Page 15 of Tempted Hearts
Saving me from having Juliette toss an olive at me—I saw the way she looked at it and the brief moment of indecision—the wine in question was delivered. Efficient, given the actual restaurant was behind us, across a street of tourists.
She took it gracefully with a smile of thanks to the waitress, and it was only after she left I got the scowl.
“How were the two of you planning to pay for this anyway?” I asked, changing topics.
“By selling our bodies. Washing dishes. Whatever it took.”
An image of her doing the first was not pleasant. Juliette was curvy in all the right places, and picturing her with another man’s hands on those breasts, or hips?—
“I was kidding. No need to get grumpy.”
“Grumpy,” I murmured. “Interesting choice of words.”
“You have a very unique way of making people feel small around you. Anyone ever tell you that?” Talking with her hands, Juliette clipped the edge of the antipasto platter, sending it flying to the ground.
“Shit.” She jumped up and immediately began to pick pieces of meat and cheese from the ground. The platter was beyond repair.
“You,” I countered, setting my wine down to help her, “have a unique way of courting chaos. Anyone ever tell you that?”
No response.
By the time the waitress came back out and helped clean up the mess, we were joined by Delaney and Parker.
“What the heck happened here?” Delaney asked.
Juliette, who proceeded to down her wine, an act that horrified the couple sitting beside her, couldn’t answer. So I tried.
“Juliette was speaking, animatedly, to me. The antipasto fell.”
“Jules,” she muttered, the wine empty. “No one calls me Juliette.”
“Yikes. Well, if you’re ready to head to the police station.” Parker shifted from one foot to the other, the way he tended to do when he worried. “It’s apparently back through the pedestrian tunnel in Old Town.” He gestured back the way we’d come from the train station.
“Let’s go.” I began to follow him and Delaney when Juliette stopped me.
“Hold on. We have to pay.”
“It’s already done.” I kept walking. She hurried to my side.
“Done?”
“I paid the bill. Added enough to cover the platter too.”
“You didn’t have to do that. I had fifty euros on me.”
“I believe”—I tried like hell not to notice the ample amount of cleavage showing in that dress. Or imagine my face between her breasts—“the word you’re looking for is ‘thank you.’”
Her chin raised. “That’s two words.”
“Appreciate the grammar lesson, Juliette.”
Our eyes locked. As I looked at her, I thought of the picture on her mantle, of her and her parents. Whoever took that picture hadn’t forced them to smile. It was one of a loving family, not marred by tragedy.
The sparkle in her eyes reflected that safety.
“Thank you.”
She continued to surprise me.
