The Tycoon's Resistant Lover (5 page)

The foyer was large and open with a curving staircase framing the circular wall, an ornate iron balustrade creating a delicate but decidedly firm portrait to look at when a person entered. “I love this house!” she breathed as she walked through one room after another. There was a living room that was perfect for social events because of the large windows that would let in the sunshine during the day with tall trees outside that she pictured filled with white lights for evening ambiance. As she passed into the next room, she gasped at the gorgeous, old hardwood floors that had been saved and therefore had a golden sheen to them. The boards hadn’t been sanded down and now had several gouges, even some stains that showed off the history of the room. A large dining room connected to a massive butler’s pantry with glorious storage space and then the large, gourmet kitchen with an eight eye stove, four ovens, three sink stations and plenty of counter space for a caterer to work with, not to mention more windows that looked out at an arbor covered in wisteria that was slowly fading from deep green to orange as it went dormant for the winter. The kitchen even had two large refrigerators and a freezer area that was separate. She loved the wine area where one could chill the whites and reserve the reds at room temperature. She noticed that this was the only room that was furnished. “You like your wines, eh?” she teased.

He glanced at the bottles that were laying on their sides, pointing downwards and shrugged indifferently. “I entertain a great deal. But honestly, I’d rather just relax at the end of the day with a beer,” he said and led her to the back staircase. “There are seven bedrooms on the second floor and five smaller ones for the household staff on the next floor.”

“Do you plan to fill up all of those rooms?” she asked, loving the idea of a large family. Being an only child, she liked to imagine what it would be like to have a house filled with children and lots of laughter and noise. Probably a great deal of fighting as well, but she could handle that. What she didn’t want when she got married was the silence that had permeated her house when she’d been little. Noise had been banned, and unless the music was appropriate, it wasn’t allowed. Which music selections had been deemed appropriate was determined by her father and no one else.

He opened the first door at the top of the stairs to reveal a pretty room painted in soft yellow with the same hardwood floors that she’d seen downstairs with two large windows across the front wall. James peered in and nodded approval as he let her enter first. “I have lots of family and friends that come to visit, but yes, all the bedrooms will get furnished eventually although it isn’t necessary to decorate them each immediately. I grew up with three brothers and two sisters and we had a lot of fun growing up, but as the oldest, I was the only one who had my own room. Sharing a room with a sibling could be a life threatening endeavor in our house,” he said with a grin, dissipating her concern immediately as she saw on his face that he’d loved all the life and death challenges of growing up in a large family. “Lots of bruises were handed out, but that just comes with the territory.”

Julianna looked up at him, concern in her soft, blue eyes. “You fought with your brothers?” she asked worriedly.

James almost laughed, but realized that she was sincere and tried to tone down his amusement. It made him feel great that she was concerned for him. He liked her feeling as if he were important. “Of course we fought. Viciously at times. But that’s just what boys do.”

She thought of Edward and the way he’d grown up. She shook her head. “Not all boys,” she replied and moved further down the hallway. Edward fought, but only in the ring during boxing practice. He was good in the ring, but she couldn’t imagine him duking it out with anyone other than the fighters that paired up at the gym.

James had no idea what she was talking about. All siblings fight. It was just part of the growing up process. With three brothers, all about equal in size with him, there was probably a bit more rambunctiousness, but siblings fought and loved and punched and irritated each other whenever possible. “I’m guessing you’re an only child, am I right?”

She continued to open doors and peek inside the other rooms, her mind thinking up several ideas for bedroom themes. “Yes. There was absolutely no fighting in my father’s household.” She closed one door and opened another before she said, “Of course, there wasn’t anyone to fight with so that wasn’t really an issue.”

“Didn’t you argue with your parents?” he asked, following her, fascinated by what she was revealing.

She pulled her head out of a closet as she looked up at him with horror. “Absolutely not!”

James chuckled at her vehemence but had to agree. He also enjoyed watching her look around his house. It felt nice to have her here. Besides, she had a very cute bottom that stuck out in his direction every time she looked into a closet or behind one of the doors, giving him an excellent view of her very enticing anatomy. “Actually, I never really argued with my parents either. They wouldn’t tolerate it. The few times I did, I regretted it pretty soon afterwards.”

She stopped with her hand on the door and looked up at him again. “What happened?”

He leaned against the wall, looking down at her while his mind remembered one issue in particular. “I wanted to use some old wood my dad had stored in the garage to build a fort in one of the trees.”

“That doesn’t sound like an argument to me.”

James chuckled. “My dad told me that the wood was too old and rotted and that I couldn’t use it. He said if I wanted to build a fort that I needed to save up my money from mowing lawns and purchase it at the hardware store.”

She smiled, thinking about the man before her as a young child. “I bet you argued quite forcefully for the right to use that wood, didn’t you?”

He laughed. “If I remember correctly, I was too busy doing chores for that one infraction for several weeks. My mother and father were creative about their punishments so I was crawling around the attic and cleaning out spiders, emptying the entire shed and putting everything back in a more organized way, mowing our lawn, edging the fence line and it was a big yard with a long fence, mind you…”

Julianna was already laughing even while she shuddered at the thought of cleaning out spiders in an attic. “Oh my,” she gasped as he continued to list the chores he’d been required to do. “What happened in the end?”

James hesitated for only a moment before continuing the story. “I finished all my parents’ required chores, my brothers and siblings laughing at me the whole time. Then I snuck all the wood out of the garage, built my fort and stood proudly at the bottom with my friends when it was finally finished.”

She smiled up at him with pride for his tenacity. “And it was a fabulous fort, the envy of the neighborhood and everyone begged you to get up into it, right?”

James grinned as he shook his head. “Nice thought, but not exactly what happened.”

“So tell me,” she encouraged, leaning against the wall herself, feeling as if they were enclosed in a happy bubble where the tension between them was at a fizzle level instead of boiling over as it normally does.

“Since I’d designed it and stolen all the materials, including my dad’s tools, I claimed the right to climb up first. I proudly stood at the top and shouted down for everyone else to climb up. Unfortunately, just as the first guy put his foot on the bottom step of the wooden ladder, the wood I’d used for the main platform, which my father had told me was rotted too badly to use, broke with my weight and I came crashing down to the ground, hitting several of the branches along the way as well as a good portion of the rough bark as I fell and hit the ground with a painful thud.”

That wasn’t funny! “Oh, James!” she stood up straighter, her eyes wide with fear and horror. “But you were okay, right?”

He laughed and shook his head. “Absolutely not. It turns out that I’d broken my leg in three places and scraped about half my skin off the left side of my other leg. To make matters worse, I was too scared to tell my parents what had happened so I convinced my friends to just get me home. They put me on one of the lawn chairs in the back yard, then left as fast as they could, not wanting to be around when my parents found me like that.”

Despite herself, she had to laugh at his story. It was either laugh or cry so she chose the first. “And when your mother found you?”

He grimaced, giving her fair warning that this was not going to end well. “She saw me several times as she was out gardening or doing her thing in the yard, but she didn’t have a clue until I couldn’t walk in for dinner.”

She covered her mouth with her hand, trying to suppress her amusement at what she suspected had been a very painful part of his past. “How long were you out on that lounge chair?”

“About four hours.” He shook his head at his insanity now. “I can’t tell you how badly I had to go to the bathroom, not to mention how hungry I was. But there was nothing that would convince me to tell my mother what had happened.”

She smothered another horrified giggle but prompted, “You eventually did, right?”

“Nope. If you didn’t come to dinner, you missed dinner. That was the rule of our house with six kids. My parents had to be pretty strict about some things and meals were one of those things. It was only when one of my friends’ mother called my mom asking me if I was okay before she finally realized that I wasn’t doing too well. My mother and father came outside after that phone call, looked down at me in the lawn chair and realized that neither one of my legs looked quite right, which is when they went into uber-parent action. In a matter of minutes, an ambulance was on the way and my sisters were outside wringing their hands while one of my brothers smacked me upside the head.”

She covered her mouth to hide her laughter, but it didn’t help. “Oh, James, that sounds terrible.”

He waved that aside. “That’s nothing. We were generally always in trouble.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Nah. With four huge boys, my sisters never had any kind of peace. Stockings were nail polished shut at the knees, bras were knotted, underwear might suddenly appear in their boyfriend’s tree…we were always getting into some sort of trouble and I think my parents knew the emergency room doctors by name by the time we all went away for college.”

Her eyes were wide with horror. “You did all that to your sisters?”

“You should hear some of the things they did to me and my brothers!”

She laughed and placed a hand on his chest, shaking her head. “Another time,” she laughed. “I don’t think I could take another story like that last one.”

She stepped into the master bedroom and loved the large picture windows that were on two walls. “This is great!” she said and circled the large, empty room. “Are you putting carpeting in or are you doing hardwood floors?”

James watched from the doorway as she looked around and he could easily picture her in this room surrounded by their kids as they raced through the furniture while avoiding getting ready for bed. He relished the thought and wondered if she would run screaming from the house if she knew what he was thinking. She was still stuck on spending the rest of her life with Edward Livingston but James was starting to think that he had other ideas for this little lady. Plans that didn’t include Edward or his orderly, scheduled existence. And his plans were growing more and more appealing as he got to know her better.

So far, besides her strict upbringing, the only thing bad he’d discovered about this slender woman was the way she wanted to live out a boring life with a man who thought and acted exactly like she did. No, he didn’t think that was a very good idea. That path would only lead to boredom and eventual divorce and he wanted Julianna to be happy. He smiled as he thought about what she really needed. She should spend the rest of her life with someone completely opposite to her personality. Someone like him, he thought with relish. Yes, he could challenge her more than Edward ever could. She might not always like it, but he suspected she would be happy just trying to survive living with him.

He chuckled as he thought about all the fights they were going to have throughout their life. And all the makeup sex they could share after he instigated those fights! Yes, that was a much better path, he thought with relish.

They wandered through the other rooms and Julianna offered some additional suggestions for pieces that might work in the various areas. He rejected some and told her he’d have to see her other ideas in person before he would agree to them. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust her style. He just wanted another excuse to see her. The timid woman would use any excuse to hide away from him he’d learned and he wasn’t going to let her do that. Especially now that he’d seen her laugh as she had earlier. Julianna had a very melodic, sweet laugh that almost punched him in the gut when he heard it, but it was a good kind of punch.

After the tour of the house, he brought her into the back yard and spread out a soft blanket on the grass that had the additional cushion of the autumn leaves that had fallen recently. She curled up on one side of the blanket and tried to peer into the basket. “Shouldn’t we start with dessert first?” she suggested, her hunger rising up to take hold of her since she’d eaten so little today. Chocolate was basically an elixir for all things and especially hunger. “We don’t want the chocolate to melt, right?”

James raised one eyebrow, then narrowed his eyes as he took in her pale complexion. “Have you eaten anything today?”

“Of course,” she said easily. Julianna was relieved to be able to honestly say that she had eaten something today. An apple as she was walking out of the house to work counted as ‘something’ she thought silently. Not that she was going to list her apple as a meal, but she wasn’t lying to him. She’d just been late this morning due to her foray into the strange world of crazy lust in his arms last night and hadn’t slept much, too disturbed by the way her body was still tingling all over, especially when she remembered the way his hands felt on her bare skin.

She definitely wasn’t going to admit
that
to him though. She shuddered at what he might think of her if she told him how frustrated she’d been as she’d tried sleeping after he left.