Unmasking Juliet (16 page)

“Leo,” she whispered.

He kissed her on the mouth. Once, twice. Mercifully soft, feathery kisses. Then he bit down gently on her lower lip, while his fingers still teased and tormented her.

She gasped and opened her eyes to find him watching her with sleepy blue eyes that held a most satisfied smile. “Yes?”

She made a weak effort to push him away. “Take off your clothes. Now.”

He let out a laugh, then winced as he took his hands off her, as if it caused him physical pain. Juliet was almost sorry she’d made the demand. She ran her toe up and down the hard muscle of his thigh while she waited, as he unbuttoned his top button, ripped open the next few and finally yanked his shirt over his head.

Then she got her first glimpse of his exposed chest, and she was no longer sorry. He was finely muscled in a way his glorious forearms had only hinted at, with the kind of washboard abs she would have never expected to find on a man who made his living making chocolate.

“My turn,” she said, reaching for him, letting her fingertips dance across the firm planes of his chest, down his flat stomach, to where a fine line of hair disappeared beneath the waistband of his jeans.

He leaned closer, giving her what she wanted, the chance to explore him the way he’d explored her. He groaned as she wrapped her arms around him, pressed her breasts against his skin and ran her fingers over the broad muscles of his back.

“Your turn?” he murmured, burying his hands and face in her hair.

“My turn to tell you how beautiful you are.” She dropped a slow, purposeful openmouthed kiss to his shoulder. His skin was salty and sweet, like the finest candy she’d ever tasted. “Mmm. How is it that you taste like sea salt and caramel?”

“I’ve got chocolate in my blood, same as you.” He tipped her face toward his and kissed her again, his lips ravenous and seeking, quickly losing patience.

She could have gladly drowned in those kisses. They were sweeter than oxygen.

She dropped her hands, somehow steady at last, to Leo’s fly, and he released another low, sultry groan. She managed to get him unbuttoned, but before she could get any farther, he gathered her in his arms and lifted her off the butcher block and into the safe nest of his arms.

“I think it’s time we moved this to the bedroom. Don’t you?” he said, enveloping her in his embrace.

So, this was really happening. After tonight, there’d be no turning back.

“Yes.” She nodded and buried her head against his shoulder, sinking into him, feeling as light as a puff of cotton in his arms.

He took a few steps, then stopped. “Maybe you should tell me where it is.”

The smile in his voice made her laugh. “It’s the open door on the left at the end of the hall.”

Once he’d stepped gingerly past the sleeping dogs, his footsteps quickened. When they reached her bedroom, he kicked the door closed behind them and tenderly laid her down on the bed.

There was a final breathless moment of stillness as he stood over her, devouring her with his gaze. She felt his eyes on her, the sensation every bit as real as if he’d touched her with those magic fingers, and chills broke out over her exposed skin. He leaned down to kiss her, his tongue gently parting her lips as he traced her goose bumps with a whisper touch of his fingertips over her breasts, down her belly, all the way to the silky edge of her panties. She sighed into his mouth as his touch grew more urgent, and she felt the scrape of lace and fingernails traveling down the length of her legs.

Completely bare before him, she rose up on her knees and helped him out of his jeans. His hands cupped her breasts, his breath coming faster and harder as he watched her undress him. Then he was instantly beside her on the bed, touching her, kissing her, anywhere and everywhere.

“I want you, Leo. Please,” she whimpered, convinced she wouldn’t last another minute without him inside her.

He lowered himself over her, and something fierce and electrifying pulsed between them.

Violent ends.

She told herself she couldn’t get hurt. She was going into this with her eyes wide open. She knew exactly who Leo was. Tonight he was here, in her bed, but the day after tomorrow they’d be competing against one another in the Napa Valley Chocolate Fair. One of them would win, and the other would lose.

The future was written in the stars, and there was nothing either of them could do to change it. But she didn’t want to think about the future right now.

For tonight she wasn’t an Arabella. She was his. And she would give herself to him in every possible way.

His body covered hers completely. The weight of all those firm, lean muscles on top of her was nothing short of exquisite. A thrill of anticipation shot through her, and she moved her hands over his hips, around to his backside and pulled him even closer. They groaned in unison as his erection pressed hot and wanting against her center.

“Juliet, baby.” He gazed down at her, his blue eyes darkened to midnight, and tenderly brushed the hair from her face. “Just you and me, remember. No one else.”

“No one else,” she whispered in return, reaching for him to guide him home.

Then he was entering her, pushing deep, swallowing her cries of pleasure with a scorching kiss.

He was everything. Everything she’d always wanted, and everything she’d never before had. It had been a very long time since she’d had this kind of attention from a man, but not once had it ever been anywhere close to this intense, this completely overwhelming. How could she have so foolishly thought she’d known what she was doing? She’d had no idea.

No more resisting. No more waiting. It was only the two of them, just like he’d said.

Her and Leo.

At last.

She opened her eyes to watch him move over her, inside her, wanting to remember everything about this night—how perfect he looked in the silver rays of moonlight from her open window, how fully and completely he filled her, so much so that it made her want to weep with relief...and the fire, the unstoppable fire moving through her until she thought it would consume her, body and soul.

And despite all her plans to guard her heart, to keep it safe, she felt it crack wide open in blissful surrender.

14

Juliet woke to the sounds of happy barking and someone bustling around in the kitchen. She sat up, reaching for Leo, but he wasn’t there. The sheets were still warm, and she could make out the shape of his jeans pooled on the floor in the darkness, so he obviously wasn’t trying to sneak off.

Not that she’d expected him to. Over the course of the past few hours, he’d made it more than clear that there was no place he’d rather be than in her bed. She couldn’t stop the smile that sprang to her lips as she remembered the things he’d said, the things they’d done.

She was happy. Happier than she’d been in as long as she could remember.

Too happy.

She closed her eyes and fell back on the pillow, craving sleep. She wasn’t ready for wakefulness, nor for the coming light of day when she’d have to think about the line they’d just crossed.

Curiosity got the better of her after only a few sleepless seconds. She climbed out of bed, threw on a T-shirt that just happened to be a certain dark shade of blue and headed for the kitchen to see what he was up to.

She found him tearing chicken into tiny pieces and hand-feeding it to a rapt Cocoa while Sugar scrambled to catch any crumbs that escaped the big dog’s mouth. There was a small pot on the stove with a cloud of steam hanging over it. He’d been cooking, apparently. His hair was charmingly disheveled, and he hadn’t bothered to throw on a stitch of clothing.

Yet here he was, cooking chicken for her recuperating dog.

She paused in the dim light of the living room, taking it all in. A candle that they hadn’t bothered to blow out on the way to the bedroom flickered its last breath. The cool breeze blowing off the bay threatened to snuff it out completely and left her gauzy curtains fluttering like butterfly wings.

An unexpected lump formed in Juliet’s throat. She swallowed it down. “Hey there.”

Leo looked up, his hand pausing midair until Cocoa voiced her impatience, and he tossed her another bite. He smiled. “Hey there, yourself. Did I wake you? I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I wouldn’t have wanted to miss this.” Cocoa didn’t even swivel her head at the sound of Juliet’s voice. That was a first. Good grief, even her dog was falling for him. Which meant that now there were two of them destined for heartbreak. “It’s not every day that a French-trained chef cooks for my dog in the middle of the night. Naked, I might add.”

The dogs sniffed the air for a few seconds, then stretched out on the floor when Leo failed to produce another chicken breast from thin air.

He lifted a brow. “Do you have a problem with the naked part?”

She tried her best to maintain eye contact with him and failed. Miserably. “Absolutely not.”

“Good.” He rinsed his hands in the sink, giving her a rather spectacular view of his ass. “Hungry? I could whip something up for the humans in attendance.”

The lump in her throat doubled in size. “Oddly enough, no. But, thanks. What are you doing up?”

“I couldn’t sleep.” Was it her imagination, or did his gaze dart to her grandmother’s recipe book?

It sat on the kitchen island, dead in the middle of the room, as if it was the center of the universe and she and Leo were helplessly destined to spin circles around it.

She looked back up at Leo. “Everything okay?”

“Everything is more than okay.” He stepped closer and tucked a wayward lock of hair behind her ear. “Everything is perfect. I just thought I’d clean things up a bit. We left a rather good-size mess.”

She remembered the bowls clattering to the floor, the avalanche of falling measuring spoons, the buttons flying off Leo’s shirt. And everything that had happened afterward.

Quite a mess indeed.

“Thank you for straightening up,” she said.

“You’re most welcome.” He ran a hand through his hair, somehow making it look both more and less tousled.

Yum.

“Tell me something. All the photos of Italy...” He nodded toward the refrigerator. “Have you ever been?”

“No, I haven’t. I’ve always wanted to go, though.”

“You would love it. It suits you.” It was the same thing he’d said about her favorite color. “I can see you there, drinking wine on the Spanish Steps, wandering through cobblestone streets with the Mediterranean breeze blowing through your hair.”

It was crazy how much she liked the idea of him thinking of her in a radically different way than anyone had before. Not as an Arabella, but as her own person. Juliet. “So you’ve been?”

He nodded. “A few times. For the
Roma Festa del Cioccolato.
You’ve heard of it, right?”

The Rome Chocolate Festival. Of course she’d heard of it. She watched it on the Food Network every year. She’d even qualified to compete in it every year for the past five years. The winner of the Napa Valley Chocolate Fair automatically qualified for entry in the festival in Rome.

“Yes. Were you a competitor?” She couldn’t remember seeing him on television, and she was fairly sure he would have made an impression. “It’s always been a dream of mine to compete there.”

George had never seen the point. He’d steadfastly refused to loosen Royal Gourmet’s purse strings so that she could go, reasoning that competing in Rome would have little impact on her commercial success in Napa. But his opinion no longer mattered, did it?

“No, I was just there to watch. La Maison du Chocolat only sends their best of the best to actually participate.”

And Leo wasn’t their best of the best? She found that somewhat difficult to believe.

“Tell me more about Rome,” she said wistfully, running her fingertips along one of her black-and-white refrigerator snapshots—a panoramic view of the Eternal City’s many rooftops with the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica rising from the background.

Leo settled in behind her, winding his arms around her and pressing a tender kiss to her cheek. At the feel of all that warm bare skin wrapped around her, her body hummed with awareness. “You can hear the sound of church bells and street music wherever you go. The food is fantastic, the tomatoes so ripe and fresh you can eat them out of the palm of your hand as if they were apples. And there isn’t a building in sight less than three hundred years old.”

It sounded wonderful. And a world away from Napa Valley. “I’ve heard there’s a building there called the Wedding Cake. Is that true?”

“Absolutely. Although that’s just a nickname. The actual name is the Altare della Patria. It’s a monument in the center of one of the busiest piazzas in the city. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is there. The building itself is really something. And it does, in fact, look like a wedding cake.”

“And the Spanish Steps? Have you seen them, too?” She pointed at the photo of the famed stairway at the Piazza de Spagna with its wide staircase spilling over with violet-colored azaleas and happy-looking people.

“Mmm-hmm,” he said absently, gathering her hair and moving it aside so he could kiss her neck. She could feel him growing hard again behind her as his lips slid over the rapid beat of her pulse. “You know, they say Rome is full of secrets. Perhaps you and I should go there since we seem to be living the secret life.”

Rome was full of secrets. At the moment, so was Napa Valley. So was this very room.

She turned in his arms and swallowed, lest her heart leap right out of her throat. “Leo, what happens after tonight?”

He shook his head, equally as mystified as she felt, then tightened his hold on her, drawing her close. “I don’t know, baby.”

What else could he say? He wanted to win the chocolate fair every bit as much as she did. And it wasn’t as if she was going to give up on the
chocolat chaud.
The French Laundry was hers, and she wanted it back. There was also the pesky detail that he was pretty much the spawn of the devil.

I don’t know, baby.

He’d never lied to her before, and he wasn’t lying now. But she couldn’t help wishing he would. Just this once.

“Come back to bed?” she whispered into his shoulder, wanting him again, and wishing with all her might that she didn’t.

Maybe things weren’t as bad as they seemed. Maybe they could keep whatever this was going while they still tried to destroy one another out there in the real word.

Right. That sounds plausible.

She looked up and found him gazing down at her with a smile on his lips.

Eyes, look your last. Arms, take your last embrace.

“I have a better idea, but I’m afraid you’re overdressed.” He dropped his hands to her hips, pausing for a leisurely caress of her backside. Then he lifted her shirt up and over her head, his fingertips skimming along her rib cage, her breasts, leaving her sighing once again with desire.

“That sound. Never stop making that sound,” he murmured against her parted lips.

Then he wove his fingers through hers and led her to the sofa where he pulled her onto his lap, and they made love again in the glow of the flickering candlelight.

Gentle, soft and sweet this time.

Just as he’d promised.

* * *

Leo was late.

He’d headed straight from Juliet’s bed to the little Italian coffee shop where Uncle Joe had mandated that all members of the Mezzanotte clan meet for breakfast before Mezzanotte Chocolates opened its doors, mindful of the fact that his tardiness wouldn’t go unnoticed.

Too bad. They were lucky he was showing up at all. He still marveled at the fact that he’d had the willpower to bid Juliet goodbye when she’d been warm, naked and tangled in bedsheets, her green eyes all sleepy and sultry. If that didn’t prove his family devotion, nothing would.

He deserved a medal. Not the scowl that Uncle Joe greeted him with when he finally arrived. As usual, his phone was glued to his ear. Who on earth his uncle spoke with on an hourly basis was a mystery. Leo didn’t particularly care at the moment, as it gave him a split-second of calm before the storm.

“Leo.” Uncle Joe switched off his cell phone and frowned at his wristwatch. “You’re eighteen minutes late.”

Eighteen. Not bad. He should have stayed for another kiss or two.

“It looks that way, doesn’t it?” He wasn’t about to apologize. That was exactly the kind of precedent he didn’t need to set. “Good morning, all.”

It was indeed a good morning. Despite the toxic combination of his sleep deprivation and the ungodly hour, he could still appreciate the beauty of a spectacular Napa Valley sunrise. The pink sky had barely begun to turn molten, and the leaves of the surrounding grapevines shimmered like gold dust.

He pulled out a chair and sat down at the outdoor café table where the three other Mezzanottes had set up camp. Sugar leaped into his lap and craned her little neck toward Gina’s cup of espresso.

Gina moved it out of harm’s way and narrowed her gaze at Leo. “You’re a mess. What happened to your shirt?”

Leo glanced at his shirt, untucked, wrinkled and missing a good portion its buttons. He shrugged. “I threw on the first thing I could find.”

The fact that he’d found it on the floor of Juliet’s kitchen wasn’t a detail he cared to share.

But Marco had already managed to figure it out. He pinned Leo with a knowing look. “Did you?”

Attitude from his brother-in-law. Just what he needed.

Leo responded with a glare and a firm nod of his head. “Yes.”

They weren’t doing this. Not now. A good twenty-four hours remained on the ludicrous deadline Marco had given him. Leo presently had no intention of abiding by that deadline, but Marco didn’t know that yet. They could deal with that later.

Things had changed.

Leo was still trying to wrap his mind around what had happened between him and Juliet the night before. Because whatever it was had been more than just sex. Much more.

When he’d felt Juliet shatter around him for the first time and he himself had all but come apart, something fundamental had shifted inside him. Given the circumstances, it was less than convenient.

He supposed he should have seen it coming. If his interest in Juliet had been casual, or merely carnal, he would have been able to walk away the instant things had gotten complicated. Like any sane person.

But he hadn’t walked away. The crazier things had gotten, the more he’d dug in his heels. Now he was even helping her re-create his
chocolat chaud.
Things had moved beyond complicated. The moment he’d carried her to bed, they’d charged headfirst into forbidden territory. They needed a whole new word for the situation they were in.

Just minutes ago, she’d been burrowed against his side, her graceful long legs still tangled with his and one of her hands resting lightly on his chest as she slept. He’d had to stop himself from picking up her hand and kissing each one of those fingertips until she stirred back to life so he could take her again. And again.

He shifted in his chair. Sugar stood, turned a few circles and settled back in his lap. “Now, what’s this meeting all about? I’m assuming we didn’t gather here to discuss my choice of attire.”

Uncle Joe looked at him, incredulous. “The chocolate fair, of course. It’s tomorrow.”

“I’m aware of that.” Leo nodded, trying his best to concentrate on the conversation instead of the elegant curve of Juliet’s bare shoulders, the sensation of her hair slipping between his fingers. So soft. Everything about her was soft. And sweet. Sweeter than his godforsaken
chocolat chaud.

“We need to be ready.” Uncle Joe drummed his fingers on the table, dragging Leo’s attention reluctantly back to the matter at hand. “Are we?”

“Yes. Stop worrying. The macarons are all perfect. And after we finish up here, I’m heading over to the shop to construct the towers.” He’d sketched out a few ideas and settled on the one that made the most powerful statement. “I’m thinking of doing a cluster with one large tower in the middle, flanked by a smaller one on either side. Striking, yet simple and elegant at the same time.”

“It’s of the utmost importance that we win, Leo.” Uncle Joe’s hands were shaking. Maybe he needed to lay off the espresso.

“I don’t intend to lose, if that’s what you’re implying.” Leo signaled for a server. This time of day, Uncle Joe’s intensity was easier to take with a heaping dose of caffeine.