“Where do you want to go?”
“My place so we can be alone?”
She nodded.“I’d like that.”
Neither of them seemed to want to let go, even for a couple of hours.
“You’ll come back, right?”
Wild gochas couldn’t keep him away.“Yeah,” he said.“I’ll come back.”
As Julian drovethe short distance from her house to his, he felt dazed, as if he was under the influence of something much bigger than him, bigger than anything he’d ever experienced.He couldn’t wait to be with her again.
When he got home, he landed on the sofa, reliving every extraordinary minute he’d spent with her since Jackson told him the news about Gabriel.He was almost afraid to check his phone.
He’d no sooner had that thought than Carson and Griffin came into his house, looking like a pair of angry bears.
Carson put his hands on his hips.“What—and I say this with love—the actual fuck, Julian?”
Griffin used his thumb to point to Carson.“What he said.”
“Sorry to disappear.I had something I needed to do.”
“You had to go to Ojai with Isla Santana and her children on a workday?”
Goddamned Miguel.He was like a gossipy old woman sometimes.
“Yes, I did.”
“While you were gone,” Griffin said, “Rachel McDavid shot and killed her ex-husband when he tried to break into the house where she and the boys were staying.She’s been arrested and booked on manslaughter charges.”
“Oh my God.”Julian sat up straight.“There’s no way she should be charged for defending herself.We need to get her a criminal defense attorney.”
“Already done,” Griffin replied.“Jackson has had one hell of a day.You might want to check in with him.”
“I will.I’m sorry, guys.I needed a minute.”
“For what?”Carson asked.“What in the world could you be thinking, swooping in on a recently widowed woman with two kids?”
“I’m not swooping in on anyone.She’s had a rough week, yes, but she’d tell you herself that the marriage had been over for years, and the only reason she stayed with him as long as she did was because she couldn’t afford to leave.”
“What do we tell all our clients about relationships after divorce, Jules?”Griffin asked.
They cautioned their clients to tread carefully when getting into entanglements after ending a marriage that’d made them unhappy.Those entanglements often ended in disaster for people who were already raw from the ordeal they’d been through with their spouse.Several of Julian’s clients had ended up back in court with romantic partners who’d tried to take advantage of newly divorced people with fat settlements.
He’d been feeling so good before the buzzkillers showed up to ruin the best day he’d had in years.
“By anyone’s standards, Isla has had a week from hell,” Carson said.“She’s the last woman on earth you should be spending time with right now.Tell me you know that.”
“It’s what she wants.”
“Are youhearingyourself?”Carson asked.“What the hell, Julian?What the fuck are youdoing?”
“I don’t know, but it feels pretty damned good.”
“It feels great in the moment, but how will it feel when it blows up in your face because she’s no more ready for something like this than you are?”
“I might be ready for it.”
