Forbidden Yearning: A Billionaire's Obsession

Prolog: Bella knew when the obsession had started. She was fourteen, painfully shy, cowering behind her father's legs at a holiday party where anyone over five feet tall and not related to her seemed grotesquely tall and glamorous while she felt ridiculous and inept. The Moreaus were middle-class and were invited solely because Robert had designed the glass staircase in Julian Devereux's penthouse. The rest flaunted wealth like another layer of skin. Bella had a grip on a paper cup of punch, careful not to dribble anything, wishing she were Lilliputian and could shrivel up into nothing. And then Julian appeared. He had flown in from an international flight, a charcoal suit on and his hair ruffled slightly by the wind. He seemed impossibly composed, impossibly untouchable. Adults bowed down to him as they would to a king. He smiled politely, shook hands, and exchanged words that Bella could not comprehend. And then, he turned toward her. His eyes softened. He squatted so he was not standing over her. "Bella Moreau?" he inquired, as if she were worth knowing. She nodded, cheeks burning. "Your dad never shuts up about how great you are. Designer in the making, right?" "N-not yet," she whispered. "I think you will be." His smile was warm, grounding. As if he had recognized something in her that no one else had thought noteworthy. That small, innocent moment lodged itself in her chest like a spark begging for air. It happened whenever he stopped by her father's house, or joined them for dinner, and even when she saw him on TV during a business interview. A slight tremor of awe. A quiet sort of worship. She grew up. So did the feeling. It had edged, deepened, widened into something she could not name without choking on guilt.  *** Bella was glued to her laptop screen, staring at the logo mock-up she'd been altering for almost two hours. It was for a little local coffee shop in Brooklyn, nothing big or glamorous, nothing remotely akin to the work she wanted to do. The client asked for something "edgy but cozy," a ridiculous contradiction that made her want to scream. And yet she continued to work, working the curve of a coffee bean she no longer even liked looking at. But she couldn't blame the logo for her lack of focus. Her mind was slipping, drifting, sliding, really back to the man she must not be thinking about. Julian. Her father's best friend. Her lifelong obsession. She shifted the open design file to a point outside herself and smacked her head down on the desk, cackling. "Pull yourself together, Bella," she muttered to the wood. "He's forty. He dates supermodels. You’re… you." She sat up and rubbed her eyes. She knew this wasn't normal. She was well aware that by now she should have been over the whole crush thing, in high school, if not sooner. But the love had never left her. If anything, they had grown into something much worse, an ache she bore like a bruise that never faded. Her phone buzzed. Dad: Dinner at 7? Julian's joining us. Her pulse leaped, treacherous and excited. She shouldn't have been excited. She should have been neutral. Detached. Mature. She was disassembling her closet in the next hour or so, looking for something that said 'accidentally pretty' instead of trying way too hard for a man who will never see you that way. She chose a soft cream sweater that dipped just enough at the collarbone to be flattering without being obvious. Subtle. Safe. Harmless. She just kept saying to herself she wasn't doing this for him. That she only wanted to look nice for herself. She didn't believe it. It was warm, it glowed, and it made enough noise to be alive, but not so much that her father had to raise his voice while going on about work. Bella sat facing him, swirling her water so she wouldn't have to look at the seat now empty next to her. Trying not to hope. The door opened, and something in her pulled tight. Just like Julian, too! He sauntered, as he did everything else, as if he owned it. Dark navy suit. Crisp white shirt. Still wearing the now speckled black coat months after the January snow. He shivered and brushed past it as he sat down at the table, giving Robert a warm smile. And then... His gaze landed on her. It only lasted a second. A brief flicker of surprise, then warm gentleness on his face. "Bella," he said. "You look… grown up." Robert laughed. "She's twenty-three, Julian. She’s been grown up." Julian laughed as he sat down next to her. She could sense static in every inch of space between their bodies. "Working on anything fun?" Julian asked, turning toward her. For some reason, his deep voice was always a touch softer when he spoke to her, gentler, in a way that made her chest squeeze. "Just freelance stuff." Her voice betrayed her. Too breathy. Too eager. "Show him," Robert said. "The designs you do are wonderful." Bella attempted, though not entirely convincingly, to conceal her embarrassment. She pulled out her tablet and called up the coffee shop's letterhead. Julian moved in close, peering at the screen with so much concentration that she could feel her fingers shaking. "It's clean," he said. "Balanced. You have a good eye for negative space." Her heart fluttered. He remembered the terms he had taught her when she showed him her first portfolio at sixteen. He remembered. She swallowed the warmth that welled up in her chest. It wasn't right how much value she placed on every crumb of attention he gave her. "You're so gifted, Bella," he murmured. “Don't doubt that." She wasn't sure what to say. So she didn't. She could only nod, afraid her voice would give way. Robert started talking about corporate architecture, oblivious to the silent storm swirling inches from his daughter. Julian leaned back in his chair, listening, elbows on the table. Occasionally, she felt his eyes flick in her direction, swift and sly, passing over her as lightly as feathers. But each one set off a silent bomb beneath her ribs. Dinner finished with promises to meet again, and Bella attempted not to watch Julian as he hugged her father goodnight. He didn't hug her; he never had, but he pressed his hand briefly to her shoulder. Warm. Steady. Destroying her. "Get home safely," he said. She nodded, the roof of her mouth glued to her tongue. She stumbled out of the restaurant past cold blasts of winter air, panting gasps of steam, whirling thoughts too fast to form correctly. She knew the kind of love it was not supposed to be. It wasn't supposed to be guilt baked into longing. It wasn't meant for someone; it should have been hands-off. It was not meant to be this serious, this consuming, this... Impossible. And yet her chest contracted with the same old pain she'd been dragging around for years. Warm, kind, and oblivious to the wreckage he left behind. She had to tell herself she could handle it. She promised herself she would bury the feelings. She let herself think she would forget how it felt to have his hand on her shoulder. She lied. An acceptable one at that, even though she wasn't aware that, in only a few weeks, her father would be boarding a plane to London... and she would be moving in with Julian into his penthouse. Into his world. Into his orbit. Into the fire, she had long pretended she wasn't already burning in.