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Juliet was watching me consider, and my heart squeezed at the pleading look in her eyes as I thought. I wanted to keep her company. She had no idea how much. But this was a job for me—one I'd been given on the back of an honorable discharge from the Marine Corps, and it would definitely be something less than honorable for me to forget that Juliet was a client. Not a friend. Definitely nothing more.
Still, those liquid eyes and the defeated slump of her shoulders told me maybe my job was about more than just physical safety. At least right now.
"I play a mean game of Uno," I told her, not sure quite where the words came from.
"You do, huh?" She smiled at me. "My sister and my Gran used to play that with me."
"Yeah?" I imagined a little white-haired lady patiently playing cards with two little girls. I was sure Juliet came from a picture-perfect background.
"Yeah, until they got tired of losing." She practically sneered this last part, and a spike of amusement and surprise whipped through me. I hadn't seen this side of Juliet before.
"Is that right?" I chuckled. "Well, bring it on."
"I've got Mastermind, too," she said over her shoulder as we stepped out toward the stairs.
"Well, now you're talking."
We settled ourselves on the floor in her living room in front of a gas fire that made the space seem cozy, despite it being bigger than most people's homes. Juliet insisted on bringing a bottle of red wine in and pouring for us both.
"I'm on duty," I reminded her.
"Jace, it's after ten o'clock. You're off."
"As long as I'm with you, I'm on." Technically, she was right—I wasn’t on the clock. But that didn't mean I was about to let down my guard. If anything happened to her on my watch, I’d never forgive myself.
She lifted her wine glass and gave me a pointed look, daring me not to drink mine. I lifted it and we sipped. At two-hundred and twenty pounds, it would take more than a glass of wine to muddy my senses.
"Wanna start with Mastermind? I probably intimidated you telling you about defeating all my enemies at Uno back in the day," she said. There was a playful glint in her eyes that I loved, and I relaxed a bit, enjoying myself.
"Sure," I said, lifting the lid off the box.
"You have played before, I take it?"
"I loved this game when I was a kid." I smiled at her as I turned the code maker side toward me and put up the little shield so she couldn't see what I was doing.
"Did you play with brothers? Sisters?" She huffed out a little breath. "I'm sorry. I'm just realizing I know nothing about you. And I'm being nosey."
"No worries," I told her. I didn't share with many people, preferring to listen instead of talk most of the time. "I played with some of my cousins when I was a kid. I have a brother, but that's it."
"But it sounds like you had a big family. That's nice."
It was the combination of the wine, the fire, and Juliet's easy posture across from me as she leaned against the armchair and tried to break my code as we began to play. It made me want to talk.
"My mom came from a big family. But I didn't know most of them well. She married a guy they didn't approve of, and we didn't get invited around a lot."
Juliet's head snapped up and her eyes met mine, full of sympathy. "That's awful," she said.
I tried to shrug it off, the old hurt of being unwanted, not good enough, was like a roughened scar that only ached a little if I bumped it. "I grew up in the south and Mom fell in love with a guy who had the wrong family and not a lot of money."
Her eyes held mine and warmth bloomed inside me. It was actually nice to share—I knew a little bit about Juliet Manchester. Now she would know something about me.
"They let us come around now and then. Her parents wanted to know my brother and me. But we weren't exactly first on the list for family gatherings. The older we got, the more we understood how it was. Her family had money, ours didn’t, and Dad’s family was part of a social caste that just didn’t mix with Mom’s. For a while, her family treated us like their own personal charity case. When we were little and cute, it was fine. But it got harder as we got older and started to understand. When we weren’t cute little boys anymore, they treated us like we didn’t fit, didn’t belong. It was hard not to resent it. For Mom too, I think. And for Dad."
"That had to be difficult," she said. "I'm from the south too. Kind of."
"Yeah?" I didn’t know where Juliet was from. She hadn’t talked about family before.
Juliet had still not cracked my code, though her guesses were getting close. She was only two colors off.
