by Joss Wood
Noah’s eyes flew up and Jules almost took a step back at the leashed power in his gaze. He rose, slowly and deliberately, and the air in the room disappeared. That power she saw on his face, in his eyes, was pure, undiluted desire. For her.
Holy hell.
The sketchbook slipped from her fingers as Noah’s hands gripped her hips, as his masculine, fresh scent hit her nostrils and her chest banged against his. She couldn’t stop her body’s instinctive move to push her breasts into his chest, her hips aligned with his and... Yeah. There it was. Long. And hard. All for her.
Using her last few remaining brain cells, Jules slapped her hand against his chest, trying but failing to push him away.
“If you’re going to be my fake girlfriend, I want one real kiss.”
“Not a good idea, Noah.”
“Screw good ideas,” Noah whispered, his mouth descending to hers. His words whispered over her lips, and his eyes bored into hers. “Every time I’ve seen you since I came back, I’ve wanted to kiss you. It’s bizarre but I keep wanting to check whether I imagined the power in our kiss. I don’t sail much anymore, Ju, and kissing you is the closest I’ve come for months to feeling that same adrenaline.”
God, how was she supposed to resist? He was all man, so sexy, and in his arms she was the woman she’d always wanted to be. Strong, sexy, powerful, feminine. But they shouldn’t be doing this, it so wasn’t a good idea...
Noah’s mouth on hers kicked that thought away and all Jules could think about, take in, was that Noah was kissing her. He kissed like a man in his prime should, a man who was fully confident with who he was and how to make a woman feel incredible. He took and devoured, and just when she thought she might dissolve into a heap of pure pleasure, he toned it down, went soft and sexy, tender. He built her up, eased off, built her up again.
Sexually frustrating but soul-tinglingly wonderful. This...this was what she’d been missing from every other man who’d held her, kissed her. None of them made her core throb, her heart liquefy. No man before him made her feel intensely feminine, indescribably powerful yet, simultaneously, willing to be sheltered and protected. He made her feel everything she should.
Everything that she shouldn’t.
She should step away and if he’d been demanding or insistent Jules might’ve done that, but Noah’s hands didn’t move from her hips, he didn’t push his erection into her, didn’t bump or grind. He just used his tongue and lips and, yeah, his teeth to maximum effect. Man, he was good.
Jules had no reservations about touching him, freely allowing her hands to sneak up under his shirt, exploring the thick muscles of his back, the ridges of his stomach, his flat, masculine nipples, the trail of hair that led down, down. She avoided his shaft, knowing that if she touched him there, if he touched her breast or between her legs, they would be making love in front of a clear window looking out to a busy marina.
But, damn, she was tempted...
Noah groaned deep in his throat, his mouth eased off hers and then his forehead was against hers, his eyes closed. “Crap,” he muttered.
Crap indeed. Jules knew what he was thinking, he didn’t need to voice the words. Like her, a part of him kept hoping that the attraction that had flared to life so long ago would dissipate at some point but... No.
It was still there. Hotter and brighter than before.
Noah’s fingers dug into her hips. “Being your boyfriend and not being able to have the benefits of the title is going to be harder than I thought.”
Because she was on the point of saying “To hell with it, let’s get naked,” Jules forced herself to step back and pushed her hand into her hair. “That shouldn’t have happened. Nothing is going to happen, Noah.”
Maybe if she kept saying it often enough the thought would sink into their stubborn heads.
Noah used one finger to push a curl off her cheek. “It just did, Ju. We can’t deny that there’s something bubbling here.”
“I wasn’t going to deny that. But we’re not going there, Noah,” Jules said, feeling that familiar wave of stubbornness sweep over her.
“Why not? We’re adults. It doesn’t have to mean anything.”
Jules nailed him to the floor with a hard look. “Sex might not mean anything to you, Noah, but it does to me. It’s not a way to scratch an itch, a way to pass some time.” She shrugged. “I only share my body with men I can trust, Noah. And, unfortunately, you’re not that man anymore.”
Jules ignored the flash of emotion she saw in his eyes, determined to ignore her inner voice that insisted that she’d hurt him, and bent down to pick her sketchbook off the floor. Holding it against her chest, she rocked on her heels. “I think we need some time to wrap our heads around the events of this morning.”
She needed some distance from him, from the passion still swirling between them. “I’m going to go, but if you can send me the yacht’s blueprints, I can put something together and we can thrash out a proposal to present to Paris.”
Noah rubbed the back of his head and nodded. “Sounds like a plan.”
Jules was grateful he didn’t argue. “And when we meet again, it will be as professionals, Noah. This can’t happen again.”
It was Noah’s turn to look stubborn. And frustrated. Jules could relate. “I can’t just act like I’m not attracted to you, Jules, nor can I forget that you were once my best friend. I can’t treat you like just a colleague.”
Jules pulled her bag over her shoulder as sadness wrapped its cold self around her heart. “When you chose to walk out on us, on our friendship, you made anything deeper impossible, Noah. You neither gave our attraction, nor our friendship, a chance. I tried to salvage what we had, you didn’t even meet me halfway. It was your choice, Noah, and you have to live with the consequences.”
Jules, feeling sick and sad and, dammit, totally sexually frustrated, walked to the door. “I’ll call you when I have something to show you.”
Jules forced her feet to walk out the door, down the hallway. She just managed to throw a cheerful “’bye” to Levi and wave to Meredith. It was only when she passed through the access control gate and pulled her sunglasses over her eyes that she allowed a few annoying tears to escape.
She thought she was done crying over Lockwood, dammit.
* * *
Darby pushed her shoulder into the doorjamb and Jules met her eyes in the long freestanding mirror. Her sister was dislodging strands of hair from her messy bun every time her head moved. Dressed in low-slung sweats and a tank top, Darby shouldn’t have looked so damn gorgeous, but she did. Her fraternal twin could wear a burlap sack and make it look like haute couture.
“So, another date?” Darby asked, her wide smile in place but her eyes showing concern.
“Nothing serious. Robert has been bugging me to have dinner with him for a while so I called him up and told him I was free tonight.” She’d dated Robert the year before Noah left. He’d always been far more invested in their relationship than she was and Jules had hurt him when she’d finally called it quits. He was a nice guy, a kind, gentle man who’d been her first real boyfriend and her first lover.
“I thought you said you weren’t going to go to dinner with him, that you didn’t want him to think that there was any chance of you hooking up again.”
That was before Noah returned and placed her heart, mind and body on a Tilt-A-Whirl. Jules refused to meet Darby’s eyes. Hell, she was having trouble meeting her own. The only reason she called Rob was because she wanted to feel back in control, on firm footing and, because she was hoping for a miracle, a little part of her prayed that she’d look at him and magically fall in love with him. She knew Rob, knew how to handle him, what to expect. With Rob she’d be in control. He was safe and predictable...
Everything that Noah Lockwood wasn’t. God, she was so pathetic.
Embarrassed at her behavior and he
r lack of maturity, Jules didn’t answer her twin. She had to pull herself together, dammit!
Darby walked into Jules’s bedroom and sat down on the end of her king-size bed, covered in blindingly white linen. Darby pulled her legs up and wrapped her arms around her knees, her slate-gray eyes curious.
“Where did you disappear to today?”
“I just needed some alone time.”
After leaving Noah’s office, Jules had needed to walk and then to run. Because she always kept a fresh set of gym clothes in a bag in the trunk of her car, she’d decided to head out of town to the Blue Hills Reservation to work out her frustration on a long trail run. After doing eight miles, she’d spent the rest of the afternoon sitting on the bank of the pond.
She’d kissed Noah. And she’d more than liked it. Holding her pencil in her hand, her sketchbook on her lap, she’d stared at the scenery, not seeing much beyond the blue sky and the forest. She was more interested in the movie playing in her head...his masculine, fresh-tasting mouth doing crazy things to hers, his strong body pressed up against hers, his warm male skin under her fingertips, the sounds of approval and desire he made deep in his throat. She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about what they did, his hard body and what it all meant.
And when she couldn’t think about that anymore, when those thoughts became too overwhelming, she allowed herself to wander back in time, to sitting on her parents’ roof with Noah, talking about anything and everything. The goofy text messages they exchanged, the way their eyes would cut to each other as they shared a joke no one else was privy to. She was extremely close to Darby and to DJ but Noah understood her on a fundamental level they didn’t.
What could these kisses, the intense attraction between them mean? Where was this going, what were they trying to be? Jules looked at her twin, unable to tell her sister—the person she shared everything with—how close she’d come to begging Noah to do wild and wicked things to her on the floor of his office. How she was both horrified and thrilled by the let’s-get-naked-immediately thoughts that bombarded her whenever Noah stepped into a room.
“Jules, talk to me.”
She couldn’t, not today. Her feelings for Noah, her need and her resistance were too overwhelming to be discussed. But, because she was obligated to inform Darby of any developments in the business, and because it was a good way to change the subject, she could tell her about Paris. “I took on a new client today.”
Darby looked surprised. “You don’t have time for a new client.”
So true. “It’s Noah. His new client wants me to design the interiors of her yacht, is insisting upon it. My involvement has become a deal breaker so I said yes.”
“I didn’t think Noah could be pushed around.”
So only Levi knew about the turmoil between Ethan and his stepsons? Jules wanted to explain the situation to Darby but it wasn’t her tale to tell. She’d always kept Noah’s secrets—the few he shared with her—and always would. “This project is important to him.”
Darby shrugged. “It’s your call, Jules, but be careful of burning yourself out. You are working extremely long hours as it is.”
Jules knew Darby was mentally measuring her stress levels, whether she’d lost or gained weight, whether she was as healthy as Darby wanted her to be. A college basketball player and a sports fanatic—she’d moved on from triathlons and was now into CrossFit—Darby was a health nut. Her twin no longer ate processed food and most carbs or drank coffee. She’d also stopped eating chocolate! Chocolate, for God’s sake!
Jules didn’t know how she got through the day.
“Blow Robert off, Jules, and come to The Tavern with us.”
“That would be rude.” And being in The Tavern would make her think of all the fun nights she’d spent there with Noah. Plus there was a good chance that Levi or his brothers would drag him to the bar tonight and she’d spend the evening trying not to beg him to take her to bed. The day had been long and hard enough as it was.
“May I point out that you only ever run away when you don’t want to talk, and the only time you don’t want to talk is when you are confused? And the only time I’ve seen you confused about a man is with Noah. So, did he kiss you or what?”
In the mirror, Jules watched herself turn a bright shade of tomato red. Ah, crap. How could she lie now?
Darby approached her from behind and wrapped her arms around her waist. Bending down, Darby rested her chin on Jules’s shoulder. In the mirror, gray eyes met pure silver. Darby shook her head, a small smile touching her lips.
Darby was looking inside her and reading all her unspoken thoughts. “It’s just an attraction, twin.”
Darby squeezed her gently. “I’d believe that if there wasn’t a whole lot of substance beneath the sexy. And you both have it in spades.”
Five
Noah...
Being back in The Tavern was like revisiting his youth. Nothing about the upmarket bar had changed in the years Noah had been gone. The staff still wore white shirts, black pants and red aprons, there were still the same elegant black-and-white photographs of Italy from the ’50s and ’60s on the wall, and Dom, the head bartender, was still behind the bar, a little grayer, a little fatter, just as attentive. Noah recognized a few of the patrons and knew that, as Bethann’s son, most recognized him. Grandpa Lockwood might’ve conceived the idea of the country club, but his mom had developed the estate’s facilities and she built and designed the two restaurants, this bar, the gym and the handful of shops to serve the estate which now, cleverly, included a coffee shop serving light meals.
Being back at The Tavern with his brothers, Levi, DJ and Darby was so normal and, damn, it was good to feel normal again, to be wearing faded blue jeans instead of designer pants, flat-heeled boots and a T-shirt instead of an expensive button-down and loafers. The bar inside the club had a stricter dress code—business casual—but this was a place for the residents to relax, to blow off steam. In here he wasn’t the professional sailor or the yacht designer; there was no one he needed to impress.
Everything he enjoyed most—the cold beers, good music, easy laughter and companionship of people he’d known all his life—was in this room.
Well, except for Jules.
Noah took a sip of his beer and looked across the room, idly watching Dom pour red wine into a glass. He wanted to go back in time, to when Dom was younger, to before he understood Ethan was more concerned about money than his stepsons. He wanted to rewind to when Jules looked at him like he was a superhero, when he was young and blissfully unaware of the crap storm coming his way.
While it felt wrong for Jules not to be there, a part of him was grateful. Since kissing her this morning he’d been unable to concentrate, to focus. He’d tried to distract himself by having lunch with Eli and Ben, and Ben’s latest blonde. He’d exchanged eye rolls with Eli at her baby-girl voice and take-care-of-me-big-boy attitude. Because they were in company, they avoided talking business and it was a relief to delay telling his brothers he was working with Jules. There would’ve been questions: Are you friends again? What happened to cause the great rift? Did you behave like a dick? What did you do to piss her off?
He’d have to have a conversation with them about Jules at some point. He might only be in Boston for a short period but none of them—because the Lockwoods were one of Boston’s founding families and because Callie and Ray had been most A-listy of A-list couples—were low profile. Before one of them heard the red-hot gossip that he and Jules were dating, he needed to give them a heads-up and, at the very least, some sort of explanation.
Hell, they wouldn’t have to wait to hear the gossip, put him and Jules within ten feet of each other and sparks flew. And that would raise more questions and speculation...
The best way to douse those sparks would be to avoid her, but that was impossible. Apart from the so-called fact that they were “dating,” t
hey were also now working together; he’d sent Paris an email confirming Jules’s commitment to the project. While he was in Boston the next month or two, and because his friends and family were hers, they were going to be living in each other’s pockets. And trying to keep his hands and mouth off her was something he didn’t seem to be able to master. Kissing her wasn’t nearly enough... Limiting himself to a few kisses was like giving a drunk the smallest sip of whiskey, waving the glass in front of his nose while keeping his hands bound to his sides.
Having Jules, kissing Jules and not being able to take it to its natural conclusion was a cruel and unusual punishment.
Speaking of punishments...he’d never grasped how much he’d hurt Jules, how much his departure had affected her. He’d been so caught up in his own grief, misery and, yeah, homesickness that he couldn’t think about those he left behind. Apart from the odd email and phone call back home, he focused all his attention on the present, on winning his races, being the best damn sailor he could be. Emotional distance, the ability to step away from a situation and focus, became a habit. Those traits, and the need to keep busy, kept him winning races, as many as possible as soon as possible.
Winning, disconnecting, moving forward was an entrenched habit, but here in Boston he was battling to connect with his cool, rational, thinking side. He had Jules to thank for that.
Levi jammed the end of a pool cue into his side. “Can you, at the very least, acknowledge that I’m kicking your ass?”
Noah looked at the pool table and cursed. Only a few balls remained, and if Levi sunk those, he’d be handing over some cash. He was out of practice.
Levi bent over the pool table, eyeing his shot. Noah was surprised when he lifted his eyes to lock with his. “Anything I need to know about? You seem distracted.”
He could lie but this was Levi. He could justify not telling his brothers—they were younger than him and this was none of their business—but Levi was Jules’s brother. And a protective one at that. If he was going to open this can of worms, it had might as well be now.