11. Juliette
Chapter Eleven
JULIETTE
I don't sleep much.
The inn room is small and smells of lavender polish. I sit cross-legged on the bed with a pot of Mary's chamomile going cold, and I make my plan. In the morning I stop hiding. Tomorrow, whoever comes, I walk out the front door with my head held high.
I fall asleep on that and wake at half past five to the sound of an engine idling below my window.
The street is dark and empty except for two vehicles. A silver car across from the inn, engine running, lights off. And fifty yards up, in the shadow of the church, Holt's truck.
The windshield is furred white with frost, every inch of it except two arcs where the wipers have been going.
I put my hand on the cold glass of the inn’s window.
He's been there all night. All night, right there in the cold, parked where he could see my window.
He just sat there in the dark and watched over me while I slept.
He's crossing the street toward the silver car right now, shoulders set, and I'm already pulling on my jeans.
The cold outside hits like a slap. They're squared up in the middle of the empty street, Holt with his back half to me, and another man I don’t recognize.
“...won't ask you again to get back in the car,” Holt is saying, low.
“Newell, I drove through the night. I'm not leaving without…”
The inn door bangs behind me, and both men turn, and Holt moves. I've watched him split logs like a pro, but I've never seen him do this: three fast steps and he's planted in front of me, square between me and the silver car. One of his arms comes back to hold me, his whole big body shielding me.
“Juliette, go back inside. Please.”
“No.” I stay close to him. “I’m guessing you’re someone my father's paying to bring me home. Like a repossessed car?”
The shaved-head man looks at me for a long moment. He has clever, tired eyes.
“Miss Ashton. I’m Dean, and your family is very worried about you.”
“My family is very worried about getting my signature on the marriage certificate to Corbin Vance. Let's save time. So the brief says I'm unwell? Off my medication, paranoid, a danger to myself. Do I seem unwell to you?”
“I’ve just met you.” He raises his eyebrows.
“There is no medication. There's no doctor, either, or if there is, it will be Dr. Geralt the orthopedist. He golfs with my father on Thursdays and once fixed my mother's tennis elbow. If my father named him as my treating physician, you can verify in one phone call that the entire brief is an invention. You’re welcome to check it out.”
The street is so quiet I can hear both engines ticking. Dane looks at me, then at Holt.
“You know what made me drive up here myself?” he says at last. “I asked Holt a direct question and he lied to me. I know him well enough for that. Whoever was worth the first lie he told me in twenty years, I wanted to meet them in person. And you don’t disappoint, Miss Ashton.”
I look up at Holt. His jaw is set hard and he keeps his eyes on me the whole time.
And that's when the motorcycle comes up Main Street. I notice the door of the inn open and Mary peeks her head around it, her mouth open. The sound arrives before the bike does, rolling off the shopfronts, and Dane's hand twitches toward his coat before Holt says, “Easy. This one's family.”
The rider backs into the curb, kills the engine, and pulls off his helmet. Dark hair, short beard, with more than a passing resemblance to Holt. He looks at Holt, then at Dane, then at me, and something in the beard moves that might be a smile.
“Hawk. I’m Holt’s cousin. He asked me for a favor, so I figured I'd deliver it in person.” He reaches into his vest and hands a folded sheet of paper to Holt.
Holt scans it quickly, then looks up. “You'll want to look at this one, Dane.
It's who's actually paying your invoice.
Your retainer didn't come from Ashton's personal accounts. It was routed through an outfit called Pinely Holdings. Pinely Holdings is a subsidiary of the Rotmere Corporation. You know the name?”
Dane's face drops.
“You're not working for a worried father. You're working for the crooks who own his debts, cleaning up a loose end before a merger. So. What kind of firm are you running these days?”
Dane stands in the middle of Main Street for a moment with his eyes closed. “I swallowed it.”
He takes out his phone, and his voice, when he speaks into it, has all the smoothness stripped out.
“The Ashton contract, kill it. I'll dictate the report from the road, and flag it for legal, all of it. Yes. Both.” He hangs up and looks at me, and gives me a small, formal nod.
“Miss Ashton. I'm sorry. For what it's worth, the report will say the brief was false.”
That’s when the black town car turns onto Main Street. Beside me, Holt goes from still to ready, no visible movement at all, just a change in the air pressure, and Hawk drifts two easy steps to the left. The three of them, mountain man, biker and bodyguard, are spread across the street like a wall.
The town car stops and Corbin gets out alone.
“Juliette.” He doesn't bother with charm now. “Get in the car. The wedding can be salvaged, but only if you come home today and sign, do you understand me? There are people who…”
“Mr. Vance,” Dane says pleasantly, “I'd think very carefully.”
“You're fired,” Corbin snaps at him and then turns to face me. “You have no idea what you've put in motion. Get. In. The car.”
“The answer is no, Corbin. It was no in the church too, but you just never asked me.”
And because he’s stupid, his hand shoots out and closes around my arm, hard, and pulls.
I hear Holt before I see him, a deep growl in his chest that I feel through the soles of my feet.
Then there's a blur, no punching or shouts, just Corbin's wrist peeled off my arm and folded up behind his back. Suddenly he’s bent over the hood of his expensive car with his cheek pressed to the frost, gasping, held there by one hand and a knee.
Holt isn't even breathing hard. He leans down close to Corbin's ear, and I only catch the end of what he says.
“...touch her again, and there isn't a family on earth rich enough to buy you back. Nod if you understand.”
Corbin nods.
Hawk walks over and crouches down. “Rotmere will be very interested to hear how you’ve been siphoning off their money into your shell companies for the last six years. I hear they make people disappear when they find out about fraud.”
Corbin makes a whimpering sound. “They don’t need to know.”
Holt’s voice is steady. “Then leave Juliette alone. Nobody knows she’s here.”
Corbin nods, his face squished against the car.
“Stay down. It's the best deal you'll get today.”
Somewhere behind me, calm as a woman reporting a pothole, Mary from the inn says into her phone, “Morning, Joe. You'll want to send a car up to the inn. Disturbance up here.”
When the sheriff arrives, he takes Corbin down the mountain in the cruiser. Dane shakes Holt's hand before he leaves. Hawk drinks the coffee Nora brings out, then swings back onto the bike. "Thanksgiving. Me and Taryn’ll be expecting you. Both.”
“Walk me through it,” I say, once Mary’s gone back inside and Holt and I are standing there alone.
He looks down at me. “Through what?”
“All of it. You had a plan this whole time, and I thought you didn’t. I’m sorry for not trusting you.”
He shakes his head. “That works both ways. I should have told you sooner, but I was worried I’d put you in more danger, or you’d run. There's a tracker on the phone I gave you. I’ve had eyes on you the whole time you’ve been here.”
I stare up at him. “Here's my one rule, Holt Newell, trust me. Tell me what the plan is, okay?”
“It’s a deal.”
“Now kiss me, and take me home.”
He kisses me right there on Main Street, one arm wrapping me clean off the sidewalk, and I forget everything else for a long time.