Unravel Me (24 page)

But she hadn’t yet found her smooth and easy way into the discussion.

And they weren’t yet eye to eye.

“Lucky the cable company finally hooked us up,” Noah said, from the other side of the closed office door. “Emergency call via e-mail. That’s a first for me.”

“I love technology,” Juliet replied without enthusiasm.

“You should. It was like one of those little slips of paper you get in dessert at the end of a broccoli beef and chicken chow mein meal.”

“ ‘Help, I’m locked inside a fortune cookie factory,’ ” Juliet muttered, and though he laughed, the humor escaped her. She was wearing a comfortable pair of cropped yoga pants, a simple T-shirt, and a pair of athletic shoes, but the casual attire had been no help. The tiny attached bath boasted a window only big enough for a loaf of bread to fit through. And without a phone in the room, and with her cell phone in her purse in the kitchen, she’d used the only means of communication open to her.

“Sorry it took me this long to get to you. I was out on an interview and didn’t check my e-mail until just a few minutes ago.”

There was a rattling sound. “I tried that,” she said. “Jiggled the handle a dozen times.” Four dozen times. Then pounded the paneled wood, kicked the doorjamb, silently screamed at the walls that had kept her captive since discovering that the lock had inconveniently jammed.

In her childhood home, there had been a downstairs powder room with a tricky door like this one. Unpredictable, unidentifiable elements would cause it to stick, stranding dinner guests on occasion, and confounding the handyman who’d been called to fix it a number of times. They’d eventually replaced the entire mechanism.

This baby was outta here as soon as today.

“What are you doing in there anyway?”

“That e-mail thing you mentioned.” When she realized she’d missed Cassandra’s message about their sperm donor, she’d figured it was past time she reconnected with the larger world. More progress, she’d thought, as during Wayne’s illness and the months after his death she’d been unable to drum up any interest in such a thing as Internet access. “I spent the morning rearranging the furniture and setting up my computer.”

And then spent the afternoon frustrated by her confinement . . . and the fact that she had to rely on a man—on Noah—to come to her rescue.

Still, she felt mostly relief when she heard the door pop open. Noah stood in the entry, his gaze taking her in. Then she stared, too. She’d never seen him look like this.

Damn
. He was a stranger to her, and she’d had to appeal to him for aid.

In a well-tailored gray suit, Noah looked older, harder, more sophisticated than she could have imagined. Against the crisp shirt, opened at the collar, his tanned skin was smooth and golden, his eyes laser blue. There was a striped tie jammed into the breast pocket of his jacket and the note of an unfamiliar, yet delicious aftershave drifted toward her as he walked into the room.

She took a hasty step back.

He ignored her nervous twitch and turned to manipulate the knob of the open door, twisting it back, then forth, then back and forth again. As she figured it would—her luck was going that way—it moved freely, normally.

Embarrassed, she cleared her throat. “Really. I know how to operate a door. It
was
stuck.” Shades of visiting the mechanic only to discover your car engine had abandoned its ominous clickety-clack-hum and returned to its usual steady purr.

Noah swung shut the door, fiddled with the handle again, paused. “I believe you.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. I really do.” He turned to face her, a half-apologetic smile on his face. “Because we’re both stuck now.”

“No!” She rushed for the door and when he moved out of the way, tested it herself, using both hands to try to free it from its frozen state. The four walls had been close enough when she was alone within them, but to share the small space with Noah . . . “Oh, no.”

“Guess I shouldn’t have taken the chance and shut it.” He shrugged. “But don’t worry, Dean’s back in town. I’ll call him on my cell and get him to star in Rescue Ranger Round Two.”

Within moments, Noah had made contact, and in another few he flipped his phone shut. “Good news is, he didn’t crash into another car while laughing his ass off. Bad news is, he’s crosstown and with L.A. traffic, may be as many as a couple of hours from reaching us.”

Frustrated, she went back to jerking on the knob. As she’d known, it didn’t budge. Still, an annoyed grunt escaped her mouth and she didn’t stay her impulse to give the door another sharp kick. “Stupid thing.”

“Claustrophobic?”

“Not really.”
I just didn’t want to confront you quite yet.
And though she’d been all determination to do just that when she’d left Malibu & Ewe the other day, look how poorly that had turned out. She aimed another swift kick at the door.

“Juliet, you’re surprising me again.”

“Really?” Giving the knob a last ineffectual rattle, she figured she was out of excuses for avoiding eye contact and turned around. “What did I do now?”

He leaned against the back of the desk that she’d manhandled into the far left corner of the room. “Did you move all this stuff?”

“All by myself.” She
was
a bit pleased about that. It had taken a lot of pushing and shoving, rocking and sliding, but not only had she moved the desk, she’d chosen a new place for the media armoire and the small loveseat, matching chair, and low round table that sat between them. She’d even hung a large antique mirror on the wall. Maybe it wasn’t perfectly level, but she’d managed. “I’m stronger than I look.”

“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.

They both froze and she stared, horrified, fascinated, then horrified again at the faint red mark blooming on his lean cheek. Her blood halted its frenzied dash, her stomach tossed as if she’d thrown
it
into the ocean.

A single thought dominated her mind:
What
had she just done?

This time, when she got to her feet, he didn’t try to hold her down. She took a step away from the loveseat, and then another, still staring at what her unfamiliar temper had wrought. “You bring out the worst in me,” she said.

“You think?” His eyes narrowed and he slowly rose from the couch. “Maybe I bring out the best. Maybe I bring out what’s real about you.”

His taller figure towered over hers, and fear skittered down Juliet’s spine. Not fear of Noah, even though she’d just slapped him. The one she was afraid of was herself: What might she be capable of next? When he moved closer, she placed her palms against his chest to keep a distance between them. “No.”

The muscle in his jaw—his jaw that was still faintly red because she’d slapped him!—ticked. His gaze was trained on her face, the blue color hot as the center of a fire.

It burned her, so she looked away, and caught a glimpse of her reflection in that mirror she’d hung. Her usually straight hair was disheveled and a little wispy at the temples. A flush covered her from neck to forehead, making her own blue and green eyes stand out unnaturally bright. Her memory flashed to Nikki, stomping into Malibu & Ewe, intensity in every step, in every breath.

She’d thought then:
That’s how I’d look if I ever really let go. In passion
or
in anger
.

Noah had said:
Maybe I bring out the best. Maybe I bring out what’s real about you.

In the mirror, she knew she had never so closely resembled her fiery little sister. And she marveled at the likeness.
Was
this Juliet at her best? Juliet . . . real?

Her gaze jumped back to Noah’s.

One of his hands lifted and he traced a finger down her hot cheek. “Juliet . . .”

“What?” In the wake of his touch, her skin prickled with a heat that had nothing to do with anger.

He stroked again. “Pity is the last thing I feel for you.”

“Is it?” It was that different Juliet, a tempestuous Juliet who was speaking through her lips, a carpe diem creature who curled her fingers and dug her nails into Noah’s dress shirt in order to get to those hard muscles behind the cotton. Now it was passion that was crawling like a flame inside of her. She shivered, as sensible thoughts—they should discuss this, they shouldn’t probably
do
this—evaporated in the heat.

“Well, me,” she said, staring into his face where she could see the reflection of her own desire, “I just want to feel.” Then, thrilled by her own audacity, she jerked her hands apart, tearing buttons from their moorings.

Revealing Noah’s naked chest.

Dimly, she registered the buttons pinging against harder surfaces. Vividly, she took in the view that had been distracting her since that first night when she’d caught him naked in her pool. His bare chest, bronzed, cut like a
Play-girl
centerfold, tempting with its heavy musculature and hard-tipped copper nipples.

If it was cold, she could fool herself and think it wasn’t a reaction to her. To what she’d just done. But it wasn’t the least bit cool in the room.

And she wasn’t going to fool herself anymore.

She wanted to feel. She wanted passion and sensation and her skin against a man’s skin.

No.
This
man’s skin.

Without another thought, she stepped forward and took that tempting nipple into her mouth.