Page 120 of Masters of Secrets

Raised voice out in the front yard? Her mom really was serious.

Spinning on her heel, Julie crossed her arms over her chest. Her mom might be serious, but she was, too. She couldn’t stop her parents from talking to her ex. She couldn’t stop them from inviting him over. But she could damn well remove herself from the situation when they did.

“What, Mom?” She snapped the words out, the Domme voice popping up unexpectedly, and felt both satisfied and guilty when her mom pulled up short, eyes widening in surprise.

“I… I really didn’t know if you’d be available, so I called you both. I left him a voicemail. I didn’t know he was going to show up.” Her mom’s tone wheedled, but Julie wasn’t having any of it.

“You also didn’t call him back to let him know he was unneeded. And once he was here, you invited him to lunch.”

Her mom huffed.

“Well, it would be rude to have him show up and send him away immediately. You can’t expect me to be rude, Julie.”

Expect? No. Want? Yes.

“He was our son for years, Julie. It wasn’t our choice for that to change.”

Ah, yes, here it came. The guilt trip. She’d deprived them of their perfect surgeon son. Never mind that she’d become incredibly unhappy married to him. Never mind that she’d been the only one putting any work into the relationship for years because she’d known how disappointed her parents would be when it ended. Nope, what mattered was that she’d chosen herself and her own happiness, and somehow, that wasn’t what her parents wanted for her.

“You haven’t found anyone since him. Maybe you two should⁠—”

“I’m seeing someone.” She said it before she could really think through whether she should say it. But seeing the look on her mom’s face was nearly as satisfying as her reaction to Julie’s Domme voice. Her eyes bulged even more, and her mouth dropped open in pure shock.

“You are?” Her mom’s voice was high and squeaky.

“I am,” she said firmly. “So you’ll understand why I certainly can’t stay here and have lunch with my ex-husband.”

Turning on her heel, she hurried to her car before her mom could recover from the shock of the announcement. Maybe her mom would stop trying to reconnect her and John now… or maybe she’d just made things worse.

Chapter Thirteen

Connor

Julie: Dinner this Friday at six?

Connor: Yes, Ma’am.

Julie: Marquis is booked up.

Connor: Just dinner is fine, too. We can always go somewhere afterward.

Julie: Stronghold?

Connor stared at the text message as though it was about to jump out of his phone and bite him.

He wasn’t sure he was ready for that. Even though his friends had been accepting. Even though his friends’ girlfriends had been accepting.

After Friday night at Marquis, he hadn’t gone to Stronghold over the weekend. If someone asked him why not, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to explain.

Maybe partly because he liked Marquis better. The privacy. The room to sleep in afterward. Falling asleep holding Mistress Julie had resulted in the best sleep of his life. Other than waking up with one of his arms also asleep. But it hadn’t mattered because he’d been so damn happy.

Even that she’d had to rush off to help her parents didn’t bother him. He’d been able to hear the phone call—her mom talked kind of loudly—so he knew she wasn’t blowing him off.

None of that bothered him. The idea of scening publicly at Stronghold—just the idea of walking in and having to face everyone he’d been lying to—he wasn’t sure he was ready for that yet. He knew that eventually he would have to, but eventually didn’t mean ‘now.’

His phone dinged again.

Julie: We don’t have to scene there; we can just hang out at the bar. Or we can go somewhere else if you’re more comfortable.