A Billionaire BWWM Romance 5: The Other Man (5 page)

“
No,
sweetie. It’s your party and you should have fun. Everything
that happened today doesn’t change the fact that you love
Steven and that you guys are going to get married soon. It’s
not like you lied or anything,” Meg said. Julie looked at her
and shrugged.

“
I
know you’re trying to cheer me up, but all I can think of right
now is the fact that I am Julie fucking Lockwood,” she cursed.
Meg stood up and walked round the desk to where Julie was.

“
You
are going to be Julie fucking dead person if you keep on talking
about this shit. And that’s not a threat, it’s a
guarantee,” she argued as she gave Julie one of those looks
that made her best friend realize that she meant business. Julie
closed her eyes and rested her head on her desk again. Somehow, this
seemed to be the worst thing that could possibly happen for so many
reasons. She didn’t have a clue why the hell things had turned
out the way they did. If it were any other ex, it would have been
okay but not Evan. She raised her head from the desk and looked at
Meg.

“
I
want to assume all this, but we all know what people say about
assuming,” she said. Meg smiled.

“
You
are making an ass of you and me?” she questioned. Julie nodded.
“What really did happen between you and this Lockwood guy? Why
is this so bad for you? I mean, it’s not like you knew it all
this time and decided to carefully select the truth or something,”
she said. Julie shrugged. “I know there is something. I can see
it all over your face,” she added. Julie looked at her and
shook her head.

“
You
know how people talk about the one who got away and stuff like that?”
she asked. Meg nodded. “Well, until I met Steven, Evan had
always been the one who got away for me. I was…smitten. I saw
myself in the family home with two point five kids and a white picket
fence…you know, the whole shebang,” she explained. Meg
raised an eyebrow.

“
You
in a white picket fence? That I do not see,” she laughed.

“
I
know right? But Evan was able to make me have that mindset and I
swear it could have worked too. At least I thought it was,”
Julie sighed. She smiled. “You know I actually considered
having the whole thing in play…like quit my job and
everything. That is how much he got to me,” she added as she
looked at a confused Meg. In all the years they had known each other,
Meg had never known Julie to be anything more than a career woman. It
was just hard to imagine her as a domestic wife. It was too Mary
Poppins for her.

“
So
what happened?” Meg asked.

“
One
day he told me he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me,”
Julie told her. Meg raised an eyebrow.

“
He
proposed?” she asked. Julie shook her head.

“
No,
he literally told me that he wanted to spend the rest of his life
with me and instead of a ring, he had just started a company.
Security logistics and he said in six months, whether the company
will have grown or not, he was going to begin the new life with me.
And I was ecstatic,” Julie explained with a smile.

“
What
happened?” Meg asked.

“
One
day he just stopped picking my calls and he disappeared, without a
trace,” Julie admitted. Meg frowned. She now understood why
Julie had such a hard time trusting men. Why her dating life had been
such a roller coaster. Why she had walked out of relationships for
the simplest reasons. “And of all my exes, it turns out that he
was the one I married in a drunken stupor,” Julie added with a
smile. Meg looked at her and squeezed her shoulder reassuringly.

“
Listen,
there is so much more to you and you have a lot that defines you
rather than some dead beat ex,” she promised.

“
I
know,” Julie said. “It’s just…the memories
and…” her voice trailed off. Meg squeezed her shoulder
again and then sat on the edge of the desk looking down at Julie.

“
Honey,
Ethan is…” she started saying before Julie looked up and
shook her head.

“
Evan,”
she corrected her.

“
Same
difference,” Mg said. “Evan is just a nasty memory. He
doesn’t define you and he never will. What’s important is
the woman you’ve become and I am proud of you for that,”
she added. Julie smiled. “All you need to do is just get it
together and tell Steven, hey you know what babe, turns out I married
a douche back when I was in college and laugh about it,” she
said smiling. Julie looked up at her a small smile playing on her
lips. “Steven’s a great sport. He’ll understand.”

Julie
was a mess when she got home. She had thought of all the ways she
could break the news to Steven but nothing seemed perfect. She had
made him his favorite: mashed potatoes and fried chicken. She had
never understood why something so plain happened to be his favorite.
Every so often she spruced it up with some vegetables on the side,
but like a child, he was not so big on eating his veggies. She had
even gone as far as Googling ‘How To Break Bad News To Someone
You Love’. As she looked through the web pages, she could not
decide whether this was a bad idea or downright dumb. She looked at
the screen and shook her head as she read through.

Step
One: Work out your own feedback to the news before you tell anyone.

She
shook her head and shrugged.

“
I
think I have pretty much worked out what I feel. Resentment,
contempt, disgust,”
she
thought as she looked at the computer screen.
“Let’s
see what the next thing is,”
she
thought as she scrolled down the page.

Step
two: Are you the right person to break the news?

She
scoffed.
“Of
course I am the right person for the job. Who else would do it?”
she
thought. A sad smile played on her lips.
“Maybe
I should get Steven’s ex to do the dirty work for me. Level the
playing field.”
She
laughed at her thoughts and shook her head.
“Get
yourself together, Julie. This is serious,”
she
scolded herself.

Stet
three: Practice makes perfect.

Julie
leaned back. The word practice echoed in her head. She cleared her
throat and made a fist before relaxing it.

“
Steven,
I have something to tell you. I’m married,” she said to
no one in particular. She shook her head. That was too direct. “Babe,
I can’t marry you because…” Wait a minute. She
couldn’t just start her news with the words ‘I can’t
marry you’. The words just couldn’t come to her. She
picked the rubber band she had put on the table earlier and held her
hair back in a ponytail. She reached for the glass of wine on the
table and took a long sip. She noticed that the level in her glass
was getting low. And this was her second glass from one of the
bottles Steven had brought over. The thousand year old bottles. She
wanted another glass so bad but if she kept chugging the happy juice
like this, there was no way she was going to be able to stand up
straight. She took another sip and looked at the computer screen
again.

Step
four: Make sure you are in a comfortable and private place.

She
looked around and shrugged. It didn’t get more private than
this, her apartment. She felt comfortable. She was comfortable. There
was no reason why she wouldn’t be able to break the bad news
here. It was better than…hell, it was the best place for such
news. She scrolled down the computer screen and looked at the next
step.

Step
five: Choose the right time.

Julie
shook her head. There was never a right time for this kind of stuff.
It always seemed to be a bad time, every time. She took the last sip
of her wine and the looked at the bottle. She needed more liquid
courage but even in the state she was in, she was sure she shouldn’t
get any more alcohol in her than she did.

Step
six: Gauge the recipient of the news before breaking it to them

It
is important to make sure that the person you are breaking the news
to is in a good mood or not otherwise rattled. The last thing you
want is to add insult to injury.

Julie
shook her head. This was almost as helpful as a double sided arrow
giving direction. She shut down her computer and leaned back feeling
defeated. She took a series of long deep breaths
as
she leaned back on the couch. She looked at her phone and sighed. It
had been almost two hours since she sent Steven a text telling him
she needed to see him. Any time now, he would be walking into the
house and she still had not made up her mind on how she was supposed
to say it. She had just poured herself another glass when she heard
the front door open and close. She put the glass down and looked up
and smiled as Steven walked in.

“
I’m
so sorry I took so long to get here,” he apologized as he
walked in. “I had two back to back meetings and I couldn’t
call because my battery was flat,” he explained as he walked
towards her. She smiled up at him as he came to sit next to her. “And
my assistant took off early. Some kind of home emergency. I had no
way of reaching you,” he said before he leaned in and kissed
her.

“
It’s
okay,” she replied, forcing out a smile. He looked at her and
smiled. She shrugged. “What?”

“
That
bottle was unopened last time I checked,” he frowned. She
smiled.

“
Maybe.
Or maybe you are just losing track of what is going on around you,”
she suggested. He looked at her and smiled.

“
Is
everything okay?” Steven asked.

“
Everything
is fine,” she said.

“
I
hate to call you out on this, but seriously, I think there is
something going on,” he fretted.

“
Come
on, I made dinner,” she said. Steven raised one eyebrow over
the other and smiled.

“
You
made dinner? Now I’m really concerned,” he teased. She
shrugged and stood up and then walked to the kitchen. “Is it
okay if we just eat in here bumming out in front of the telly?”
he asked. She smiled and nodded, even though he could not see her.

“
Sure,”
she replied. Her head was spinning as she served the food and then
walked back to the living room.

“
Smells
really good,” Steven said as she sat down.

“
Wine?”
she offered. Steven smiled and shook his head.

“
Somehow
I feel like you’ve had enough for the both of us,” he
said with a smile. She shrugged and then reached for her glass.

“
To
us,” she said before they began eating. Halfway through dinner,
she looked at him and smiled. “How tired are you?” she
asked as she looked at him.

“
Not
very, why?” he

“
I
just need….” Her voice trailed off. She looked at him
and wondered how she was supposed to start this talk. There was no
telling what exactly she was supposed to start this conversation. She
shook her head and shrugged. “Never mind,” she said
before she took a bite of her food.

“
I
think I know what you want to say,” he said as he put his plate
on the table. She looked at him and he took her plate too and placed
it on the table next to his. Her heart was pounding hard and fast. He
moved closer to her and smiled before he kissed her deeply. She had
half a mind to push him away, but if ever there was a relaxing
technique, sex was it. She raised her arm and slipped it behind his
neck before she went on kissing him. The kisses grew deeper and more
intense. Steven slowly brought his body down on her and laid his full
weight on her. Steven pulled away and looked into her eyes before he
slipped a hand under her and undid the clasp of her bra in one move
freeing her breasts. Her nipples were already hard from the
passionate atmosphere. He looked at her and then slowly began lifting
her top up. She lifted her hands up and allowed him to pull the top
over her head and off her arms. She whimpered when he slowly caressed
her nipples. She wanted to cry out as he toyed around with her hard
nipple around his index finger. She was breathing hard as he brought
his head down to slowly trail kisses down her chest. Steven held one
breast in his hand as he circled his tongue around her nipple. She
was whimpering and moaning as he went on giving the much needed
attention to her breasts. She sighed her relief when he pulled his
mouth from her nipple, but it was short lived because he trailed his
tongue across to her other breast to take in the other nipple. Julie
closed her eyes and held his head against her moaning softly.