His big hands came up to cradle her face as his head lowered. “So you know,” he said, his voice whispery-hoarse, his breath warm against her lips. “Now I’m excited.”
Four
War does not determine who is right—only who is left.
—BERTRAND RUSSELL
Noah’s kiss wasn’t tentative or gentle or sweet, but as confident and masculine as the man himself. Against hers, his mouth was hot and hard. His whiskers scratched the skin surrounding Juliet’s lips.
I shouldn’t…sailed across her mind, but then fell right over the edge of her consciousness, shoved aside by all things Noah.
His sun-and-man scent.
The breadth of his chest in the circle of her arms.
The warm, sure thrust of his tongue.
She gasped, drawing him farther into her mouth, and his fingers cupping her face tightened, biting into her scalp. It was all so real, so here-and-now, so corporeal.
So much different than cold sheets and quiet memories.
She pressed harder against his solid heat, and felt his body shudder. An answering shiver shot down her spine as pleasure softened her knees.
Who could ever want this to stop?
“Juliet? Hello!” The rattle of the front door closing followed the woman’s voice. “Juliet?”
Noah jerked back, breaking their embrace. Ducking her head, Juliet put her feet in reverse, too, her hand coming up to cover her burning lips.
“Juliet?”
“In here.” She coughed to clear her clogged throat, and didn’t know whether to curse or bless herself for leaving the door unlocked after retrieving the mail. “The kitchen, Marlys. I’m in the kitchen.”
Her husband’s dark-haired, twenty-five-year-old daughter entered the room with all the jerky speed and tightly wound energy she brought to every task. “What’s up?” She dumped the large cardboard box she was carrying onto the butcher block, heedless of the arrayed cookbooks. Her gaze flicked from Juliet to Noah, who was squatting on the ground to retrieve the scattered papers from the California Bar.
Marlys’s lip curled in what was more sneer than smile. “Hey, Private,” she said. It was an obvious put-down instead of a personal nickname, and everyone in the room knew it. For whatever reason, early on she’d taken a dislike to the man who did so much for her father. Wayne’s death hadn’t changed her attitude one whit.
Noah ignored it, as he always did. “Marlys,” he said, nodding in her direction as he came to his feet. “I’ll talk to you later, Juliet.”
“Okay. Later.” Her view of his back didn’t give a clue as to how he was feeling. Or how she should be feeling now that their scorching moment was over. Or what she should do or say when “later” came about.
Closing her eyes, she rubbed her temples with her fingers.
“You look like crap,” Marlys observed, with her usual tact.
Juliet lifted her lashes to stare at her husband’s daughter. “Gee, thanks.”
The other woman wasn’t deterred by her dry tone. “Really. You should try combing your hair and using a little powder. You’ve got a rat’s nest going on there and your face is too pink.”
But Juliet had bigger worries than what the kiss had done to her appearance—such as what she was going to do about the kiss. “It’ll be simpler if I just wear a sign when I venture out in public. ‘Not Looking My Best.’ ”
“I wouldn’t go that far. Frankly, nobody expects widows to be candidates for InStyle.”
“Right.” But at the mention of the magazine, her gaze sharpened on Marlys. With sleek hair and dark eyes, she was gymnast-sized and sprite-tempered. As the owner of a successful boutique in Santa Monica, she made a living out of looking like a fashion layout.
Today, though, she was in boy-styled jeans with rips at the knees and a sweatshirt that read “Bayridge Bengals.” “Marlys? Have you been digging into the boxes of your old junior high clothes?”
When she shrugged, the overstretched neckline of her sweatshirt slid to reveal some of her olive-skinned shoulder. “Last night I might have been rummaging through some stuff I dragged down from the attic.”
“Oh, Marlys,” Juliet said, though she wasn’t surprised. The house in Pacific Palisades had belonged, originally, to Wayne’s parents. Though the time had felt right for her to move out and leave it to Wayne’s daughter, it didn’t seem healthy for the younger woman to use her new solitude as an unfettered opportunity to fixate on the past. In the months since the funeral, she’d often found Marlys sifting through cartons of military memorabilia as well as even less worthy flotsam of Weston family life.