Trouble In Triplicate (8 page)

"Did she really say that?" Juliet asked doubtfully.

"Scout's honor."

"You were a boy scout?"

"An eagle scout. Didn't you know?"

She shook her head, and Caine flashed a sheepish grin. "Sometimes I forget that you aren't well-versed in Saxon history." His grin turned decidedly rakish. "Lots of women are, you know."

"I'm sure. No doubt they have to take a course in it before they're framed and mounted on your wall."

He stared at her quizzically for a moment. "Are you referring to the photographs in the restaurant?" he asked. "You don't think Grant and I had affairs with all the women in those pictures, do you?"

Juliet shrugged and said nothing. A pang of pure jealousy surged through her at the thought of Caine with all those glamorous beauties.

"Good grief, you do!" He gave a short laugh. "Honey, I hate to shatter your illusions, but not even Superman could have made it with all those women and played professional football too."

"You didn't play football all year long," she retorted.

"True. But I did work during the off-season. I was a color commentator for the Pittsburgh Pirates on a local TV station there. That kept me fairly busy."

"But the Pirates are a baseball team. I think," she added uncertainly.

"They are. I happen to be as familiar with baseball as I am with football. I played both all through high school and college, and had a hard time choosing between them when it came time to turn pro."

"More Saxon history, hmm?"

"Pay attention. You're going to be tested on it at the end of the evening." He smiled at her. "Will you have dinner with me, Juliet? There is one table available and it's already reserved for a Saxon and a Post."

She was hungry. And she was dressed for the luxuriously appointed dining room, even if he wasn't. "Since the table is reserved for a Saxon and a Post, it might as well be us," she conceded.

"And am I forgiven?"

She stared at him. "Forgiven? For what?"

"For not asking you to dinner in the first place. I should have, of course, but—"

"You were under no obligation to ask me to dinner," she interrupted coolly. "And you still—"

"As I was saying." It was Caine's turn to interrupt, and his voice was just as cool as hers. "I should have asked you to dinner, but I was determined to keep my distance and not become involved with you."

Juliet was totally nonplussed. How was she supposed to reply to that? "Well," she began cautiously, "I certainly don't..."

"But so much for my determination. We're already deep into the second quarter, aren't we?"

"Do you always talk in incomprehensible football metaphors?" she asked shakily. The way he was looking at her made her feel weak. She quickly turned to follow the bustling Mrs. Castle to their table, a cozy corner one on the far side of the room.

Caine followed closely behind her, laying his big hands on her shoulders as they walked. "Did I tell you how beautiful you look tonight, Juliet?" She was stiff with tension, and his strong fingers began a gentle massage. "When I saw you in that dress, I—"

"Yes. you—you told me," she replied quickly. She took a deep breath. "Caine, tonight we're simply using Randi and Grant's dinner reservation. You don't have to go through your standard dating bantei with me."

"I don't use some kind of preplanned, standard banter on my dates!" he protested. "And you do look beautiful." He drew out the chair for her and seated her on it, hovering over her for an extra moment to lightly brush his lips against her glossy dark hair. "You wanted to dress up for me tonight, didn't you, Juliet? You wanted to knock my eyes out."

His perception—and his frankness—made her blush. She shifted away from him and immediately began a thorough study of the menu.

Caine sat down opposite her at the small table. "Juliet." He reached across the table and took her hand in his. Automatically, her eyes lifted. He was staring at her face, which was illuminated by the flickering candlelight. "You succeeded admirably. I'm dazzled."

No man had ever confessed to being dazzled by her, she thought. Wholesome girl-next-door types like her and her sisters seldom inspired such responses. For a moment Juliet felt as alluring and glamorous as one of those bona-fide beauties whose pictures hung on Caine's restaurant wall. And then she remembered that Caine Saxon undoubtedly had more lines than a fisherman and that she was not about to be caught with one.

She carefully withdrew her hand from his. "Everything on the menu looks delicious." She spoke in the polite, impersonal tone one would use in talking to a stranger in a bank line. "What do you recommend?"

"I recommend that you forget about my past and those pictures on the wall. I'm here with you tonight, Juliet."

Her heart jumped, but she ignored his comment. "I think I'll try the chicken pot pie. I've never had it homemade, only the commercially frozen type."

Caine sighed. "Okay, we'll play it your way. This is our first date. We know nothing about one another and we have to make polite small talk over the menu. My, doesn't the sherry tomato bisque soup sound interesting? I wonder if they serve it with crackers."

Juliet did not react to his sarcasm. Instead, she chose to answer him seriously. "I don't know. Perhaps you could request them. And the sherry tomato bisque does sound interesting. I think I'll order it myself."

Surprisingly enough, their superficial discussion of the inn's menu led to a more natural conversation about their own respective businesses.

"My sisters and I always loved to cook," Juliet found herself confiding in response to his question of how and why the Posts had begun their catering business. "After we graduated from college with liberal arts degrees and no marketable skills, cooking seemed to be our strongest talent. We thought of opening our own restaurant, but we didn't have the necessary capital. It was Mark Walsh, our next-door neighbor, who suggested catering out of our house. Our folks were retiring and moving to Arizona, so they left us the house and we started cooking."

She smiled in reminiscence. "Our first customers were the Friends of Mr. Jefferson Lawn and Garden Club. They hired us to do their annual luncheon. It was held in one of the ladies' homes and was a huge success. We do the luncheon every year now. It's sort of an anniversary for us."

"Funny how you always remember your first customers. The first people to set foot in our restaurant were a group of fraternity boys, football players on the university team. Grant and I talked to them for hours! Which was fine, since very few others showed up that day."

"Business certainly has picked up for you since then," Juliet said. "I hear you have overflow crowds almost every night."

"The restaurant has been an amazing success." Caine shrugged and smiled. "Oddly enough, we never intended it to turn into a gold mine. Grant and I could both live comfortably on our various investments, but we wanted to do something after retiring from the pros, and opening a restaurant in our old hometown seemed like a good idea. Since it's been so successful we've hired a restaurant-management-school graduate and really aren't too involved in the day-to-day operations anymore."

"It sounds like you Saxons have the golden touch. Everything you do turns out well."

"We used to call it the 'Saxon touch.' And you're right, it seemed like we would actually have to work at failing. Good things just seemed to happen naturally to my brother and me—the big pro football contracts, the product endorsements, the commercials." He paused and frowned. "And then Grant's luck seemed to run out. He was dumped by his fiancee two weeks before his wedding without even being given a reason."

"Randi was terribly hurt by it all too," Juliet said, compelled to defend her sister. "Aside from the usual adolescent crushes, Grant was her first real love—her first lover!"

"And is Bobby Lee Taggert Olivia's first real love and first lover?" Caine asked thoughtfully.

Juliet nodded.

"And you're still a virgin, waiting for that first real love to come along and be your first lover. And when he does you'll undoubtedly marry him."

"There's nothing wrong with that," she said defensively. "It doesn't make me some sort of a freak."

"No." He shook his head. "But it is unusual. Why would three beautiful sisters reach the age of twenty-six before two of them finally made love? Why is the third one still holding out? You and your sisters weren't recluses. All three of you have dated through the years. In fact, I distinctly recall Sophia frothing at the mouth your senior year in high school because the Post triplets took up three of the nominations for prom queen. If you'd been elected triple queens, I think she would have slashed her wrists," he added dryly.

"Bonnie Jo Webster was prom queen," Juliet remembered with a smile. "She married her high-school boyfriend and moved to Lynchburg. They have three children now. The oldest girl, Kyla, is—"

"Do you have the answers to my questions, Juliet?" Caine interrupted softly. "Or are you trying to avoid answering them?"

She stared into the candle flame. His questions. Sometimes she'd asked them of herself. "I guess my sisters and I never felt the need, the urge, to be that close to anyone else," she said slowly. "It's hard to put into words. I—I've never tried to explain it to anyone before. ..."

"Explain it to me. Juliet," Caine demanded quietly.

Their eyes met and clung for a timeless moment. Juliet felt herself being drawn into the mysterious amber depths of his gaze. She was suddenly quite breathless from the intensity of his searching stare.

It required considerable effort to drag her gaze from his, but she mustered her strength and looked away. "From what I've heard—and read," she said, "falling in love involves a certain dependency and loss of autonomy. For a while, in the early stages of a passionate relationship, the couple's identities sort of merge." She glanced up at him for confirmation.

He was watching her closely, his expression enigmatic. "Go on."

"Well, I think that's why my sisters and I avoided that kind of intense relationship when we were younger. It took us years to feel like three separate people because we were never treated as individuals. We were always the triplets, a single entity, a single identity. So none of us was particularly eager to merge herself with another person." She smiled slightly. "You're not following me, are you? I told you it was hard to explain."

"I'm following you very well, Juliet. And I believe I understand why Miranda was so quick to break her engagement to Grant. I think she was still unsure of committing herself."

Juliet considered his theory. "That may be true. It's not easy to give up your identity after finally finding it. For years the boundaries between the three of us were blurred. If one of us wanted to go somewhere, we all felt like we had to go. If one of us liked or disliked something, the other two thought we did too. We even had one name we used interchangeably between us."

"Sissy," he guessed.

She nodded as she fidgeted nervously with a spoon. She had never spoken so frankly about the difficulties of being an identical triplet. She drew in a deep breath. "It took us a long time to grow up and finally learn who we were. I don't think any of us was ready for a mature relationship with a man ..."

"Until this year," Caine finished for her.

"Yes. Liwy started going with Bobby Lee, and just three months later Randi met Grant. They were serious about each other almost immediately."

"And Juliet has yet to take the plunge." He studied her across the table. Those big, beautiful periwinkle blue eyes of hers were troubled. He saw the traces of uncertainty and confusion in them, and was inexplicably touched.

"I don't want to sound as if I've ever resented Liwy and Randi or being born a triplet," Juliet hastened to add. "I haven't." It was so strange putting her previously unspoken thoughts into words, and she suddenly felt terribly disloyal to her sisters. Why was she talking this way? And to Caine Saxon, of all people!

"My sisters are my best friends. We have wonderful times together. We love each other very much." All the words ran together and she looked at Caine worriedly. "The bond between us is incredibly strong. I don't want you to think that I—that we . . ."

"Juliet." He leaned across the table and took her hand. "I understand." He did, too, he realized. Somehow he understood her with a clarity that startled him.

A wave of tenderness surged through him. He felt protective and possessive and . . . oddly fatalistic. Waterloo, he thought. Napoleon met his destiny on the fields of Belgium. His was sitting across from him in the Apple Country Inn just outside Charlottesville, Virginia. Strangely enough, the thought made him smile.

They had almost finished dessert—apple brown Betty with whipped cream—when a loud crack of thunder was followed by an earsplitting crash. Several diners rose from their chairs and went to the windows to peer out, but it was too dark for anything to be seen. *»

Mrs. Castle hurried into the dining room ten minutes later. "One of the giant pin oaks was struck by lightning about a quarter of a mile down the road," she announced to the diners. "It's lying across the road and has blocked it completely."

"In which direction?" a man called out. "Toward Charlottesville or Waynesboro?"