Trouble In Triplicate (7 page)

Before Olivia could move Caine walked to the foot of the staircase and peered up at Juliet. Their eyes met for just a moment before Juliet quickly looked away. Caine started up the stairs, his amber eyes never leaving her. "Hello, Juliet."

He knew her!
Juliet's heart turned over in her chest. No one but their parents and Bobby Lee Taggert and Grant Saxon had ever learned—or bothered to learn—to tell the triplets apart. But Caine Saxon had correctly identified her twice.

"You look beautiful tonight," he said huskily. His warm gaze seemed to caress her, and Juliet allowed herself to bask in that warmth until the thrill of his recognition was replaced by the realization that he knew she'd taken special care to dress just for him.

She flushed, and glanced down at her dress and his jeans, and then caught Liwy's eye.

There were times when the triplets were so attuned to each other that an unspoken communication existed between them. This moment was such a time.

"Julie is dressed up because she has a date later tonight," Olivia said, her eyes meeting Juliet's. The message had been received and acted upon. "As soon as she gets back from this . . . er, spying expedition of yours."

"A date?" Caine frowned. He tore his gaze from Juliet, startled by the sudden vehemence that surged through him. He hated the idea of Juliet with another man, and the fact that he did alarmed him. He had never been the jealous type. And these primitive, possessive feelings surging through him were new to him too.

"With who?" he heard himself ask.

"I'm sure you don't know him," Juliet interjected quickly.

"Mark Walsh, one of our neighbors, an assistant math professor at the university," Olivia said. She smiled, quite pleased with her inventiveness.

Caine frowned. "That name sounds familiar. ..."

"Liwy, don't you have some cream of artichoke and avocado soup to make?" Juliet prompted. The sooner they dropped the subject of her mythical date, the better.

"Oh! Yes, I guess I do." Olivia drifted off, with a final glance at her sister.

"So who is this jerk you dressed up for?" Caine asked with a scowl. "When did you make this date? I don't know when we'll be back, you know."

Juliet's gaze flickered over him. "We won't be gone long. You obviously plan to sit in the car outside the Inn for a few minutes and then leave." She could tell by the way he'd dressed that he had planned to do just that. And she'd been foolish enough to dress up, as if this were an actual date! She flinched inwardly. Bless Liwy for coming up with that inspired notion of a later date.

"But I thought we'd go out for a drink afterward," Caine said. He did not look pleased.

There was a flash of lightning, instantaneously accompanied by a loud clap of thunder. "We'd better leave before the storm gets any worse," Juliet suggested. They stepped out onto the front porch and she opened her umbrella. A sudden gust of wind swirled the raindrops around them.

"Don't you have an umbrella?" she asked.

"No, I don't."

"Let me guess. Real men don't carry umbrellas?

It's so much more macho to get soaked, I suppose." She watched the relentless downpour of rain. "It's coming down in buckets. Would your machismo be greatly offended if I offered to share my umbrella with you?"

Caine stared at the driving rain. "I gratefully accept your kind offer, Juliet." He scooped her up in his arms and held her high against his chest. "You can hold it above both of us.

They were pelted by cold raindrops as Caine dashed to the car, but Juliet was suddenly impervious to the weather. Instead, she was breath-takingly aware of the strength in the arms that held her, of the hard breadth of his chest. They paused beside the car door, and she looked up to find him staring down at her.

Caine peered into the depths of her violet-blue eyes and felt the searing effect of her gaze flash through him. His mouth lowered slowly to hers, even as he silently protested to himself. It was absurd to want to kiss a woman while standing under an umbrella in the middle of a thunderstorm, but he couldn't stop himself.

"How did you know that it wasn't me who opened the door tonight?" she asked shakily. Her pulses were racing. She needed to put a brake on this crazy excitement he so effortlessly evoked in her and she sought to do so with conversation. "How did you know that it was me on the stairs?"

"No woman looks at me the way you do, Juliet." His face was close to hers and he continued to gaze into her soft blue eyes. "I don't think any woman ever has."

Juliet watched his head descend with a kind of fated submission. You shouldn't let him kiss you, her mind tried to insist. You don't want him to kiss you. But she didn't say a word.

His mouth brushed hers as her hand compulsively sought his face. Her fingertips traced his high cheekbones and the strong curve of his jaw while his lips nibbled softly at hers. And then, suddenly, it wasn't enough. She began to ache for something harder, something more demanding than those teasing, torturous little kisses.

"Caine." She whispered his name against his lips and tangled her fingers in his dark hair.

"What do you want, little rain witch?" His voice was thick with desire, sensuous with triumph. He decided that she had cast a spell over him, and it no longer seemed absurd to be kissing in the rain. But her spell had rebounded—he knew she wanted him as much as he wanted her, and the realization was enormously pleasing.

"I want you to kiss me . . . hard," she said, her eyes dark with hunger.

"Oh, Juliet," he said, his voice raspy. "You'd better watch what you ask for or—"

"I may get it?" Juliet finished enticingly. "Oh, Caine, I hope so!"

She clutched his head and held it to hers, opening her mouth under his, tempting, teasing, deepening the kiss with an ardent expertise she had never dreamed she possessed. She was dizzy with excitement, out of her head with the passion flaring between them in this dark, rainswept night.

"I beg your pardon," a voice intruded, "but unless you're conducting some kind of experiment by using yourselves as a lightning rod, I would advise you both to get in out of the rain."

Caine lifted his head at the sound of the flat, slightly nasal voice. Juliet stared dazedly at the man who stood beside them, clutching a black umbrella. He was at least six or seven inches shorter than Caine.

"Mark!" she gasped, half wondering if he were an apparition. She was still somewhat lost in the hazy throes of passion. "Wh—what are you doing here?"

"I'm on my way to your house to borrow some olive oil." Mark adjusted his glasses with one hand and his umbrella with the other. "Sherry needs it for the lasagna she's making for dinner tonight," he added rather proudly.

"Go on in, Mark," Juliet said. "Liwy's there, she'll give it to you."

Mark beamed. "Thanks, neighbor! And . . . er, seriously, you shouldn't be standing out here with all this lightning. There's been a tornado watch issued for Albemarle and Fluvanna counties until midnight tonight."

"He's right, of course," Caine said, his voice still husky with unslaked desire. The sound of it sent sensuous shivers along Juliet's every nerve ending. He opened the car door and set her in the front bucket seat, then raced around the car to join her inside.

They rode in silence to the Charlottesville city limits. Juliet was thoroughly disconcerted by their passionate interlude in the rain. Once again she'd lost all control, all sense of timing and place, when Caine had taken her into his arms. I could make your head spin in bed, Juliet. The words he'd spoken yesterday echoed softly, tauntingly in her brain. He could make her head spin anywhere, she acknowledged nervously.

She cast a covert glance at him. What was he thinking? That she was hot and hungry for him? She feared he had good reason to think just that. Any woman who went wild in the middle of a tornado watch could certainly be considered an easy score.

And Caine Saxon kept score! His scoreboard was the wall of his restaurant, where his conquests were framed and hung. He'd carried the notion of notches on the bedpost to new heights! Not her, Juliet promised herself. She was not joining that rogue's gallery. She'd always been one of a crowd, but—

"Now I remember!"

Caine's exclamation cut in on her reverie.

He was smiling broadly. "Mark Walsh! He's your neighbor, the one you introduced to Sherry Carson, Channel 42's weather girl. And he has a date with Sherry tonight. He's borrowing olive oil for the lasagna she's cooking for him."

"It sounds promising," Juliet said thoughtfully. "I hope so. Mark is such a nice man, but he's very shy. I know he's been lonely."

"Nice, shy, lonely guy, huh? With two dates for tonight?"

"What do you mean?" And then she remembered. Olivia had told Caine that Juliet had a date with Mark Walsh tonight.

Caine remembered too. "Why did your sister tell me you had a date with Walsh tonight?"

"She was trying to be fiendishly scheming, like your sister," Juliet retorted.

"Uh-oh, I recognize a defensive play when I see one. I'm throwing down the penalty flag, honey. No personal fouls allowed."

"Will you kindly translate? I've made it a point to know as little about football as possible."

"You'll love the game after I've explained it to you. Now, leaving both of our sisters out of it, what's this about a date with Walsh tonight?"

Juliet decided the safest answer was no answer at all. She folded her arms across her chest and stared at the rain pounding at the windshield. The trees along the darkened mountainside were half bent from the force of the wind. "Quite a storm we're having, isn't it?" she said blandly.

"I think I'm beginning to get the drift, Juliet. I'm the jerk you dressed up for tonight, aren't I? And when I showed up in jeans, you—"

"You're a jerk, all right," she interrupted dryly.

He didn't take offense. He laughed instead. "Yeah, maybe I am at that. I should've asked you to have dinner with me at the inn tonight. You were expecting me to, weren't you?"

"No, I always dress up to sit in a car outside a restaurant."

"I'm sorry, honey. I'm not dressed for dinner at the inn, but we can—"

"Caine, look!" Juliet interrupted, pointing at the sky. "A bolt of lightning struck that tree down on the hillside! I saw it! It split it right in two!" Actually, she was grateful for the diversion. She didn't want to talk about her expectations for tonight. Or Caine's either!

He shook his head. "We picked one helluva night to stage a reconciliation. Are you afraid of storms, Juliet?"

"No, I like them. I think they're exciting."

He smiled. "I should have known a woman as passionate as you would—"

"But I'm not crazy about being in the mountains in a storm," she added hastily. "We've been driving for a long time." She decided a change of subject was definitely in order. "Are we getting close to the inn?"

"We'll be there soon. Damn! That idiot coming toward us should dim his headlights! They're practically blinding me!"

The car roared past them. Less than two minutes later a van came barreling down the mountainous road in the opposite lane, its headlights glaring. "Every fool in the world is out on the road tonight!" Caine said with disgust. "That van—"

"Was our van!" Juliet sat up straight in her seat. "I'm sure it was, Caine! That means Randi has left the inn."

"It couldn't be," Caine argued. "It's only a few minutes past eight. They would have hardly had time to say hello.''

"If they even said hello. Maybe they took one look at each other and said 'drop dead" instead," Juliet said glumly. "Did the first car that passed us look like Grant's car? He drives a Lambourghini, doesn't he?"

"I couldn't tell what it was. It was too dark. Just as it was too dark for you to be sure that was your van. Don't be so pessimistic, Juliet."

They reached the Apple Country Inn a few minutes later. The two-story frame building seemed to be set in the middle of a sea of mud.

"I'll carry you in," Caine told Juliet, and she did not demur. The mud was so deep and thick, she knew even a short trek through it would spell doom for her new shoes.

To Juliet's surprise, the inn's small dining room was full, every table but one occupied by guests. She scanned the cozy room, staring at each diner, and then repeated the process. Grant and Randi were not seated at any of the tables. "Maybe they already went upstairs," Caine said before she could comment on their very conspicuous absence. "I reserved a room for them."

"You're an eternal optimist." She shook her head. "They're not here, Caine. We passed them on the road."

He set his jaw stubbornly. "I'll ask the proprietor if they've arrived yet."

Caine gave Juliet a thumbs-down sign after his brief chat with Mrs. Castle, the owner and hostess of the inn. "Miranda and Grant were here." He heaved a sigh. "Mrs. Castle said a man and a woman fitting their description met in the vestibule, quarreled for a few minutes, and then stormed out. No pun intended," he added as lightning flashed outside the window.

Juliet sighed too. "Now what?"

"We could follow them, I suppose, and spend a miserable evening watching them feel miserable." He brightened. "Or we could stay here and have dinner. Mrs. Castle said the inns dress code is abolished during bad weather."