His eyes narrowed before he put his drink down and took two steps toward her.
She took two steps back and her bottom hit the edge of his desk. She might be angry but she didn’t like talking about this and, furthermore, it was none of his concern. She was beginning to be furious he’d put her in a position of defending herself, just as furious as she was scared of him. He was frightening when he was brooding like this, immensely so.
“What other things?” he asked when he’d stopped advancing.
“Nothing, just… it seems silly now but at the time –”
“Yes?” he prompted, obviously not willing to read into it and demanding she explain.
“Sean could be very cruel,” Julia replied simply.
Cruel was not the word for it. It was more than cruel the way Sean spoke to her. It was soul-destroying.
“How so?” Douglas pushed.
She sighed deeply, wondering how to explain it, wondering if a man like Douglas could even understand it.
“He didn’t hit me or anything.” Her eyes skittered away. She hated to think about it and had learned, over the years, to set it aside. It wasn’t her, she told herself over and over again, it was Sean. He was destructive, belittling, domineering and hurtful. She didn’t make him that way; he’d been that way always. It still made her heart ache, even after all these years. “He would just… say things,” she finished.
Silence.
Then in a tone that was far quieter, dangerously quiet, Douglas pressed, “Say things?”
“Yes, things. Stupid things. Hateful things. Just things meant to hurt me. They were just words and it was silly of me to give them power.”
Again, he was silent and she felt it sounded foolish even to her own ears.
“He was mean, a bully,” she explained, exasperated with herself at the memory of how she was so weak, and further angry at herself for letting those long ago memories tear at her insides now. “He just wanted me to feel small so he could be the big man. I shouldn’t have let it affect me but I loved him and wanted him to love me, so I did. Let it affect me, that is. It was… he meant to… it just…”
She didn’t know how to explain it to a powerful, rich, fit, tall, famous man who probably never felt small in his whole life. She couldn’t put into words how, day-by-day, Sean would methodically strip her of her sense of humour, sense of fun, sense of self until he shredded her confidence and made her a quivering wreck. He never stopped and she was always scared of him, scared of what he would say and do, scared to do anything to cause his displeasure. She became scared of what others felt about her and wondering if they saw all the same ugly things Sean seemed to see. She had to build a wall of bravado around her simply so she could function.
Then, of course, there was the long and difficult journey to find herself again when Sean was finally gone.
“Hurt,” she finished and her voice betrayed vividly in that one word just how destructive Sean had been.
Douglas walked forward again and Julia had no place to retreat so she held her ground.
“And what did your brother do about this?” he asked, his tone still quiet, the menace somehow gone but that didn’t make her less frightened. If anything, she was more so because now his quiet tone was also, shockingly, gentle.
He looked down on her; he was so close she could feel the heat from his body. She ignored it and pressed on and she did this in an effort to finish this discussion and move on.
“Well,” she hesitated, staring in his expressionless face, “after the divorce, he waited, of course, until I’d ended it, I think… I don’t know, but I think that Gavin arranged for Sean to have an accident.”
Douglas went very still and she rushed on, “I have no way of knowing if he did it but the police said it was suspicious, the accident. They interviewed me a couple of times, thinking I might have had something to do with it, but they never could prove anything. Gavin was so angry, he hated Sean anyway and when I told him some of the things Sean had said. Well… once, when I was in high school, some boys were talking about me, saying nasty things and Gavin took them on, all five of them. They eventually beat the hell out of Gavin but he did a good deal of damage before they overcame him and, after that, the talk stopped. It was known from then on that I was Gavin Fairfax’s sister and no one was to mess with me. It played havoc with my social life, let me tell you.” It was a lame joke but she was trying to lighten the very heavy mood.
Douglas’s face was no longer blank and he was not amused by her joke. His look was now strangely intense (or more intense than was normal with Douglas) as he stared down at her and she had to tilt her head back to look at him.
She found she was holding her breath.
“So you think, because Webster ‘messed with you’, Gavin arranged for him to have an accident?” he asked, his voice deceptively calm but underlying it there was hint of an emotion Julia could not put her finger on.
“Yes. I don’t know, maybe. It’s not entirely out of character for Gavin. He seemed very easygoing but you didn’t mess with someone he loved. What the police said, it sounded bad. Sean wasn’t beloved by all, so it could have been others, but Gavin could be, well, he protected Mom and me our whole lives as the man of the family after our father left, even when he was a little boy. So I wouldn’t put it past him to protect me like that, get vengeance for me. Sean wasn’t hurt too badly, he survived. It was just a warning.” She hoped to make it seem not as bad as it sounded. “We’re close,” she went on. “It was only the three of us, we all took care of each other. So, Gavin took care of me and now… now I’m taking care of his children,” she finished on a shrug and hoped he understood. She wanted desperately to get away from him, wanted to escape his bizarre intensity, wanted to stop talking about Sean.
“Gavin didn’t arrange for Webster to have an accident,” Douglas announced firmly, surprising her with his words.
“How do you know?”
“Because I did,” he told her bluntly without a hint of hesitation.
Julia gasped and her eyes rounded in disbelief.
Then she cried, “What?”
“He was an ass,” was all he said to explain.
She stared at him, stunned, then whispered, “You? You did it?”
“I may do it again,” he muttered as if to himself.
“But why? Why did you do it?” She ignored his last comment.
“He was an ass,” Douglas repeated.
“Did Gavin ask you to?”
“No.”
Then it dawned on her.
“Tamsin,” she breathed.
He moved closer to her but she didn’t notice. She was too astounded by his incredible announcement.
“She told me,” Julia explained, “long after Sean was gone. She told me he made a pass at her, a rather unpleasant pass. She told you too, didn’t she?”
It was then Julia realised how close he was to her. If she moved, her breasts would brush against his chest. She started to feel a rising panic, both because of his unpredictable mood and of her body’s acute response to his closeness.
“What would he say to you?” he asked, abruptly changing the subject and she faltered.
“What?” she blinked, not following.
“Webster. What would he say to you?”
“Why do you want to know?”
And why did he want to know? Not only was it none of his business but she couldn’t imagine he’d care.
“Just tell me,” he demanded.
“I don’t want to, I don’t like thinking about it.”
To her further shock, his hands came up, both of them. Gently resting on either side of her jaw, he held her face and Julia’s body went still.