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Juliet was silent a moment. “She went into the dance without you.”
“Yep. Apparently Daddy’s reaction opened her eyes. Now, instead of considering me good-for-rebelling, I was good-for-nothing. She took the ticket I bought for her and waltzed inside, never looking back.”
“Little bitch.”
It still surprised and amused him to hear Juliet Weston use anything less than high tea vocabulary. He laughed.
“I hope she dreams of you at night.”
Laughing again, Noah shook his head. “Doubt it. She got knocked up by the president of the senior class and was married with a kid on the way before the ink was dry on her graduation diploma.”
“Hmmph.” Juliet flounced against her seat. “Then you’re lucky. It could be you that was married to Mean Jean and the father of her babies.”
“I never took that kind of risk with anyone.” Not with Juliet, either. They’d used a condom every time. He was disease-free, and no doubt she was as well, but he’d never wanted to make a woman pregnant.
Except…
Except, God, it jumped into his head. The image of a child. A towhead with Juliet’s uncommon eyes and his tall frame. Then another joined the first. Two? The second was a chubby, dark-haired toddler who could wrap a man around her little finger with just a flash of flirty lashes.
Juliet’s voice popped the mental picture. “You’re going quiet again. Are you feeling sick?”
“No.” Crazy, maybe. Deluded.
“Good.” She leaned closer and nuzzled his neck, then licked the edge of his jaw. “Mmm. Like sandpaper.”
He rubbed the scratchiness with his palm. “I’ll shave before—”
“I wish you wouldn’t.”
Uh-oh. Her voice took on this telltale throatiness every time she was thinking about steamy sex. He grinned, his lingering foreboding pushed off by the idea of ladylike Juliet with naughty plans of her own. “Why shouldn’t I shave?”
Her voice lowered. “Because I like to feel your whiskers here”—she lifted their joined hands to draw them down her neck—“and here.” His fingertips caught on the unmistakable jut of a hard nipple.
“Wait a minute.” His grin widened as through her layers of shirt and bra he tweaked that sweet little berry already waiting to be tasted. “Ma’am, what’s this?”
“Something we’ll save for later, soldier boy.”
“Later? But—”
“We’re here,” she said, a little breathless and a little smug sounding, and he realized they’d indeed arrived at Malibu & Ewe. He also realized Juliet had effectively defused his odd mood with thoughts of her creamy skin reddened by the rough caress of his five-o’clock shadow and the sensual promise of her already peaked breasts. Fact was, uneasy didn’t stand a chance in hell against lust.
“How long did you say this knitting thing goes on?”
She pointedly put his hand back on his leg. Left it solo. “A couple of hours. But you’re welcome to join us.”
God, he was thinking about it. Even just watching her was preferable to his own horny company. “Well…”
“Nikki brings cookies.”
That clinched it. The object of his desire, plus baked goods. A winning combination.
Or so he thought, until he walked in with Juliet and was the focus of twenty pairs of female eyes. Christ. But he’d been a soldier and trained to discern friends from enemies. Those bags they all had at their feet couldn’t be big enough for grenade launchers. Still, he grabbed some cookies on a napkin and beat a path to a lone chair in a half-hidden corner of the room. From there, he planned to entertain himself by tripping out on sugar and sexy plans for the elegant woman across the room who hid her naughty soul from everyone but him.
Yeah, that cool fog billowing around the edges of his brain didn’t stand a chance.
But he didn’t get the opportunity to amuse himself with scenarios involving Juliet and the fastest way to let loose her inner sensation seeker. Because an obstacle to that arrived in the form of Cassandra, who approached his hiding place and then worked some sort of spell on him, as if she was a third of Macbeth’s three weird sisters.
One minute he was swallowing a bite of cookie. The next he was holding knitting needles and a ball of yarn.
No. Really.
Noah looked at what she’d shoved in his hands and then up to her face. “What’s this?”
“Something you should try.” She smiled, that one so much like Juliet’s.
Still, he tried to resist. “You some sort of wool evangelist?”
“Knitting’s calming. You look like you could use calming.”
