24. Juliette
— ? —
Juliette
The yacht club is doing its annual holiday luncheon, and I’m here because Rosie insisted that networking is how small businesses survive the winter season.
“Smile,” she said this morning. “Charm them. Make them want to support local.”
She also texted me three times before I got out of the truck. Shoulders back. Then: If the Whitfield woman starts something, walk away and let the room finish it for you. Then, before I’d even pocketed the phone: Or don’t walk away. Dealer’s choice.
I’m wearing the green dress, the one Rosie calls my closing-argument dress, and I’ve already survived the coat check, two curious once-overs, and a woman who touched my sleeve and said she’d heard the new shop would carry “real books,” whatever the alternative is.
So I’m smiling. Charming. Wearing a dress that makes me feel like I can handle anything this room throws at me.
The room’s weather has changed since the sidewalk.
I feel it in the first ten steps: the harbormaster’s wife touches my arm and says the chowder at my opening better be Rosie’s recipe.
Two women I’ve only ever seen at Eleanor’s tables nod at me - actual nods, aimed and delivered.
Somewhere behind me a man murmurs that’s the wife to another man, and for the first time in six years the sentence doesn’t sound like an accusation.
The harbormaster’s wife catches me by the raw bar with a grip that means business. “Chowder committee,” she says. “February. We need a literary judge - someone who can write the little descriptions for the program. Rosie says you’re the most overqualified woman on the island.”
“Rosie exaggerates.”
“Rosie has never exaggerated in her life; it’s why nobody plays cards with her.” She pats my arm, already leaving. “February. You’ll get a badge. It’s laminated.”
I have lived among the Deans for six years and been offered nothing with my name on it. One autumn on this island, and I’m getting laminated.
Word of the sidewalk got around. On an island, word doesn’t travel. It teleports.
Zachary is across the room, talking to the harbormaster about something that requires hand gestures. He’s been careful today - present but not hovering, attentive but not possessive.
Learning the difference.
“Juliette!” Nicole’s voice cuts through the ambient noise like a blade. “How wonderful to see you.”
She’s approaching with a man on her arm - tall, blond, the kind of face that suggests family money and not much else. Whit Prescott. Old family, older money, the kind of person who’s never worked a day in his life and considers that a point of pride.
“Nicole.” I keep my voice pleasant. “Whit. I didn’t realize you two knew each other.”
“Oh, Whit and I go way back.” Nicole laughs, that particular tinkling sound she makes when she wants people to think she’s delightful. “Our families have been friends for generations.”
“How nice for you.”
“Isn’t it?” She glances around the room, her eyes landing on Zachary. “I hear your little shop is coming along. Despite the setback.”
“The fire, you mean.”
“Such a shame about the wiring.” Nicole’s smile sharpens. “Though I suppose these things happen when one rushes into business without proper planning.”
“The wiring passed inspection.”
“Did it? How reassuring.”
Whit, who has been listening with the glazed expression of a man who’s had one too many pre-lunch cocktails, suddenly decides to contribute.
“I have to say,” he drawls, swirling his drink, “when I heard about the guarantor situation, I was fascinated. Zachary Dean, underwriting his estranged wife’s little bookshop.” He raises his glass. “Very modern.”
“Is there a question in there?”
“More of an observation.” He grins, enjoying himself. “Man signs on to guarantee a woman’s business. Spends weeks standing at the end of her lane. Shows up to every event she attends.” He tilts his head. “Makes you wonder what else comes with the building.”
“Careful, Whit,” I say pleasantly. “You’re about to ask a question you don’t want answered in a room this quiet.”
“Am I?” He swirls his drink again, playing to the tables around us. “I think the room’s curious too.”
The room goes quiet around us. Not all at once - conversations continue at the edges - but the people nearby have stopped talking.
“I’m sorry?”
“I’m just asking what everyone’s thinking.” Whit’s grin widens. “Does she get the wife too, or does that require a separate contract? Though I suppose you’re used to that, aren’t you? Being owned by Deans?”
He turns his glass as he says it, signet ring clicking against the crystal, playing to the tables like a man who’s done this in every club on the seaboard and never once paid for it. Nicole’s hand tightens on his arm - steering or bracing, impossible to tell.
Don’t you dare flinch, I tell my own face, and my face holds.
“Whit.” Nicole’s voice holds a warning, but she’s smiling.
“What? It’s a fair question. The man’s been following her around like a stray dog. Either he’s planning to buy her or he already has, and I’m curious which-”
“Whit.”
Zachary’s voice cuts through the room. He’s crossing toward us, his face absolutely blank in a way I’ve never seen before - the careful control of a man who is about to do something precise.
He sets his drink on a stranger’s table without looking at it. The harbormaster takes one step back out of his path with the instinct of a man who reads water for a living.
“Zachary Dean.” Whit extends his hand, still grinning. “Of course we’ve met. Your mother and my mother-”
“I heard what you said.”
“Just making conversation.” Whit’s hand stays extended. “No harm meant.”
“There was harm.” Zachary doesn’t take the hand. “And you meant it.”
“Look, I’m just asking what everyone’s thinking-”
“Everyone isn’t thinking it. You are.” Zachary’s voice is level. Calm. The voice he uses in boardrooms when he’s about to destroy someone. “And you said it in public, to my wife, while she was standing alone.”
“Estranged wife.”
“No.” Zachary takes another step forward. Whit’s grin falters. “Wife. The legal paperwork hasn’t changed, and neither have my feelings about what happens when someone speaks to her like she’s property.”
“Zachary.” I reach for his arm. “Let’s go.”
He doesn’t move.
“I apologize,” Whit says quickly, his bravado evaporating. “I didn’t mean-”
“You did mean. That’s the problem.” Zachary’s jaw is tight. “You saw a woman you thought was vulnerable, and you decided to humiliate her for your own entertainment. In front of people she’s been trying to build relationships with. At an event for her business.”
“I was just-”
“You were just being exactly the kind of person your family has produced for generations.” Zachary’s voice drops. “Small. Mean. Convinced that money makes cruelty acceptable.”
“Zachary.” I pull harder on his arm. “Now.”
He looks at me. Then back at Whit.
“Stay away from my wife,” he says quietly. “Or the next conversation we have won’t be in a room full of witnesses.”
I drag him toward the door before he can say anything else.
The cold air hits us like a wall.
I should be furious. Should be lecturing him about making scenes, about violence solving nothing, about the hundred better ways he could have handled Whit Prescott’s disgusting insinuation.
Instead, I’m pulling him toward his car.
“Juliette-”
“Don’t talk.” I yank open the back door and push him inside. “Get in.”
“What are you-”
I climb in after him, close the door, and then I’m on him - hands in his hair, mouth on his, all the adrenaline finding an outlet that has nothing to do with conversation.
His surprise lasts one full second. I feel the exact moment it converts - his hands leaving the diplomatic zones, one finding my jaw, the other flat against my spine pulling me across the console, and the sound he makes into my mouth is nothing the yacht club would recognize from any Dean in its registry.
He makes a sound against my lips. Surprise, maybe. Or want. His hands find my waist and pull me closer, and we’re a tangle of limbs in the backseat with the valets a hundred feet away and the windows starting to fog.
“Juliette-” He pulls back, breathing hard. “We’re in a parking lot.”
“I noticed.”
“Anyone could see-”
“Then we’d better be quick.”
His coat is somewhere. My clutch is somewhere. The console is aggressively somewhere, and neither of us files a complaint. The windows have gone fully opaque, which is either privacy or evidence, depending on your attorney.
We are two grown adults, I think, as his mouth finds the hinge of my jaw and my thoughts lose quorum. Board member. Business owner. Absolutely fogging up a German sedan at a charity luncheon. Fuck it. The auxiliary wives can add it to the minutes.
His eyes go dark.
My dress gets pushed up. His shirt gets untucked. His hand slides up my thigh, and I make a sound that definitely carries through the fogged windows.
I don’t care.
“We should stop,” he manages against my neck.
“We should.”
Neither of us stops.
His fingers find the edge of my underwear, and I arch into his touch, and he groans something that might be my name. For one perfect moment there’s nothing except this - his hands on my body, his mouth on my skin, the desperate urgency of wanting something you’ve been denying yourself.
His fingers slip under the edge, one knuckle from ending the argument, and the sound I make is a yes in every language. I hear it the way the valets would hear it.
“Stop.” My own hand closes around his wrist. “Stop. I have a rule.”
He goes still. Instantly, completely, forehead dropping to my shoulder, breathing like a man who just lost a fight he was winning. “You have a rule,” he says, into the fabric of my dress.
“Said all of it. Everywhere.” I’m still holding his wrist. I notice I haven’t moved it away, just held it, like the rule needs a bailiff. “One luncheon isn’t everywhere, Zachary. You don’t get to buy out the last mile in a parking lot.”
“For the record,” he says, not lifting his head, “I hate your rule.”
“So do I. It’s an excellent rule.”