Page 72 of The Husband Diet
I sighed. Sex with Ira had been a fight – a war. But with Julian it was easy to feel something good. If only I could talk to him about Tuscany.
Are you nuts?My alter ego snapped at me.You barely know the guy and you want to drag him all the way to Europe? Don’t you think you’re taking a lot for granted?
Maybe, I snapped back.But if I don’t risk it, how will I ever know?
You’re in for a big crash, it countered.You talk to him about the future, especially in another country, and you’re going to scare the crap out of him. Your own husband and father of your children wouldn’t follow you – what makes you think Julian would? At least wait a while before you drop that bomb on him.
Well, my conscience was certainly right about that. I couldn’t do that to him so early in the relationship. But sooner or later, if this continued, it would have to take some direction, right? But for now, I’d take what life gave me. Which was countless orgasms a week. Not that I was complaining, mind you.
‘Erica, you’re amazingly sexy,’ Julian whispered against the side of my face, and then down between my breasts as his hands traveled over and over my butt.
Oh boy. If he kept that up, we’d be doing it among the artichokes.
But how exactly was I sure this could lead to Tuscany? There was no way I was ready to trust a man again just yet. Not even Julian. But the sex, I could enjoy and milk forever. Until he got sick of me and would break the heart I professed had been closed for business. Not to mention the kids – they adored him. What if he broke their hearts, too? This was something I couldn’t accept.
I kissed him back and he sighed.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘I told you, Erica. I don’t just want this to be about sex.’
‘Why don’t we take one day at a time, huh?’ I whispered softly lest the kids came back downstairs and then I’d have one hell of a task explaining why Mr. Foxham had his hands down Mommy’s pants.
He ran a hand through his gorgeous black hair and nodded. ‘OK, we’ll do it your way. For now.’
Which to me sounded not like an ultimatum, but a promise.
27
Irreconcilable Differences
One rainy afternoon, Julian asked me to meet him at his home. Was he going to dump me? Or move our sex relationship up to the next level, with maybe leather straps and chains? Hell! If I knew what was going on between us, really.
At first, I’d said yes (to meeting him at home – not the chains), but by the time I was due there, I chickened out and went to my local coffee shop for a cappuccino instead and watched the streets flood under the sudden downpour. There were a thousand things that I still worried about.
Due to my healing self-confidence, and also thanks to Julian’s reactions to me in and out of bed, my weight was no longer an issue for me anymore. Sure, I wasn’t Barbie, but I was no longer obese. Big? Sure – but happy, too. I’d taken to seeing myself as Julian did – curvy and sexy. And that, in a normal woman’s mind, should only have been the start of a happy ending. But you know me and my obsessive fears.
What if he suffered from Superman syndrome and eventually got fed up with saving me? He’d break my heart and the kids’. I knew I was being a chicken, but I had the horrible feeling that I’d fallen in love with him after, what – a couple of months? On what planet had I allowed that to happen? And to boot, I was still worried about Tuscany.
What person in their right mind would upheave their entire life to follow someone they barely knew halfway across the world? I knew Julian loved his job, his home, his parents. Why the hell would he leave all that for me? It wasn’t like he’d said he loved me or anything, right?
‘Julian?’ I said into my cellphone, my heart in my throat as the rain beat against the large windows of the café. And then I told him why I wouldn’t be keeping our date, all in one breath, before I could change my mind. That I wasn’t ready for another relationship, especially with my kids’ principal. Yeah, it sounded lame to me, too, but when you’re chicken, you’re chicken.
He sighed softly. ‘Where are you?’
I swallowed. No way I was telling him. ‘In the coffee shop round the corner from my home.’ Shit. ‘Don’t come,’ I added lamely.
‘I’ll be there in five.’
‘Don’t! I won’t be here,’ I warned. But who was I kidding?
Exactly five minutes later, he poured into the shop, his jacket flying in the wind behind him, his hair wet from the downpour. He looked damn sexy, all wet from head to toe. What the hell did he want with a woman like me? I had baggage – physical, emotional and lately, even under my eyes.
And I’m passing this guy up?I asked myself, bewildered. I could at leastaskhim if he liked Tuscany, no?
Julian slid into the seat opposite me without a word, his eyes caressing me, so warm my skin began to heat.
He put his hand on mine, his eyes liquid. ‘Hey…’
