It was only the press she saw, the press who seemed less interested in Marlys’s father, the general, a true hero, than the treacherous woman who’d married him. It was the press Marlys focused on, and also on the woman who now had a happy, supportive family and an adoring new lover. Her father’s aide.
She heard the reporter say, “If I could ask another question, Mrs. Weston?”
And Marlys remembered she’d come tonight with questions, too, and they’d all been answered except for one that she’d never dared utter before, not even in the ear of her source at the tabloids. It came out of her mouth, though it wasn’t much more than a whisper.
“Juliet, did you have something to do with my father’s death?”
Noah’s head turned at the sound of Marlys’s voice. What the hell had she just said? She stood just outside their small circle of people—reporter, photographer, the three sisters, and himself. The majority of the launch party attendees had gone, but there were still a dozen or so left, enjoying the food or in line to buy the general’s book. Juliet had handled the crowd like a pro, even taking on the most cutting press questions with unflappable cool.
A few media members continued to hang around—those standing beside them, and another photographer that Noah just now spied, tucked beside a beverage urn. He recognized the rat—that damn paparazzo he’d caught sneaking around Juliet’s pool weeks ago.
Torn between throwing that guy out and not wanting to leave Juliet’s side, he was still standing there when Marlys raised her voice and repeated her question for everyone’s ears.
“
Did you have something to do with my father’s death
?”
Jesus. “Of course she didn’t,” Noah ground out. Protecting Juliet was his number-one concern, and he should have known that meant getting rid of the general’s daughter the moment he’d spotted her in the yarn shop. “I told you to get lost before, Marlys,” he said, starting for her, “and it’s time you listened.”
Marlys evaded him by squirming between the reporter and photographer. From the corner of the room, Noah could hear the distinctive click of a camera shutter. He shot the other photographer, the one closer to the action, a searing look.
No pictures.
Marlys’s gaze remained on Juliet. “You played the doting wife in public and when my father’s friends were in our family home, but when he was taking his last breaths, you were being pampered at a spa. How could you? How can you explain that?”
“Damn it, Marlys.” Noah launched himself forward, but Juliet grabbed his arm and hauled him back.
“Don’t,” she said to him, then turned her attention to the other woman, her voice calm. “I’ve said this before, Marlys. I couldn’t know it was that day, that hour—”
“He hadn’t been eating.”
“Your father—”
“He hadn’t been drinking.”
Juliet pushed back her hair. “His illness meant he didn’t have much appetite—”
“Or was it that my father was refusing nourishment in order to hasten his death and you did nothing to stop him?”
Noah saw Juliet freeze. Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Her lips set and her eyes narrowed as her gaze slowly slid from Marlys to his face. Was she connecting some inconvenient dots?
The general’s daughter’s tone was shrill. “Juliet—”
“Knows nothing about anything like that,” Noah interjected, his voice harsh and loud enough to reach all four walls of the store. He’d made a promise, but he couldn’t let a public accusation such as this stand. “In the last weeks, the general didn’t let anyone tend him during his meals but me.”
“The both of you hinted it embarrassed him to have me see him struggle to feed himself,” Juliet said slowly. “He flat-out refused to let me help. But neither of you told me how much he was eating and drinking. Or wasn’t eating and drinking.”
Noah knew the shit had hit the fan now. But with her looking at him like that, there was no way he could tell her anything less than the truth.
“He wasn’t, not at the end. He really couldn’t—it wasn’t a matter of choice,” he clarified. “But it was one of the general’s last commands that I not let you know that.”
“What? Why?”
Noah ignored the questions to pin Marlys with his glare. “Satisfied? Have you done enough?”
The general’s daughter’s face was pale. “What did
you
do?” she shot back.
“Christ, Marlys. Nothing like you’re insinuating—hospice was there alongside me. When the general wasn’t eating or drinking any longer, he asked us to keep the particulars quiet because it gave him a measure of control and self-respect. It gave him back a little dignity to think he was doing one last thing for his wife.”
“What last thing?” Juliet’s shaken voice made him ache.
“He didn’t want you hovering at his bedside. He didn’t want you making yourself sick while watching his every breath to determine if it was his last.”
“Hover—!”
“He knew that would be torture for you and he wanted to protect you from the ordeal. The day he sensed was his last day . . .” Noah looked down, then back to the face of the woman he loved. He’d held this secret for so long, but it was out now, and he recognized with another sharp ache that the casualty of it could very well be the future with her he’d almost started to believe in. “On that day he asked me to convince you to spend it at the spa.”
Juliet’s hand rose to her throat. At her side, Cassandra put her arm around her older sister’s shoulders.
Marlys made a strangled sound. “Why didn’t you call me, if Juliet wasn’t the one he wanted with him when he died?”
“Jesus Christ, Marlys. If he didn’t want Juliet as a witness to that, he certainly didn’t want you there either. He wanted to shield you, too.”
“Shield me?” she repeated. “Why would my father want to shield me?”
Noah shook his head. “Because he loved you, Marlys.”
She paled further, the angry expression on her face melting away. If he’d thought the little witch had a heart, he might have suspected it was broken. But he didn’t believe she had a single soft organ inside her, and when she scrambled backward and then ran for the door, he could only be glad she was gone.
Leaving all the destruction that she’d wrought behind.
Silence settled over the room. There were a few last sales rung up at the register, a few last looks cast, but quickly the party was over, the shop empty of all but the sisters and the three men.
To Noah, the only one in the place was Juliet.
Even obviously upset, she’d never looked more beautiful—and more unattainable. Her sisters were close to her; Nikki had brought her coffee, but she hadn’t taken a sip.
She hadn’t looked at him.
Finally, she spoke, her gaze fixed on something only she could see. “That day, that day I went to the spa, you didn’t really think it was Wayne’s last day.”
Juliet had been nearly impossible to pry from the general’s side. She’d complied during mealtimes, but for months, the rest of her day—except that day—had been exclusively devoted to her husband. The spa certificate the general had bought for her last birthday was months old.
“Yeah, I did.” Noah shut his eyes, remembering the wasted figure in the bed, the general’s stoic attitude toward his pain, the calm way he’d come to terms with dying. On that day, his last desire had been to prevent his wife’s further suffering and it had been what Noah wanted, too. “I did think it was.”
“But it was you who persuaded me to have a day at that spa. I remember it perfectly. You encouraged me to leave Wayne’s bedside. I wouldn’t have gone if you hadn’t insisted.”
Noah opened his eyes and saw that Juliet had moved farther from him. If he put out his hand, it wouldn’t reach her. “It was what he wanted.”
“Wanted?” she snapped back. “It was that he considered me too fragile to handle it. And you, you thought he was right about that, too.”
She’d gone from stunned to something else. Angry? Aching? Some miserable combination of the two? He didn’t know how to fix it. Pushing a hand through his hair, he sighed. “That wasn’t—”
“Don’t give me that,” she interrupted, her voice hot. “You could have reasoned with him; you could have refused. At the very least, you could have given me some sign of what you suspected would happen that day.”
“Juliet . . .”
Her gaze narrowed on his face. “Did
you
think I was strong enough to stay at his side? Do you think Wayne was wrong?”
He thought it was the most heroic thing the general may have ever done—to meet the end of his life without the love of his life next to him. That wasn’t what she wanted to hear, but her blue and green eyes were a bicolored lie detector and there was really nothing to be gained by bull-shitting now. He’d already lost her. “No.”
She jerked, as if the word was a blow.
At that sign of her pain, he found himself trying to leap the chasm between them anyway. “Juliet.”
But she was already retreating farther from him, her outstretched hand shoring up the very air between them. “Don’t touch me,” she said. “Don’t ever touch me again.”
God help him, the insistence in her voice didn’t stop him. He had to try one last time to reach her, he was that stupid in love. “Juliet, what we’ve had together—”
“Was nothing. Any warm body would do.”
He ignored the sting of that and edged closer. “Juliet.
Honey.
”
“I said I don’t want you near me.”
“Fine.” Halting, he shoved his hand through his hair again. “Later, when we’re back at the house—”
“There won’t be a later, Noah.” Her expression was set, her beautiful mouth compressed in a tight line. “You’re fired.”
He froze. Two words. A single killing shot that dismissed him as well as the relationship they’d developed over these weeks of friendship and intimacy.
You’re fired.
Who the hell knew why it felt like such a damn surprise? Because no matter how he’d tried to fool himself otherwise, he’d never believed it would ever last—the officer’s wife and the enlisted guy.
He raised stiff fingers to his forehead and sent her a military salute. “Yes, ma’am.”
And like that, his tour of duty was over.
Nineteen
In war, truth is the first casualty.
—AESCHYLUS
Juliet tidied the area around the cash register, Cassandra slid skeins into bins, and Nikki perused a stack of wedding magazines that she’d brought with her instead of her half-finished fiancé sweater. “I knew nobody would come tonight,” she said, frowning at a slick page. “But still I had hope, even though it’s almost Thanksgiving. I really need wedding advice and the knitters are always ready to offer some up.”
“I considered canceling tonight,” Cassandra admitted. “But then I thought—”
She broke off, but Juliet could finish the sentence for her.
But then I thought our older sister needed the distraction.
Today was the anniversary of Wayne’s death, and Cassandra was right. She needed to be distracted. She didn’t want to think about him. About him or Noah.
“Anyway,” Cassandra continued. “I’m here, Juliet’s here. We can help, though I thought you and Jay were pretty serious about the Vegas drive-through chapel on New Year’s Eve.”
“We figured his relatives would never forgive us, and then I thought . . . I realized . . .” Her cheeks pink, Nikki glanced up from her magazine to look at Cassandra across the room. “I have my own family now, too. I want you to stand up with me.”
“Oh.” Cassandra dropped the yarn she was holding, and then bent quickly to retrieve it. She stood again, grinning. “Oh,
yes
.”
Nikki smiled in return, then glanced over at Juliet. “You’ll have to cut cards for who gets to be maid of honor.”
“What?” Juliet blinked. “Me, too? I don’t know . . . a wedding . . .” Being involved in one might make it impossible for her to put from her mind the two men she’d loved and she was devoting every ounce of energy to just that very thing.
But there was her sister, her
sister
, looking at her with such expectation from eyes so very like her own. How could she refuse?
“Of course I’d be honored to be in your wedding party,” she said quickly, and before her inner self could start howling, she forced out the next question. “And what kind of advice are you looking for?”
“A theme. That’s what Jay’s sister said. He, of course, immediately thought of ‘sultan and harem,’ but we managed to convince him that if he brought it up again he wouldn’t live to see the wedding.” The mischief on her face fled and her eyes flared wide. “Oh, God, I’m sorry. That’s probably not so funny to you.”
“What?” Juliet realized the turn her sister’s thoughts had taken. “No, no. Don’t worry about it.”
“I’ve got such a big mouth. You don’t need any offhand reminders that your husband has been gone a year, and . . .” She clapped her hand over her lips and mumbled from behind them. “Go ahead, kill me n—”
Cassandra clipped her on the side of the head, then dropped down onto the cushions beside the other woman. “Shut up, little sister.”
With a groan, Nikki sank into the couch cushions. “I’m sorry. Someone should just shoot me and put me out of my miser—”
Cassandra’s second clip wasn’t quite so gentle. “Nikki? Seriously. Are you brain dead?”
Juliet’s two sisters stared at each other, matching expressions appalled.
“It’s not our fault,” Nikki said. “It’s just one of those things, where the subject you want to steer clear of most keeps making its way to the tip of your tongue.”
Reaching for one of the magazines, Juliet gave a nod. “I understand. No problem. Don’t worry about it.”
“Thing is, no matter how hard I try, I have a terrible feeling I’m going to find myself talking about your husband’s death—”
“Nik!”
She ignored Cassandra’s protest and went on, like a dog with a bone. “—as well as how you’re doing now that Noah’s gone.”