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“I’m sorry, it’s stupid,” I started, my eyes searching her troubled, hurt brown ones staring back at me. “Tricia was Billie’s maid of honor at their wedding and I was one of Sawyer’s groomsmen. We were kind of thrown together, and I guess we got caught up in the occasion.”
“You hooked up?” Juliette asked and I pressed my lips into a line and shrugged. Her gaze dropped to our hands and her small fingers tensed. “That’s not it… not all of it … especially from the way you both reacted to seeing the other today.”
Shock tightened my chest. What did she see? My physical reaction to seeing Trisha wasn’t one I welcomed, but Juliette’s challenge told me my attempt to disguise how I’d felt had been fruitless.
The hurt etched on Juliette’s face filled me with shame. She was right, no matter how I’d wished I had felt; my true feelings about Tricia had shone through. But as we’d sat holding hands, I knew I didn’t want to face how desperately attracted to Tricia I still was, when Juliette felt precious to me.
“Being with Tricia was no more than a lapse in judgment. She wasn’t good for me, and once I’d figured that out, I chose not to contact her again.” My eyes searched her face, willing her to believe me. “We were never serious, sweetheart.”
“I’d like to believe that, James, but am I supposed to ignore all to those sneaky glances you stole toward her, or the more blatant scrutiny we came under from her?” Sucking in a deep breath, Juliette exhaled slowly and composed herself before she spoke again. “So, tell me what the fuck I was in the middle of today.”
“She didn’t mean anything to me,” I pleaded, still trying to convince myself of that. “I just wasn’t prepared to see her there, that’s all. I’ll admit seeing her shocked me, but all I needed was time to catch my breath.”
Before Juliette could reply, the car drew up alongside my brother’s apartment building. Juliette roughly pulled her hand out from mine, opened the door, and was out on the sidewalk before I could think. Seconds later, I climbed out and strode toward her as she headed inside the building.
I signaled briefly to the front desk security detail that she was with me and continued following her. Even though I had never taken her to Sawyer’s building before, she was clearly incensed and marched blindly into an elevator car, which arrived at the precise moment she’d gotten there. Turning to look at me, I was met with the wrath of her angry expression, shoulders bunched by her ears as she tried to contain her fury in a public place.
“You need to come out of there, sweetheart. This is the one that goes to my brother’s floor,” I said, gesturing toward the last one at the end of the bank of elevators. For a moment I thought she was going to let the door close on her anyway and stood back so as not to antagonize her further. I felt safe in the knowledge I wouldn’t have lost her at that point anyway, as she had no key card to insert for the car to move.
The wounded look on Juliette’s face slayed me, as she rolled her lips in a line and stepped back out of the car. “You needed to catch your breath? You mean she made you breathless,” she hissed quietly, so the guys in the lobby couldn’t her. “If we weren’t so far from the city, I’d have left you there and gone home,” she mumbled in a quiet, distressed tone.
Staring intensely, I absorbed her comment before I stretched out my upturned palms. “Please, sweetheart. Don’t do this to us. I love you. I’m so sorry I hurt you today. Tricia’s the last person we should be arguing over, she’s nothing to me,” I said, stepping into the elevator car, I wrapped my arms around her.
Initially Juliette’s body was stiff and unyielding, but a few moments later something gave within her and she allowed me to hold her. We stood there for a few moments until the tightness in my chest eased, and then she let me guide her toward the elevator that led to the penthouse apartment.
Once inside, I continued holding her firmly to my chest and slid in the spare key card Sawyer had given me into the slot. My brother’s family only used it on weekdays during school semesters as my stepnephew, Colby attended a local school nearby.
Releasing her from my arms, I opened the door and signaled my girl inside, and as I closed it, she spun around to look at me. Fury darkened her pretty brown eyes and rightly so, because I deserved her calling me out.
“Take a good look at me, James. Do I look like a fool?”
“Jules…”
Pacing the floor in front of me as she gathered her thoughts made me feel crestfallen. “Tell me… I want to know everything about your history with that woman, and don’t think for a minute you can pretend what went on today was nothing. Do you know how humiliated I felt?”
“Trust me,” I started, and immediately wondered why the fuck she should after how I’d felt about Tricia.
“Trust you?” she scoffed in a high-pitched tone. “I thought I did before we went to Hammer’s place today. Now? If I’m honest, I don’t. You almost melted when you laid eyes on her, and from how she watched your every move since then, I knew it was only a matter of time before she’d try to get you alone.”
“Then you knew more than I did,” I answered, honestly. “I can’t stop someone from looking at me.”
“She watched your every move. Oh, and the way your brother and his friend stepped in as your wingmen to keep me busy while you both headed inside, felt very degrading.”
“Whoa. I only left to take a leak. How was I to know she’d come after me?”
“I want to know exactly what that woman is to you and don’t leave anything out.”
Rage gripped me. I stood rubbing the back of my neck as I tried to control how angry I was that Tricia’s appearance had disturbed the pleasant balance which had existed in our relationship.
“Sweetheart, I’m so fucking sorry you felt like that. If you thought my brother and Hammer were covering for me, you were wrong. If they thought they were, then that was also on them.
“Stop stalling and tell me about her.”
A frustrated huff of breath left my chest. No matter what I said, Juliette had already made her mind up. If it was honesty she was after, she left me with no choice but to be frank.
“Look, I had no idea Hammer had invited Tricia. Why should I? We’ve had nothing to do with one another for years, and no, before you get the idea she was an old girlfriend, she wasn’t.”
“But you slept with her.” It wasn’t a question and I’d already admitted as much.
