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“Lucky for you, you have family that can help with the details,” Cassandra said. She’d found a paper napkin and had rolled it into a ring she was sliding on and off her thumb. “There’s plenty of space for people and for cars at Malibu & Ewe. If Nikki doesn’t have time to cater—”
“I’ll make time.”
“We can get Gabe to help out anyway.”
Juliet protested. “We don’t have to ask—”
“I can, and he needs reasons to emerge from his bat cave.”
“And I’ll put out the word,” Jay offered. “I can get the press there and we’ll distribute posters and flyers.”
Juliet nodded, determination growing. “And I’ve reconsidered doing that interview for NYFM.” She was nobody’s delicate daisy. “I have a few things to say.”
“I can have whatever those are online by as early as tomorrow,” Jay promised, and then was drawn into Cassandra and Nikki’s part of the planning
The room seemed to warm with all their positive energy. Juliet let the talk flow around and then surround her, until their support felt as palpable as the cup of tea she held between her palms.
Winter went away again, and she didn’t feel the cold night air, even as she walked her family—her family, how comforting was that?—out to their car. It was only when she walked back inside and faced Noah that she felt a renewed chill.
“I don’t know what to say to you,” she told him. “I want to protect you from all this.”
Noah smiled, that beautiful, lady-killer smile of his, and he crossed the floor to cup her face in his big hands. “Then maybe you can forgive me for what happened earlier tonight. I just want to protect you, too.”
Tears burned, but she hid them by closing her eyes as Noah’s kiss drifted over her mouth. This wasn’t the time for worries or regrets.
Right now, it was enough that he wanted her, and when they went into the bedroom, a different mood infused what before had been wild heat and needy passion.
I want to protect you.
I just want to protect you, too.
Equal impulses. Twin urges. Matching motivations.
Skin to skin, and closer than ever before.
Marlys sensed it was Dean in the shop the instant the door closed, ruffling the curtain that separated the supply alcove from the retail space. She kept her back turned to that curtain, but she was aware when he swept it aside, too.
With a steadiness she didn’t feel, she kept to her crouch, continuing to unpack the box of holiday scarves that had arrived earlier that morning. “So…you’re here again,” she said.
“I told you I’d come back. In the note at your house that morning and in the messages I left here at the store. Funny how you were never available to talk to me. Funny how you never called back either. I left my cell number every time. I was here last week, just for the day, as I said in my message, but I still couldn’t get a response from you.”
“Been busy.” Busy working like hell to forget you. Busy hoping like hell it wouldn’t be like this if you did come back. Her hands were shaking and she had to fight herself not to jump up and bury herself against him.
“Stand up and let me touch you.”
God, he could still read her mind! She shook her head, rejecting the idea and rejecting her need to do the very thing he ordered. Marlys Marie Weston couldn’t want a man so much, because she remembered that whatever she’d wanted most she’d never gotten.
But hard hands grasped her waist and hauled her up, even when she stuttered a protest. Dean turned her, brought her flush against him, kissed her mouth as if he’d thought about her every day, every minute he’d been gone.
No, that was her.
Panicked, she wrenched away, though he only let her go so far, his hands still linked at the small of her back. Her heart was slamming against her chest. His breath soughed in and out like he’d been running for days.
No, again, that was her.
Running from this. How could one person become so important so fast? She didn’t understand it. She could never trust it…could she?
He ran a thumb under her lower eyelashes. “Shadows, angel. You haven’t been sleeping?”
“Don’t call me that.” Her voice was sharp, not cool as it should be, and she jerked out of his embrace. “I’m no angel.” God knew that was true, and she didn’t feel guilty about it either.
Regrets were for suckers. Same as this you’re-the-one certitude that was pumping from Dean and trying to invade her. That way lay madness.
Sadness.
As Marlys had been avoiding that very feeling for nearly a year, thank you very much, she was certainly not signing on for another potential source of the depressing emotion. Dean was going to Afghanistan, for heaven’s sake. A danger zone. A woman would have to be crazy to want him enough to risk having to worry about him.
