Chapter 7
COLE
“Vorrei un bicchiere di rosso, per favore?”
Before Juliette could respond, the waitress returned, not batting an eye that her companion had changed.
“Certo,” the pretty waitress said, looking me up and down, and not subtly before walking away.
“Not a white wine guy, I take it?” Juliette asked.
“You first,” I said, helping myself to an olive. “I’ve been highly curious since Parker got the call about how, exactly, one leaves a backpack in a bathroom without noticing it missing.”
Less curious, if I were being honest, since it was this particular woman. It was a surprise, based on the contents of her house, that she was able to keep anything in order.
Instead of answering right away, she took an evasive sip of wine. In a white sundress, her dark hair kissing each bare shoulder—the woman really did love baring one, or both, shoulders—Juliette looked as if she belonged here.
Chaotic, but incredibly beautiful. Especially today. Italy looked good on her.
I followed Juliette’s wistful gaze to the sailboat.
“Ever been on one?” I asked.
“No. Always wanted to though. It seems like the ultimate… I don’t know, dream. Sailing on the Mediterranean.” She looked back to me. “Although that’s technically the Ligurian Sea, of course.”
“Of course,” I said wryly, not surprised she knew that. According to Parker, Juliette was obsessed with her Italian heritage. She and Delaney had come to this particular town because it was where her ancestors were from.
“I have no idea how I left it there. One minute, we were sipping spritzes, hiking the Azur trail to Vernazza. The next—”
“Il Suo vino, signore.”
“Grazie.” I took the wine, ignoring the waitress’s attempt to flirt. I had no interest in anything at the moment except Juliette’s story.
“You know Italian?”
“Not really. I looked up a few phrases on the plane.”
She seemed amused by that. “‘May I have a glass of red wine’ being one of them?”
“Came in handy. Now, about that backpack…”
She was doing everything possible to avoid the topic. Understandable, given the circumstances, but I wasn’t one to let her off the hook. Just the opposite. Something about her made me want to push buttons I had no business pushing.
“I dunno. I was thinking about how grateful I was, to be here with Delaney, drinking a limoncello spritz on the way to explore one of the Cinque Terre towns… and I just… washed my hands and left. Delaney handed me the drinks, went into the bathroom herself, and that was it. It didn’t occur to either of us that the backpack was missing until halfway to Vernazza.
When we went back, it was gone without a trace. ”
I had so many questions.
“Maybe drinking spritzes while hiking was part of the problem?”
Juliette apparently didn’t like either my question or my tone, and her face said as much.
“Then maybe they shouldn’t sell them at the entrance to the hike. Especially since once you’re on the actual trail you can’t bring them.”
“Hmm. So chugging spritzes and hiking?”
“We didn’t chug them.”
“No?”
“No.” She squinted at me. Annoyed. “Maybe a little.”
My head fell back as I laughed. Not at her words but at her expression. “Parker says you write thrillers. Ever hear the expression ‘if looks could kill’?” I asked when I finished laughing.
“First of all, I haven’t had a ton of time for my fiction writing, so that’s a bit misleading. Second, I have heard the expression. And third… actually, I won’t say that out loud.”
It was hard not to smile around this woman. She was outrageous.
“You looked everywhere in the area, I assume. For the backpack, that is?”
As expected, she rolled her eyes. “No. We actually hiked back, looked in the bathroom stall and then returned to the hotel. I didn’t even think of looking anywhere else.
What if”—she paused and made a face that made me realize she was being sarcastic—“someone took it and gave it to the bathroom attendant? Or the restaurant next door? Holy crap, do you think we should go back and ask around?”
Halfway through her speech, I was inexplicably struck with the desire to kiss her. Just to make her stop talking.
“Actually,” she said, stretching out her legs, “maybe I’ll finish this glass of wine instead.”
Since her wine was just about finished, and there was no sign of the almost newlyweds, not surprisingly, I flagged down the waitress and ordered her another.
“So you’re one of those guys, huh?”
I pretended to miss her meaning.
“Pardon?”
“That orders a wine for a woman without asking if she wants another one.”
“Did you want another wine?”
“Besides the point.”
“Is it, though?”
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.
“You’re welcome.”
“They said at the hotel the Carabinieri Station is this way,” Delaney said from behind us. With that, the spell… or whatever was between us… broke.
“It’s Jules,” she said as we entered the tunnel and split into single file on the sidewalk. “Not Juliette.” I stepped aside for her to walk in front of me.
“You don’t like Juliette?”
“I like it fine. But my dad started calling me Jules the day I was born, apparently. And it stuck.”
There was something about the way “Juliette” rolled off my tongue that I liked. Immediately regretting that visual, I informed her that I’d continue using her real name.
“You are so contrary.”
“I saw the picture on your mantle. Is it just the three of you? In your family.”
As we came out of the tunnel, tourists lugging backpacks and luggage streaming from the nearby train station toward our direction, Juliette stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk, almost causing a collision.
“Mi scusi,” she said, stepping aside.
“I should have led with the fact that Parker gave me the code for your house. We were on a tight schedule to catch the flight. He gathered Delaney’s things while I grabbed your license.”
“Are you two coming?” Parker called from ahead.
Juliette stared at me for a few seconds longer, apparently processing that information, and then began walking again.
“I’m trying to remember how clean I left the house,” she mumbled.
“Looked pretty clean to me. Interesting choice of decorations, especially in your bedroom.”
“Oh my God. You were in my bedroom.”
“That’s where your license was,” I reminded her.
As we climbed the hill, I watched her expression transform from shock to embarrassment. She really did wear her feelings. Every damn one of them.
“Why do you keep your expired IDs?” I asked, thinking of the stickies.
She frowned. “You saw my stickies.”
Juliette stopped again, although this time with less people around, and her eyes widened.
I stopped with her. “You can walk and talk, you know?”
“You went through my drawer.”
“Went through?” The sun hit her hair in just the right way, making parts of it look almost auburn even though anyone looking at her would say Juliette had black hair. Interesting.
“I’d call it ‘looked for your license to save your ass in Italy’ but, po-tay-to, po-tah-to. Same thing.”
“What the hell are you two doing?” Parker and Delaney had stopped too.
She would kill me. Then again, getting Juliette riled up proved to be mildly entertaining.
“She just realized I saw her vibrator looking for her license,” I called ahead.
Juliette swatted me on the arm. Delaney’s jaw dropped and Parker tried to stifle a smile.
Italy, it turned out, was proving to be much more fun than I’d expected.