Chapter 26 Gus

Julia leans her head against my shoulder and sighs. She always finds the perfect spot to rest her head so neither of us ends up uncomfortable. We could be here for hours—and I'm not complaining. I can't think of a better way to spend a flight from Vienna to Boston.

"Tired?" I ask before I plant a kiss on her hair. And another. I've been doing that as much as possible since yesterday. Kissing her, touching her, staring at her unabashedly. It comes naturally and makes me so damn happy.

"Not tired. Wistful," she admits. "I love Vienna. We should go back soon."

"We can go anytime you want," I assure her. Another kiss. Okay, two more, actually. Fuck it—three. Then I hold her hand, because I can't sit here and not hold her hand. "Now that the takeover is underway, all I have is time."

Surprised, Julia pulls her head back to look at my face. One of her eyebrows tilts upwards in that cute, amused way. "Pardon me?" she inquires, now eyeing me like I'm not the man she just spent the last forty-eight hours banging so hard that the guests in the room below us called the front desk because they thought there was a murder underway.

"Did I say something wrong?"

Julia cants her head to the side. "You, with free time? Unheard of. This is the part when you tell me you're kidding."

"I'm not. I'm nearly unemployed."

"So? Employed or not, I plan to keep you busy in Montana. We're supposed to hunker down in the cabin until we've run out of surfaces to fuck on. Oh, and in the rare moments when we're not fucking, you'll be working nonstop on your book."

"We can christen every surface of the cabin, work on my book, and go to Vienna, love."

"I don't know," she says before biting on her lower lip flirtatiously. "It's a big cabin."

"We have the stamina, don't we?" I reply, shrugging.

She bobs her head in agreement. In fact, she nods so vigorously, I nearly miss her mouth when I pull her into a deep, probing kiss.

Being in love for the first time in twenty years makes me realize I was an idiot for putting it off so long. Regret is now my middle name, and even though I know we ended up in the right place, I'm annoyed it took me so damn long. In hindsight, I should have gone up to Julia on the night of her father's birthday party, assured her I would screw her filthily and love her madly for the next fifty years, and we could have been in a love drunk haze for five or six months by now.

And "love drunk haze" is the best way to put it. When we woke up the night after the chaos with Jay, we didn't leave the bed. We quite literally stayed there for another six hours, alternating between fucking, eating room service, and talking about what happens between us now that everything has changed.

I love her. She loves me. We're together.

We agreed: From this point on, we don't leave each other's sides. I'm going to follow her around the world and she's going to follow me back to Montana whenever I need a break from the jet setting. I'll work on my book and Julia wants to find a job—which I support completely.

It's simple. There's no reason for it to be anything but simple.

The kiss lasts us all through the descent and landing, and when my plane's wheels have touched the ground, I'm so worked up that I'm visibly hard through my pants. I'm going to have to cross the tarmac and into the waiting SUV with this—

"Oh my god," Julia blurts out, like a record scratch cutting right through my rose-colored fantasies.

My stomach knots when her posture stiffens. She frowns deeply while she stares at her phone with her mouth agape. Her left hand grips the device so hard, it shakes. Frantically, she presses the screen, her motions growing increasingly frenzied with each second.

"What's wrong?" I demand. Every inch of my skin tingles with alarm. "Julia, what's wrong?"

"Jay," she sputters out, finally looking at me. "He told."

"Told what?" I reach out and grab her hand. "Told who?"

"About us," she continues, dropping her phone into her lap. "I told him about the deal. Our deal. Jesus, I'm so stupid."

"Hey," I warn. "Never say that."

"I broke the NDA," she blurts out, exasperated. She fumbles to undo her seatbelt. "I told him everything, Gus. I told him..."

She trails off, but I know what she refuses to say: that she slept with me in exchange for FundRight.

Her anguish is killing me. An overwhelming urge to take her in my arms consumes me, but I can tell she doesn't want to be held right now. She wants to solve this—immediately.

"Julia, talk to me. Let me help. Has he told anyone?"

Silently, she nods. Her big eyes look so guilty.

"Who did he tell? Because we have a hell of a lot of money, and we can pay—"

"He told The Carraway."

My heart damn near stops. Shit. He told a publication about how I demanded Julia. About how I bartered for her. Played dirty to get her. This could easily end my career.

"And they published it?" I question, anger riddling my tone. "The story is out? Because I can have my lawyers on this so fast—"

"They've held the story for now," she interjects, gulping in air to steady herself.

Relief washes over me. "So, nobody knows yet."

The exhalation she releases is so reticent and strained that I know this debacle is only just beginning. Sure enough, Julia wipes a tear away with the back of her hand and says, "They've held the story because they've blackmailed my father for ten million dollars."