Unmasking Juliet (9 page)

Of course he wanted to leave. Why wouldn’t he? Cocoa was in good hands now, and Juliet was ready to see him go. More than ready.

Wasn’t she?

“Sure, you go on home. Thank you again for everything. I’ll give my cousin a call to come pick me up later.” Why was it suddenly so difficult to say goodbye? She should be feeling nothing but relieved.

He jammed his hands on his hips. He didn’t look so nice anymore. In fact, he looked angry. “I wasn’t planning on leaving you here alone. I was planning on going out to the parking lot for a minute and coming right back, but since you seem so determined to get rid of me, maybe I should rethink my plans.”

She lifted her chin and reminded herself that the last thing she needed to worry about right now was Leo Mezzanotte’s ego. “Maybe you should.”

“Fine,” he spat.

Good. This was for the best. She shouldn’t spend another second in his presence. The more time they spent together, the worse things got. As much as she hated to admit it, her mother was right.

Oh, dear God, did she just agree with her mother? Things were even worse than she’d thought.

But it was true—Arabellas and Mezzanottes weren’t destined to be together. Her grandmother had known that fifty years ago when Leo’s grandmother had stabbed her in the back. Her father knew it. Her mother, brother and cousin all knew it. Even the Mezzanottes knew it.

The crazy thing was that Juliet knew it, too. But when she was around Leo, she had difficulty thinking straight. Or keeping her clothes on, apparently. So the prudent thing to do was to keep her distance. No more Leo Mezzanotte.

Starting right now.

* * *

Leo didn’t particularly want to stay with Juliet at the vet’s office. He really didn’t. The heat they’d managed to generate in the kitchen had cooled considerably, and in the aftermath, he’d begun to seriously question what he was doing. He’d very nearly married another woman. Recently. What on earth was he doing with Juliet? He should be avoiding anything remotely resembling a romantic entanglement like the plague. He needed time to get his bearings. Time to get his head on straight.

Time. Lots and lots of time.

And even if he’d had all the time in the world, the last woman he should be attempting to bed was Juliet. The ridiculous Mezzanotte-Arabella feud aside, she was still his competition. She’d made no secret of the fact that she wanted his
chocolat chaud
recipe. And if his uncle got wind of the fact that he was gallivanting around with an Arabella in the middle of the night, Leo would never hear the end of it.

It wasn’t as though he was the nurturing type, anyway. Rose could have testified to that. He might have had it in him to rescue a stray dog, but that was completely different. Dogs didn’t harbor any expectations. They were simple creatures. Women, on the other hand, were not. And Juliet was an Arabella, which meant she was as far from simple as she could get.

But abandoning her didn’t feel right. And the fact that Juliet fully expected him to do just that infuriated him.

The nagging headache he’d had all day blossomed into full-blown jackhammering behind his eyes. All his life, Leo had seemed to disappoint people at every turn. Most recently, Rose. But she was just the latest person who’d expected more from him than he’d been willing or able to give. His father had wanted him—
ordered
him, basically—to stay in Napa and help run the family business.

Leo had seen the handwriting on the wall. He’d seen himself working, holding down the fort at the store, making excuses for his father when he disappeared to pursue his extracurricular interests. Since he’d been a kid, his dad had used him as an alibi in one way or another. At least once a month, his dad had taken him to the track under the guise of spending a day with him at the park. To say his father hadn’t taken the decision well would be an understatement.

And then there’d been his mother, whom Leo had let down in the cruelest way possible. He liked to think he would have done the right thing and come home before the lymphoma claimed her...if his father had bothered to tell him she was sick. Until he’d been called home from France for the funeral, he hadn’t had a clue.

And now Juliet Arabella seemed to think that by virtue of his last name, he was some kind of monster. A monster she had no trouble seducing, he noted with a heavy dose of irony. But a monster nonetheless.

He should have been relieved. For once, he was dealing with someone who expected nothing from him. Yet the more Juliet acted as though she was waiting for him to up and leave, the more determined he became to stay.

Until she finally got her way, and he stormed out.

He pushed his way through the doors of the animal clinic, trying mightily to ignore her reflection in the polished panes of glass. She looked so pitiful standing there all alone, with her arms wrapped around herself and her hastily buttoned blouse all askew.

Pitiful, yet undeniably cute.

He did his best to push that image of her out of his head as he cleaned what seemed like a gallon of dog puke from his backseat. All the way back to Napa from Sonoma Valley, he tried to forget the way those sad eyes of hers pulled at him, even as she’d ordered him to leave. But when he guided his car down the only street he’d ever heard of that boasted not one but two gourmet chocolate boutiques right across the road from one another—a sight he’d never even come across in Paris—she was still at the forefront his mind. Along with the things they’d said to one another.

Since you seem so determined to get rid of me, maybe I should rethink my plans.

He cringed. It sounded like something a lovesick kid would say.

Then he remembered Juliet’s response.
Maybe you should.

He jerked the steering wheel into a U-turn. He’d never been good at taking orders from his father. Taking them from Juliet Arabella was flat-out unacceptable. She could get as angry as she pleased, but like it or not, he was going back to that vet clinic to wait with her while her dog vomited up a pound of chocolate.

Only a handful of cars remained in the parking lot when he got there. Even fewer than when he’d left a half hour ago. He pulled into a spot close to the entrance, snapped Sugar’s leash to her collar and strolled back inside. His dog trotted at his feet, her tags jangling in the silence of the smooth tile entrance of the animal hospital.

He nodded at the receptionist and rounded the corner toward the waiting area, fully expecting to find a lonely Juliet slumped in one of the orange vinyl chairs that seemed standard issue for waiting rooms the world over. Despite the drama surrounding their goodbye, he didn’t quite believe she’d be unhappy to see him. Who truly wanted to be alone at a time like this?

He couldn’t have been more wrong. Juliet didn’t look the least bit pleased, and she was decidedly
not
alone.

She was still right where he’d left her. Only now a young woman sat beside her, holding her hand exactly the way Leo had envisioned himself comforting her when he’d hightailed it out of Napa and back to the vet clinic.

“Leo.” Every drop of color drained from Juliet’s face. She looked as if she might faint. Or strangle him. One of the two, definitely. “What are you doing here?”

His gaze darted from Juliet to her companion—she looked to be in her midtwenties with ultra-short blond hair, sizeable gold hoop earrings and an even more sizable scowl. Leo would have bet every penny he’d ever earned, plus his ex-fiancée’s sizeable bank account, that her last name was Arabella.

He half expected her to bark at him. Instead, she let out a shuddery, horrified gasp. “Leo? As in
Leonardo Mezzanotte?
”

Leo could have sworn he heard Cocoa’s deep-throated
woof
from somewhere deep in the bowels of the animal hospital.

“Yes. And you are?” He answered as politely as he could manage, considering he would have been more comfortable addressing a firing squad.

“This is my cousin, Alegra. She just arrived.” Juliet swallowed. Leo traced the movement up and down the slender, graceful column of her throat. He tried not to think about the fact that not long ago, his lips had been on that throat. “Alegra, this is Leo Mezzanotte. I have no idea what he’s doing here.”

Leo narrowed his gaze at her. “Don’t you?”

For a split second, he actually thought about faking some sort of emergency with Sugar in order to explain his presence. Then he realized how ludicrous that would have been. He was a grown man, not some love-struck teenager sneaking around after curfew. Besides, Sugar was too busy bouncing around at the end of her leash to fake any kind of viable illness.

“Um.” Juliet blinked.

Alegra shot daggers at him with her eyes.

He backed up, out of spitting distance. “I’m here for the same reason I was here earlier. I was worried about you and your dog.”

“Earlier?” A look of horror flashed across Alegra’s face as she turned to face Juliet. “He was here earlier? With you?”

Leo half expected her to deny it. So he was rather surprised when she nodded, although she still didn’t quite look him in the eye.

“Yes,” she said. The calmness in her voice was completely at odds with the way her knuckles were turning white from gripping the armrests of her chair.

Alegra glared at Leo again. He simply shrugged. He’d wandered deep enough into this bucketful of crazy without opening his mouth and making things worse.

Sugar let out a yip and launched herself onto Juliet’s lap as if the two of them were long-lost friends.

Alegra shook her head and stared at his dog as though
Mezzanotte
was an unfortunate medical condition rather than a surname. Some kind of sickness, like rabies. Clearly she presumed Sugar was a carrier. “I’m confused. What exactly is going on here?”

“Absolutely nothing. Nothing at all.” Juliet met his gaze full-on. Finally.

Something about the indifference, feigned or otherwise, in her cool green eyes made Leo’s temples throb with fresh intensity. “Cocoa got into some chocolate. I happened to be...” He shot a purposeful glance at Juliet’s still-askew blouse. Her cheeks flamed as red as that bra of hers. All that lace. Those tiny bows. He’d probably dream about that bra for weeks. “Nearby.”

Alegra threw her hands in the air. “Neither one of you is making a lick of sense. Cocoa knows better than to get into chocolate.”

Leo couldn’t help the almost-smile that crept to his lips. “It must have been some really great chocolate. Extra tempting.”

Juliet snorted. Loudly.

Oblivious, Alegra resumed her interrogation. “And what exactly were you doing nearby? In the middle of the night?”

First his uncle Joe, now Juliet’s cousin. Never before had so many people been this interested in what he did in his free time.

He crossed his arms. “Is that really any of your business?”

“Not helping,” Juliet muttered. Sugar craned her tiny white neck and gave Juliet’s cheek a dainty lick.

Judging by the look on Juliet’s face, Sugar was the only Mezzanotte that would be getting within kissing distance for the foreseeable future.

Then again, they’d been down that road before. And they’d ended up lip locked for a second time. Leo still fully intended to finish what they kept starting, which made him either the most desperate man on the planet or the craziest. Because no sex was worth this kind of trouble.

Except maybe the sex he wasn’t having with Juliet Arabella.

Alegra’s steely gaze bored into him. If she could read his mind, he’d be a dead man. “Oh, my God. I totally know what’s going on.”

Well, that made one of them. For the life of him, Leo couldn’t remember why he’d been so dead set on coming back here. His behavior was beginning to exceed that which he could blame on jet lag or good old-fashioned lust.

“You!” Alegra flew out of her chair and jammed her index finger at Leo’s chest.

Ouch.

And he’d thought his own family was nuts. This cousin of Juliet’s made Uncle Joe seem mellow. Leo would have gladly traded places with poor Cocoa right about now.

“I’m onto you,
Leonardo Mezzanotte.” She poked him again. “You tried to murder my cousin’s dog, you dog poisoner.”

8

What a mess.

Juliet thought the night had taken its turn for the worse when
Cocoa had ingested a saucepan full of bittersweet chocolate. But apparently, the
fun had just been getting started.

The Nuovo Winery’s Annual Hot Air Balloon Festival was
scheduled to begin in two short hours. She should be in bed right now.
Alone.
But somehow she was standing in the emergency
vet clinic watching her cousin accuse Leo of premeditated dog murder.

Or would that be attempted dogslaughter?

His innocence notwithstanding, his piercing blue eyes went
instantly lethal. “
Dog poisoner?
Right. Because
that’s the sort of guy I am. I get off on hurting innocent animals.”

His voice ricocheted off the polished floor and sterile tile
walls of the waiting room. Thankfully, no one else was there to witness this
train wreck. Just their dysfunctional little trio.

“Well, you
are
a Mezzanotte. I
wouldn’t put it past you.” Alegra pulled her cell phone from the pocket of her
hoodie. “I’m calling the police.”

Juliet snatched the phone from Alegra’s hands. “No one is
calling the police.”

Juliet hadn’t seen much in her life outside the four walls of
Arabella Chocolate Boutique. But of all the things she’d managed to bear witness
to, the sight of Leo Mezzanotte cradling her dog in his arms and carrying Cocoa
inside the animal hospital was something of a standout.

Alegra couldn’t have been more off the mark. Not about
this.

“Leo hasn’t done anything wrong,” she said quietly.

Leo responded with only a soulful look.

Alegra jammed her hands on her hips and looked him up and down.
“How can you know for sure? He’s—”

“A Mezzanotte.” Leo rolled his eyes. “That’s some powerful
evidence. I’m sure it will hold up in court. Shall I refuse my name? Change it
to something like Smith or Jones? Would that put an end to any of this
nonsense?”

Things were far,
far
from being
that easy to fix. A rose by any other name was still a rose. “Enough. Leo,
you’re not changing your name. And, Alegra, you’re not calling the police. Cocoa
drank some hot chocolate that Leo made for me. It was an accident, pure and
simple. He didn’t hurt her. Quite the opposite, in fact. He was actually pretty
fantastic.”

She stopped talking, as she’d begun to tear up. Over a
Mezzanotte. She would never hear the end of this. And if her parents ever found
out, she would probably be banished from the family, or suffer some other
equally antiquated consequence.

“Cocoa consumed Mezzanotte chocolate? No wonder she’s vomiting.
Please tell me you didn’t drink any of it. Why in the world was Leo making you a
midnight snack, anyway?” Alegra’s confused gaze darted between them once, twice,
three times before finally landing on Leo. “Leo has gold glitter on his face.
And his neck. And his hands. Why is Leo covered in glitter?”

Juliet glanced at him. Sure enough, he was as sparkly as a
unicorn. A super hot, angry-looking unicorn. With perfect lips and spectacular,
muscular shoulders.

“The strawberries for the balloon festival.” Alegra’s voice
danced somewhere between astonishment and disgust. “Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
I was only joking when I said you two were
secret lovers. It’s true, though, isn’t it? You’re actually sleeping together,
aren’t you?”

“Secret lovers. That has a rather romantic ring to it.” Leo
lifted a sardonic brow. “For the life of me, I can’t see why you’d consider that
worse news than if I’d actually poisoned the dog.”

Juliet would have given anything right then for a swirling
abyss to open at her feet and swallow her whole. “Leo and I are not sleeping
together, Alegra. Absolutely not.” She couldn’t seem to shake her head hard
enough.

So what if it was somewhat of a technicality? She wasn’t lying.
They hadn’t crossed that line. Maybe they’d danced around the line a bit, dipped
a toe close to the edge, but they hadn’t crossed it.

And they weren’t going to.

She glanced at Leo. He smoldered back at her. Who knew it was
possible for someone with glitter on his forehead to smolder like that?

Juliet cursed her knees for growing weak. “We’re friends. Sort
of.”

Friends who couldn’t keep their hands off each other after
dark, but pretended they didn’t know each other in the light of day. That was
normal, right?

“Now that we’ve got that cleared up, I think I’ll be going.” He
lifted Sugar off the floor and nestled her in the crook of his elbow. The sight
of him with that dog made Juliet go all mushy inside.

She looked away.

“Don’t leave on my account, Sparkle.” Alegra released a
less-than-subtle snort.

“Sparkle?” A vein throbbed in Leo’s right temple. “Really?”

Alegra shrugged. “Would you prefer I call you Butthead?”

He let out a little laugh. How he could laugh at a time like
this was a mystery Juliet couldn’t quite comprehend. “Good night, ladies. Or
should I say good morning? I suppose we’ll all see each other in just a matter
of hours.”

“Yes, we will.” Juliet nodded. At the same time, she sent up a
silent prayer that Leo would go home and wash off all that glitter before the
balloon festival.

“You can bet on it. We’re going to kick your pathetic drugstore
chocolates to the curb.” Alegra gave him a smug smile.

She wasn’t going to look half that smug once she got the barest
whiff of Leo’s
chocolat chaud.

Juliet’s heart sank. With all the drama surrounding the night’s
events, she’d forgotten about that decadent hot chocolate. She had a sick dog on
her hands and a cousin who’d learned her deepest, darkest secret, but she still
didn’t have a clue about Leo’s secret ingredient.

Unicorn tears. Right.

“Kick my chocolate to the curb? We’ll see about that, won’t
we?” He grinned. Nothing but a tiny, wicked quirk of his lips. “Good night,
Juliet.”

“Good night, Leo.” The words nearly stuck in her throat for
some ridiculous reason. Why did this keep happening? Never in her life had she
experienced so much difficulty saying goodbye to a person who she was more than
happy to see go.

Then he walked toward her, took her fingertips in his and
kissed the back of her hand. It was the softest, gentlest touch of his lips, but
it very nearly took her breath away. She was barely conscious of Alegra gaping,
slack-jawed, at the two of them.

And as Juliet watched Leo walk out those doors again, she was
filled with an inexplicably sweet sorrow. In spite of their respective last
names and all the secrets floating between them, she wondered what it might be
like to stay with him as the sun came up, bathing the valley in soft hues of
pink and gold. To keep whispering
good night,
again
and again, until night became tomorrow.

* * *

The strawberries were sweating.

All that time, all that effort, all that godforsaken glitter,
and now Juliet was watching her precious strawberries turn to mush.

“I don’t get it. Why is this happening?” Alegra dabbed at the
berries with a paper towel in painstakingly measured movements. She reminded
Juliet of a nurse gently wiping perspiration from a doctor’s brow during
surgery.

Clearly Juliet had spent too much time around medical personnel
in recent hours. She’d left the animal hospital only an hour before arriving at
the majestic grounds of Nuovo Winery for the hot air balloon festival. And she
would be headed right back to the vet clinic once it was over. The vet had
wanted to keep an eye on Cocoa for the remainder of the day. With any luck,
Juliet could bring her home by nightfall. She longed for the comfy warmth of her
bed and Cocoa’s big shaggy head in her lap.

Huge, colorful balloons hovered above the lush green grounds of
the vineyard, waiting for takeoff. But Juliet couldn’t seem to appreciate the
beauty of it all. Not with her strawberries suffering like they were. “It’s the
change in temperature. Strawberries are ninety percent water, and all this cool,
damp air is drawing out their moisture. It’s freezing out here.”

She should have known this would happen. Any decent chocolatier
knew better than to store chocolate below sixty-five degrees, and to never, ever
keep it in the fridge. This was one of the major tenets of chocolate known as
Belgian Wisdom. But it had been so long since Juliet had prepared anything for
an outdoor fair of any kind, not to mention untold years since she’d been up and
about at five, that she’d forgotten just how frigid Napa Valley could be this
early in the morning.

Weather had been the least of her concerns. She’d been consumed
with one thing and one thing only—making sure the chocolates she brought to the
balloon festival outshone whatever the Mezzanottes sold. And now here she was,
with row upon row of sweaty strawberries on her hands while dozens of hot air
balloon enthusiasts lined up at the Mezzanotte Chocolates booth for Leo’s
chocolat chaud.

“People are going back to Leo for seconds and thirds.” Alegra
shook her head. Beyond her rose Nuovo Winery’s famed
castello,
its central building, which had been constructed to look
like an Old World Italian castle, complete with turrets and arrow slits. “What’s
he putting in that stuff? Crack?”

Crack. That would explain a lot. “You should taste it. Then
you’d understand.”

“No way. Mezzanotte chocolate has never passed my lips. And it
never will,” Alegra announced with a heavy dose of indignation. Guilt wound its
way through the sleepy fog in Juliet’s head.

Alegra kept on talking. “Hey, maybe we can start a rumor that
Leo’s hot chocolate put someone in the hospital last night. There’s an element
of truth to it, so he probably couldn’t sue us or anything.”

“Let’s just forget last night ever happened, okay?” She didn’t
want to talk about it. Or think about it. Or even remember it. Maybe the doctors
could somehow empty her head the way they’d emptied Cocoa’s stomach.

“I have to admit, hot chocolate was a great idea. I mean, it
sounds so simple. But really...genius.” Alegra’s teeth chattered slightly as she
gazed longingly at the elegant white tent where Leo was filling a cup from a
fancy silver server. There wasn’t a drugstore candy bar in sight over there. It
was strictly white-glove service. And the pristine tent was the perfect canvas
to showcase the vibrant balloons floating in the background. “Don’t ever tell
your mom I said that.”

“I think we can agree that as far as secrets go, you pretty
much have me over a barrel.” She was indebted to Alegra now for life. She
shuddered to think how her cousin might use this to her advantage once Cocoa was
all better. For the moment, Alegra just seemed to feel sorry for her.

As sorry as someone who couldn’t stop smirking could feel,
anyway. Once the shock had worn off, Alegra’s horror over the discovery of
Juliet and Leo’s secret had quickly changed to intense amusement with just a
lingering dash of revulsion.

She managed to stop smirking long enough to sell four dark
chocolate Cabernet Sauvignon truffles to a pair of tourists with fanny packs
strapped to their waists. At least the wine-inspired truffles were moving. And
they’d nearly sold out of the sea salt maple bacon chocolate hearts. Deep down,
Juliet still harbored the tiniest bit of hope that her chocolate bacon hearts
would win the coveted Best of Balloon Fest Award, an honor bestowed on the
finest culinary or beverage item featured at the festival. This being the wine
country, the prize was typically awarded to one of the many local wines on
offer. Once an olive oil made from locally grown olives had taken the prize,
though. So winning wouldn’t be completely without precedent.

She had a good feeling about the maple bacon hearts. Bacon was
very trendy at the moment. Who didn’t love bacon? Besides vegetarians and, well,
pigs.

Speaking of pigs...

“Is that George, the self-proclaimed prince of everything, over
there talking to your lover?” Alegra had apparently forgone any attempt at
subtlety and was staring blatantly at the Mezzanotte tent.

Juliet gave her a sharp nudge in the ribs. “Stop looking at
them. Please. Just pretend they don’t exist, George in particular. And for the
last time, I’m not sleeping with Leo.”

“Yes, you mentioned that. In fact, you’ve said it so many times
that I don’t believe it for a minute. If you haven’t slept with him yet, it’s
only because your dog’s suicide attempt threw a kink in things.” Alegra’s gaze
darted again to the Mezzanotte tent. “I have to admit, though, I almost
understand. He’s hot. Like, crazy hot. Why didn’t anyone tell me how gorgeous he
is? He probably heats up that hot chocolate just by winking at it.”

“He actually does it the old-fashioned way and uses a
saucepan.” Not that the winking wouldn’t work.

He looked awfully good in those chef’s whites he was wearing.
Oh-so-proper and quite French, with Le Cordon Bleu stitched discreetly in blue
embroidery in the region of his left pectoral muscle. Juliet had first caught
sight of him as she’d been hauling her chocolates from the van to her setup, and
her knees had gone nearly as soft as her strawberries. She’d always had a major
addiction to the Food Network. And she might have developed a certain
appreciation for men in culinary uniforms, but neither Jamie Oliver nor Alain
Allegretti could hold a candle to Leo Mezzanotte in a crisply ironed chef
coat.

“Wait. How do you know that?” Alegra said, frowning.

Juliet was probably frowning, too. Just what was George doing
over there in the Mezzanotte tent? And why was he grinning his smarmy grin and
shaking hands with Leo? “How do I know what?”

“How do you know that Leo makes his hot chocolate in a
saucepan?” Alegra smiled at a few customers. They smiled back, looked closely at
the strawberries and fled.