling in frustration, Gio said, “We’re not little boys anymore. You don’t have to protect us from them.”
“You’re wrong, George. I just hope you realize that before they tear our family apart in a way that even you can’t fix.”
She hung up.
Tear us apart?
I’d say that happened a long time ago.
Her call had changed his mind about seeing his father’s family again, and not in the way his mother had hoped. He was certain now he had to go. He needed to know what awaited him that his mother feared.
But unlike the first time he’d decided to attend the wedding, he didn’t want to bring Julia with him. If the situation got ugly, he wanted her far away from it.
Rena’s Queen Anne townhouse in Henderson Place had surprised Julia. Even to someone as new to New York as Julia was, the rare cul-de-sac neighborhood implied expensive and exclusive. And if Rena’s designer wardrobe was any indication, the area’s high price hadn’t affected her ability to shop.
Which should have made Julia feel uncomfortable, but Rena had a down-to-earth personality. As she encouraged her to try on dress after dress, Julia felt like she was with her friends back in Rhode Island preparing for prom. They laughed their way through good and bad fits.
