Christ. Noah rubbed his chest. He really wished he hadn’t left the guesthouse now. He hated seeing her like this—because it made him worry that what she wanted so badly wouldn’t come to pass.
“How about if I take a couple of shots of you?” the photographer asked.
“Now?” Her hand went to her hair.
“Sure. Why not? I’ll bet people would like to know what you’re up to.” He jerked his chin in Noah’s direction. “And
who
you’re with.”
The overhead light clearly illuminated the flush shooting up Juliet’s slender neck. “That’s not . . . we’re not . . .”
Yeah
, Noah thought
. I’m the furniture. The enlisted guy. The hired help. Not good enough for her, and I know it.
Her gaze flicked to his face, then jumped away. “Noah is . . . Noah was my husband’s assistant. He helped Wayne as . . . as my husband declined. He helped him dress, helped him with his meals, helped him with the book he was writing.”
Noah refused to let any feeling show in his expression. He’d helped the general in ways that Juliet would never know about. In ways that she would never thank him for if she ever found out.
Which she never would.
The paparazzo shrugged. “None of that means you two aren’t an item.”
Juliet was shaking her head, her cheeks bright pink. She glanced over at Noah again, and licked her lips.
God
, he thought, staring at her mouth. She was so effing beautiful, sometimes it hurt to look at her. And maybe it hurt a little more to see her total rejection of him as a romantic interest.
Of course, they were miles apart and he accepted that. And he also knew her well enough to realize it would be difficult for her to verbalize this to some dumbass from Celeb!.com. With a sigh, he stepped closer to the photographer.
“Listen, bud, the lady said we’re not . . . intimate or whatever the hell you’re getting at, and that’s a fact. She’s . . .” He ran out of steam, and just lifted his hand to where she stood under the light, her pretty hair, her delicate build, her slender limbs all glowing golden. “She’s . . .”
“Too old for him,” Juliet said.
Noah froze. He was hearing things, right? There was water in his ears from his swim. Because he
knew
Juliet Weston. Of the many things to keep them apart, the
very
last thing that would ever stand in the way was . . . was . . .
He moved his head to stare at her. She couldn’t have possibly said . . .
But then she said it again. “Noah’s younger than me.” All right. He hadn’t left the guesthouse and come back to her after all. Instead, he’d fallen across his bed and then into a deep sleep, dreaming.
A really odd, odd dream.
Two
You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.
—JEANNETTE RANKIN
Noah was back in her kitchen. He’d ushered from the premises the Celeb!.com photographer who’d left after trying to wheedle her phone number out of her. With disapproval blasting from Noah’s parade-rest position a few feet away, she’d reconsidered her impulsive proposal of a tabloid TV segment on Wayne’s book—she must have been really rattled to suggest it in the first place—but the paparazzo had persisted in trying to set something up.
She’d held firm to her refusal though, and while the stranger with the cameras was finally gone, Noah’s dark mood hadn’t dissipated. Trying to ignore it, she moved about the room, making up little tasks for herself like refolding the dish towels and straightening the salt-and-pepper shakers. Normal activities. Normal activities that she hoped would put their relationship back to normal.
There’d never been tension between herself and Noah, and now the air seemed thick with it. From the corner of her eye she stole a look at him and—
bam!
—another jolt of sexual heat rocked through her. Oh, boy. Her response to him wasn’t anywhere near normal either.
But was that her fault? Who could ignore all that uncovered skin?
“Aren’t you cold?” she blurted out.
He glanced down at his bare chest. “No. Do I look cold?”
From the shield of her lashes she glanced at him again. Leaning against a countertop, he wore only jeans and shoes. The denim was nothing special, worn almost white in places, and slung low across his hips to reveal yards of healthy male abdominal muscles, curved pectorals, and heavy shoulders. Those sinewy arms. There were his dark nipples that had caught her attention earlier in the evening. The centers were gathered into tiny, hard-looking buttons. Her nipples only tightened like that when she was chilled, or . . . or aroused.
Her right arm clamped over her breasts and she clutched her upper left with tight fingers, a little noise sounding from her throat. She tried to disguise it by faking a cough.
Noah wasn’t so easy to fool. “Juliet?” His voice sounded puzzled. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing.” Everything.
“Juliet.”
She looked up at him. He was still propped against her counter, but he’d folded his arms over his chest in a no-nonsense attitude that went along with the no-nonsense narrowing of his blue eyes. Noah was handsome—she’d always known that on some faraway, objective level—thanks to his chiseled cheekbones and square jaw. Wayne had been a good-looking man, too, her lean silver fox. But Noah was made of more rugged material and there was nothing subtle about the testosterone that seemed to ooze from his pores.
“C’mon, Juliet. We’re friends, aren’t we?”
Her throat tightened. “I thought we were.”
Something flickered in his eyes. Oh, God. Had she hurt his feelings? This was all her fault, she thought, looking away. This unseemly, inappropriate, unlooked-for reaction was something that was entirely on her shoulders. “Noah . . . It’s not you.”
He laughed. “I’ve heard that one before.”
She met his gaze again. “Somehow I doubt that.”
“What?”
“You forget how long I’ve known you. Remember all those months when you were in the apartment over the garage at the house in Pacific Palisades?” While attending law school, he’d lived with them and aided her husband as his illness progressed. Noah had stayed on with her after the general’s death, taking care of a thousand details, including helping her move to this much smaller place in Malibu.
She found a smile for him. “Don’t think we didn’t notice the blondes, the brunettes, and those redheads who came and went from your apartment. I think your social life gave Wayne more than a few vicarious thrills.”
“Now I’m the one doubting. Not only am I not nearly the player you’re making me out to be, we both know the general had the only woman and the only thrills he was looking for.”
Juliet looked away again. Maybe not. She’d felt an inexplicable distance between herself and Wayne as he neared the end of his life and it still bothered her.
“Juliet.” Noah had made another of his silent moves. Without her detecting his travel across the terra-cotta tiles, he was beside her, his body radiating warmth. One of his fingers slid under her chin to lift her face. “What’s going on with you tonight?”
Thoughts of the past evaporated as goose bumps shivered over her flesh from the point of his contact. Her heartbeat throbbed in the cells of her skin as she stared up at him. She’d never, ever, been so aware of her body, but she couldn’t let this man know what he was doing to her. She couldn’t! They were supposed to be getting back to normal.
His finger curled in what seemed to her overheated self as a short caress. “What are you thinking about?”
“You.” Oh, God, her brain was set on blurt again. She coughed, then lied to explain herself. “I was, um, thinking that since we moved here I haven’t seen a woman at the guesthouse. You . . . you need to know I don’t expect it to be a monastery.” Maybe if she saw him with some pretty young thing she’d get over this weird reaction to him—if a night’s sleep wouldn’t do the job on its own.
He dropped his hand and stepped back. “I don’t need to bring a woman here.”
“But, Noah—”
“It’s only temporary, remember?” Turning away, he ran his hand through his dark hair. “I’m only living here for a short while. Until the automatic sprinklers are set right and the gazebo is painted, and we’ve figured out how that damn built-in barbecue works.”
Then he’d be gone. And she’d be alone. There was Wayne’s daughter, Marlys, of course, but they’d never been close. Even after Juliet had told her she was moving from the Weston family house in Pacific Palisades so that Marlys could have it to herself, the other woman hadn’t warmed up. No doubt she blamed Juliet for everything from her parents’ divorce—that had occurred years before Wayne’s second marriage—to her father’s cancer diagnosis.
Or maybe Marlys believed all the ugly rumors about Juliet. How she’d been callous over the fact that her husband was dying. How she hadn’t cared enough to stick by him when the very end came.
Yes, Marlys wasn’t going to provide much friendship. When Noah vacated the guesthouse across the pool, there’d be no one who—
This time the information she’d learned at the shop that night hit with the weight of a brick and sank straight to her consciousness. “Oh.” She put her hand over her mouth. “Oh my God.”
Noah spun. “Now what?”
“I think I need a glass of wine.” She headed for the refrigerator. “How about you?”
He caught her arms and drew her to him. “I’m not a wine kind of guy, honey. Surely you know that.”
Honey.
The soft word made her feel all warm again, but she couldn’t be distracted by that, or by the smooth skin of his tanned, muscled chest such a very few inches away. “Noah . . .” She tried pulling free.
He only drew her closer. “Juliet . . .” he echoed. “I’m done dancing around this. You’re acting very unlike yourself.”
“That’s the problem.” She looked up into his eyes. “I don’t know who I am anymore. Not really.” That was the truth. And not just because she was smelling Noah now, taking in his scent, and feeling her inner woman instead of her inner widow responding with another wash of heat.
She tried pushing him away, but Noah’s grip firmed on her upper arms. “I’m not letting you go until you come clean with what’s set you off-kilter tonight.”
It was like trying to move a mountain. With a sigh, she went ahead and told him some of what had her teetering on her feet. “I’m not my father’s daughter.”
“Yeah?” His thumbs drew a pattern over the flat knit of her silk sweater. “What makes you say so?”
“It’s what my sisters told me.”
Surprise showed clearly on his face. “You’re an only child.”
“That’s what I thought. But tonight—just an hour or so ago—I found out that isn’t the case.” The notion seemed incredible, but the words coming from the mouths of the two women in the yarn shop had held the distinct ring of truth. “Cassandra Riley and Nikki Carmichael told me we are all products of a single sperm donor and our own separate mothers.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Where did this come from? How did these women contact you?”
Juliet thought of the knitting shop on the Pacific Coast Highway, a short drive away. She remembered walking in and looking at the two women sitting together on a couch and how their jaws had dropped when they’d looked back.
“Cassandra—she has a business in Malibu—did some Internet research into her biological father. Her mother told her from childhood she was the product of an anonymous sperm donor, but only recently did she try to discover who that donor was.”
“I thought you just said ‘anonymous.’ ”
“It’s the age of the Internet. I could probably find out your deepest, darkest secret given my flying fingers and a few hours with ‘the Google.’”
He didn’t crack a smile at her little joke. As a matter of fact, at the mention of “deepest, darkest secret,” his body had tensed. A muscle in his jaw ticked.
“Noah?”
“So you’re telling me that this Cassandra . . .”
“Used her own flying fingers. When I was still living in the old house, she sent me an invitation to her business in Malibu. I dismissed it as some generic direct mail advertising, but when I was out for a drive tonight I saw the place and it jogged my memory. I was curious enough to stop by.” She shrugged. “I thought it was a whim at the time, but maybe fate was giving me a little nudge.”
“And inside you found your two supposed sisters.”
Sisters! It really was a strange thought. But . . . “I’m inclined to believe we’re related. If you listened to them, if you saw them, you’d understand why.”
“Well, I
am
going to see them.”
“Noah . . .” She shook her head, realizing she should have expected this. “There’s no need to go guard dog on me.”
“Yeah? Is that what I’m doing?”
“Yeah, that’s just what you’re doing. It’s written all over your face.” She lifted her hand to touch his hard cheek, then pressed it to his chest. “And all over the tension I can feel right here.”
Beneath her palm, his heartbeat quickened. Then her skin registered a surge of heat in his and she heard the jerky hitch in his breathing. She couldn’t continue to meet his eyes.
Instead, she shuffled back, a new burn spreading across the nape of her neck. But her hand stayed glued to his chest and she stared at it, willing it to move, too.
Now
, she commanded.
Stop touching him now.
The stubborn thing finally obeyed, but slowly, so that her fingertips took a lazy path down the hard plane of his abdomen. When they brushed his denim waistband, she jerked, and her hand dropped to her side.
They both let out a breath.
She whirled toward the refrigerator and opened it, staring at the shelves while the cool air wafted over her. Oh, it would be good to crawl inside right now, not only to bring her temperature down, but so that she didn’t have to face him again. What must he be thinking?