Take Me Forever (Billionaire's Beach Book 2)

by Christie Ridgway

  “Hey, Marlys.” She lowered her glasses farther down her perfectly sloped nose. “It’s me.”

  Oomfaa. Familiarity explained. The actress frequented her boutique, though usually not garbed in sunglasses that made her eyes look like a rabbit’s and with her hair stuffed into a black, floppy-brimmed, knitted hat.

  Oomfaa tugged it toward her eyebrows. “I made it for when I want to go out incognito.”

  Oh-kay. Though combined with the pink sunglasses, Marlys would have thought it would attract more attention rather than less. “What are you doing here?”

  Oomfaa smiled. “This is my LYS—little yarn shop. I’m friends with the owner and I come here to knit.”

  Marlys turned to look at the full parking lot and then turned back to Oomfaa, keeping her voice casual. “But it’s not knitting tonight, right?” The other woman might be one of the most famous actresses in America, but she was also one of the biggest gossips in Southern California. The information she would spill during a short shopping spree could keep Marlys and her assistant, Leeza, entertained for days afterward.

  And that’s what Marlys was after tonight. Information.

  She’d told herself she was going to stay away, but here she was anyway, albeit an hour past the publicized start time. Questions had plagued her until she’d given in to impulse and headed for Malibu.

  What was Juliet up to with this party?

  Why had she chosen some “little yarn shop” in Malibu as the event’s location?

  Was Dean inside?

  A couple pushed through the door, and Oomfaa and Marlys had to step aside to let them pass. Each of them held her father’s book. As if they were the cork popped from a bottle, a stream of exiting people followed, some of them obviously from the media, and most of them clutching their own copies of General Matters in one hand and a cup of delicious-smelling coffee in the other.

  Oomfaa sniffed. “Nikki made coffee and I’m betting there’s her food inside. That’s reason enough to visit Malibu & Ewe.”

  “Nikki?”

  “One of the three sisters,” Oomfaa clarified, stepping back toward the door and then retreating again as another group wandered out. “Cassandra owns the yarn shop, Nikki’s a personal chef and engaged to Jay Buchanan, and—”

  The rest of what she was saying was swallowed by the noise of the crowd in the shop as the tall woman walked inside. Even with Marlys at her heels, the words didn’t reach her.

  She took in the interior of the shop instead. Not only was it full of milling, chattering people, but there was color and texture to overwhelm her, too. Yarns overflowed built-in bins that were stacked against the walls. Knitted garments, from toe socks to campy lingerie, from fuzzy sweaters to elegant dresses, were displayed on the walls or hung from wooden coatracks tucked into corners.

  As a woman who admired fashion and made her living from it, Marlys took a moment to appreciate the talent and skill that had gone into each piece. Not to mention the artistic eye that had placed them so strategically. She’d have to come back during regular shop hours, she decided, making her way toward the back table where platters of food and beverage urns were set.

  She wanted to meet this Cassandra. It looked as if they might have a lot in common. Then she took her first bite of a spinach-and-cheese-filled pastry and her taste buds cried in happiness. Okay, she hadn’t eaten much, not since that last encounter with Dean, but it wasn’t only hunger that had her drooling in delight.

  This was good, really good. Now she wanted to meet Nikki, too.

  Marlys didn’t have friends, not since her days as an Army brat, but maybe she could change that. She would change that, she decided, popping the rest of the small appetizer into her mouth, if only to prove Dean wrong. It’s other people that you use to take out your pain, he’d said. Well, she’d prove to him that she could get close to people without hurting them.

  Maybe then he would—

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  The demand in the male voice had her whirling around and her stomach leaping toward her throat. Noah stared at her, his eyes narrowed. Noah, not Dean. Her stomach settled back to the bottom of her belly.

  From the look on his face, she guessed his friend had passed along that she’d been passing along tips to the tabloids. “It’s a free country, Private.”

  “You’re not welcome here, Marlys.”

  She’d never taken rejection well, true. But it rankled even more as she remembered how she’d come on to him when they’d first met and how gently he’d tried letting her down. That gentleness was what she found so mortifying. Noah had treated her like she was breakable, and everyone—Dean included now—knew that wasn’t true.

  Marlys drew herself taller, and wished she was wearing higher heels. “It’s a party for my father’s book.”

  “The party’s over for you.” He took her elbow.

  Her face went hot, and she yanked her arm from his hold. “I can see myself out.” She meant to spin away and leave with dignity, but some stupid compulsion kept her glued to the spot. Call it curiosity. None of her questions had been answered, after all.

  What was Juliet up to?

  Why’d she have the party here?

  “Where’s Dean?” The two words tumbled out of Marlys’s mouth. “Is Dean here?”

  Noah’s eyes narrowed. “You’re toxic, Marlys.”

  The sharp edge in his voice had her stepping back. Noah had always seemed like such a nice guy, which had been a huge part of his appeal. The rough hunkiness and “do a good turn daily” demeanor was an unbeatable combination. But the Boy Scout was gone and all that looked to be left was the narrow-eyed, trained-to-kill soldier.

  “I only—”

  “Save it,” he said, cutting her off. “Just get the hell out.”

  She took another step back, but found she couldn’t go without knowing. “Please,” she heard herself say, embarrassed further by the entreaty she could hear in her own voice. “Please, Noah. Dean—”

  “Is gone,” the other man said flatly. “He reported early. Happy now?”

  Happy now? She couldn’t breathe now. As the crowd moved around her, as Noah gave her a last look of condemnation and then moved on himself, Marlys stood where she was. Dean had reported early. Maybe he was in Afghanistan already.

  In a danger zone.

  She wouldn’t think of it, she decided, turning and heading back toward the shop’s door. Their short interlude wasn’t something she should dwell upon. And she was good at letting go, remember? She was a military brat, a dandelion. Like them, she was resilient. Like them, she knew when it was time to let the breeze take her to the next place.

  She was like a hardy dandelion that survived anywhere and that…Marlys’s feet stuttered.

  …that grew in unexpected places.

  …and that—

  She froze, then had to lean against the nearest wall to hold herself up. The other thing about dandelions, the thing she’d stupidly forgotten, is that their roots went so damn deep.

  Just like her feelings for Dean. Unexpected, deeply held, made to survive.

  And she’d done everything she could to turn him away from her.

  Cold closed around her throat and she felt as if a wound opened inside her chest. She braced her hand on the plaster beside her because a shoulder wasn’t enough. Who could stand when she’d so royally fucked up her life?

  “Are you all right?”

  She glanced up at Oomfaa. “Sure.” No. Never.

  The other woman gave a happy nod. “Party turned out great, it looks like. I know everyone’s pleased.”

  “Everyone?” Marlys only spoke because it seemed to help her keep breathing. Dean. Oh, God. Dean.

  “The sisters. Well, half sisters, I guess is more accurate. They’re donor siblings, all products of the same sperm-donor father but different mothers who used the same fertility clinic.”

  “Oh.” Closing her eyes, she thought of his face, those clean-edged features, the clear
eyes that had seen into the soul she’d not been sure she had until him. Dean.

  “I was the one who kind of spilled the beans to Nikki that she was related to Cassandra. I didn’t realize she was at Knitters’ Night, and I didn’t know that while Cassandra had located one of her sisters, she hadn’t told her right away they were related. But all’s well that ends well, right?”

  “Right.” It wasn’t going to end well for her though, was it?

  “The story gets even better,” Oomfaa said, bending closer to Marlys. “I overheard Cassandra talking about their biological father. He was a medical student when he was a sperm donor. You’ll never guess who’s the father of Cassandra, Nikki, and Juliet.”

  “Who?” she repeated obligingly. “Who’s the father of Cassandra, Nikki, and—” Juliet?

  “Dr. Frank Tucker,” Oomfaa whispered. “You know. They call him Dr. Tuck on that show.”

  Marlys did know. Dr. Frank Tucker, who was called simply Dr. Tuck on the reality TV show he starred in, Fountain of Youth, was one of the most eminent plastic surgeons in the country. He was Juliet’s father? Juliet had sisters?

  Something spilled into Marlys’s chest from her new wound. It felt bitter and raw, like bile, and if it had a color she knew it would be an acid, ugly green. Juliet, the Deal Breaker, the Happy Widow, the woman who had taken Marlys’s father from her and left her with nothing, now had her very own father, her very own family.

  Before Marlys, the crowd parted, and there stood Juliet, in front of a blowup of General Wayne Weston. Noah stood close to her side, and Marlys noticed that while their shoulders remained a discreet distance apart, the backs of their hands were touching.

  More poison leaked around her heart.

  As she watched, two women closed in on the couple. One had a river of rippling brown hair and wore a beautiful, lacy, obviously hand-knit sweater. Cassandra, Marlys guessed. The other woman, who had shoulder-length, gold-streaked brown hair, glanced around the room. Her eyes were that same bicolor as Juliet’s and she waved at a man standing nearby with a cup of coffee. Marlys recognized Jay Buchanan, well-known L.A. bachelor. Engaged to Nikki, Oomfaa had said.

  So now she could identify them. Cassandra and Nikki, the two women who were supposed to be her friends, but who were instead Juliet’s sisters. The chef said something, and Juliet laughed.

  More acid leaked, burning inside Marlys’s belly and fertilizing another ugly emotion growing inside of her. Two others approached the sisters, obviously a reporter and photographer. Without saying a word to Oomfaa, Marlys advanced on the group as the rest of the world fell away.

  It was only the press she saw, the press who seemed less interested in Marlys’s father, the general, a true hero, than the treacherous woman who’d married him. It was the press Marlys focused on, and also on the woman who now had a happy, supportive family and an adoring new lover. Her father’s aide.

  She heard the reporter say, “If I could ask another question, Mrs. Weston?”

  And Marlys remembered she’d come tonight with questions, too, and they’d all been answered except for one that she’d never dared utter before, not even in the ear of her source at the tabloids. It came out of her mouth, though it wasn’t much more than a whisper.

  “Juliet, did you have something to do with my father’s death?”

  Noah’s head turned at the sound of Marlys’s voice. What the hell had she just said? She stood just outside their small circle of people—reporter, photographer, the three sisters, and himself. The majority of the launch party attendees had gone, but there were still a dozen or so left, enjoying the food or in line to buy the general’s book. Juliet had handled the crowd like a pro, even taking on the most cutting press questions with unflappable cool.

  A few media members continued to hang around—those standing beside them, and another photographer that Noah just now spied, tucked near a beverage urn. He recognized the rat—that damn paparazzo he’d caught sneaking around Juliet’s pool weeks ago.

  Torn between throwing that guy out and not wanting to leave Juliet’s side, he was still standing there when Marlys raised her voice and repeated her question for everyone’s ears.

  “Did you have something to do with my father’s death?”

  Jesus. “Of course she didn’t,” Noah ground out. Protecting Juliet was his number-one concern, and he should have known that meant getting rid of the general’s daughter the moment he’d spotted her in the yarn shop. “I told you to get lost before, Marlys,” he said, starting for her, “and it’s time you listened.”

  Marlys evaded him by squirming between the reporter and photographer. From the corner of the room, Noah could hear the distinctive click of a camera shutter. He shot the other photographer, the one closer to the action, a searing look. No pictures.

  Marlys’s gaze remained on Juliet. “You played the doting wife in public and when my father’s friends were in our family home, but when he was taking his last breaths, you were being pampered at a spa. How could you? How can you explain that?”

  “Damn it, Marlys.” Noah launched himself forward, but Juliet grabbed his arm and hauled him back.

  “Don’t,” she said to him, then turned her attention to the other woman, her voice calm. “I’ve said this before, Marlys. I couldn’t know it was that day, that hour—”

  “He hadn’t been eating.”

  “Your father—”

  “He hadn’t been drinking.”

  Juliet pushed back her hair. “His illness meant he didn’t have much appetite—”

  “Or was it that my father was refusing nourishment in order to hasten his death and you did nothing to stop him?”

  Noah saw Juliet freeze. Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Her lips set and her eyes narrowed as her gaze slowly slid from Marlys to his face. Was she connecting some inconvenient dots?

  The general’s daughter’s tone was shrill. “Juliet—”

  “Knows nothing about anything like that,” Noah interjected, his voice harsh and loud enough to reach all four walls of the store. He’d made a promise, but he couldn’t let a public accusation such as this stand. “In the last weeks, the general didn’t let anyone tend him during his meals but me.”

  “The both of you hinted it embarrassed him to have me see him struggle to feed himself,” Juliet said slowly. “He flat-out refused to let me help. But neither of you told me how much he was eating and drinking. Or wasn’t eating and drinking.”

  Noah knew the shit had hit the fan now. But with her looking at him like that, there was no way he could tell her anything less than the truth.

  “He wasn’t, not at the end. He really couldn’t—it wasn’t a matter of choice,” he clarified. “But it was one of the general’s last commands that I not let you know that.”

  “What? Why?”

  Noah ignored the questions to pin Marlys with his glare. “Satisfied? Have you done enough?”

  The general’s daughter’s face was pale. “What did you do?” she shot back.

  “Christ, Marlys. Nothing like you’re insinuating—hospice was there alongside me. When the general wasn’t eating or drinking any longer, he asked us to keep the particulars quiet because it gave him a measure of control and self-respect. It gave him back a little dignity to think he was doing one last thing for his wife.”

  “What last thing?” Juliet’s shaken voice made him ache.

  “He didn’t want you hovering at his bedside. He didn’t want you making yourself sick while watching his every breath to determine if it was his last.”

  “Hover—!”

  “He knew that would be torture for you and he wanted to protect you from the ordeal. The day he sensed was his last day…” Noah looked down, then back to the face of the woman he loved. He’d held this secret for so long, but it was out now, and he recognized with another sharp ache that the casualty of it could very well be the future with her he’d almost started to believe in. “On that day he asked me to convince you to spend it at the spa.”

>   Juliet’s hand rose to her throat. At her side, Cassandra put her arm around her older sister’s shoulders.

  Marlys made a strangled sound. “Why didn’t you call me, if Juliet wasn’t the one he wanted with him when he died?”

  “Jesus Christ, Marlys. If he didn’t want Juliet as a witness to that, he certainly didn’t want you there either. He wanted to shield you, too.”

  “Shield me?” she repeated. “Why would my father want to shield me?”

  Noah shook his head. “Because he loved you, Marlys.”

  She paled further, the angry expression on her face melting away. If he’d thought the little witch had a heart, he might have suspected it was broken. But he didn’t believe she had a single soft organ inside her, and when she scrambled backward and then ran for the door, he could only be glad she was gone.

  Leaving all the destruction that she’d wrought behind.

  Silence settled over the room. There were a few last sales rung up at the register, a few last looks cast, but quickly the party was over, the shop empty of all but the sisters and the three men.

  To Noah, the only one in the place was Juliet.

  Even obviously upset, she’d never looked more beautiful—and more unattainable. Her sisters were close to her; Nikki had brought her coffee, but she hadn’t taken a sip.

  She hadn’t looked at him.

  Finally, she spoke, her gaze fixed on something only she could see. “That day, that day I went to the spa, you didn’t really think it was Wayne’s last day.”

  Juliet had been nearly impossible to pry from the general’s side. She’d complied during mealtimes, but for months, the rest of her day—except that day—had been exclusively devoted to her husband. The spa certificate the general had bought for her last birthday was months old.

  “Yeah, I did.” Noah shut his eyes, remembering the wasted figure in the bed, the general’s stoic attitude toward his pain, the calm way he’d come to terms with dying. On that day, his last desire had been to prevent his wife’s further suffering and it had been what Noah wanted, too. “I did think it was.”