Unravel Me (7 page)

I shouldn’t . . .
sailed across her mind, but then fell right over the edge of her consciousness, shoved aside by all things Noah.

His sun-and-man scent.

The breadth of his chest in the circle of her arms.

The warm, sure thrust of his tongue.

She gasped, drawing him farther into her mouth, and his fingers cupping her face tightened, biting into her scalp. It was all so real, so here-and-now, so
corporeal
.

So much different than cold sheets and quiet memories.

She pressed harder against his solid heat, and felt his body shudder. An answering shiver shot down her spine as pleasure softened her knees.

Who could ever want this to stop?

“Juliet? Hello!” The rattle of the front door closing followed the woman’s voice. “Juliet?”

Noah jerked back, breaking their embrace. Ducking her head, Juliet put her feet in reverse, too, her hand coming up to cover her burning lips.

“
Juliet
?”

“In here.” She coughed to clear her clogged throat, and didn’t know whether to curse or bless herself for leaving the door unlocked after retrieving the mail. “The kitchen, Marlys. I’m in the kitchen.”

Her husband’s dark-haired, twenty-five-year-old daughter entered the room with all the jerky speed and tightly wound energy she brought to every task. “What’s up?” She dumped the large cardboard box she was carrying onto the butcher block, heedless of the arrayed cookbooks. Her gaze flicked from Juliet to Noah, who was squatting on the ground to retrieve the scattered papers from the California Bar.

Marlys’s lip curled in what was more sneer than smile. “Hey, Private,” she said. It was an obvious put-down instead of a personal nickname, and everyone in the room knew it. For whatever reason, early on she’d taken a dislike to the man who did so much for her father. Wayne’s death hadn’t changed her attitude one whit.

Noah ignored it, as he always did. “Marlys,” he said, nodding in her direction as he came to his feet. “I’ll talk to you later, Juliet.”

“Okay. Later.” Her view of his back didn’t give a clue as to how he was feeling. Or how she should be feeling now that their scorching moment was over. Or what she should do or say when “later” came about.

Closing her eyes, she rubbed her temples with her fingers.

“You look like crap,” Marlys observed, with her usual tact.

Juliet lifted her lashes to stare at her husband’s daughter. “Gee, thanks.”

The other woman wasn’t deterred by her dry tone. “Really. You should try combing your hair and using a little powder. You’ve got a rat’s nest going on there and your face is too pink.”

But Juliet had bigger worries than what the kiss had done to her appearance—such as what she was going to do about the kiss. “It’ll be simpler if I just wear a sign when I venture out in public. ‘Not Looking My Best.’ ”

“I wouldn’t go that far. Frankly, nobody expects widows to be candidates for
InStyle
.”

“Right.” But at the mention of the magazine, her gaze sharpened on Marlys. With sleek hair and dark eyes, she was gymnast-sized and sprite-tempered. As the owner of a successful boutique in Santa Monica, she made a living out of looking like a fashion layout.

Today, though, she was in boy-styled jeans with rips at the knees and a sweatshirt that read “Bayridge Bengals.” “Marlys? Have you been digging into the boxes of your old junior high clothes?”

When she shrugged, the overstretched neckline of her sweatshirt slid to reveal some of her olive-skinned shoulder. “Last night I might have been rummaging through some stuff I dragged down from the attic.”

“Oh, Marlys,” Juliet said, though she wasn’t surprised. The house in Pacific Palisades had belonged, originally, to Wayne’s parents. Though the time had felt right for her to move out and leave it to Wayne’s daughter, it didn’t seem healthy for the younger woman to use her new solitude as an unfettered opportunity to fixate on the past. In the months since the funeral, she’d often found Marlys sifting through cartons of military memorabilia as well as even less worthy flotsam of Weston family life.

Despite Juliet’s best efforts, she’d never been close to Marlys. But because of her love for her husband, she couldn’t overlook the old clothes or the shadows under his daughter’s eyes. “Have you been sleeping?”

Another shrug.

“Maybe you shouldn’t be rattling around that big house,” Juliet started. “Maybe you should think about sell—”

“No.” The word was fierce. “Maybe you can walk away so easily, but I can’t. I won’t.”

Grrrr
. Juliet wanted to smack her forehead against the nearest countertop. Marlys never once gave her a break. Of course it hadn’t been easy for her to leave the house where she’d spent her married life. Of course it hadn’t been easy for her to . . .

... kiss another man. The moment caught up with her in Technicolor, with surround sound and full tactile memory. Noah’s muscles, his heat, his soft groan, and then the taste of his tongue in her mouth. God.
God.
Hardly more than a week after she’d left the house where she’d lived with the husband she still loved, she’d kissed another man.

“By the way, your ex-grief counselor called.”

“What?” Juliet blinked, trying to follow Marlys’s next thread of conversation.

“That woman you used to see after Dad died. Did you tell her I needed help?” Marlys looked ready to spit fire at the idea.

“What? No, of course not. She has the home number and was probably just checking—”

The other woman cut her off with a slash of her hand. “Yeah, yeah. That’s what she said. Checking on you.” Marlys leaned over to toy with a tail of denim fringe on the edge of her ripped kneehole, so that her shiny dark hair hid her face. “Did you get anything out of that? The counseling?”

Mercurial was a good way to describe Marlys’s moods, and Juliet found her hard to keep up with on her good days. But now, rattled by Noah, rattled by that kiss—
oh, God
—she was struggling more than usual. “The counseling? You want to know about the counseling?”

“Yeah.” The dark-haired woman jerked upright and folded her arms over her chest. “Tell me about it.”

“I went for just a few weeks,” she answered, not sure what information the other woman actually wanted. “It let me know that my feelings were entirely normal.”

Feelings like the ones she’d been experiencing lately, Juliet realized. During their last session, her counselor had gone over what to expect in the upcoming months.

Deep loneliness and isolation. Check.

Then a lessening of the heavy grief. Check.

Finally, the renewal of sexual drive.

At the time, that possibility had seemed remote. Due to Wayne’s cancer and treatment, the physical side of their marriage had ended long, long before his death. She’d believed her urges in that direction were dead, too.

Okay, she thought, taking a deep breath and letting it out. So what had happened today wasn’t crazy or weird or even unexpected. Wayne would be the first one—as a matter of fact, he
had
been the first one. “Juliet,” he’d said. “You’re too young to have your future end with my life.”

But there wasn’t room in her heart for anyone else. There wasn’t.

“Well, I’m at least as normal as you,” Marlys declared.

Not even close
, Juliet wanted to retort, but she’d managed to play peacemaker for this long so she swallowed the words. “If there’s anything I can do . . .”

“It’s too late for that, don’t you think? With the anniversary of Dad’s death coming up, the rumors are swirling again, you know. I hear it at the club, in the shop, around all the old family friends. Deal Breaker. Happy Widow.”

“Marlys—”

“If only you’d been there for Dad on the day he died. But I forget where you were again? Oh, yeah, a
spa
.”

Spa. How Juliet had come to hate those three letters arranged in that particular order. It had been all over the cable channels. They’d run footage of the place’s fancy double doors, zeroing in on the discreet placard that read CELL PHONES OFF BEFORE CROSSING THIS THRESHOLD.

Without thinking, Juliet had complied with that order. So when she returned home to the terrible news, she’d been glowing from a facial and sporting a fresh pedicure.

“Marlys, of course I didn’t know what would happen.” This wasn’t the first time she’d defended herself. But Marlys, the press, and many in her social circle had continued to look on her with suspicion.

“It hasn’t helped that you don’t talk to your old friends. Aunt Helen said you won’t return her calls.”

“Aunt Helen” was Helen Novack, a contemporary of Wayne’s, someone he’d known since childhood, and who’d never warmed up to Juliet. So Marlys was right, she had been dodging Helen’s calls and ignoring others. The “old friends” had been Wayne’s old friends and not hers. Without him, would they have anything to talk about? And if they got together, wouldn’t the “without him” be just that much more painful?

But the grief counselor had told her she’d have to push herself to be sociable. And while she might not yet be ready for Helen and that circle, she could look at the dinner tomorrow night as practice.

The sense of purpose lifted her mood a little. A dinner party. Tomorrow night. She turned toward her cookbooks.

Marlys’s box sat in the way. She slanted the brunette a look. “What
is
this?”

“Showed up at home and addressed to you,” Marlys said. “From the publishing house.”

“The books.” Juliet’s mood bobbed higher. “It must be the books.”

Ignoring Marlys’s blasé shrug, Juliet armed herself with a knife and sliced through the packing tape, anticipation making her breath come faster. Beneath the flaps and a wad of crumpled paper were two stacks of hardback books, their covers gleaming.
General Matters: My Military Life & More,
by General Wayne L. Weston. Juliet stared. Here it was, Wayne’s dream.

Here it was, Juliet’s hope. Her hope that whatever tarnish their marriage had brought to his reputation would be polished away by his life story in his very own words.

Despite her casual attitude, Marlys crowded in for a look. It was she who reached in to take hold of the top copy to survey the front cover with eager eyes. It was a dark silhouette of a man, the red, white, and blue of the American flag rippling behind him.

Slowly, Juliet reached inside to retrieve her own book. Her palm slid across the sleek front, and then she turned it over.
Wayne.

It was a wonderful photo of him, black-and-white, which played up his silver hair and dark, watchful eyes to their best advantage. With her forefinger, she traced the edges of his military brush cut and then let it fall to find the curve of his black eyebrows and then the line of his firm lips.

Was it really natural? she wondered to herself. Was it really natural or forgivable, that though her gaze drank in her beloved’s face, the rest of her was still humming in reaction to the warm, sexy resilience of another man and the pulse-jittering thrill of his kiss?

 

Noah gave Marlys plenty of time to clear the premises before heading back across the pool. The general’s daughter didn’t take rejection well, even though he’d been as tactful as he could in rebuffing the feelers she’d sent out when they’d first met.

She was beautiful in a petite, devilish sort of way, but Noah hadn’t been moved by either her lures or her ensuing vitriol when he’d turned his back on her. Marlys was a powder keg and he was careful to keep any sparks away from her.

Even the sparks that had been generated by Juliet’s body against his. By his mouth to hers.

The memory caused his pace to quicken as he skirted the pool. That kiss wasn’t something he could ignore. He was going to confront Juliet . . . and then follow her lead. Through the kitchen windows, he could see her figure, back turned toward him, and his hands curled inside his pockets.

God knows, it was going to be hard to let her direct their what-came-next discussion. He’d gone back to the guesthouse with her high-class scent on his hands and the taste of her hot mouth in his. Hell, she’d sucked on his tongue! The memory of that was enough to have him going hard again as his libido geared up for a second round.

But blowing out a breath, he forced himself to slow his stride and rein in his sex drive. Yeah, he was a man trained for action, but Juliet deserved more from him than his thuggish sexual impulses. She’d seemed to enjoy herself—hell, he thought all over again, she’d sucked on his tongue!—but she was still the officer’s wife, the officer’s
widow
, and he was still the enlisted guy she’d hired to live across the pool.

He shouldn’t presume that anything more would come of this—but he couldn’t ignore it either. He had to find out what she was thinking about their kiss.

So he rapped on the French door, then opened it, pausing at the threshold to take in the sight of the sleek fall of fine hair draped against her elegant back. It was a straight swathe the color of the caramel used to cover autumn apples. Today she was in a matching caramel shirt and plain jeans.

“Juliet?” he said softly, even as his inner gangster itched to take what he wanted. His hands would close over her shoulders and spin her to face him so that he could plunder her mouth all over again. From there he’d touch, he’d kiss, he’d taste everything. He could see it all in his head, but he didn’t stir a muscle to make it happen.

His body tensed as she remained frozen in place. His voice roughened. “Juliet?”

She didn’t turn, just talked, and in a decidedly—deceptively?—cheerful tone. “I heard from Cassandra. She and Nikki can make dinner tomorrow night. Nikki’s bringing along her fiancé, Jay, and Cassandra asked if she could tell Gabe—that’s the wallpaper guy—that I wanted him to join us as well. That way she can ensure he eats. Apparently she sees herself as his nutrition guru.”