“Yes, but I thought?—”
He placed a finger lightly on the full lips that had brought him real pleasure, but not true love.Never that.“You thought wrong.”
She was crying openly now.
“I don’t want to hurt you, but I was honest from the start about what this was—and what it wasn’t.”
“You care about me, too.I can tell!Why won’t you let yourself have feelings?”
He didn’t have time to deal with a question that’d take all day to answer.“Because I don’t want to.I’ve got court in an hour.I’ve got to go.”
Julian had just enough time to run home to shower and change.His driver, Ernie, would pick him up at home and get him to the Stanley Mosk Courthouse downtown for a trial he’d been working toward for a year.He couldn’t wait to present the case and to watch his client’s ex-husband’s face when he presented irrefutable proof of his douchebaggery.While that wasn’t an official legal term, it should be.Bryan McDavid was the poster child for the concept.
Stacey got out of bed and followed him to the door, grabbing his arm.“You can’t just dismiss me like hired help when you’re finished with me.”The angry edge to her voice was new and unattractive.
When he turned to face her, he saw she was naked as the day she was born, with her considerable assets on full display.Those assets didn’t change anything for him.“That’s not what I’m doing.”
The tears had dried up, and her pretty eyes seethed with outrage.“I said something I didn’t mean.Don’t be so dramatic.”
“Take care of yourself, Stacey.I hope you find what you’re looking for.”
“Julian!”
She was still screaming his name from her doorway when the elevator doors quietly came together to get him out of there.
Julian leaned against the back wall, closed his eyes and sighed over yet another near miss.Why did they never believe him when he told them—in the bluntest possible words—that he’d never fall in love with them, he’d never marry them or be anything more to them than a hard cock once in a while?Why did they always want more?
What else could he have done or said to prevent this latest in a long list of scenes that occurred whenever he had to remind a woman that he was exactly who he’d said he was from the beginning?
Most people spent their lives waiting and hoping to hear those three little words.For Julian, his brothers and sisters, they were the worst three words in the English language to hear from a romantic partner.Love, as they’d experienced it, was a battlefield, a place where people tore apart those supposedly dearest to them on their way out the door.
No, thank you.
The Remington siblings wanted nothing to do with that four-letter word.The other one, the less socially acceptable four-letter word?They were all for that one, but when l-o-v-e entered the room, they were out the door so fast the heads of their now-former partners were left spinning as they hit the road and never looked back.
Maybe Julian should’ve clued Stacey in on what he’d been thinking when they were having sex.He should’ve told her he was reviewing his schedule for the day and making a mental list of things he needed to do ahead of each appointment.
Then she’d know what a heartless bastard he really was and would realize she could do better.
After Julian made a quick stop at home to shower, shave and change into one of the bespoke suits he was known for, Ernie picked him up for court, the one place in the world where everything made sense to him.That’s where he helped his clients get out of the very thing Stacey wanted with him.It’s where he negotiated the future for innocent children who’d become pawns in their parents’ wars, the way he and his siblings had once been.
Ernie handed Julian a tall Americano with oat milk.At nearly seventy, Ernie was a proud Vietnam veteran who still wore a missing-in-action bracelet on his tattooed forearm.He’d been a nineteen-year-old Marine when he was sent to the jungles of Vietnam to fight a war that’d never made sense to him or most of the guys he served with.He’d tell you they’d served their country and would do it again, despite the decades of PTSD most of them had lived with, not to mention the less-than-welcoming reception they received when they’d first returned home.
These days, Ernie hung his hat out at the beach in Venice in a “shack by the sea”—as he put it—with his girlfriend and loved his job as Julian’s driver.
“Thanks,” Julian said for the coffee Ernie bought for both of them any time he picked Julian up at home.
“How was your night?”Ernie asked.
“Better than my morning.”
Ernie glanced at him in the mirror.“How’ve you already had a shitty morning?”
“Had to give Stacey the bad news that I meant it when I said I don’t do relationships.”
“Ah, and I take it that went over well?”
“As it usually does.”
