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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.”
“Ah.” He didn’t know what else his response should be.
“I thought maybe you’d like to come as well.”
As Juliet’s date? “Sure.” Confidence surging, he took a step toward her—
“It will even out the numbers.”
—and then halted his forward movement. Shit, there he was again, unsure of himself, and hating every moment of the uncharacteristic hesitance.
So stymied about his next move, he was still standing halfway between the door and Juliet when she at last turned to face him. The jewel-brightness of her blue and green eyes hit him like a one-two punch in the gut. His palm over his heart, he inhaled a hard breath, and then realized his pose mimicked hers. Except her hand was used to hold an open book against her body. General Matters by General Wayne L. Weston.
Noah’s gaze flicked to the cardboard box behind her. So that was what had brought Marlys to Malibu. Irritating woman. Thanks to her, now he couldn’t bring up what had happened in the kitchen, could he?
“So it’s here,” he said. “Those are your copies?”
She ignored the question. “He wrote about me.” Her voice wobbled a little. “He said he would, but I was never sure.”
Noah’s eyebrows rose. The general had asked her not to read the book in manuscript form, and obviously she’d kept her promise.
“Wayne wrote about the day we met,” Juliet continued, “the day we re-met, I should say.”
“Page three hundred and forty-three.” By the time the galley form of the manuscript had arrived—the last step before publication—it had been Noah who had checked through each sheet because the general didn’t have the energy. “ ‘She was everything fresh and fine this jaded soldier had forgotten about the world.’ ”
Juliet gave a little shake of her head. “I can’t believe he wrote something so…”
“Sappy?” Noah tempered the word with a little smile. “When it came to you, there wasn’t much the general wouldn’t do.” Or ask of Noah, either.
“It was at my parents’ funeral. He was a friend of my father’s. I hadn’t seen him since I was a kid, but there he was again.”
Noah nodded. “He remembered you as that child, but when he saw you at the funeral service…”
“I was twenty-two, yet he thought he needed to take care of me.” She wore a half-sad smile.
“He fell in love with you,” Noah corrected.
“And I’d daydreamed about a handsome prince since childhood. In dress uniform, he was about as close to one as a modern American man could get.”
Great. On the one hand there was common-as-dirt Noah, and on the other was a highly decorated, wife-adoring ghost. Why the hell for even two seconds he’d let his imagination run to images of refined Juliet going sweaty skin to sweaty skin with him, he didn’t know. For a smart guy, he sure could be as dumb as the next box of rocks.
“What did you think the first time you met me?” she suddenly asked.
His surprise made him step back. “Huh?”
“I don’t remember it. Do you?”
Christ, was the question a test? It felt like a test, and hadn’t he told her he was such a good taker of them? Now he felt tongue-tied and buffalo-footed, while the man she’d married had written: She was everything fresh and fine this jaded soldier had forgotten about the world.
If Noah wanted his tongue in her mouth again—he did—and if he wanted her scent on his hands, on his chest, and every other inch of skin he could manage—he did—then his answer was crucial. Still, his mind was as thick as a custard milkshake and refused to stir.
It was the truth or else risk looking like he suffered from some sort of brain damage. “If I recall correctly, we met on the front porch as you tore out of the house screaming at the top of your lungs while chasing after Marlys’s dog with a plastic bag full of dog shit.”
As if all the air leaked out of her, she sagged back against the butcher-block table. “Oh, my God. What must you have thought?”
If he hadn’t been there to interview for a job that seemed perfect for his circumstances, he probably would have laughed his ass off. “I thought I better not have an accident on the carpet in the master bedroom.”
