Maybe he wanted his own tonsil inspection.
That now-familiar belly burn ignited again and Marlys glanced around the shop. She had plenty of excuses if she wanted to refuse, but her clerk Leeza knew the ropes nearly as well as she did. And there was only a couple of browsers besides the woman who’d taken some outfits into the fitting room. Through her lashes, she made another quick assessment of Dean.
Not cute, handsome. Sexy. And the way he was looking at her, all silvery cool, felt like a direct challenge. Angel, show me what you’ve got.
Marlys could never resist a dare, and this one didn’t have a downside. The upper hand was always fun, and she’d show him that to her, lunch with a gorgeous man like himself equaled pure playtime.
“All right.” The shop was so small it was only two hops and a skip to retrieve her purse from behind the counter. “Leeza, you’ll be okay?”
The clerk said she would, and Marlys was headed for the door and Dean. With only five steps to go, the woman who’d been in the fitting area blocked her way. In a long-sleeved, knee-length cotton knit tunic over leggings, she held out her arms. “What do you think?”
Marlys didn’t hesitate. “You’ll need to lose ten pounds before you can wear that without looking pregnant.”
Over the crestfallen shopper’s head, she caught Dean’s wince. She ignored the little poke of guilt at her plainspokenness, and while she would have done it anyway, she hurried on her detour to a freestanding rack. There, she pulled a different top off the metal stand. “This one will look fabulous with your great skin.”
Cheering some, the woman took the hanger, and Marlys continued on her way. Outside, Dean slanted her a look. “How the hell do you stay in business with that kind of customer service?”
“I stay in business because when I tell them something’s right, they believe me, and don’t think I’m just trying to make a sale.”
“Ah,” Dean said, nodding. “I’ve been to a restaurant in Atlanta where the waitresses regularly curse the diners and roundly criticize their selections from the menu. The line is out the door.”
“The top I picked out cost twice as much as the one she’d tried on.”
“Marlys!” A laugh was startled from him.
She gave him a cheeky grin. “What? It will look twice as good on her. Really.”
He laughed again, and slung an arm over her shoulders. Her little shiver of reaction was easy to cover by drawing her sweater closer around her. “I can’t decide if you’re wicked or fun,” he said.
“Wicked fun,” she answered. See? Playtime. Nothing to worry about.
It was cool enough to choose the table under a patio heater at a nearby café. She asked for a half order of Chinese salad and black coffee, while Dean wanted eggs, bacon, homefries, a blueberry muffin, and a side of granola-topped yogurt.
“You and Noah need to go grocery shopping,” Marlys said, marveling at the number of plates that the waitress had placed around him and the speed at which he was chowing down the food. “Last night it was beefsticks. This morning he didn’t have anything to offer for breakfast?”
“Noah wasn’t there this morning.”
She hooted in surprise. “So the private got lucky last night! Who’s the woman on gun-cleaning detail?”
His fork halfway to his mouth, he froze. His cool silver gaze seemed to slice right through her like an ice pick. “I don’t know. What do you have against him anyway?”
Her plate of shredded cabbage, sliced almonds, and wonton strips required her full attention. “What makes you think I have something against him?”
“ ‘Private’?”
Marlys squirmed. “It’s not meant to be a put-down. I don’t criticize soldiers—of any rank.”
“Mmm.”
Miffed, she glared at Dean. “I don’t!”
“Yeah, and that guy you tongue-kissed in your shop a little while back is your true soul mate.” He put down his fork and patted her fingers resting on the tabletop. “Don’t get worked up, angel. Not everyone appreciates the military life.”
Marlys jerked her hand from his touch and shoved it into the patch pocket of her cardigan where she fingered the silver amulet and played with the attached silver chain. “I lived on Army bases. I loved military life.”
“Yeah?” Dean pushed the last of his plates away. His eyebrows rose as he took in her expression. “I think you mean it.”
While she resented his apparent belief that he could read the truth on her face, she didn’t see any harm in reminiscing about the childhood she remembered as blissfully happy and incredibly secure.
“It was the best. I was an only child, but there were always other kids to play with. Our parents shopped at the same places, we went to the same schools, the focus of every family on my block was exactly the same. I loved the way that everything stopped on base when the flag was lowered at five P.M.” She had her hand out of her pocket and halfway to her heart before she realized what she was doing and, embarrassed, redirected it to her coffee cup.
Dean gave a little nod. “The way my sisters and brother and I were raised, our entire family was in the service, not just our father.”
“Exactly.” Marlys smiled. “I couldn’t wait until I turned ten and was eligible for my very own military I.D.”
Dean laughed. “I’d forgotten about that.”
“And instead of Barbies, I had a whole army of G.I. Joes.”
His brows rose again. “Which might explain your career in boutique-wear. You missed out on your girly years.”
“I didn’t miss out on anything.” Every day she’d walked within those comforting gates, she’d known she’d belonged and she’d been secure.
Dean was shaking his head. “God, I felt like I did. When I turned fourteen, I wanted to be a civilian kid in the worst way, which only made my dad clamp down harder. My mom, too, telling me that every trouble report on me reached the base commander and reflected on my father, and my father’s career. At seventeen, I bailed out of the whole thing and it took me a few years before I woke up, went back, and enlisted. I don’t suppose growing up with that kind of pressure was any easier for you.”
“My father was a general.”
He shrugged. “Yeah? Only worse. My father didn’t have near that kind of clout, and when I was a kid, he still pissed me off.”
The amulet’s silver chain strangled her forefinger. “I adored my father.”
“I’m sure the feeling was mutual, though imagining Marlys Weston, teen angel, makes even a battle-scarred dude like me shiver a little. How’d the general deal?”
“The general didn’t deal at all,” Marlys heard herself confess. She whipped her hand from the silver tear in her pocket and flattened her fingers against the table as if it could flatten her own emotions. “My mom asked for a divorce when I was twelve.”
Dean brushed her fingertips with his. “And?”
“If I recall correctly, he wasn’t in the country at the time. He didn’t protest. We moved off base, I lost my friends.” I lost my security, my place. “I never spent any more time on a military base.” The rare occasions she saw her father, they’d go to the mountains to ski or to the beach to swim. They never went anywhere and worked, lived like a family.
She’d never belonged anywhere again, she thought, staring off into space. Or belonged to anyone. Sometimes it made her so damn mad, and other times—
“Marlys? Angel?”
Blinking, she focused on Dean. He was tossing some bills onto the little black tray that had come with the check, then he tucked his wallet in his back pocket.
Leaning across the table, he rubbed his thumb over her mouth. Her lips tingled. “I don’t like to see you sad.”
“Sad?” The word shocked her out of her reverie. It wasn’t close to mad and sounded too much like serious. “Sad! Marlys Weston doesn’t do sad. Marlys Weston is much too happy for sad.”
“Whatever you say.” He stood, then lifted her out of her chair. His posture was familia
r, soldier-straight, and she had a sudden urge to see him in uniform. Crisp, correct, everything in its place. In the military, you knew the rules and you played within the fences.
It might sound weird to other people. Stifling, instead of comforting. But she could see herself in on-base housing again. It was a harmless little fantasy, just more playing, but she could see it. A house, with herself inside of it. The front door opened, and a uniformed man strode inside.
Not her father. Not some anonymous military man.
Dean. And her heart thrilled at the sight of him.
On the sidewalk outside the café in Santa Monica, he was gazing down at her. When he cupped her chin, their gazes met, and just like that, the chemistry experiment bubbling between them blew up in their faces. Ka-boom.
“Jesus,” he said, all of him jerking away from her except for those fingers gripping her jaw. “Jesus, you do something to me.”
Her heart jittered in reaction to the stark truth in his voice. This wasn’t fun, or funny, or playful, or like the prank she’d played when she’d kissed Pharmaceutical Phil in his presence. This was weakness and want and everything she’d sworn that a man would never make her feel.
This was serious.
Juliet drove to Malibu & Ewe, eager to put distance between herself and Noah. He’d left her bedroom shortly after eleven, while she—what a chicken—pretended sleep. After a brief shower during which she acknowledged she could never look at those tiled walls the same again, she’d scampered to her car and instinctively headed for the first person she thought of.
Cassandra.
Her sister.
It was a notion still almost as unfamiliar as a man in her bed. But unlike that idea, it was a comfort to her, a promise of unequivocal support, and all she wanted right now was to sit on one of Cassandra’s couches. In the other woman’s calm, warm presence, she would draw out her needles and her yarn and work on the wrap she was making as a long-term substitute for a man’s arms. In Malibu & Ewe, there would be time and quiet to get her bearings.
The parking lot the shop shared with Gabe’s fish market/ café was crowded, but she found a just-vacated spot and strode for Cassandra’s place. It was another incredible day, November now, she realized, but the sun bounced so brightly off the ocean that she was forced to tent her hand over her eyes.
It wasn’t so much easier in Malibu & Ewe, she discovered, as she pushed through the door. Colors came at her, clearer and brighter than she ever recalled, and not just from the bins of yarn around Cassandra’s shop but from the outfits worn by the crowd of customers and in the tones of their upbeat, excited chatter.
By the register, Cassandra looked less calm than harried. A line had formed and she was obviously struggling to be efficient with the transactions while still answering the questions that were thrown her way from about the room. Juliet caught her eye, but she got barely a smile before her sister’s attention was split by yet another request.
The couches were full, and in the chaos, no one but Juliet seemed to notice that ensconced in the middle of the cushions was One of the Most Famous Actresses in America. Oomfaa, her long, lean legs crossed at the knee, appeared to be knitting a red-and-white striped mitten. Juliet had to grin to herself. She wasn’t the only woman who considered Cassandra’s shop a haven. And apparently the paparazzi were as ignorant of Oomfaa’s hobbies as they were of her home address.
A muffled, frustrated curse directed Juliet’s attention back to Cassandra. She rolled her eyes heavenward. “Out of register tape,” she muttered.
It wasn’t clarity, but it was industry, and Juliet welcomed that almost as much. “Move aside,” she ordered the shop owner. “I’ve got this.”
She took care of more than inserting a new role of tape. Cassandra had been snagged by a customer when Juliet took over, so she stayed behind the register. It was the Accucount 480, and she knew how to work the thing. Yes, she had to call Cassandra back for a brief lesson on her preferred procedures for credit cards and checks, but even that was mostly familiar.
An hour and a half later, she was tidying the countertop. Her feet hurt, and she’d made zero inches of progress on her wrap, but a sense of satisfaction filled her anyway. Cassandra was moving about, returning skeins to their bins. Oomfaa and everyone else, for the moment, was gone.
Cassandra looked over. “I owe you, big. What would you like?”
A game plan for what comes next with Noah. Instead, she said, “That was crazy busy.”
“My version of what Nikki calls the ‘lunch rush’ in restaurant speak. Everyone comes in before the kids get home from school or before the highway gets too bad with the commuter traffic. It’s worse, for unknown reasons, on midweek afternoons.” She sighed. “I suppose I should be looking for some part-time help. Strictly minimum wage plus discounts, but the location’s stellar.”
“You should hire me.” The suggestion just popped out, and Juliet blinked, surprised by the thought. “Of course, you don’t—” she started, and then swallowed the rest. She wanted the job, she decided—even at strictly minimum wage plus discounts—so why demur?
“Done.” Cassandra grinned.
Juliet grinned back. Maybe it wasn’t a career—finding that could come later—but this was a start.
My, wasn’t this turning out to be an interesting day? Job in the afternoon, sex in the morning. Oh, that’s right, there was that. Her mood dipped and she felt her smile die. Sex in the morning. Sex in the morning with Noah.
And now what?
He said he was moving out. Her stomach jittered a little at the thought, and she felt stupid at her dismay at the idea of him leaving.
It wasn’t that she expected he’d stay forever. She knew he was going to move on, she’d said that to him herself. He’d move on, start his own life, find the woman he wanted to marry.
That wasn’t her. For certain, that wasn’t her.
Not only had she had her love-of-her-life and been wedded to him, but she wasn’t sure she could satisfy a man like Noah, even for a little while. Because he’d said: I’m no officer and gentleman outside the blankets or underneath them either. I’m a guy from the streets who likes his sex sweaty and raunchy and more intimate than you can imagine.
Because he’d said that, and then, once they were in her bed he’d acted as if she were fragile. Delicate. Like a heart about to break.
“Uh-oh,” Cassandra said, coming to the register. “Don’t tell me it’s nothing. Something’s bothering you.”
“It is,” she said, nodding. “I came over here to ask your advice.” There had to be someone who would tell her what to do when it came to Noah, and she was banking on this down-to-earth, warm-hearted woman.
Cassandra grabbed her hand and drew her toward the couches in the center of the room. “Sit down and tell me all about it.”
As Juliet opened her mouth, the bells on the shop door rang out with an angry jangle. Her head turned in time to see Nikki storm through the door, her hands balled, her face and neck flushed, her blue and green eyes glittering like jewels.
Her gaze zeroed in on Cassandra as she stalked toward the center of the room. “Explain that e-mail,” she spit out.
Juliet stared. Good God, the younger woman was steaming with fury. That’s how I’d look if I ever really let go, Juliet thought to herself. In passion or in anger.
Nikki came to a stop in front of the shop owner and slammed her arms over her starched cook’s tunic. “Cassandra—”
“Wait.” She flicked a glance at Juliet. “Can’t we . . .”
Juliet took the hint and jumped to her feet. “I’ll just—”
“Sit right back down.” Nikki pointed to the cushions. Then she addressed Cassandra once more. “What? You didn’t e-mail big sister? You’re keeping secrets from her just like you once kept them from me?”
A cold chill rolled down Juliet’s back. “I don’t like secrets.”
“Cassandra’s an expert at them.”
“That’s not fair!�
� Cassandra rubbed her palms against her flowing paisley skirt. “I apologized for that, for not telling you right away we’re sisters. You know my reasons.”
“What are your reasons now?” Nikki said, a brow rising over her one green eye. “Why would you consider contacting our sperm donor without—”
“Our father,” Cassandra corrected, her voice rising, too. “The man fathered us.”
Nikki’s slashing gesture dismissed the idea. “Not me. Not Juliet. And not you either, Froot Loop.”
The other woman’s eyes now glittered, too. “Don’t.”
“Fathering goes beyond petri dishes and turkey basters. Even you should know that.”
“And even you should know that every time you reach out a hand it won’t be slapped.”
Both fuming, they stared each other down and Juliet remembered she’d come to the shop for some calm. Before that, she recalled she’d been intrigued at being part of a trio. At the idea of sisters. But this was messier than she’d expected, not to mention—her train of thought derailed as the source of their argument finally sank in.
“Wait,” she said. “You contacted our sperm donor?”
Cassandra glanced over. “Not yet. I just floated the possibility to you both in e-mail. I guess you haven’t checked yours yet.”
“I thought the donor process was anonymous,” Juliet said.
“It was at the time,” Cassandra answered. “But there are ways—”
“Sneaky ways,” Nikki put in hotly. “The same sneaky ways you used to find me.”
“It’s not like I stole your identity,” Cassandra shot back. “Thanks to my ‘sneaky ways,’ I gave you something. I gave you us, your sisters.”
Nikki’s mouth set in a stubborn line. “Well, fine. But I don’t want or need anyone else. And we have no right to be poking into this man’s life after all these years.”
“Didn’t you finish reading the e-mail?” Cassandra’s gaze narrowed. “Oh, no, you didn’t. You read the first line and then came stomping over here, breathing fire like a dragon.”
Nikki didn’t soften. “So what? What did I miss?”
Unravel Me Page 16
