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Him. Noah Smith.
The man who lived in the guesthouse across the pool. The man who worked for her and who before that had tended to her dying husband.
The younger man.
He shouldn’t go back to her, Noah thought, pulling on jeans and shoving his feet in a pair of ragged running shoes. He should stay in the guesthouse and mind his own business, leaving Juliet alone to deal with whatever it was that had spooked her.
But hell, before finishing college and attending three years of law school, the Army had schooled him long and schooled him well in keeping focused on the mission. And his mission—but no, not his obsession, damn it—was Juliet Weston.
For her—no, for the mission—he’d done some things, and then not done some others that were secrets he expected to take to his grave. He didn’t regret a one, but he was now bound to her in a way she didn’t know. That’s why when he’d heard the strange sounds from her supposedly vacant kitchen—she’d said she was going to be gone for a couple of hours—he’d rushed in wearing nothing more than his protective instincts.
Probably scared the bejesus out of her, a big wet body decorated by only an infantryman’s meat tag tattoo. Naked Noah.
Except he couldn’t claim she’d looked at him with any particular awareness then or before. From the pleasant yet detached manner she always exhibited he supposed she considered him along the lines of a convenient piece of furniture.
While she’d never struck him in the least like a chair or a table or a desk.
Just another reason to keep to his side of the pool.
He glanced out the window to assure himself all was well. There was no reason to go back there. To her.
Except a stealthy figure was just now creeping over the wall to position itself outside Juliet’s kitchen windows.
Christ! What now? Kidnapper? Peeping Tom? Didn’t matter. His Army training said OP-FOR and he was going after this particular opposition force with everything he had.
Noah was through his door and across the flagstone deck before the intruder could take another step.
“Hey!” he yelled, grabbing the stranger by his shirt collar to yank him around. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
The lights from the pool glowed greenly on the other man’s face. Like Noah, he was close to thirty, and dressed in jeans, the cotton shirt that was crumpled in Noah’s fist, and lightweight hiking boots. Two cameras hung around his neck. Noah twisted the shirt collar tighter and the guy stumbled closer.
“What are you up to?” he demanded again.
“Easy, easy,” the stranger said, not attempting to fight Noah’s grasp. “I’m a friend of the lady’s.” He gestured toward the kitchen windows. “She invited me over.”
“You and your cameras?”
“She…she asked me to take some pictures.” The stranger’s voice was low, his smirk suggestive. “You know.”
Noah didn’t want to know, but hell, he had to find out, didn’t he? “Juliet?” He pitched his voice louder. “Juliet!”
The fixture over the back door flipped on and then she stepped out, hesitating there as the light turned her wealth of fine, straight hair from its usual caramel color to a brighter gold. When Noah had blasted into the kitchen earlier, it had been down around her shoulders, but now it was pulled away from her face by a thin band. It looked damp around the edges as if she’d just splashed water on her skin. The lashes surrounding her amazing eyes—one green, one blue—were spiky with wetness.
She blinked as she gazed at the two men. “Noah?”
“Is this a friend of yours?” he demanded, not easing his grip on the other dude’s shirt. “Did you invite him over?”
Juliet blinked again.
Shit, Noah thought. Maybe she had. For God’s sake, she’d been a widow for eleven months and her husband had been dying for many, many before that. It would be natural to want someone to spend time with, and there was no reason to be pissed that if she wanted a man she hadn’t turned to him. She was the quintessential uptown girl and officer’s wife, while he, after all, was the hired help, the enlisted guy, the piece of furniture from across the pool. But did she have to torture his imagination by wanting pictures, too?
Because, God, imagined freeze-frames were overtaking his gray matter. Juliet out of her pants and sweater and into a black teddy, lace playing peek-a-boo with his gaze so he glimpsed a shell-pink nipple here, the crease that separated her long legs from her hips there. Now a backside shot, Juliet peering over the creamy, elegant blade of her shoulder, the sweep of her delicate spine leading to the taut hump of her ass. One set of ruby-tipped toes in the air.
