Page 74 of Ungodly Rich

“If you give me Abby’s address, I’ll call you a car,” Harry offered. He had come to stand behind her, and for a moment, Julia studied their reflections in the antique Venetian mirror—his so tall, so impossibly handsome, and hers so sad.

“I’m going to take the tube.” Julia grabbed her purse—her real one, not the postage-stamp-sized thing she’d been carrying all night—and slung it over her shoulder.

Harry frowned. “At this hour? I really don’t—”

“This is something that I need to do alone. Please,” she added, her voice breaking, “just let me go.”

Harry went still. Perhaps he, like Julia, didn’t know what she meant by that—whether she was just talking about going to Abby’s or something more.

Julia didn’t look at him as she clattered down the stairs and out the grand front door. Then she was running, down the pathway to the gate, which opened automatically before her. Perhaps it was on a motion sensor, or perhaps a guard somewhere was watching her flee.

The London night felt balmy and warm. Julia slowed to a walk, letting a few cars amble past. She navigated the broad residential streets, all full of enormous houses behind ivy-covered walls or fences, until she reached an avenue with more traffic. The red and white sign for the Underground was up ahead, but Julia didn’t turn toward it. Instead she drifted toward the lights of a café, where a few patrons lingered over glasses of wine or slices of cake.

It was strange to think that none of these people knew about the Ellenes—at least, not outside the pages of a magazine. Just a few months ago Julia had been one of them. She had recognized the family’s name, but that was all. Certainly she’d never spared them more than a passing thought.

Now she had agreed to marry one of them, tobecomeone of them.

Julia stared down at the engagement ring on her finger. For a moment, in the light of the dimming streetlamps, the glitter of the rock crystals felt almost menacing.

She shivered and curled her hand into a fist, hiding the ring from sight.

Maybe this was for the best. If she and Harry weren’t going to work, it was better that she realize it now. She could leave New York and never look back. What if she moved to Europe? Abby would be close, and there were some lovely galleries in Paris, or even right here in London.

Julia turned aside at a crosswalk, tears blurring her vision. She didn’twantto start over. She loved her life with Harry: The mornings where they ran together along the Hudson and ended at Murray’s Bagels. The nights where she reached for him in the dark, and he matched her heat with his own, and then afterward, the way they would talk in thatmeandering, sleepy way about topics serious or absurd. She loved curling up on the couch with him while one of his awful movies played in the background, trying to read her Kindle while his hand kept skirting distractedly up her thigh, until they were making out to the sound of exploding cars and she had to lean over, laughing, to find the remote.

She loved the way Harry made her feel that anything was possible.

Suddenly, all she wanted was to be with him. What the hell was she doing, running away again? She couldn’t bear the prospect that they might be breaking up; it was unthinkable, it was devastating.

Julia turned around, seized by a sudden desire to find him. To talk. She started running through the streets—

“Jules!”

Harry stood in front of her. In her overheated mind, Julia didn’t even question that he was there; she just pulled him close, buried her face in his chest.

“Hey,” he murmured. “It’s going to be okay, don’t worry.”

“I love you,” she sobbed, and then said it again. “I love you, I love you.”

Harry reached beneath her chin to tip her face up. His blue eyes were very serious as he said, “I love you, too. I’ll walk away from all of it for you, okay? We can leave New York, start over somewhere new, forget this whole big production of a wedding.”

Julia managed a smile, touched by the magnitude of the offer. “I couldn’t ask that of you.”

“You didn’t need to ask. I offered.”

Valentine had been wrong about one thing, at least: Harry wouldn’t choose his family over her.

But as much as Julia wanted to say yes, to take him up on the offer and leave his family behind, she knew better.

If she couldn’t give him up, and she couldn’t be the reason he lost his family, then there was only one option left.

“No more running,” she told him. “We’re doing this the right way. But I will need a little more say in things, from now on.”

“AndIneed to mess with Preston a little bit,” Harry declared. At the look on her face, he wore a sheepish expression. “I’m not saying I’lltake a baseball bat to his knees, okay? I just think I could, you know, get him fired from his law firm, or evicted from his house, or something.”

“I don’t want to spend another minute thinking about Preston,” Julia told him.

She was done worrying about the past, done letting it infect her future. She and Harry were together, and that was what mattered.