“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.”
Juliet flipped a page of the magazine, staring unseeing at some glossy, frothy image. “I don’t want to discuss either one.”
“But that’s the downside of this sister thing,” Cassandra said gently. “You’re stuck with our noses in your business.”
They were ganging up on her. “I don’t want—”
“And if nagging won’t work, we’ll use guilt,” Nikki added. “Like, how could I possibly go forward with my wedding to Jay when you’re so obviously unhappy?”
“Unhappy?” Juliet’s hand froze, mid-page-turn. “I’m not unhappy. I’m angry.” And if she dwelled too much on it, her mood might set fire to something.
Her sisters exchanged glances. Cassandra opened her mouth. “All right. Want to expand on that?”
“No.” Juliet tossed the magazine to the table. “Can’t you just let this go?”
“I could,” Nikki responded. “But the granola girl here, she’s just a big pain in the ass.”
Cassandra huffed. “Snot.”
“Froot Loop.”
“Witch.”
Nikki smirked. “Lightweight. Try bi—”
“All right!” Juliet dropped her head to her hands. “All right. If just to shut the two of you up.”
“Hah.” Nikki smiled, all good humor again as she elbowed Cassandra. “We cracked her. You said it might take margaritas.”
&nb
sp; “For God’s sake, Nikki, we don’t want to give away our plague-the-sister strategies,” she replied, rolling her eyes. “What is wrong with you?”
“Nothing’s wrong with me, Froot Loop—”
“Please stop calling me that.”
Nikki’s expression turned sly. “Why? Because it’s Gabe’s pet name for you?”
Juliet leaned forward, eager to nurture this new topic of conversation. “Yes, speaking of things a person is itching to find out…”
The two younger sisters stilled, then turned on her as one. “Nice try, but no banana,” Nikki said.
Cassandra flipped a handful of wavy hair behind her right shoulder and then nodded. “We just want to help, Juliet. At the book party, what Noah said, help us understand…”
Noah. She tried pushing the man out of her mind, but it wasn’t working. Wayne was there, too, front and center. “I can’t believe they’d conspire to keep me away when my husband needed me most.” The words tumbled out.
She rose from the couch, her voice rising, too, but she couldn’t seem to modulate her tone. “It makes me furious to realize just exactly how frail they considered me to be.” She held out her arms. “Do I look like a puff of air would blow me over?”
Cassandra appeared to think about it. “Well, kind of. No! No! Don’t get all huffy. It’s just that you do have that ethereal blonde thing going on. It’s natural for people to respond to that in a certain way.”
“And I don’t think you’ve been eating enough,” Nikki added. “I should make you a big dish of enchiladas.”
Juliet dropped back to her seat, still frustrated. “Mexican food is not going to solve anything. As for people naturally responding to my kind of looks—these were two men who knew me. How could they have—What are you doing?”
She broke off as Nikki jumped from the couch to drag the oversized cutout of Wayne from the back room and over to the couches. Propped against the coffee table, all nine feet of him stared down at the three of them.
Nikki eyed the man right back, her arms crossed over her chest. “Just looking at him, he makes me want to enlist,” she said. “Either that or confess I cheated on my U.S. History midterm exam.”
Juliet could almost smile. “He had a way about him like that.”
“So you knew him then,” Nikki said.
“Of course.”
“Like you wished he’d known you.”
She narrowed her eyes at the other woman. “What are you getting at?”
“I hate to break big news, Juliet, but the man was old. Handsome and sexy, I’ll give you that, yet of an entirely different generation. And he was a military man. A commander.”
“But old,” Juliet said wryly. Her elegant silver fox.
“Well, if you’re aware of so much, can’t you see that he very likely thought—as a man of his generation and inclination—that it was his duty to protect you? Hadn’t he always tried to do that?”
“To a fault, yes, but he was dying, surely that meant—”
“I’ll tell you something I know about people and about dying. I watched my mother die, my father, too. Nothing changes about a person when they come to their last days. The funny ones still make jokes, and the private ones don’t suddenly reveal their souls.”
Cassandra slid down the couch to move closer to Juliet as Nikki continued.
“If you ask me, the choices your husband made at the end of his life tell us something about him—that he was a proud and caring man—but they don’t tell us anything about you.”
Cassandra picked up the thread. “Nikki’s right. They don’t say that you’re anything less than a woman loved with devotion by a well-intentioned, but perhaps pigheaded man.”
Juliet stared at Cassandra, then shifted her gaze to Nikki. Were they right, that this wasn’t about Juliet so much as it was about what Wayne needed to do for himself? And if so, how could her sisters possibly understand something so clearly that Juliet hadn’t realized on her own?
But wasn’t that what family did? she mused, looking up at Wayne’s masterful—oh, yes, and macho-to-the-core—image. Family could offer up clarity because they cared. Her gaze drifted back to the two other women. She’d risked forging a bond with them to gain everything that was written across their faces at this moment: warmth, loyalty, caring.
Insight.
Her anger leached away as her gaze lifted once again to Wayne’s photograph. Stubborn cuss. Pigheaded, stubborn cuss. But maybe I understand now, she conceded. Okay, she did understand now. I forgive you. She could almost swear she saw his black-and-white lips turn up in a little smile.
And if she forgave him…
But she wasn’t extending that to the other man who was out of her life and who she was still trying so desperately to keep out of her mind. The one who—
The bells on the door to Malibu & Ewe clanged. Oomfaa came dashing through, her face flushed, her voice breathless. “Passed Jay on PCH. No cell reception. He said to tell you, come quick. Something about a man and a car crash.”
The one who—Juliet finished the thought as dread filled her chest—was Noah, the man she still loved.
When they found Jay in the parking lot of Malibu’s Surfrider beach, Juliet’s dread seeped away. Her sisters had warned her that Oomfaa was as known for her hyperbole as her tendency to gossip and this “emergency” didn’t look quite so dire and didn’t involve Noah at all, though there was a tow truck, a crashed car, and a man—Gabe Kincaid.
The three women hurried from Juliet’s sedan to join Jay, who was conferring with the tow truck driver underneath the propped-up hood of his vehicle. Apparently engine trouble had halted him in the process of towing a crumpled but classic Thunderbird convertible, complete with a drunken—and singing—man sprawled in its backseat.
“No matter where you go,” Gabe sang at the top of his lungs, and though it wasn’t top quality, Juliet thought she recognized the song.
“Beatles?” she asked the others.
Jay shook his head. “Badfinger. Common mistake, because McCartney wrote a big hit of theirs, ‘Come and Get It,’ and George Harrison produced one of their albums.”
“I told you before he’s a font of useless info,” Nikki remarked.
“Useless?” Her fiancé grabbed her around the waist to yank her close. “That’s not what you said last night when I showed you that technique to—”
“Can you guys stop playing around?” Cassandra interrupted, sounding strained. “Can’t you see this is serious?”
Her voice seemed to penetrate Gabe’s drunken fog. He pushed himself straighter on the backseat, cradling a tequila bottle close to his chest as he peered at their assembled group. “Hey, Froot Loop! Look, I found it!”
“Oh, Gabe.” Cassandra’s hand shook a little as she pushed her hair over her shoulder. “Surely this isn’t it.”
“Not it, it,” he said, with an overemphatic shake of his head. “But like it, it. Going to restore this it. Bring it all back.”
“Oh, Gabe,” she responded again, as if her heart was breaking. She turned away from the man.
Juliet stepped nearer to her sister. “What’s the matter? What’s he doing?”
“I don’t know what he’s doing. Maybe what I’ve been worrying about all along,” she said, her words nearly masked as Gabe renewed his loud cover of the Badfinger ballad.
“What’s that?” Nikki said, she and Jay crowding close as well.
“Going completely crazy.” Cassandra glanced back at the man, then wrapped her arms around herself as if there’d been a sudden temperature dive. “He had one of those cars before. A 1963 Thunderbird convertible. It was in an accident as well. A drunk driver T-boned it when his wife was driving. It killed her instantly, along with their five-year-old daughter.”
“God.” Nikki clutched Jay’s arm. “God.”
He cleared his throat. “We didn’t know.”
“Gabe doesn’t talk about it unless he’s drunk. Unless he’s very, very drunk.”
/> “Froot Loop!” Gabe interrupted his song to give a lusty yell. “Come over here.”
With a sigh, she turned, then walked toward the car, the others trailing behind her. “Gabe…”
He frowned. “Whaz the matter?”
“I don’t like this.” She gestured to the convertible. “I don’t like seeing you in there.”
Juliet knew what her sister wasn’t saying. It didn’t take a giant leap of genius to wonder—to worry—that Gabe was placing himself in that same car because he was wishing he’d been with his wife and daughter at the time of their accident. That he was going to restore this Thunderbird so he could re-create the very same scenario.
“Come in wi’ me,” Gabe said to Cassandra, lurching for the door handle so that tequila spilled from the bottle he clutched. “We could fuck—”
“Gabe!”
“ ’Scuse me,” he said, giving up on getting the door open and going back to his sprawl. “We could make love righ’ here. Big backseat.”
Cassandra groaned. “How can you—”
“Wha’?” He slapped the leather with his free hand. “Lynn…m’wife and me made Maddie righ’ here.”
“Gabe, I’m not—”
“Wha’?” He took a chug of tequila, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “You don’ want my babies?”
It was hard to tell if Cassandra wanted to cry or crack Gabe on the head with that tequila bottle. “I don’t want you like this.”
He didn’t appear to hear her. “ ’S okay. I don’t want babies either,” he declared, then took another swig of liquor. “Proteshun. We’ll use con…con…con…”
“…doms,” Jay put in. “Condoms. So why don’t we get you out of that car, buddy, and I’ll drive you home. We can discuss your favorite brand and preferred size on the way.”
“Triple XL,” Gabe said, getting to his feet so he stood on the back cushions, swaying.
Jay took his tequila and handed it off to Nikki, then he helped maneuver Gabe from the car.
On the asphalt, the drunken man gave the group a serious look and pounded his chest. “Hung like ’n elephant.”
Cassandra rolled her eyes. “Dumbo, that’s what I’m going to call him from now on.”
Take Me Forever (Billionaire's Beach Book 2) Page 25
