He shook his head. “Marlys.”
For a moment she felt like Blackie, not just chastised, but chagrined she’d disappointed him.
Fine! Let him be disappointed or disgusted or whatever that frown on his face meant. She hadn’t invited him over. She wanted to be alone, anyway.
“I’m going to bed,” she said. “You can see yourself out.” The back staircase was just a few feet away, but his voice halted her at the bottom step.
“There was nothing between them while your father was alive, Marlys.”
Again, betrayal bubbled and roiled in her stomach like bile. “Did they send you here to tell me that?”
“They didn’t, nor did they have to.” Dean’s voice was nearer now and she knew he was closing in on her. “Noah would never do that.”
“Yeah? And you know this how?”
“I know him. Time in Iraq is often numbing boredom only broken up by mortar rounds and bloody battles. The soldiers standing with you are your saviors from death as well as from tedium. You get pretty damn close. So I’m certain Noah would never have shown such disrespect to your father.”
“Maybe not while he was alive…”
Dean put his hands on her shoulders. “And now he’s dead, Marlys.”
Her body jerked away from his touch. “Thank you for that startling piece of information. Good night.” She marched up the stairs, slapping her hand against her thigh. “C’mon, Blackie.”
After a moment, the jingle of her dog’s collar followed. She breathed a sigh of relief. Unless Dean was on his way out, she didn’t think her fair-weather pet would have obeyed her command.
Her room was dim, lit only by the forty-watt bulb in the Sleeping Beauty lamp on her bedside table. It was another of her attic finds and she remembered it being in her room at Fort Bliss. She kneed her way across the mattress to pull at the spread covering the pillows. At the doorway, Blackie’s collar jingled again.
Without glancing back, she pointed to his bed on the floor. “There you go, boy. Right there.”
“I don’t think I’ll fit.”
Marlys stiffened. Unless Blackie had suddenly done a reverse Dr. Doolittle on her, Dean hadn’t left after all.
“I didn’t invite you in here.” Glancing back, she noted he was leaning his shoulder against the doorjamb and that Blackie’s shoulder was leaning against his leg. She glared at them both. Dogs.
“I brought Blackie up. He didn’t seem to be responding when you called him.”
Like she’d thought before. Dogs.
“Thanks. You can go now.” She snapped her fingers, and the dog pranced into the room, then he looked back at his new BFF, as if to say, Hey, aren’t you coming, too?
“No, Blackie,” she answered for him. “And don’t even try begging for his company, either. Dean thinks we’re spoiled enough as it is.”
“That’s not what I think,” Dean corrected, crossing the rug toward the bed. “I don’t think you’re acting spoiled right now, Marlys. Like I told you earlier today, I think you’re acting sad.”
“And like I told you earlier today, I don’t need cheering up.” She jerked the covers back to expose her flower-sprigged sheets. As if he wasn’t there, she yanked at the tie of her robe and tossed it away. Her toes slid down the icy cotton as she lay on her side and gathered the blankets around her.
“And now you’re sad because of what Juliet told you.” The mattress shifted as he sat in the space made by the C-curve of her body. “You’re upset about the ashes.”
“I don’t give a shit about those ashes!” Blackie’s head jerked up at the sharp edge of her voice. He whined.
Dean’s big hand reached out to brush her bangs off her forehead. “Angel—”
“I have my own ashes.” She snagged a piece of her robe and drew it across the bed toward her. From the pocket, she pulled the silver chain. “See? I carry around my own piece of my father.”
The pendant swung from the chain clutched in her fingers. Dean caught it, held it against his palm for inspection. “A tear. Interesting choice. You wear it?”
“I don’t wear it.”
“You feel it?”
She’d had it with him. She wanted him out of her bedroom, out of her house, out of her mind, just out, before he could worm himself any further into her head. “Feel what?”
“Grief, angel. Anger and bitterness and sadness come off you in waves, Marlys, but I’m not getting grief.”
She snorted. “I’m not giving you a single one of my emotions. Ever.”
“Not even desire?”
“Believe me, the last thing I want to do with you right now is have sex.”
“How about sleep?” He crawled over to curl around her on the mattress.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she asked, rising on her elbow.
“Holding you, Marlys. Holding you while you sleep.” He pushed her against the pillows.
When she tried jerking up again, he stroked his hand down her arm. “Take it easy.”
“You said that to the dog!”
“And look how he settled to my touch.” Dean bunched the pillow beside hers and then pulled her more snugly against his body. He stroked her again. “Isn’t this nice?”
On the floor beside her, Blackie dropped his head between his paws, sighed. “Are you a dog whisperer?” she asked.
He laughed, his breath warm against her neck. “If I said yes, you might take offense at the way that plays out.”
“Bitch whisperer.” Her head settled more deeply on the pillow. “You’re right, I might take offense.”
“So just take my touch, angel.” His soothing hand had a soporific effect on her. So did his warmth. It stole through the covers that separated them. Her heart shuddered, but she squeezed shut her eyes and let her mind and her mood shut down for the night.
In the morning, she woke, panicked. She jerked upright, but found she was alone. Thank God. He’d only left behind an indentation on the pillow beside hers.
But her pulse wouldn’t settle. She could still feel the impression of his heat at her back and if she couldn’t shake that, she was doomed. Somehow she had to push him away, because she couldn’t risk wanting—no, needing—to belong to someone ever again.
Panic rising a second time, she jerked her gaze around the sheets and ran her hands over the cover. There. There. Her fingers found the silver tear. Holding the cold metal against her cheek to remind herself of her resolve, she spied a piece of paper half buried beneath the pillow he’d used. Pulling it free, she took in three sentences in masculine block letters.
HAVE TO BE GONE A FEW DAYS.
It was relief she felt. Yeah. Disappointment was for other women.
THINK OF ME.
Did she have any other choice?
BE GOOD.
Not on her life.
Fourteen
The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.
—SUN TZU
She hadn’t anticipated this was how or where she’d next confront Noah, Juliet thought, pacing the floor of the room designated as her home office. After Marlys had caught that impulsive moment of comfort on the patio, they’d separated without further discussion. Juliet had gone to her house and he’d returned to his place across the pool.
It wasn’t clear who had avoided who in the thirty-six or so hours since, but it was fact that they hadn’t caught sight of each other after that. By the next time they came face-to-face, she’d been hoping to have found some smooth and easy way of acknowledging what had happened between them in her bedroom—and then maybe moving on to those questions that had plagued her ever since.
Why had he treated her like she might break? Did he worry she couldn’t stand up to a man’s passion?
But she hadn’t yet found her smooth and easy way into the discussion.
And they weren’t yet eye to eye.
“Lucky the cable company finally hooked us up,” Noah said, from the other side of the closed offi
ce door. “Emergency call via e-mail. That’s a first for me.”
“I love technology,” Juliet replied without enthusiasm.
“You should. It was like one of those little slips of paper you get in dessert at the end of a broccoli beef and chicken chow mein meal.”
“ ‘Help, I’m locked inside a fortune cookie factory,’ ” Juliet muttered, and though he laughed, the humor escaped her. She was wearing a comfortable pair of cropped yoga pants, a simple T-shirt, and a pair of athletic shoes, but the casual attire had been no help. The tiny attached bath boasted a window only big enough for a loaf of bread to fit through. And without a phone in the room, and with her cell phone in her purse in the kitchen, she’d used the only means of communication open to her.
“Sorry it took me this long to get to you. I was out on an interview and didn’t check my e-mail until just a few minutes ago.”
There was a rattling sound. “I tried that,” she said. “Jiggled the handle a dozen times.” Four dozen times. Then pounded the paneled wood, kicked the doorjamb, silently screamed at the walls that had kept her captive since discovering that the lock had inconveniently jammed.
In her childhood home, there had been a downstairs powder room with a tricky door like this one. Unpredictable, unidentifiable elements would cause it to stick, stranding dinner guests on occasion, and confounding the handyman who’d been called to fix it a number of times. They’d eventually replaced the entire mechanism.
This baby was outta here as soon as today.
“What are you doing in there anyway?”
“That e-mail thing you mentioned.” When she realized she’d missed Cassandra’s message about their sperm donor, she’d figured it was past time she reconnected with the larger world. More progress, she’d thought, as during Wayne’s illness and the months after his death she’d been unable to drum up any interest in such a thing as Internet access. “I spent the morning rearranging the furniture and setting up my computer.”
And then spent the afternoon frustrated by her confinement…and the fact that she had to rely on a man—on Noah—to come to her rescue.
Still, she felt mostly relief when she heard the door pop open. Noah stood in the entry, his gaze taking her in. Then she stared, too. She’d never seen him look like this.
Damn. He was a stranger to her, and she’d had to appeal to him for aid.
In a well-tailored gray suit, Noah looked older, harder, more sophisticated than she could have imagined. Against the crisp shirt, opened at the collar, his tanned skin was smooth and golden, his eyes laser blue. There was a striped tie jammed into the breast pocket of his jacket and the note of an unfamiliar, yet delicious aftershave drifted toward her as he walked into the room.
She took a hasty step back.
He ignored her nervous twitch and turned to manipulate the knob of the open door, twisting it back, then forth, then back and forth again. As she figured it would—her luck was going that way—it moved freely, normally.
Embarrassed, she cleared her throat. “Really. I know how to operate a door. It was stuck.” Shades of visiting the mechanic only to discover your car engine had abandoned its ominous clickety-clack-hum and returned to its usual steady purr.
Noah swung shut the door, fiddled with the handle again, paused. “I believe you.”
“You do?”
“Yeah. I really do.” He turned to face her, a half-apologetic smile on his face. “Because we’re both stuck now.”
“No!” She rushed for the door and when he moved out of the way, tested it herself, using both hands to try to free it from its frozen state. The four walls had been close enough when she was alone within them, but to share the small space with Noah… “Oh, no.”
“Guess I shouldn’t have taken the chance and shut it.” He shrugged. “But don’t worry, Dean’s back in town. I’ll call him on my cell and get him to star in Rescue Ranger Round Two.”
Within moments, Noah had made contact, and in another few he flipped his phone shut. “Good news is, he didn’t crash into another car while laughing his ass off. Bad news is, he’s crosstown and with L.A. traffic, may be as many as a couple of hours from reaching us.”
Frustrated, she went back to jerking on the knob. As she’d known, it didn’t budge. Still, an annoyed grunt escaped her mouth and she didn’t stay her impulse to give the door another sharp kick. “Stupid thing.”
“Claustrophobic?”
“Not really.” I just didn’t want to confront you quite yet. And though she’d been all determination to do just that when she’d left Malibu & Ewe the other day, look how poorly that had turned out. She aimed another swift kick at the door.
“Juliet, you’re surprising me again.”
“Really?” Giving the knob a last ineffectual rattle, she figured she was out of excuses for avoiding eye contact and turned around. “What did I do now?”
He leaned against the back of the desk that she’d manhandled into the far left corner of the room. “Did you move all this stuff?”
“All by myself.” She was a bit pleased about that. It had taken a lot of pushing and shoving, rocking and sliding, but not only had she moved the desk, she’d chosen a new place for the media armoire and the small loveseat, matching chair, and low round table that sat between them. She’d even hung a large antique mirror on the wall. Maybe it wasn’t perfectly level, but she’d managed. “I’m stronger than I look.”
“I should have known that.” His head tilted as he regarded her with his vivid gaze. “You did a lot of things around the old house. More than once the general asked me to attend to something and you had gotten there before I could.”
“I don’t think he believed I was capable of even the most minor repair.” Juliet smiled a little. “Or maybe he considered it unfeminine of me to show the slightest hint of handiness.”
“No.” Noah shook his head. “Unfeminine? Never that, no matter what.”
“Are you sure? Because I don’t know what else he’d think if he could see me kicking stubborn doors or cursing at the sky.” She flushed, remembering exactly what that sky-cursing had been about.
Noah looked away as if to save her the embarrassment. “Still, strong or no, that armoire must have been a bitch to move on your own. You should have called me.”
Right. The person she’d been so careful to avoid. “I knew you’d left early this morning. I, um, heard your car start,” she added hastily, not wanting him to think she’d been keeping tabs on his comings and goings.
“Dean, then. He was here this morning.” Noah shrugged out of his suit jacket and slung it across the desk, then went to work on the starched cuffs of his dress shirt.
“Oh.” Juliet tried not to stare as he revealed his powerful forearms by rolling up his sleeve. The skin was tanned there, too, of course, and sprinkled with dark hair. She rubbed at the smoother skin of her own with the palms of her hands, trying to rub away a sudden chill. “I wouldn’t bother Dean.”
“Because you’re embarrassed to face him?”
“Embarrassed?” It was Noah who she’d been so anxious to evade. “Why would I be embarrassed to face Dean?”
“Because he saw us kiss the other night.” Noah focused on his shirt sleeve as he carefully rolled it to his elbow. “Because he knows, or guesses…”
She frowned. “He knows or guesses…what? What exactly are you getting at?”
Noah hesitated.
Giving her time to fill in the blanks.
“Are you saying Dean knows that we…that you…” His friend knew Noah had gone to bed with her and he expected she was distressed about it. Why?
Then it hit her. Heat crawled over her face.
“Why should I care that your friend knows you took pity on the dried up, lonely old widow across the pool?” She flung the question at him, in order to get the words away from herself. “I don’t really know him, and you—well, in his eyes you likely just look like a nicer guy for doing the generous deed, don’t you think?”
No wonder Noah had treated her like she’d break. Little old widows were frail like that.
Blinking at the burn that was in her eyes as well as on her face, she whirled back to the door, jerking on the knob and kicking the paneled bottom at the same time.
Incensed, she yelled at the stubborn thing. “Let me out!”
Arms wrapped around her from behind. She struggled against their hold, throwing herself from right, to left, then right again.
“Settle down,” Noah said, tightening his embrace. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
Too late, she thought, still twisting. All her life she’d played the perfect lady, the composed hostess, the gentle wife, but the jagged emotions roiling inside of her were shattering that pose. “Leave me alone!”
He turned her easily, his arms still holding hers, fast, against her sides. “Not until we have this out.”
She stiffened in affront, then went crafty instead, going limp in his grasp. Noah instantly relaxed, releasing her and stepping back.
Triumphant, Juliet whirled again to make another desperate attack on the door.
Noah was only a second behind. Once again he had her, one arm banding her waist, the other around her chest, and as if it was no effort at all, he lifted her wiggling body off her feet to walk her toward the seating area she’d earlier arranged.
“No,” she said through her teeth. “Don’t do this.”
“I’m not doing anything,” he replied, his voice as tight as her own. “I just want to talk.”
“But I have nothing to say.” Her bottom bounced on the loveseat and then he dropped beside her, his hand like a vice around her upper arm. Fuming, she tried getting to her feet, but he held her against the cushions with just those five, implacable fingers.
“Stay put,” he ordered.
Had she ever been this angry? A high whine buzzed in her ears and her blood was crashing through her system, hot and intoxicating like some kind of terrible drug. Under its influence, her right hand reached out, fast as a blink, and slapped him across his handsome face.
Take Me Forever (Billionaire's Beach Book 2) Page 18