“You’ve got to be kidding.” He dove in for another wet, deep kiss that had her clutching at his shirt. His hands slid over her back and then down, to tilt her hips into his. She went on tiptoe again to make the fit more gratifying. “I wasn’t planning on telling you anything,” he said.
She managed a laugh, even though with every unsteady breath, her breasts rubbed against his shirt. “I meant your astrological sign. The goat.”
“It’s not a goat.” He looked offended. “It’s a ram.”
“That’s a kind of truck. Your sign’s a goat. As in old goat. Or Billy Goat Gruff or—”
“Ram,” he said again, with heat, and then caught on. With another groan, he shook his head and then snatched the halo from her hair and sailed it toward the living room couch. “Brat, not angel. I was right the first time we met.”
It gave her a moment to rearrange her sagging armor. She mentally pulled it up around herself, and then scooted back so that her butt met stool again. Dean’s arms dropped, and she discovered she didn’t like the chill that distance afforded.
He didn’t look happy either. “You’re not going to make this easy, are you?”
The skinny satin strap of her costume dropped, but before she could draw it back, he ran his forefinger along the newly naked spot of her skin. “Are you, Marlys?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Uh-huh.” He shook his head again. “You big on denial, angel? Because we’ve got some crazy-ass chemistry going on here, and I, for one, am all for exploring it.”
Well, Marlys wanted to explain it. “I don’t… I’m not…” While no fainting virgin, she didn’t know how to deliver the message that Marlys Weston didn’t fall into strangers’ arms. She didn’t casually sleep around or even have a congenial fuck buddy on speed dial.
She didn’t like men that much.
Or women, either, for that matter.
Marlys Weston took no prisoners and not lovers very often. Her last best friend had been lost to her in seventh grade, and there hadn’t been anyone to fill the gap since. So how could this man so quickly get under her skin? There had to be a logical answer.
“Let’s start over again, Mr. Aries. So you have an April second birth date. Where exactly are you from?”
He hesitated, sliding back into his own stool. Was he playing obstinate man of mystery again? But no, he didn’t look cagey, he looked…confused?
Or unable to answer.
With new eyes, she took in his muscled physique and the close haircut, and then remembered that moment when he’d gone from asleep to alert. Like her father. Like a soldier.
“You grew up military, too,” she said. Military kids couldn’t name a hometown because they’d never had one. Two years here, three years there, they moved from place to place, base to base. “Army then, army now?” she hazarded a guess, and then thought, duh, he was a friend of Noah’s. That crazy-ass chemistry had scrambled her normal deductive skills.
He nodded, a little smile quirking his lips.
Yeah. That crazy-ass chemistry all made sense now, she decided. It must be because Dean was part of her tribe, the one and only group she’d ever belonged to. The one and only group that she’d felt completely comfortable in her skin around—until she’d been yanked from base life and had gone from soldier’s daughter to misfit civilian in one fell swoop.
As another who’d grown up military, he was one of her own. Almost like family—she found she was staring at his mouth, so, okay, not like family. But that was all right. Because he was military that meant he knew the score, too. An organization of the brats had assigned themselves a flower, like governments did. The U.S. national flower was the rose. The state of California had the poppy.
The military brats had adopted the dandelion.
Like them, it was resilient. Like them, it knew how to move on.
Which meant that she and Dean were alike and in their sameness they were safe. When—no, if—she decided to do something about this crazy-ass chemistry, they could go ahead and enjoy the experiment until the inevitable wind blew off its blossom or blew out its flames.
Nikki bumped her elbow into Juliet’s ribs and gestured toward the costumed crowd gathered on the restaurant’s glass-screened deck overlooking the ocean. “What do you think it says about men when a disproportionate number of them came dressed for Halloween as kings?”
“It could be a superiority complex, I suppose,” Juliet said, pitching her voice over the sound of the crashing surf and the rendition of “Monster Mash” from the band in the corner. “But my guess is a big basket of fake crowns right next to the checkout at CVS.”
“Okay,” Nikki said, nodding. “Laziness over a supremacy wish. And it explains why Jay is here telling everyone he’s Don Ho when he’s really just dressed in his own pair of cargo shorts, flip-flops, and one of his collection of vintage Hawaiian shirts.”
Juliet smiled as she spotted the man in question threading through the crowd and carrying drinks for the three of them. The deck was lit by the lights on the small patio tables and the tiki torches ringing it. “The ukulele is a cute touch. And the costume does kind of go with your most outstanding mermaid getup.”
Nikki reached for the lemon drop martini Jay handed to her and ran her gaze over Juliet. “You’re looking good, too. I like the Shakespearean slant.”
“Credit Cassandra’s creativity once again,” she said, running her hand down the long blue velvet robe the other woman had pulled out of her own closet. Underneath the half-open garment they’d paired a white peasant-style blouse and a long cotton petticoat. “It took her fifteen minutes and a glue gun to make the ‘Juliet’ cap.” In a darker shade of velvet, it hugged the crown of her head and was edged with colored “gems” as big as her thumbnail.
And it had taken less than fifteen for Cassandra to convince Juliet to attend the Halloween event. After a few days of stewing over Noah, she’d realized she needed the distraction. A little fun.
Nikki sipped at her drink and leaned closer so she didn’t have to yell over the music. “The only thing missing is Romeo.”
Romeo, Romeo, where for art thou, Romeo?
Juliet sighed. Recently, she’d only caught glimpses of her across-the-pool-neighbor—always accompanied by Dean. He’d nodded. She’d fluttered her fingers.
They’d both looked away.
After that last interlude in her kitchen—she was beginning to wonder if the location was bewitched—she’d gone to bed flustered. Okay, frustrated. Not to mention hurt. How could he touch her so intimately and then retreat with such speed and without so much as a word?
But after a few hours of flopping back and forth on her mattress, she’d started to look at it from his point of view. Why would a man—handsome, intelligent, and used to a variety of women—want to get involved with a widow who carried enough baggage to weigh down both of them?
Not to mention that she hadn’t spoken a word to him either. Before that kiss, after those touches, neither time had she assured him she was only contemplating a brief affair. Maybe if she’d been up-front: I just want your skin, your heat, your manness, no more—
But thinking about that wasn’t distracting or fun, so she turned away from it all by turning to her sister’s fiancé. His gaze was trained on Nikki.
“So,” she said. “How are things with you, Jay?”
He started. “Huh?”
“How are you?”
He shook his head. “Sorry, I was just congratulating myself on my choice of future wife.”
Nikki rolled her eyes. “Right. You were congratulating yourself on my cleavage, Hef.”
He grinned. “If you say you didn’t wear those starfish with just that in mind, then you lie, cookie.”
Without bothering to hide her own shameless grin, Nikki shot a look at Juliet. “Can’t get much by him, I tell ya.”
“Which reminds me,” Jay said. “I’ve been meaning to follow up on that conversation I started about your
husband’s book.”
“Jay…” Nikki groaned. “We’re at a party.”
“Exactly. So if you try to murder me again, this time there’ll be plenty of witnesses.”
Wayne’s book, Juliet thought. She’d yet to come up with any concrete plan to promote its success. “What do you want to know about it?”
“I’m thinking of featuring the autobiography in NYFM’s online edition.”
“NYFM?” Juliet’s interest sparked. Now she recalled that Jay was a magazine editor, but she hadn’t known it was that magazine. For men, mostly about men, the publication could bring to the book the kind of attention it deserved. “You work for NYFM?”
“Yep,” he said. “So what do you think about your husband’s book? Does it capture the essence of the man?”
She closed her eyes and breathed in, for a moment almost conjuring up the essence she remembered so well. She almost, almost, had it, the smell of starch on Wayne’s shirt mixed with the slightly caustic scent of his dry-cleaned dress uniform. Then it was gone, and she looked at Jay again, with a pang realizing how alone she still could feel, even at a party attended by more than a hundred people.
“Juliet?” Jay prodded. “I wouldn’t take up much of your time.”
Time wasn’t the issue at all. All she had now was time, unending, empty stretches of it, and she had to force that thought away as another sharp ache pierced her chest. “But why would you need me?” She must have missed something.
“I said I want to do an interview with you.”
“No,” Juliet said, her answer automatic. “Not a good idea.”
“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 wa
s 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.
Take Me Forever (Billionaire's Beach Book 2) Page 11
