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“Yes.” Then he realized how that sounded and amended his response, eager to get back before Juliet disappeared like the soap bubble he was afraid she might be. “Taking her home.”
Nikki put her hand on his arm as he started to turn.
“I’ve only known her a short while…” she started.
He could read her concern, and because he cared for Juliet, too, he was grateful for it. His biological family had given him nothing, but he’d found brothers in the Army and he knew how valuable those bonds could be.
“I’m not going to hurt her,” he told Nikki. Juliet only wanted a simple, single night, and he could do that, without jeopardizing hearts or secrets.
Is it too much to ask that I could find some way to prove that I didn’t die, too?
He had to do that for her.
It took him moments to get back to the spot where he’d left her. She wasn’t there.
The soap bubble had already burst.
But no—no, there. There she was, in the restaurant foyer. He hurried through the archway and took her hand. “I thought I’d lost you.”
He registered the frozen look on her face and her odd, stiff posture, and wondered if he just might be right after all. She glanced at him, her expression that careful blank, then slipped her fingers from his as she directed her attention back to an older woman standing nearby.
“Noah, you remember Helen, don’t you? Wayne’s—our—old friend?”
Helen. Helen Novack. In her early sixties, the woman had the chic but no-care haircut of a woman who spent her days on tennis courts and golf courses. Her face was tanned but relatively unlined and her eyes were a shrewd brown. Noah had grown up without learning shit about high society, and if he’d thought about it at all, he’d have figured that the southern end of wet-behind-the-ears California would be without such pretensions anyway. But then he’d met the general and the old-moneyed families like the Westons who called places such as San Marino, Bel Air, and Pacific Palisades home.
There was the new-ink reek of the money made by studio heads, movie producers, and the DUIs-by-the-dozen actors, and then there was Helen Novack’s money that smelled like century-old bricks of cool adobe and acres of orange blossoms.
Juliet was still speaking. “And, Helen? I’m sure you recognize Noah Smith, my…um…Wayne’s assistant?”
“That’s right,” the older woman said, acknowledging Noah with a flick of her eyelashes. “He’s working for you now.”
Noah didn’t give Juliet a chance to reply. “Correct, ma’am.”
“Only until I’m settled in the new house,” Juliet added, her lips curving in a pale imitation of her usual smile. “Noah just passed the California Bar exam.”
Helen Novack’s brows rose a fraction. “But for now he’s your—what exactly? Driver?”
“Um, well…” A flush rose up Juliet’s neck.
“Driver, gardener, house painter, whatever’s required,” Noah injected himself into the conversation again, not that he thought for a moment that Juliet would confess she wanted him to be more. And not that he considered for a moment that Helen Novack herself would ever dream that the general’s beautiful wife would go slumming with the likes of an enlisted soldier who hailed from some scrub-and-sand desert hamlet—law degree or not.
Staring him down, Helen’s eyebrows rose a half-inch more, but he’d never withered under the disdain of his drill sergeants and he didn’t twitch now. After a moment, she transferred her gaze back to Juliet. “Well, it’s convenient we ran into each other.”
“You said your niece persuaded you to join her tonight.”
“A charity event, she told me.” Helen frowned as the band took up an old party song and the crowd shouted for Tequila! “I didn’t expect it to be quite so raucous, though I should have known. Malibu.”
It was said in the same tone as Noah imagined she’d use when uttering, “Drugs.” “Rock ‘n’ roll.” “Sex.”
The crowd yelled again—Tequila!—and Juliet glanced over her shoulder then sent Helen another one of those half-hearted smiles. “I was just leaving myself.”
“I must say I’m surprised to see you out partying.” The older woman’s obvious disapproval made Noah’s hackles rise. The general had been gone for nearly a year and Juliet had devoted herself to him during his long illness before that. Wasn’t she entitled to experience a little music, a little laughter, a little—
Tequila! the crowd shouted.
—even a little of that, too, if she liked?
