Mattie.
“He has been well for a full day. Look, he is moving about and is also packed quite snugly. Also,” she told him lightly, “his lips are still pink.”
Was he still in love with his wife? Did he still think of her? Julianna didn’t want to know the answers. Just thinking the question angered her. It frightened her, as well. How could she be jealous of a dead woman? Mattie was dead! She was never coming back!
Just as with Elias and Avice. Mattie wasn’t here, but Julianna was.
Still, he’d loved someone else, kissed someone else—she didn’t let herself go on. She may have married, but she never loved Phillip. And still, she had chosen him over Nicholas. It made her belly ache and her skin crawl.
She wrung her hands. He smiled at his son.
She’d never loved anyone but him. She’d never told him. She assumed he knew.
“Do you think of her often?” she asked him against the howling wind.
“Who?”
“Mattie.”
He turned for a moment to scowl at her. Julianna bristled and then cut her gaze to Elias.
“Am I not permitted to mention her name?”
“You take liberties with the manner in which you speak to me.”
She quirked her brow at him, then dipped her chin. “Forgive me, but what do you mean?”
“Lift your head when you speak to me,” he commanded then waited until she did. “You use our familiarity as a gateway to go where you should not go.
Her mouth opened wide with insult. She was about to tell him where he should put that opinion.
She understood that if she didn’t know him so well, she would not have asked him about something so personal. But she wasn’t using the familiarity to win him back.
She intended on telling him but received a mouthful of snow from Elias’ pudgy hand instead. He squealed with laughter, making her and his father laugh, too.
She spit out any unmelted snow and went after him. He took off running, laughing as he went. When she caught him, she lifted his rosy cheek to her lips and lavished him with wet, cold kisses then she whispered something in his ear.
With mischief gleaming their eyes, they picked up the snow, packed it in their hands, (Julianna helped Elias pack his) and threw it at Nicholas.
He ducked and avoided her ball. Julianna and Elias rushed him, picking up snow and throwing it at him as they went. Nicholas laughed and he didn’t run. He took the snow that came to him and grabbed them both up in his arms when his son and Julianna reached him.
They fell to the ground in fits of laughter. Elias was the first to sober and move away. Julianna watched him and sat up. Nicholas stood to his feet and offered her help getting up. She was sorry the moment had passed.
“Forgive me for that,” he said, pulling her to her feet by one hand.
“For what?” she asked, coming up close to his body.
He lowered his eyelids, concealing his gaze within his lush, dark lashes. When he spoke, his voice was low and deep near her cheek. “For taking you into my arms as if I had any right to.” He backed away, breaking contact and putting distance between them. “I do not have the right, nor do I want it. But you are hard to resist for many reasons.”
He didn’t want it. He didn’t want her. Julianna’s heart broke and her spirit fainted within her. “Why do you want to resist me?”
He lifted his lashes and met her gaze. His eyes were like flashes across a summer sky, offering no mercy from its consuming fire. “Because everyone I have ever loved has been taken from me.”
She remembered his mournful lament when he thought his son had been lost to him. This was what he meant. But Nicholas had left his son, her mind argued. But he hadn’t begun to love him then, her heart replied.
“I lost you once,” he continued, “and it nearly destroyed me. I cannot, I will not go through it again.”
She couldn’t tell him she’d always loved him. He would ask her why she had refused him. She wasn’t ready to confess her cowardice to him.
