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“I should have known that.” His head tilted as he regarded her with his vivid gaze. “You did a lot of things around the old house. More than once the general asked me to attend to something and you had gotten there before I could.”
“I don’t think he believed I was capable of even the most minor repair.” Juliet smiled a little. “Or maybe he considered it unfeminine of me to show the slightest hint of handiness.”
“No.” Noah shook his head. “Unfeminine? Never that, no matter what.”
“Are you sure? Because I don’t know what else he’d think if he could see me kicking stubborn doors or cursing at the sky.” She flushed, remembering exactly what that sky-cursing had been about.
Noah looked away as if to save her the embarrassment. “Still, strong or no, that armoire must have been a bitch to move on your own. You should have called me.”
Right. The person she’d been so careful to avoid. “I knew you’d left early this morning. I, um, heard your car start,” she added hastily, not wanting him to think she’d been keeping tabs on his comings and goings.
“Dean, then. He was here this morning.” Noah shrugged out of his suit jacket and slung it across the desk, then went to work on the starched cuffs of his dress shirt.
“Oh.” Juliet tried not to stare as he revealed his powerful forearms by rolling up his sleeve. The skin was tanned there, too, of course, and sprinkled with dark hair. She rubbed at the smoother skin of her own with the palms of her hands, trying to rub away a sudden chill. “I wouldn’t bother Dean.”
“Because you’re embarrassed to face him?”
“Embarrassed?” It was Noah who she’d been so anxious to evade. “Why would I be embarrassed to face Dean?”
“Because he saw us kiss the other night.” Noah focused on his shirt sleeve as he carefully rolled it to his elbow. “Because he knows, or guesses…”
She frowned. “He knows or guesses…what? What exactly are you getting at?”
Noah hesitated.
Giving her time to fill in the blanks.
“Are you saying Dean knows that we…that you…” His friend knew Noah had gone to bed with her and he expected she was distressed about it. Why?
Then it hit her. Heat crawled over her face.
“Why should I care that your friend knows you took pity on the dried up, lonely old widow across the pool?” She flung the question at him, in order to get the words away from herself. “I don’t really know him, and you—well, in his eyes you likely just look like a nicer guy for doing the generous deed, don’t you think?”
No wonder Noah had treated her like she’d break. Little old widows were frail like that.
Blinking at the burn that was in her eyes as well as on her face, she whirled back to the door, jerking on the knob and kicking the paneled bottom at the same time.
Incensed, she yelled at the stubborn thing. “Let me out!”
Arms wrapped around her from behind. She struggled against their hold, throwing herself from right, to left, then right again.
“Settle down,” Noah said, tightening his embrace. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
Too late, she thought, still twisting. All her life she’d played the perfect lady, the composed hostess, the gentle wife, but the jagged emotions roiling inside of her were shattering that pose. “Leave me alone!”
He turned her easily, his arms still holding hers, fast, against her sides. “Not until we have this out.”
She stiffened in affront, then went crafty instead, going limp in his grasp. Noah instantly relaxed, releasing her and stepping back.
Triumphant, Juliet whirled again to make another desperate attack on the door.
Noah was only a second behind. Once again he had her, one arm banding her waist, the other around her chest, and as if it was no effort at all, he lifted her wiggling body off her feet to walk her toward the seating area she’d earlier arranged.
“No,” she said through her teeth. “Don’t do this.”
“I’m not doing anything,” he replied, his voice as tight as her own. “I just want to talk.”
“But I have nothing to say.” Her bottom bounced on the loveseat and then he dropped beside her, his hand like a vice around her upper arm. Fuming, she tried getting to her feet, but he held her against the cushions with just those five, implacable fingers.
“Stay put,” he ordered.
Had she ever been this angry? A high whine buzzed in her ears and her blood was crashing through her system, hot and intoxicating like some kind of terrible drug. Under its influence, her right hand reached out, fast as a blink, and slapped him across his handsome face.
