Shocking fact: a junior detective isn't raking down the cash. Not in the quantities it takes to be jet-setting off overseas whenever she feels like it. And honestly, who even thinks of going on those sorts of trips alone?
So when someone offers to take you to Italy, you say yes. Especially when he's handsome, and honest, and totally into you, and not asking you out and then taking it back in the same day.
Juliet stapled a report together aggressively, slamming the stapler down with a force that made Carlton look up and then glaring at him in a way that made him look right back down again.
It wasn't like she hadn't given Shawn his opening. Even a non-psychic male should know what "I could make other plans" meant when a woman was talking about changing a date with somebody else. Even Carlton would know that meant "I'd rather go with you."
Stupid idiot psychic.
Because what is a woman supposed to take away from that? That he's not serious. That he's never serious, not about her, anyway. Abigail was one thing—what ever happened with Abigail?—but Juliet was obviously another.
Stupid idiot detective thinking maybe that was because he was more interested in her than in Abigail, and afraid of it.
All those little glances she caught when he didn't think she was looking, those times when the seemingly ubiquitous cocky grin slipped and she thought she caught a flicker of something real in his eyes. All those flirty comments delivered so casually that her brush-offs could sound just as casual. All those other women, then the one who got away who stayed for so long and then turned out maybe not to be "the one" after all. All those times he showed up alone again and her heart did that little flip of hope she hated so intensely.
Stupid finding out you're right at the completely wrong time.
Juliet's heels clicked twice as loud as strictly necessary as she delivered her reports to the front desk.
For a guy who talked so much, he sure wasn't good at saying much. Except to Gus, apparently.
She kind of wished she hadn't been in the van, hadn't heard that whole "Serious Shawn" moment. Because she liked Serious Shawn. A lot. And it killed her that he didn't show up more often. A man with the ability to make her laugh, to keep life interesting, and to have enough depth that she could believe in him, trust him implicitly? That was rare. And a man who would care about her so much that he would let her be happy without him was even more rare.
Too bad a man—or a Shawn, anyway—who would take a chance on telling her anything of real value seemed to be an impossibility.
Juliet sighed and shut down her computer. Nodding goodbye to Carlton, she picked up her bag and headed to the parking lot.
She knew Shawn was hiding something. Lots of somethings. She just didn't know why. Or why even when she kissed him, he wouldn't hold on to her.
Maybe for the same reason that she was trying to avoid the fact that when Declan came running in telling her not to worry about the hotel in Amalfi being all booked up, she had hoped he was going to continue "because it turns out I have to call off the whole trip." Maybe for the same reason she was trying to figure out the etiquette in a hypothetical situation in which you potentially refuse the hospitality of somebody who just spent over $45 million dollars on you. Maybe for the same reason all of her imagined pictures of moments to come in Italy had Shawn in them.
If she could just figure out what that reason was….
If she could just figure out why that reason seemed tied up with whatever was so familiar about the way Shawn talked about taking mental pictures….
Juliet realized she had been driving for a while. She still didn't know where she was going.