But was that her fault? Who could ignore all that uncovered skin?
“Aren’t you cold?” she blurted out.
He glanced down at his bare chest. “No. Do I look cold?”
From the shield of her lashes she glanced at him again. Leaning against a countertop, he wore only jeans and shoes. The denim was nothing special, worn almost white in places, and slung low across his hips to reveal yards of healthy male abdominal muscles, curved pectorals, and heavy shoulders. Those sinewy arms. There were his dark nipples that had caught her attention earlier in the evening. The centers were gathered into tiny, hard-looking buttons. Her nipples only tightened like that when she was chilled, or…or aroused.
Her right arm clamped over her breasts and she clutched her upper left with tight fingers, a little noise sounding from her throat. She tried to disguise it by faking a cough.
Noah wasn’t so easy to fool. “Juliet?” His voice sounded puzzled. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing.” Everything.
“Juliet.”
She looked up at him. He was still propped against her counter, but he’d folded his arms over his chest in a no-nonsense attitude that went along with the no-nonsense narrowing of his blue eyes. Noah was handsome—she’d always known that on some faraway, objective level—thanks to his chiseled cheekbones and square jaw. Wayne had been a good-looking man, too, her lean silver fox. But Noah was made of more rugged material and there was nothing subtle about the testosterone that seemed to ooze from his pores.
“C’mon, Juliet. We’re friends, aren’t we?”
Her throat tightened. “I thought we were.”
Something flickered in his eyes. Oh, God. Had she hurt his feelings? This was all her fault, she thought, looking away. This unseemly, inappropriate, unlooked-for reaction was something that was entirely on her shoulders. “Noah… It’s not you.”
He laughed. “I’ve heard that one before.”
She met his gaze again. “Somehow I doubt that.”
“What?”
“You forget how long I’ve known you. Remember all those months when you were in the apartment over the garage at the house in Pacific Palisades?” While attending law school, he’d lived with them and aided her husband as his illness progressed. Noah had stayed on with her after the general’s death, taking care of a thousand details, including helping her move to this much smaller place in Malibu.
She found a smile for him. “Don’t think we didn’t notice the blondes, the brunettes, and those redheads who came and went from your apartment. I think your social life gave Wayne more than a few vicarious thrills.”
“Now I’m the one doubting. Not only am I not nearly the player you’re making me out to be, we both know the general had the only woman and the only thrills he was looking for.”
Juliet looked away again. Maybe not. She’d felt an inexplicable distance between herself and Wayne as he neared the end of his life and it still bothered her.
“Juliet.” Noah had made another of his silent moves. Without her detecting his travel across the terra-cotta tiles, he was beside her, his body radiating warmth. One of his fingers slid under her chin to lift her face. “What’s going on with you tonight?”
Thoughts of the past evaporated as goose bumps shivered over her flesh from the point of his contact. Her heartbeat throbbed in the cells of her skin as she stared up at him. She’d never, ever, been so aware of her body, but she couldn’t let this man know what he was doing to her. She couldn’t! They were supposed to be getting back to normal.
His finger curled in what seemed to her overheated self as a short caress. “What are you thinking about?”
“You.” Oh, God, her brain was set on blurt again. She coughed, then lied to explain herself. “I was, um, thinking that since we moved here I haven’t seen a woman at the guesthouse. You…you need to know I don’t expect it to be a monastery.” Maybe if she saw him with some pretty young thing she’d get over this weird reaction to him—if a night’s sleep wouldn’t do the job on its own.
He dropped his hand and stepped back. “I don’t need to bring a woman here.”
“But, Noah—”
“It’s only temporary, remember?” Turning away, he ran his hand through his dark hair. “I’m only living here for a short while. Until the automatic sprinklers are set right and the gazebo is painted, and we’ve figured out how that damn built-in barbecue works.”
Then he’d be gone. And she’d be alone. There was Wayne’s daughter, Marlys, of course, but they’d never been close. Even after Juliet had told her she was moving from the Weston family house in Pacific Palisades so that Marlys could have it to herself, the other woman hadn’t warmed up. No doubt she blamed Juliet for everything from her parents’ divorce—that had occurred years before Wayne’s second marriage—to her father’s cancer diagnosis.