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Trying to banish the thoughts, his eyes closed and his hand tightened on the photographer’s collar. He barely recognized the grating sound of his own voice. “Well?”
“I’ve never seen him before in my life.”
“I’ve never seen her before in my life.”
Juliet and the stranger spoke together. Noah’s eyes popped back open. “What?” Loosening his grip a little, he shook the man he held. “I thought you said she invited you over.”
“I thought she was somebody else!”
Noah’s eyes narrowed. “You forgot your friend’s address?”
“She used to live here, anyway. I know this used to be her house.”
Puzzled, Noah stared at the guy for a long minute.
“Oomfaa,” Juliet put in quietly. “Remember, Noah? She owned it before me.”
Oh, Christ. The realtor had revealed that “One of the Most Famous Actresses in America,” nicknamed Oomfaa by the Malibu community, had lived here before Juliet had moved in. Which meant that the guy with the cameras was likely one of the—
“Paparazzi,” he said with disgust, letting go of the man’s shirt and shoving him away at the same time. “I hear they guarantee celebrity sightings at the Malibu Starbucks. Get out of here.”
The man shrugged his shoulders and pulled on the placket of his wrinkled shirt. “Wrong. Now the best spot is The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. But I’m looking for Oomfaa in particular. Do you know where she moved? I heard she’s for sure in Malibu.”
Noah rolled his eyes. “As if I would tell you.”
The guy slid his hand in his front pocket. “There’d be money in it for you. I sell my stuff to that website—I’m sure you know it—Celeb!.com. I pay for tips that pan out.”
“I don’t want your money,” he said, shooting a glance at Juliet. They both knew that the actress had moved just across the canyon.
The paparazzo followed his gaze. After a heartbeat, his pose went from casual to alert. He pivoted to face Juliet. “Wait a minute. I do know you.”
When his hands moved toward his cameras, Noah wrapped his fingers around the straps hanging from the guy’s neck. “No pictures. Don’t even think about it.”
The photographer pointed his forefinger at Juliet instead. “You married America’s Hero.”
That’s what the media had dubbed General Wayne Weston—America’s Hero. With his Hollywood looks, his West Point education, and his well-documented bravery, he’d been a military man that the populace—and more important, maybe, the politicians on both the right and the left—could be proud of. When he’d retired, the world assumed he was going to run for public office. The highest office.
And win.
“They called you the Deal—”
Noah’s hand jerked to the other man’s throat. “That’s—”
“Okay,” Juliet interjected. “Let him say it. And let him go.”
Shit. He gentled his stranglehold, but didn’t completely ease off. “Juliet…”
“Then I’ll say it for him,” she put in, her voice matter-of-fact. “They called me the Deal Breaker.”
Shaking his head, Noah dropped his hand. It was true that when the general had married his very much younger wife, both of the parties had dropped him like a hot political potato. Where before they’d been courting him to run on their tickets, now they couldn’t back away fast enough. Rumor had it that when he’d mentioned his plans to wed a woman thirty years his junior the national committees had said the bride was out or their support was gone.
Wayne Weston had chosen marriage.
The media and the people hadn’t taken very well to losing their favorite presidential contender. But had they blamed the hierarchies of the parties or even their hero himself? Hell, no. They’d blamed Juliet.
“Then they called me the Happy Widow.”
Every muscle in Noah’s body clenched. He hated that part of the story most of all. He’d been there in the last months of the general’s life and in all the months since. Not once had Juliet been happy.
Not goddamn once.
But because she hadn’t been at Wayne Weston’s side in his last hours, unfounded, anonymously sourced rumors had been swallowed by the hungry-for-content twenty-four-hour media machine, to be regurgitated into cruel sound bites like the Happy Widow. And here, right beside Noah, was a representative of that slanderous, libelous, salacious fourth estate.
Hey, he thought, cheering a little. And I’ve been trained to kill.
“You’d better leave,” he told the man in a low voice, deciding even a dolt like this one deserved a warning. “Now.”
