Unravel Me (14 page)

He touched her knee and she jumped. The skimming contact felt like a sting.

“Ouch.” He looked down at his fingers. “You burn.”

“Then keep your hands off,” she grumbled.

Rubbing it against his jeans, he glanced back up at her face. “Not sure that’s possible.”

Yeah, well, she wasn’t sure that was possible either. After she’d left the other day with Juliet’s package, distance and her common sense had kicked in. True, she was impulsive, sometimes incautious, hyperenergetic, and often caustic, but she wasn’t stupid. Instead of making plans to head back to Malibu and chance running into Dean again, she’d slapped a new address label on Juliet’s package and remailed it at her local post office.

And yet, here she was again.

She had to figure out why this man—from the moment he’d gazed at her from those cool silver eyes—fascinated her. She didn’t fascinate easily. Hell, she didn’t think she’d ever been fascinated.

Until Dean Long had looked at her. Especially after Dean Long had touched her.

There had to be an explanation, she thought, rubbing her knee and surprised to find he hadn’t burned a hole clear through the fragile mesh. So far, she was betting on that mystery factor. He’d gone out of his way to be all he-man inscrutability. Getting to the bottom of him would surely end her overblown interest.

She propped an elbow on the breakfast bar and sent him her most winning smile. “So why don’t you tell me every little thing about you?”

“I’m the strong and silent type.”

Okay, so she wasn’t all that practiced at winning smiles, but did he have to be so uncooperative? Curbing her normal impatience, she only jiggled one foot while trying to look sweet—even with her teeth clenched. “Well, let’s start with your birth date. Or gee, if you find that’s just too personal, how about your astrological sign?”

“Who’s trying to pick up whom now?”

She snorted. Whoops, there went sweet. “Just give me the info, damn it.”

Leaning into the back of the stool, he crossed his arms over his chest and grinned at her. “Now that’s more like it. No point in faking the sugar when vinegar looks so good on you, angel.”

“Why won’t you just answer my questions?”

“Because you look so cute when you fume.”

Beyond annoyed, she launched out of her stool. Maybe he thought she was going to get violent, because suddenly he stood, too, and his big hands curled around her wrists. “Don’t hurt me,” he said, grinning again.

His fingers were bands of heat and that warmth was shooting up her bare arms, leaving prickly goose bumps in their wake. Instead of struggling to be free, she went still. “Maybe,” she heard herself say, her voice quiet, “that should be my line.”

Alarm bells sounded in her head. No, no! The words sounded female and weak and it was as if he’d already managed to rub away her sharp edges and evaporate the acid from her tongue. With a yank of her hands, she tried pulling free of him, but he ignored her struggles and jerked her closer.

White satin bodice met white cotton T-shirt. She was aware of the little silver teardrop she carried with her always, now tucked between her breasts, but she was even more aware of Dean’s heartbeat. It thumped, steady and strong, against the double-time that was her own.

He smelled like laundry soap and then, as his mouth descended, she caught the scent of cinnamon. And then she tasted the red-hot flavor as his breath brushed against her lips. “Shall we try this, Marlys?”

No!

Yes.

Certainly not.

Please now.

Never in a million years would she admit it, but she didn’t have the voice to utter a single one of her conflicting responses. So she threw each to the wind and answered in the only way left to her. Marlys-the-Brash went on tiptoe to close the gap between them.

His kiss burned, too. She opened her mouth to cool the flames and his tongue took up the invitation. He stroked inside her mouth, strong and sure. Oh. Oh, wow.

To bolster her sagging knees, she pressed against his chest even as her head dropped on her neck, letting him take what he wanted.

He didn’t take enough. With a small groan, he lifted his head to press a gentle kiss to the corner of her mouth, her nose, her chin. “I’m thirty years old. Aries. April second.”

“Stubborn,” she said.

“You’ve got to be kidding.” He dove in for another wet, deep kiss that had her clutching at his shirt. His hands slid over her back and then down, to tilt her hips into his. She went on tiptoe again to make the fit more gratifying. “I wasn’t planning on telling you anything,” he said.

She managed a laugh, even though with every unsteady breath, her breasts rubbed against his shirt. “I meant your astrological sign. The goat.”

“It’s not a goat.” He looked offended. “It’s a ram.”

“That’s a kind of truck. Your sign’s a goat. As in old goat. Or Billy Goat Gruff or—”

“Ram,” he said again, with heat, and then caught on. With another groan, he shook his head and then snatched the halo from her hair and sailed it toward the living room couch. “Brat, not angel. I was right the first time we met.”

It gave her a moment to rearrange her sagging armor. She mentally pulled it up around herself, and then scooted back so that her butt met stool again. Dean’s arms dropped, and she discovered she didn’t like the chill that distance afforded.

He didn’t look happy either. “You’re not going to make this easy, are you?”

The skinny satin strap of her costume dropped, but before she could draw it back, he ran his forefinger along the newly naked spot of her skin. “Are you, Marlys?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Uh-huh.” He shook his head again. “You big on denial, angel? Because we’ve got some crazy-ass chemistry going on here, and I, for one, am all for exploring it.”

Well, Marlys wanted to explain it. “I don’t . . . I’m not . . .” While no fainting virgin, she didn’t know how to deliver the message that Marlys Weston didn’t fall into strangers’ arms. She didn’t casually sleep around or even have a congenial fuck buddy on speed dial.

She didn’t like men that much.

Or women, either, for that matter.

Marlys Weston took no prisoners and not lovers very often. Her last best friend had been lost to her in seventh grade, and there hadn’t been anyone to fill the gap since. So how could this man so quickly get under her skin? There had to be a logical answer.

“Let’s start over again, Mr. Aries. So you have an April second birth date. Where exactly are you from?”

He hesitated, sliding back into his own stool. Was he playing obstinate man of mystery again? But no, he didn’t look cagey, he looked . . . confused?

Or unable to answer.

With new eyes, she took in his muscled physique and the close haircut, and then remembered that moment when he’d gone from asleep to alert. Like her father. Like a soldier.

“You grew up military, too,” she said. Military kids couldn’t name a hometown because they’d never had one. Two years here, three years there, they moved from place to place, base to base. “Army then, army now?” she hazarded a guess, and then thought, duh, he was a friend of Noah’s. That crazy-ass chemistry had scrambled her normal deductive skills.

He nodded, a little smile quirking his lips.

Yeah. That crazy-ass chemistry all made sense now, she decided. It must be because Dean was part of her tribe, the one and only group she’d ever belonged to. The one and only group that she’d felt completely comfortable in her skin around—until she’d been yanked from base life and had gone from soldier’s daughter to misfit civilian in one fell swoop.

As another who’d grown up military, he was one of her own. Almost like family—she found she was staring at his mouth, so, okay, not like family. But that was all right. Because he was military that meant he knew the score, too. An organization of the brats had assigned themselves a flower, like governments did. The U.S. national flower was the rose. The state of California had the poppy.

The military brats had adopted the dandelion.

Like them, it was resilient. Like them, it knew how to move on.

Which meant that she and Dean were alike and in their sameness they were safe. When—no,
if
—she decided to do something about this crazy-ass chemistry, they could go ahead and enjoy the experiment until the inevitable wind blew off its blossom . . . or blew out its flames.

 

Nikki bumped her elbow into Juliet’s ribs and gestured toward the costumed crowd gathered on the restaurant’s glass-screened deck overlooking the ocean. “What do you think it says about men when a disproportionate number of them came dressed for Halloween as kings?”

“It could be a superiority complex, I suppose,” Juliet said, pitching her voice over the sound of the crashing surf and the rendition of “Monster Mash” from the band in the corner. “But my guess is a big basket of fake crowns right next to the checkout at the Rite Aid.”

“Okay,” Nikki said, nodding. “Laziness over a supremacy wish. And it explains why Jay is here telling everyone he’s Don Ho when he’s really just dressed in his own pair of cargo shorts, flip-flops, and one of his collection of vintage Hawaiian shirts.”

Juliet smiled as she spotted the man in question threading through the crowd and carrying drinks for the three of them. The deck was lit by the lights on the small patio tables and the tiki torches ringing it. “The ukulele is a cute touch. And the costume does kind of go with your most outstanding mermaid getup.”

Nikki reached for the lemon drop martini Jay handed to her and ran her gaze over Juliet. “You’re looking good, too. I like the Shakespearean slant.”

“Credit Cassandra’s creativity once again,” she said, running her hand down the long blue velvet robe the other woman had pulled out of her own closet. Underneath the half-open garment they’d paired a white peasant-style blouse and a long cotton petticoat. “It took her fifteen minutes and a glue gun to make the ‘Juliet’ cap.” In a darker shade of velvet, it hugged the crown of her head and was edged with colored “gems” as big as her thumbnail.

And it had taken less than fifteen for Cassandra to convince Juliet to attend the Halloween event. After a few days of stewing over Noah, she’d realized she needed the distraction. A little fun.

Nikki sipped at her drink and leaned closer so she didn’t have to yell over the music. “The only thing missing is Romeo.”

Juliet sighed. Recently, she’d only caught glimpses of her across-the-pool-neighbor—always accompanied by Dean. He’d nodded. She’d fluttered her fingers.

They’d both looked away.

After that last interlude in her kitchen—she was beginning to wonder if the location was bewitched—she’d gone to bed flustered. Okay, frustrated. Not to mention hurt. How could he touch her so intimately and then retreat with such speed and without so much as a word?

But after a few hours of flopping back and forth on her mattress, she’d started to look at it from his point of view. Why would a man—handsome, intelligent, and used to a variety of women—want to get involved with a widow who carried enough baggage to weigh down both of them?

Not to mention that she hadn’t spoken a word to him either. Before that kiss, after those touches, neither time had she assured him she was only contemplating a brief affair. Maybe if she’d been up-front:
I just want your skin, your heat, your manness, no more
—

But thinking about that wasn’t distracting or fun, so she turned away from it all by turning to her sister’s fiancé. His gaze was trained on Nikki.

“So,” she said. “How are things with you, Jay?”

He started. “Huh?”

“How are you?”

He shook his head. “Sorry, I was just congratulating myself on my choice of future wife.”

Nikki rolled her eyes. “Right. You were congratulating yourself on my cleavage, Hef.”

He grinned. “If you say you didn’t wear those starfish with just that in mind, then you lie, cookie.”

Without bothering to hide her own shameless grin, Nikki shot a look at Juliet. “Can’t get much by him, I tell ya.”

“Which reminds me,” Jay said. “I’ve been meaning to follow up on that conversation I started about your husband’s book.”

“Jay . . .” Nikki groaned. “We’re at a party.”

“Exactly. So if you try to murder me again, this time there’ll be plenty of witnesses.”

Wayne’s book, Juliet thought. She’d yet to come up with any concrete plan to promote its success. “What do you want to know about it?”

“I’m thinking of featuring the autobiography in
NYFM
’s online edition.”

“
NYFM
?” Juliet’s interest sparked. Now she recalled that Jay was a magazine editor, but she hadn’t known it was
that
magazine. For men, mostly about men, the publication could bring to the book the kind of attention it deserved. “You work for
NYFM
?”

“Yep,” he said. “So what do you think about your husband’s book? Does it capture the essence of the man?”

She closed her eyes and breathed in, for a moment almost conjuring up the essence she remembered so well. She almost, almost, had it, the smell of starch on Wayne’s shirt mixed with the slightly caustic scent of his dry-cleaned dress uniform. Then it was gone, and she looked at Jay again, with a pang realizing how alone she still could feel, even at a party attended by more than a hundred people.

“Juliet?” Jay prodded. “I wouldn’t take up much of your time.”

Time wasn’t the issue at all. All she had now was time, unending, empty stretches of it, and she had to force that thought away as another sharp ache pierced her chest. “But why would you need me?” She must have missed something.

“I said I want to do an interview with you.”

“No,” Juliet said, her answer automatic. “Not a good idea.”