1Love Redesigned (Lakefront Billionaires, #1)(47)

He hasn’t called me that since college, right after he kissed me senseless.

A kiss he regretted instantly.

Screw him.

I tug open the first drawer within grabbing distance and point at the file in front. “Scan the pages for anything related to the house, Gerald Baker, or someone named Francesca.”



“I think I found something.” Julian’s eyes flick over the clipping in his hand.

“What?” After thirty minutes of scanning newspapers, I can’t contain the excitement in my voice.

“Follow me.” Julian leads us toward a nearby table.

He pulls my chair out and waits. I slide in, and the tips of his fingers brush across my shoulder blades as he pushes me closer to the table. Thankfully, my harsh inhale isn’t heard over the scraping of the chair legs against the floor.

Julian’s arm brushes up against mine as he points to the headline. My body leans into his touch before I snap out of whatever spell he has me under.

“Gerald died before the house was fully completed.”

I blink. “No!”

“Look.” He shoves the article toward me before scooting his chair away.

I read the article with a frown. According to the reporter, Gerald died from a bacterial infection and was survived by his two dogs. Town sources close to Gerald mentioned how he refused to go to the hospital because he wanted to die in the comfort of his half-finished home.

My eyes itch. “That’s so freaking sad.”

“Stories like this make me glad I was born after penicillin was invented.”

I check out the grainy image of Gerald holding a shovel in front of a plot of land. “He never lived long enough to see his house get completed.”

“It appears not.”

“Or marry his true love.”

“Not many do.” There is a slight edge to his voice.

“She must have been heartbroken when she got the news about his death.”

“Why?”

I rear back. “What do you mean why? Because they were in love.”

“If she truly loved him, she would have stuck by his side from the beginning.”

“He was the one who told her not to come until the town was finished.”

“Then it was her mistake to listen to him.”

I can’t help feeling defensive over Francesca and her choices, especially when I see a bit of her in myself. “She waited for him, wrote him letters, and held on to a dream that one day they would get married despite the odds stacked against them. That’s what people do when they’re in love.”

“So you say.”

The audacity of this man. “For someone who has never been in love, you sure have a lot of opinions on the matter.”

The vein in his neck pulses with each erratic beat of his heart.

I continue, “What if he was the one who didn’t want to take the risk on her? What if she begged to join him, but he shut her down time and time again? He could have asked her to marry him at any time, and perhaps her father would have agreed because he wanted what was best for his daughter.”

“That’s a lot of assumptions.”

“You’re the one jumping to conclusions here by judging her for not being brave enough to join him, when maybe he was the one too afraid of the risks. Maybe he should have built a life with her rather than erecting a wall to keep her out.”

Shit. Shit. Shit!

His fist clenches and unclenches against the table. “Dahlia—”

My gaze dips back to the newspaper in the worst attempt to hide my flushed face. “Anyway, Gerald is probably the ghost, so the case is solved.”

“I never judged you.” Despite his whispering, he might as well have shouted the words.

“I was talking about Francesca.” I stand.

He does the same. “Funny, because for a moment, it felt like you were talking about us.”

My throat feels like he wrapped both hands around it and squeezed. “That’s quite the narcissistic assumption of you.”

“No mames. Háblame.”

I drag my eyes away from his balled-up fists. “You’re about ten years too late for that conversation, don’t you think?”

“Clearly this is a big mistake.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time you said that.”

He opens his mouth, only to slam it shut.

Truth is, I can give Julian a hundred different chances to explain his choice to push me away, but it won’t change the truth he made painfully obvious.

He didn’t want me.

A bitter laugh claws its way up my throat. “It’s fine.”

“I never meant to hurt you.” He exposes my insecurities with a single sentence.

Háblame: Talk to me.



“You didn’t,” I lie.

“What I did…” He loses his voice, along with whatever nerve he had found in the first place.

Good. I prefer it that way.

“Things happen the way they’re meant to,” I say.

He folds and unfolds the newspaper, only to refold it again. “I never expected you to go into design too.”

He would have if he had given me a chance to explain my hopes and fears instead of assuming he knew what was best for me by pushing me to stay at Stanford to finish a political science degree I never wanted.