Chapter Fourteen
Jules and Wyatt had made a pact years ago not to fight on their birthday. Once they were old enough to understand their history, they swore not to do anything to upset their father on the anniversary of their mother’s death. Even if he never outwardly showed it, the pain was always etched across her daddy’s handsome face over the glow of birthday candles, and neither of them could bear to do anything to add to the misery.
Even though their father was long gone, they’d never stopped the tradition, and Jules woke up on the morning of May 6 determined to be the best sister possible. She dressed conservatively in a black pantsuit and wore a natural shade of lipstick. Then she put a big, golden clip in her hair because it was her birthday and she didn’t want to look too dowdy. She could only go so far to be the toned-down sister Wyatt secretly wanted.
Then she grabbed her purse and bounced down the steps. She found Wyatt in the kitchen, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, which was sort of surprising. He usually attempted to dress up, probably hoping to be the sophisticated brother he thought Jules would’ve wanted if God had asked her opinion on the matter.
Wyatt laughed when he saw her, and Jules frowned, looking down at herself in concern. “What?”
“Nothing,” he said, another chuckle slipping out of him as he leaned against the counter drinking coffee. “You look very, um…”
“Classy, conservative, like a pillar of modern female virtue,” Jules offered before Wyatt said something that ruined their day.
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“Yeah, all those things,” he agreed with another laugh. “I think you wore that suit last year.”
“Probably.” Jules stuck out her tongue because she didn’t love this suit with the buttons up to her neck and the straight lines of the jacket that hid everything. “Just for you, Wy Wy.”
“Okay,” he said, looking away with what would usually be a roll of his eyes, but he refrained. “I was hoping you’d let me buy you breakfast.”
“Nope,” Jules said as she walked up next to him and reached into the cabinet to grab a coffee cup. “You bought last year.”
She was surprised to find her father’s old mug right in front, with the big, faded sheriff’s star calling out to her like a hug from the past. Wyatt nabbed that one every single day without fail, and if Jules complained he would gesture to his chest, uniform or not, and remind her that he’d earned the right to it.
She took down the cup and stared at it, remembering a thousand mornings where her father sat at the kitchen table in the darkness of early morning and drank his coffee.
Her bottom lip jutted out without warning, and tears sprang to her eyes. “Thank you.”
“Okay, come on, Ju Ju Bean.” Wyatt took the cup out of her hand and set it on the counter. He leaned down and placed a kiss on top of her head. “It’s just a cup. Put coffee in it so you can buy me breakfast.”
She wiped at her eyes and then leaned into him and hugged him tightly. “I love you.”
“I love you too.” Wyatt sighed, rubbing her back. “But what the hell is up with you? This is the third time this week you’ve started crying for no damn reason.”
“It’s been a long few months since those tax returns started rolling in. It’s always so draining.” She wiped at her eyes again and stepped away, trying to pull herself together. “Everyone’s finally got the money to pay for their divorces and wills and every other darn thing they put off till the government starts mailing out those checks.”
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“You didn’t get like this last tax season,” Wyatt observed, pouring her a cup of coffee. He turned to walk to the fridge, grabbed a container of milk, and then focused on adding it to her coffee rather than look at her. “Maybe your hormones are off again.”
“Thank you, Wyatt, for your advice on my female reproductive cycle. I didn’t realize you were an expert.”
“I’m not starting anything. It’s our birthday, and I’m not nagging ya. I’m telling you, there’s something wrong. I dunno what it is, but I’m getting a sick vibe off you.”
“I’m not sick!”
“You got circles under your eyes.” Wyatt took another sip of coffee and mumbled against the rim, “And you’ve put on a few pounds too.”
“Not starting anything, huh?” Jules gave him a look of disbelief. “It sure as hell sounds like you’re starting something!”
Wyatt set his cup down, looking flustered. “Remember when you had that thing.
You put on a couple extra pounds, right? And you were weepy and sick-looking. And who noticed? Who told ya to go to the dang doctor even though you bitched and moaned ’bout it the whole time?”
Jules felt her face flame, because she had to reluctantly admit, “You did.”
“And you needed surgery and the doctors said something bad could’ve happened if you hadn’t gotten that cyst thing removed off your”—Wyatt gestured to her waist—
“parts.”
“Ovary,” she corrected him drily.
“You need to go to the doctor,” Wyatt announced as he picked up his cup of coffee. “I’d bet my badge on it.”
“Fine. I’ll put it on my to-do list.”
“Put it at the
top
of your to-do list.”
Jules leaned against the counter, sulking over the few pounds comment. She looked down at herself, wondering if Romeo had noticed. She needed to step on a scale 216
and see how many pounds Wyatt was talking about. She reached under her jacket, feeling the waistline of her pants, trying to decide if they were tighter than they were last year.
“You want a birthday present?”
“Yes,” Jules said, now fidgeting with her jacket, tugging at it and seeing that the buttons did bulge a bit across her chest. “Make it something good for calling me fat.”
“I didn’t call ya fat,” Wyatt said with a laugh. He pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and forced her into it. Then he set their father’s old mug in front of her and drew an envelope out of the back pocket of his jeans. He set it in front of her. “For you.” Jules picked up the envelope, staring at the front of it, seeing Wyatt’s messy scrawl,
Ju Ju Bean
. She opened it, finding one of those cheesy best sister cards and a gift card to one of her favorite department stores for five hundred dollars. She tilted her head back, giving him a surprised look. “This is a new kind of gift. I really love it.”
“And I made sure you could use it online,” Wyatt went on, giving her a smile.
“It’s not your only present, but I just thought I should get something that let you know I like you how you are. Next year dress how you want on our birthday. You’re my sister; I wouldn’t change ya, even with all the flash and glitter.” Jules’s lip jutted out again, and the words on the card bled out to a watery blur as tears rolled down her cheeks. “I didn’t do anything this thoughtful.”
“Good, that means I win,” Wyatt said triumphantly as he pulled a chair up to hers and sat next to her. Knee to knee, he leaned over and pressed another kiss against her forehead. “You need to go to the doctor.”
“I ain’t talking ’bout the doctor anymore on our day.” She turned to Wyatt, hugging him once more. “Happy birthday.”
Wyatt hugged her back. “Happy birthday.”
* * * *
Jules was having a top-notch birthday.
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It turned out the reason Wyatt was wearing jeans was to follow her to work and do all the little things around the office she’d been putting off. By noon he’d fixed the broken drawer at her desk, the leaky sink in the downstairs kitchen, and helped her purge all last year’s files and store them in the attic.
Even Chuito and Alaine were getting into the spirit of things. Ordinary office work had been pushed aside to the fever of spring-cleaning. Alaine sat on the floor, going through the bottom filing cabinets, still looking for old files that could go into the attic while Chuito stood on a ladder, helping Wyatt hang the ceiling fan that Jules had bought over a year ago and stored in the shed when hanging it turned into too big of a project.
“You sure you ain’t gonna electrocute yourself?” Wyatt said in concern. “Maybe we should call a real electrician.”
“I got this.” Chuito leaned against the ladder with his head tilted back as he worked on the wiring. “I moved from Puerto Rico to Miami. I know how to install a ceiling fan.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Alaine asked.
“We didn’t have any air conditioning in Puerto Rico,” Chuito said simply. “And Miami is hot as fuck. Both places make ceiling fans a necessity. Okay, hand me the mounting bracket.”
Wyatt frowned as he studied the fan that was out of the box and bleeding parts all over Jules’s expensive Oriental rug in the front of the office. “It’s still attached to the fan.”
Chuito laughed. “Then unattach it.”
“Are you sure this thing ain’t used?”
“They gave me a discount,” Jules said defensively. “It ain’t broken, is it?” 218
“I dunno,” Wyatt said as he worked on unattaching the mounting bracket from the ceiling fan. “I do know this is gonna take a while, and we were gonna go to lunch
’round two. This fan could end up messing up our plans.”
“I’ve got to run a few errands. I can pick up lunch for everyone on the way back, and we can eat here,” Jules said as she stood up from her desk. “It’s the least I can do.”
“Um, maybe.” Wyatt hesitated. “Why dontcha stop by Dr. Philips’s too? Have him check you out.”
“I made an appointment with the specialist,” Jules said defensively, giving him a look.
“Not till next month.”
“Well, then, I guess I’ll run out now,” Jules announced as she grabbed her purse.
She didn’t want to argue with Wyatt when he’d gone out of his way to be nice. She knew he’d probably waited until their birthday on purpose to press his point. “And I’ll stop by the doctor’s. It can’t hurt.”
“What’s wrong with you?” Alaine asked.
Jules rolled her eyes. “There ain’t nothing wrong with me, but Wyatt thinks I look sick.”
Alaine tilted her head to study Jules with a critical eye. “Ya look fine to me.”
“He’s paranoid.”
“She’s got circles under eyes,” Wyatt said as if that explained it.
“Maybe you aren’t getting enough sleep?” Chuito suggested drily. “Too many late nights.”
“Okay, I’m gonna head out,” Jules said before Chuito’s teasing got bad enough to make Wyatt suspicious. “I’ll call y’all for your orders once I get closer to Hal’s.” She pulled out her phone once she got outside to text Romeo, unable to resist jumping on the small gap in her schedule.
Birthday quickie?
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She got into her car, waiting for Romeo’s response, and she wasn’t disappointed.
Her phone buzzed before she could put the key in the ignition.
My place?
Jules texted him back and then made a beeline for the doctor’s, if for no other reason than to shut Wyatt up and keep him pacified on their birthday. She walked into the office, finding that life was continuing to smile on her when the place was completely empty.
“Hey, Jules,” said the nurse, Sara. “You sick?”
“There might be something going on with my hormones.” Jules leaned against the counter and tilted her head to speak through the window. “I made an appointment up in Mercy, but I thought maybe Dr. Philips could draw blood, make sure I ain’t dying or anything. Just kinda a precaution.”
“Yeah, sure,” Sara said as she jumped up from behind the desk. “Just lemme go get him.”
Once Jules quickly explained her symptoms, Dr. Philip’s wanted to do a full workup, but the promise of meeting Romeo had Jules talking him down to a few vials of blood with the assurance that she’d come back if she got worse.
Then she ran out the door, texting Wyatt on the way to her car.
Doctor busy. Hour wait.
Wyatt texted her back while she was on her way to Romeo’s house.
Not hungry yet. Get it done.
Jules smiled. That was exactly the response she was hoping for. If they’d all been hungry, the guilt would’ve made the small interlude stressful. Now she had an hour to spend with Romeo on her birthday when that had previously been impossible as she had plans to spend the whole day with Wyatt.
She was surprised to see the Ferrari in the driveway when she pulled up, because she’d assumed Tino would’ve taken it to give them some privacy. Feeling a bit thrown 220
off, she rang the doorbell to the lake house, half expecting Tino to come bounding to the door with a knowing smile and too much energy to be normal.
Instead Romeo opened the door. He stood there bare-chested and barefoot in a pair of jeans and gave her a broad smile. “Happy birthday, baby.” Jules beamed. “Thank you.”
“Come on in.” He pushed the door open wider. “Seeing you is a nice surprise. I thought you were spending today with Wyatt.”
“I found a break in the storm.”
Jules walked in, and Romeo closed the door behind her and then promptly forced her against the wood, kissing her. She opened to his passion, letting his tongue thrust in and explore for a few minutes before she started fighting the haze and pushed at his shoulder.
Breathless, she asked, “Isn’t Tino here?”
“What?” Romeo was fighting for breath too, his muscular chest rising and falling as he looked down at her. “Oh no, he and Nova took off.” Jules pulled back. “Nova’s here?”
“Yeah, he stopped by last night.” Romeo ran a hand through his hair, pushing it off his forehead as he took another deep breath. “Unexpected visit. He’s staying for a couple days.”
“Are you okay?” Jules reached up and ran a finger over the crease between his eyes. She considered his face, seeing dark circles under his eyes. “You look tired.”
“I gotta headache,” he said with a wince. “We stayed up late. The night’s wearing on me today.”
“I’m sorry.” Jules heard the exhaustion in his voice and wondered if perhaps their sneaking around was wearing on both of them. “We don’t have to—”
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“Are you kidding?” Romeo wrapped his big arms around her and hugged her before she could finish the sentence. “I’m happy you’re here. I needed it. Needed you.” He buried his face in her hair, inhaling deeply as he said, “I love you so much, Juliet.” Romeo’s hug was tighter than usual, almost as if he was clinging to her, and she rubbed his back soothingly. “Are you sure you’re okay?” He pulled back while still holding her and gave her a wan smile. “I am now.”
“It doesn’t look like it.” Jules studied his bloodshot eyes, making the green stand out vibrantly against his tan skin. “You wanna talk about it?”
“No, I wanna love you instead.” Romeo ran his hands up the curve of her waist to her breasts, cupping them in both hands through her business suit as he looked down at her. The frown line between his eyes deepened. “What’re you wearing today?” Jules giggled. “You don’t like it?”
“It’s just…different.”
“Wyatt and I have this thing, like a birthday tradition,” Jules explained, shaking her head and laughing again. “It’s complicated, but I wore it for him. You know, to tone myself down a little. Be the sister he always wanted.”
“I think I like you better naked,” Romeo said very diplomatically.
Jules gave him a teasing smile. “That can definitely be arranged.”