by Nalini Singh
Blinking rapidly, Juliet glanced away. They watched Gabriel and Charlotte kiss on the curly-haired photographer’s redundant cue. Gabriel couldn’t keep his hands off his new bride, and Charlie was his partner in crime.
“I heard it was fast.” Juliet’s voice was rough. “That the meningitis took her quickly.”
“She didn’t suffer.” That would matter to the girl who’d been by Calypso’s side since childhood. “She wasn’t feeling well one night, and since it was so soon after the birth, my mum and dad drove us to the ER so the doctors could confirm it wasn’t anything major. We thought the flu. They admitted her instead. She slipped away only hours later, despite all their efforts.”
It still seemed surreal when he thought about it, that the vibrant young woman he’d loved with all his teenage heart had been brought down by a disease that didn’t understand that she was a new mother with a baby she adored—and a scared boyfriend who was doing everything in his power to man up and give her the support she needed.
“Daddy!” A tiny sprite jumped up and down in front of him.
His entire soul smiled, the sadness of memory fading away into the past where it belonged. Because his future was right here in front of him, and she needed a man with a whole heart, a man who understood joy.
Going down on his haunches, he said, “I’m sorry, do I know you?”
“It’s me, Esme!”
“I don’t think so.” He rubbed his jaw. “My daughter’s a little girl, and you’re a beautiful young lady.”
She giggled. “I love you!” She leaned in to kiss him on the cheek before running away to join Emmaline and the kids who’d been attracted by the bridal party.
Yeah, he did okay. Even if he was scared all the time about fucking up.
Gut tight, he took a breath… and the scent of a lushly sensual woman bloomed on his tongue, in his blood. A woman whose bare legs were inches from him. Legs covered by smooth brown skin he wanted to stroke until he heard her purr. Thighs he could imagine pressed around his head as he did things with his tongue that might—finally—blunt the sharp edge of hers.
6
The Lady Parts, They’re Misbehavin’
Seeing Esme kiss her dad with such joy had Juliet smiling past the grief of the past. And seeing Jake crouched down that way, his daughter’s tiny hands on his face as she held him in place for her kiss, had her heart doing ridiculous somersaults. All wide shoulders and dark hair with a tendency to curl, his voice playful as he teased his baby girl, he was lethal to Juliet’s lady parts.
They wanted to tingle.
Gritting her teeth, she told said lady parts to calm the heck down. There was to be no tingling whatsoever where Jacob Esera was concerned. Then Jake rose to his feet as the photographer took several photos of Alison and Joseph with the newlyweds and she caught a hint of that manly forest-and-rain-and-sex aftershave of his, and her breasts joined in on the act, seeming to swell inside the cups of her bra.
“All right.” The photographer clapped his hands. “Wedding party!”
Thank God.
Juliet focused all her attention on the lanky male, who was very good-looking but incited no tingling whatsoever. A tingle-free zone, that’s what she wanted and would achieve.
“Ladies, you’re up!” the photographer said. “Then we’ll do all of you together, then some other single and group shots. Groomsmen, you’ll be the closers.”
It was chaotic and wonderful, and Juliet’s cheeks ached by the end. Maybe she’d lift her romance-novel moratorium, because this was a happy-ever-after in every way. Her own situation couldn’t compare.
Reid the Pinhead had never looked at her the way Gabriel looked at Charlotte.
When the photographer banished Gabriel to stand with the men, Charlotte’s husband clutched his chest and pretended to be heartbroken as he walked sideways down the steps of the rotunda. Charlotte laughed and blew him a kiss, and the photographer’s camera shutter clicked.
Juliet sighed.
Aroha nudged her with an elbow. “Hah! Told you you’d fall victim to the luuuuurv bug.”
“It’s the wedding virus. Passes once the wedding is over.”
“You sure? Saw you cozying up to Jake there.” A waggle of her eyebrows. “Hubba-hubba.”
“I once beat him up at school.” In truth, she’d thrown a tomato at his head for reasons she couldn’t quite remember, he’d dodged it, and they’d gone about their business.
Aroha’s mouth fell open. “Seriously? You went to school with Jacob Esera?”
“Ugh, stop fangirling.” Aroha was a rugby fanatic. “But talking of hubba-hubba, Harry’s pretty hot.” Though at this point, he could’ve been a three-headed weevil and she’d have said that to get Aroha off the subject of Jake.
Her friend looked down, an uncharacteristically shy smile on her face, and Juliet took a second and far more speculative look at Harry. Big, muscled—a bit too much for her, to be honest—and square. Square jaw, square face, square shoulders, a sense to him that said he liked things solid and in their place.
Aroha, by comparison, was wild, dazzling color and a wide-open heart.
But who knew what might happen when so many love pheromones were in the air? Just so long as they didn’t infect Juliet. She planned to live a long and gloriously single life, complete with the adoption of at least five cats once she no longer had to travel for work.
“I hope you bang Harry like a drum—man looks like he needs to be unleashed,” she said to Aroha, startling her friend into laughter that was caught by the photographer.
The groomsmen, when it was their turn, decided to have their pictures in among the ancient trees that grew all through the Domain. A group of big, gorgeous men with identical smiles on their faces. Blood relations or not, it didn’t matter, they were so much birds of a feather. The effect didn’t change even after Harlow and Joseph joined them for a shot.
Jackets came off, ties were loosened and then discarded, and arms went around each other. When Emmaline and Esme ran into the shots partway through, the men grabbed the girls and put them on their shoulders. And the photographer clicked on.
Before they moved to the greenhouses for the next set of photographs, the men grumbled but put their jackets and ties back on. Several of them, groom included, then paused to sign autographs for and take pictures with the little boys who’d been in the rotunda when they first arrived.
Juliet tried not to look at Jake while all of that was going on. He was also avoiding her. Good. Because they’d had their moment of togetherness—it’d all go downhill if they tried for any more.
At one point she bent down to fix the ribbon sash at Esme’s waist when a shutter clicked, and she realized the moment had been captured.
Another time, Jake wrapped his arm around his younger brother’s neck and hauled him down to ruffle his hair while Gabriel laughed, and the photographer captured that too.
“I’m starving,” Charlotte said toward the end. “Seriously, does anyone have snacks?”
Laughing, the photographer promised he was almost done. And Gabriel leaned down to whisper something in Charlotte’s ear that had her cheeks going pink before she turned to lay the side of her face against his chest.
Juliet pressed a hand to her heart. “They keep this up and I’m going to give them a citation for ridiculous amounts of adorableness,” she said to Molly.
Charlotte’s best friend wiped away a tear, utterly no help in assisting Juliet maintain her own composure. “I’m so happy for her. She’s the kindest human being I’ve ever known.”
That, of course, had Juliet sniffling as well—and damn it, she wasn’t a crier. “Charlie tamed the T-Rex,” she rasped to Molly, “so she must have some evil superpowers we don’t know about.”
Molly laughed at Juliet’s reference to the nickname Charlotte had given Gabriel when he’d first taken over management of the company where Charlotte had then worked. He’d apparently fired people left and right, rampaging through the place.
But he hadn’t fired Charlotte. No, he’d seen her for exactly what she was: a highly intelligent and capable woman who was being woefully misused.
Thus had begun the battle of the mouse and the T-Rex.
Up ahead, Gabriel said something that made Jake grin, and damn if her breath didn’t stick in her chest. Cheeks creased, hands in his pockets, and head slightly lowered so the sun glinted off the black strands of his hair, Jacob Esera was the definition of sexy.
It was a good thing he never smiled at Juliet that way. Because if he did, she might forget that they were sworn nonfriends. And that was her number one rule for dating now: friendship. Which was probably why she’d been celibate since recovering from marriage to the pinhead. Turned out that these days most men looked at her and didn’t want friendship—they wanted hot, sweaty, no-strings-attached sex.
What a hoot that was for the girl one teenaged charmer had called a “walking stick” who’d probably give him bruises with her “pointy” bones. At least the salivating male reaction had quickly disabused her of the notion that Reid had tried to plant in her head: that her weight gain made her less desirable. Tell that to the guys whose tongues hung out of their mouths the rare times she went out for a drink with her girlfriends.
Unfortunately, her incredibly unearned reputation as a sex-hungry, gold-digging debaucher of innocent males came along with her. Those drooling men would sleep with her if she were foolish enough to accept an invitation, but they wouldn’t be taking her home to meet the family. Juliet had too much respect for herself to accept that state of affairs. So it was a good thing she was an old hand at being alone.
Debauchery was overrated anyway. All those nights she’d gone out with Reid because “we have to be seen, babe,” she’d ended up dog-tired and just wanting a good nap the next day.
“Time for the final photo!” the photographer called out. “Everyone, I need you back here!”
That final image was of the entire group against a backdrop of ancient trees. And because fate was laughing at Juliet today, she ended up sandwiched between Jake and Aroha. Then the photographer, surely in league with the devil, asked Jake to move in tighter and put his arm around Juliet’s waist.
Heat.
That’s all she felt. She didn’t breathe until the photo was done. At which point she inhaled Jake’s sexiness, and the tingles went from low buzz to a full-on vibrating concerto. “Did you bathe in deodorant?” she said to Jake when he caught her trying to sniff him.
Really, Juliet?!
“I find it gives me good all-over coverage,” he said with a straight face.
Juliet’s lower lip quivered, and she had to turn away to maintain her composure. There it was, that sneaky sense of humor that had always taken her by surprise, she was so used to thinking of him as Callie’s straitlaced choirboy of a boyfriend. But every so often, out he’d come with a zinger.
“Look to the left,” he murmured in her ear, his warm breath kissing her skin and that delicious scent in her lungs all over again.
Juliet did so instinctively and had to grin. The photographer wasn’t done after all—Gabriel and Charlotte were currently posing with Esme and Emmaline, with Gabe holding Esme as if she were a rugby ball he was ready to throw, while Charlotte and Emmaline took positions as if to catch her, their bodies mid-lunge.
“He should do some shots of the entire bridal party as if we’re playing a game of rugby,” Juliet found herself saying. “Bridesmaids against groomsmen maybe?”
“Sometimes, Jules, you’re all right.”
Even as Jake grabbed her hand to tug her to the rest of the bridal party, Juliet muttered, “That’s Juliet to you, Jacob.” But she didn’t pull her hand away—and she really, really should have. Because Jacob Esera was never going to be anything but a mistake for a woman like Juliet.
Everyone loved the idea of joining the girls and the wedded couple in their game of frozen rugby. Teams were chosen, a ball borrowed from the same kids who’d been playing in the rotunda, and the “game” was on.
They took shots with pretend running and the “opposition” getting ready to tackle, others where Gabriel was boosting Charlotte up so she could grab the ball in a line-out, still others with the flower girls “arguing” with the referee—their grandfather, who’d borrowed the limo driver’s red license holder and was holding it up as if sending one of the girls off the field.
Needless to say, the public in and around the shoot were taking some images of their own.
“Is it okay?” Juliet asked Jake at one point, aware the family was justifiably protective of the two young girls in their midst. “The photos by the public, I mean.”
“Things like this, with ordinary folks taking a few shots, it’s not a problem,” he said as the photographer—having a grand old time with this new element of the shoot, told them to organize themselves with their arms over each other’s shoulders—or around waists—depending on position, and bend as if forming into a scrum.
“Women on one side, men on the other,” he ordered. “Girls, you’re playing first five-eighth. Emmaline, you’re on the men’s team. First five-eighth is Jake’s usual position on the—”
“We know!” both Esme and Emmaline cried, the two girls probably far better versed in rugby than the photographer.
“We just don’t want the media stalking them,” Jake added as the girls scrambled to take position. “Luckily the Kiwi public isn’t keen on kids being hounded for photos, especially when we’ve made our position clear, so the mags and tabloids leave them alone.”
“Or we’d burn them dead,” Danny said, tone merciless as he got into formation next to Jake. “No interviews with any of us into eternity.”
Yes, that would be a serious deterrent when their family had such enormous pulling power. Add in the fellow athletes who’d back them in solidarity and it would be a bad business call for any media outlet to breach that unwritten law of privacy.
“One, two, three!” The photographer took the shot.
And Juliet found herself looking straight into a pair of dark brown eyes that were far too intense and far too serious for a woman who was a bad influence. Yet the eye contact robbed her of breath, as if she’d truly played a hard hour of the most unforgiving ball game on the planet.
* * *
Afterward, the wedding party—sans the bride and groom—went ahead to the reception venue, a stately old theater with a rich history. Antique chandeliers sparkled overhead as they walked into the space, dripping light across the ornate cornices that ringed the ceiling and falling across the deep blue velvet that lined the walls.
Charlotte had asked her bridesmaids if the color would be too much, given the shade of their dresses, but the hue of the velvet was much darker than their midnight blue. Also, the theater was just stunning in its unashamed baroque glory—every single one of them had sighed at the romance of it when Charlotte brought them in for a sneak peek when she and Gabriel had been looking at booking the venue.
The tables were clothed in white, the centerpieces glass bowls holding flowers and tea lights floating in water. That was Charlotte’s touch all the way. Simple but lovely. Gabriel’s more pushy and bold nature came in on the masses of fragrant flowers piled in every corner. Literally piled, as if a flower truck had lost its load.
Come the end of the night and the kids were going to have a lot of fun with those floral mountains. Juliet, Molly, and the other bridesmaids were already planning a group shot with their bodies flung back against the blooms, and they intended to talk Charlie into joining them.
The newlyweds hadn’t yet arrived, having detoured to their apartment for more photos and so Charlotte could change out of her wedding dress into a dress more suited for the reception and the planned dancing. When Danny—poker face in place—had suggested the bridesmaids should go with the newlyweds so they could help Charlotte with her dress change, his big brother had threatened murder.
From the look in Gabriel’s steel-gray eyes, he’d had plans to do m
ore than just help Charlotte out of her dress. Which was why Juliet wasn’t the teensy bit shocked when the bride and groom arrived at the reception a little later than expected. Charlotte was radiant, a guilty flush on her cheeks but her hair still perfectly in place.
Gabriel just looked gorgeously smug.
He also looked smitten, which Juliet figured excused the smug.
Aroha sent Juliet a speaking look from down the table, her gaze sparkling. Had she been sitting beside Juliet, she’d no doubt have elbowed her into breaking out into a grin. As it was, Juliet had been seated between Jake and Fox. It was tempting to focus on Molly’s tattooed rock-star husband and busy herself with random questions about the rock-star life, but she could hardly ignore Jake when he was sitting right next to her.
Especially when he was sending out that scent of his that wasn’t just deodorant or aftershave, but Jake. She’d figured she’d build up a tolerance after so much exposure, but no, the tingling was still proceeding without hesitation. Pushed to the edge, Juliet decided to talk to him specifically so she could incite their mutual aggravation with each other.
She was going to whack this ludicrous attraction stone-dead.
7
Juliet Nelisi Is Not a Chicken
“So,” she said to him without warning, “you going to date that tennis player with all the red hair?” A serious stunner as well as gifted in her sport, the visiting athlete had, a week earlier, been asked in a radio interview which man she wouldn’t kick out of bed if she had all the choice in the world.
Juliet would’ve bristled at the question if the two interviewers weren’t renowned for such questions; it was their shtick. Anyone who came on their show knew their reputation well in advance, so it was never an ambush—and they were equal opportunity. Gender and sexual orientation didn’t matter; they’d find a way to work sex into the interview.