“Have you read the book? Are you worried about what it reveals?”
“I’ve read it. And I’m not worried about what it reveals at all.” She’d pored over every printed page. What Wayne had said about their romance—
She was everything fresh and fine this jaded soldier had forgotten about the world
—had torn new holes in her heart, but in the end it was only a very small part of Wayne’s story. The rest of the book had been devoted to his experiences in the Army and at war.
“So why not?” Jay pressed.
A knot of tension tightened at the back of her skull. Was she having fun yet? “
General Matters
is everything I want people to know about my husband, but I don’t think it’s wise to remind them of my connection to him.”
Though she’d give anything for the book to be a sensation, giving an interview surely wasn’t the right way to make that happen. She made a face. “We’re both aware I’m not the public’s favorite person.”
Jay frowned. “Yes, but I think—”
“
I
think you need to take off your press pass.” Nikki placed her hand on her fiancé’s forearm and sent Juliet a look of exasperated sympathy. “Jay, now is not the time to discuss business-type things.”
“But—”
“No.” Nikki’s voice was firm. “Now is the time for entertaining things. Things like ogling guys. Juliet, behind you and to your left. Check out that dude dressed like Tom Cruise in
Risky Business
.”
Grateful to drop the subject of the interview, Juliet glanced over her shoulder. “Oh,” she said. “Um.”
“I know,” Nikki answered. “Kinda cute face, but those caveman legs would do better without tighty whities. Ankle-length boxers, maybe.”
Jay grabbed Nikki’s empty glass from her hand and then Juliet’s. “We’re all going to need another round if we’re to survive the cookie’s critiques. I’ll be right back.”
Nikki smiled at his retreating form and sidled closer. “Okay, now it’s just us again. So . . . how’s it going with Noah?”
“Not.” Juliet admitted, without meeting her youngest sister’s gaze. “Not going.”
The other woman shrugged. “Oh, well. As we mermaids say, there are plenty of fish in the sea.” She lifted her right hand and using the shield of its palm, pointed her left forefinger at a man standing a few feet away. “That guy over there. The one in the kilt? Jay knows him. Well, Jay knows everybody, but I’m pretty sure he’s single. Look! He’s giving you the eye.”
Juliet didn’t look. She was still staring at Nikki and her hands, the shield, the pointer. She hadn’t seen anyone do that since high school and a bubble of laughter caught in her throat. More of her tension slipped away. “I’ve always been suspect of men in dresses.”
“That isn’t a dress, it’s a kilt. A kilt is like a uniform, and you like those.”
The laugh slipped out. “Nikki . . .” She glanced at the man this time and decided that it wasn’t the skirt, but the knee socks that really turned her off. “I don’t think he’s for me.”
“Well, survey the crowd. Jay and I will steer you clear of the sharks.”
Juliet had to laugh again, even as she followed orders. Maybe there
was
something to what Nikki said. She’d told herself her reaction to Noah wasn’t personal. Of course she didn’t see herself hopping into bed with some stranger—instruction-adhering, rule-following widow Juliet probably wouldn’t go that far—but what was the harm in looking?
However, not one of the men milling about the party caught her eye. Not the guy in the kilt, not the hirsute Tom Cruise in his white dress shirt, not the several pirates, or the many fans of plastic crowns. There was an elegant gentleman in a Clooney-worthy tux, but as he was hand-in-hand with a cowboy wearing chaps and a ten-gallon hat, she slid her gaze right over him.
Then the crowd shifted and she caught a glimpse of a tall male. It was just a flash of his shoulder, in a darkish T-shirt, but something about him caused her to pause. She narrowed her eyes and kept her focus pinpointed there. Another movement of the knot of people and there was that shoulder again, then the flat plane of a masculine back.
Two people strode off in the direction of the bar leaving a larger gap that revealed Cassandra in a knitted, naughty schoolgirl’s outfit, her wavy hair in two long pigtails bound by more yarn. Next to her was Gabe, wearing his characteristic grim expression and regular street clothes. The both of them appeared to be talking to the man with the shoulder and back that had caught her fancy.
He was wearing his T-shirt tucked into a pair of camouflage pants. Costumed as a soldier. Maybe that’s what had caught her attention, she thought. Except her attention had been caught by him before tonight. It had been captured the instant she’d seen his naked body swimming in her pool. At that moment, she’d awoken to the world around her.
As if he could feel her regard, Noah turned. There was thirty feet between them, but neither of them blinked, even as a couple drifted past, and a young woman dressed as a Dallas cheerleader skipped by.
“Juliet?”
She managed to turn toward Nikki.
The mermaid smiled. “This feels like that song, you know, ‘Some Enchanted Evening.’ ”
“Noah’s no stranger,” Juliet protested.
“Convenient, that.”
The sensation of his gaze on her back was impossible to ignore. Prickles of heat cascaded down her spine and she could actually feel her blood surging through her veins. Awareness, attraction, sex—call it what you will, but it had never found her from across the proverbial crowded room.
“I don’t know what to do,” Juliet confessed in a whisper.
The band had segued into a loud version of
Rocky Horror Picture Show
’s “The Time Warp,” but Nikki seemed capable of reading lips.
“That’s easy,” she replied, pushing on Juliet’s shoulder. “Just turn around.”
She did, and he was there. Broad, and so tall that she had to tilt up her head to meet his gaze. Behind Noah, someone pushed by and he stepped nearer, the warmth of him mingling with the warmth of her.
They stood together in a bubble of combined body heat.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.” She couldn’t pull air into her lungs.
“You came to the party.”
She swallowed. “A woman has to get out sometime.”
His gaze moved from her eyes, to her mouth, down her neck to her pulse point. There was a wealth of bare flesh between her throat and the edge of Cassandra’s low-cut peasant blouse, and Juliet was aware of each millimeter of hot-chilled skin as he took that in, too.
“Nice costume,” he said.
She swallowed again. “You, too.” Of course his was leftovers from his Army days. She’d seen those ragged camouflage pants before, and the cotton knit of his T-shirt looked soft and worn, so thin that it couldn’t hide the curve of his pectoral muscles and the tight points of his nipples.
New heat flashed over her body and she was sure her skin flushed with the sudden change in temperature. Her fingers curled so that her nails dug into her palms and she didn’t know what to do with her gaze. What to do with herself.
Her skin pulsed with each beat of her heart and she didn’t think she’d ever felt more alive.
“Juliet?”
She met his eyes. They were intense, their blue color hot. His hands were fisted, and she could sense his restraint. There was power in those flexed muscles, but she knew he had every impulse leashed this time.
This time, there would be no hug ending in a kiss. No kiss ending in a touch.
There wouldn’t be any fun to be had with this fire-breathing attraction unless she did something about it herself.
Unless she wanted it.
Unless she asked for it.
Nine
Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.
—SAMUEL JOHNSON
Juliet took a breath. Then took a chance. “Want to take a walk?” she asked Noah.
He hesitated a moment, and she could see his muscles bunch beneath his shirt. Then he shrugged, as if forcing himself to relax. “Sure.”
A small breath eased out of her tight chest. She led the way—that was what this was about, wasn’t it?—and he followed, closely, but not touching her, even though the small of her back twitched in expectation. Around her, people parted for their progress, until a man dressed as a cannibal—wild wig, “bone” in his nose, painted skin, and brandishing a big fork—leaped into her path.
“Yaahh!” he yelled.
Swallowing her surprised shriek, she jolted back, bumping into Noah. He drew her close, twisting to put himself between her and the happy carnivore.
“Damn,” the other man said, looking crestfallen. “And I wanted to make a meal out of this morsel of sweet meat myself.”
“She’s not a morsel, she’s a
lady
,” Noah said through his teeth. “A widow, for God’s sake. Show some respect.”
The cannibal’s painted face turned even ghastlier at the word “widow” and he backed off in a big hurry. “Sorry. Excuse me. Uh, gotta go.”
Juliet felt as embarrassed as the other man looked. “I didn’t need saving,” she protested.
“From that guy?” Noah responded, enclosing her hand in his and stepping through the restaurant’s back exit that opened onto a bluff. From there he towed her down a narrow, gritty trail that tracked through low-lying ice plant toward the beach below. “Yeah, you did.”
The steep path quickly dropped them beneath the level of the restaurant. Juliet glowered at his back as annoyance joined the arousal inside her. “Because I’m a poor little widow?” she asked.
Or worse, was his protective response because he considered her such a “lady”? No wonder Noah hadn’t followed up on those kisses in the kitchen. No wonder he’d backed away. He probably pitied her, the poor, desperate widow lady.
As they continued down the path, the annoyance grew, smoldering embers of it flaring into the fire of real anger. It was cool outside, but dressed in her velvet robe and thorny mood, she barely noticed. Trying to keep up with Noah’s longer strides, she stumbled over the root of a scruffy bougainvillea, and the graceless movement stopped her short, her bad temper spiking.
“Damn it,” she yelled, kicking at the scrubby brush. “Damn it all to hell!”
Noah turned to stare at her, and she yanked her hand from his then kicked the bush again. Twice. She glared at the offending plant and then at him. “And don’t you dare look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you didn’t think I knew any swear words. Because, hell yes, I do, and when I’m mad I’m going to let them loose.”
Noah’s voice softened. “Juliet, what’s the problem? What’s made you so upset?” In the bright moonlight, she saw his expression soften, too. It only made her madder.
“I’m not upset.” She took another swipe at the bush, and its barbs caught the hem of her robe so she had to reach down and jerk it free.
“Okay.” His placating tone did nothing to help matters.
She kicked the bougainvillea once more instead of stomping her foot like she wanted to. “I’m enraged, all right?” And before he could ask the obvious question, she let the answer tumble out from wherever it had been packed away all these months. “I’m enraged at Wayne. What was he thinking? How could he have done this to me? How could he have left me alone?”
“Ah, honey—”
“And then how am I supposed to do this . . . this thing we’re doing now?” Her throat tightened, but the ball of anger inside her was growing and it pushed the words up and out. “I barely dated before I was married—did you know I didn’t have one date in high school?”
“Uh—”
“Well, I didn’t. And so guess what? It means that here I am, over thirty and unmarried, with no idea of how to play the game or read the signals or where to find the rules. There are rules, aren’t there?”
“I’m not sure I know . . .”
She rolled her eyes. Six plus feet of soldier muscle and a law degree and he was trying to play dumb with her? Before Wayne’s death, she’d watched the leggy girls, the curvy women, the feline females Noah had escorted in and out of his above-the-garage apartment. “Oh, you know the rules all right, which is why I’m furious with you, too. Sure I’m angry at Wayne for leaving me, but you, you’re worse because, damn it, you’ve been leading me on.”
Noah jerked at the accusation and stepped forward. “Now wait a minute. Now wait just a minute.” His hands closed over her shoulders.
She wrenched back. “Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me unless you’re prepared to follow through.”
His arms dropped.
Now she did stomp her foot. She stomped her foot and fisted her hands and addressed the swathe of stars flung across the night sky, her frustration pouring out of her. “Damn it all! Is it too much to ask that I could have just a little time with a man I admire? Is it too much to ask that I could have a man to hold me through one simple, single night? Is it too much to ask that I could find some way to prove that I didn’t die, too?”
As the last words echoed in her ears, the desperate note in her own voice doused her anger. It subsided as quickly as it had built, leaving her still hot and bothered—but only by distinct embarrassment. And Noah was staring at her, silent.
Aghast, most likely.
“Oh, God,” she said. She covered her eyes with her hands. “Oh, God. Now you not only think I’m a pitiful widow, but a crazy pitiful widow.”
The ground didn’t open up and swallow her. Noah didn’t back away as she was sure he wanted to. Instead, his fingers circled her wrists and he yanked down her hands, leaving them eye to eye, toe to toe.
“That’s it? Someone to hold you through the night?” At Noah’s guttural tone, her eyes widened. “That’s what you want?”
But he didn’t wait for her answer. Instead, he jerked her hard against him. Her feet slipped on the sandy ground, but that didn’t matter, because he held her with a grip that wouldn’t allow her to move, let alone fall.