Sommersgate House by Kristen Ashley Read Free Book Online Page A

country pub going about its business of closing down for
the night, he turned his thoughts to his current challenge.
    Julia
Fairfax.
    He was
surprised Julia hadn’t remarried. It couldn’t be for lack of
offers.
    He wished she
had. If she’d had a loving home with two parental substitutes to
offer the children, no doubt Tamsin and Gavin would have left them
to Julia alone.
    Douglas would
have accepted that, unless she’d made another foolhardy choice in
husbands, which seemed to run in her family. Patricia Fairfax had
married a philanderer who had run off with an heiress but he
continued to work as a surgeon at the same hospital where Patricia
was a nurse. Trevor Fairfax set up house with his new woman, having
three more children and daily rubbing his former wife’s face in it
until Patricia had become fed up and moved to other employment.
    Gavin and
Julia rarely saw their father when they were growing up; Trevor
Fairfax was so consumed with his other family. By the time Gavin
had his assignment in England as an electrical engineer with a
multi-national construction company, his brother-in-law hadn’t seen
his father in years.
    According to
Douglas’s research (and he most definitely investigated his
future-brother-in-law), Gavin and Julia hadn’t missed much with
their father. Trevor wasn’t invited to the wedding and had never
seen his grandchildren. And, as far as Douglas was concerned, that
was the end of that.
    Which meant,
of course, that, indeed, was the end of that.
    But now, the
Fairfax family was causing another problem and Douglas may have had
a great deal of patience with a lot of things but he had no
patience with problems.
    Julia Fairfax
would be living in his house, with his mother, and that was not
going to work.
    He had
no affection for his mother but she was his mother. He owed his existence to her if nothing else.
But she was a difficult woman and even though she tolerated Gavin,
barely, she loathed his mother and sister.
    Julia was
Gavin’s sister and Douglas liked Gavin. He was one of the few
acquaintances who held both Douglas’s regard and respect. Julia was
also the chosen guardian of Tamsin’s children and that, in addition
to his regard for Gavin, meant Douglas had to find some way to make
the situation work.
    In any other
circumstances, he would have been happy to settle a monthly amount
of money on Julia and allow her to take the children to whatever
backwater town she lived in. Or settle an even larger amount of
money on Julia and have her just go away. If she had taken the
children, Douglas would have been content with Samantha gathering
progress reports and sending appropriate gifts during holidays and
birthdays. He quite liked Tamsin’s children, even held some
affection for them, but he had no desire to raise them.
    However, that
wasn’t what Tamsin wanted. Tamsin wanted her children to be raised
at Sommersgate and for himself, and Julia, to do it and Douglas
would respect his sister’s wishes, regardless of how inconvenient
they were.
    However, there
was another issue with Julia.
    He remembered
when he first met her, or more to the point, he remembered that he
wanted her the first moment he saw her.
    She was a
great deal different then. When she first visited them in England
it was the first time she’d left her home country. She was
uncommonly pretty, tall and shapely with thick blonde hair, green
eyes and long, long legs. She held herself with a posture that
demanded attention, effortlessly wearing clothes that were both
timeless and vogue. The Americans called it “cool” and Gavin had
been the same way, it was one of the reasons (Tamsin had told
Douglas) why the American had caught his sister’s discerning
eye.
    Douglas had
overheard a cousin at Tamsin and Gavin’s engagement party referring
to Julia as “a bit intimidating.” At the time, he’d been surprised
by the remark but watching Julia, who conducted herself with the
grace and confidence of an old-fashioned