CHAPTER EIGHT

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. . .

"I'd like to start off by saying I miss you."

He said the words gently and very sincerely.

Juliet had just turned the light out when the phone rang, and seeing his name on the screen filled her with trepidation. She hadn't spoken to him since the White Tuxedo Debacle.

"I really want to be with you again," he added.

I don't miss you, not yet. Is that sad? And I don't want to be with you again. That is sad.

She said, "But?"

Shawn sighed. "But I have a matter of great importance to discuss. Oh and don't think I didn't notice that you didn't say you miss me too."

"Shawn?"

"Seriously, Jules. You and your 'best friend' told my dad about us?"

"Why didn't you?"

"Maybe because you were beating me over the head about nobody finding out?"

"I wasn't talking about your father, Shawn. Besides, I didn't say that until Sunday and it never occurred to me you hadn't already told him."

"Oh, I see. So… was it you or your 'best friend' who told him?"

Ignore it. Ignore the air quotes in his tone.

"Carlton did, but it was with my permission."

"Your permission," he said with emphasis.

"If he hadn't said it, I would have. The conversation was going that way and there was no reason Henry shouldn't know. What's your issue?"

"My issue is Lassie had no right to even be in that conversation."

"No right? What does that mean?"

"He's your work partner. He shouldn't have been part of any private conversation with my father."

Juliet said as patiently as she could manage, "Apart from the fact that Carlton's known your father even longer than I have, I am as close to Carlton as you are to Gus, and you know that. He cares about me and he's been very good to me this past week. Why are you suddenly so hostile about him?"

"Suddenly?"

"You two have always been at odds—usually because you get in his face—but you've been really harsh about him since… since that day. Why?"

Shawn was quiet a moment. "I don't like that you're letting him be more of a husband to you than I am."

She felt goosebumps as her brain said don't be ridiculous and her heart said that's because he is.

Shawn pressed on, "He was the one you called to 'rescue' you. He was the one you let step in to supposedly protect you when I went to the station on Tuesday. He was the one who broke the news to my dad. I wouldn't be surprised if you ran to him on Sunday when you ditched me at your place."

Her heart was pounding, and not in a good way, and she couldn't stop the flow of words. "I couldn't count on you to take me home, I couldn't count on you to leave my apartment or the station simply because I asked you to, and I already told you: if Carlton hadn't said the words to Henry, I would have. It was hard for me to make any sense and Henry was already confused enough. I am not going to tell you again that Carlton is my friend and someone I trust completely, and furthermore, if I acted this way about Gus you'd think I was a jealous nutjob."

His intake of breath was sharp. "I have no reason to be jealous of Lassie."

Yeah, you do.

"And thanks for thinking that way about me." But in the next breath, he sounded apologetic. "Jules, I don't want to fight with you. I really just want you back in my life. If you don't want to live together as man and wife, okay, I can dig that, but you can't give up on us like this. We have something. I'm not going to say 'had.' We have something."

I have mainly regrets.

"What we have, Shawn, is… I can't trust you to respect me or be honest with me. Or really with anyone else either. Why didn't you tell me your 'heart-to-heart' with Henry was actually a huge fight?"

There was only a short pause. "It would have upset you."

"Of course it would have upset me. I would have asked you about it and tried to help you work through it."

"There was nothing to work through," he said impatiently. "He was a jerk and I yelled back and it was the same-old, same-old. What difference does it make now?"

"The difference is you led me to believe it was a meaningful conversation because of which you were able to make decisions for your future. For our future."

"Oh, it was meaningful, all right. So yeah, there was yelling—it did help me make decisions, and those decisions helped you make decisions. What's the downside?"

Her head was beginning to ache. "The lie is the downside. The lie is always the damn downside, Shawn! You are not stupid. You are an extremely clever person with stellar deductive reasoning abilities. Why do we always come back to you not seeing the damage your lies can do?"

He was silent, sighing. "Here's what's true, and I told you before. I love you. I'm sorry I made a mess of our wedding day but that's just one day out of a lifetime. The rest can be all good. I want another chance. I want to get past this. I don't want you to rush into a divorce."

"The way we rushed into marriage?"

"Jules. No more fighting. Let's just… try this again."

I can't, she thought, and I don't want to. She almost said it out loud.

Tell him it's over.

Tell him.

"I need more time. Please. There's still so much I have to make sense of."

Coward.

"Love shouldn't be hard to make sense of. How you feel about me… you already know that."

Yes, I do… but it's not my former feelings for you I'm preoccupied with.

"I'll call you in a few days," she said. "Goodnight." She disconnected and set the phone down, and rolled over in bed, punching the pillow.

And just like that, her thoughts returned to where they'd been all day long.

Kissing Carlton in the car.

She shivered, remembering the want and feeling it again. He must think she was some kind of desperate two-timing hussy but oh, she would so do it again. The heat of his mouth, the sheer animal drive she'd felt so keenly between them… tempered by his gentleness and obvious feelings for her.

Earlier she looked up transference online; she wanted to find some validation that she wasn't simply pointing her feelings for Shawn at Carlton instead, but the truth was… the truth had always been… what she felt for Shawn was never as intense as the connection she felt with Carlton. She'd never experienced with Shawn the level of trust she had in Carlton.

She had always assumed it was due to the nature of their jobs; the bond between partners was deeper and more complex than other relationships. She also assumed Shawn being different from pretty much everyone else in the universe (who wasn't a teenager) was part of the problem: he was quirky, whimsical, intense, larger-than-life.

He was fun when the job wasn't. He was an escape.

But he was no refuge.

Carlton was a refuge.

What she had concluded from her reading was different than she expected to find. What she thought now was that she had transferred—or rather, deferred—her growing awareness of Carlton during the early years of their partnership (when neither one of them could afford any black marks on their records) to Shawn. Shawn was her distraction from Carlton.

And now, with Shawn very nearly out of the picture, there was… Carlton.

... who was still her partner, even more her friend, intense in his own way, someone she could trust and absolutely rely on and whom she knew felt the same away about her. He also smelled good and was so warm and he kissed like nobody's business, and everything he felt for her was reflected in his incredible blue eyes.

She knew he loved her. She didn't know how long exactly, but she knew it.

She was a coward for not breaking it off with Shawn tonight. But it wasn't because the relationship had any life left in it. It was only because even after everything that happened, she was simply a coward about saying the words "it's over."

However, she would find her courage soon, because after today in the Crown Vic, there was no way she was going to do without Carlton.

. . . .

. . .

Saturday morning, Carlton was about to leave the farmers' market when he saw Gus eyeing monkey bread at a booth near the exit.

Gus looked up and Carlton nodded. He had no intention of approaching him but Gus held up his hand, so he waited for him to come closer. "Guster. The best monkey bread is six booths down."

"I know. I was just there but they said their last loaf went to a tall Irish-looking guy. I think the booth lady is sweet on you." He seemed irritated more than amused.

"Oh. Sorry about that. Well, the bread you were looking at is pretty good, so..." He trailed off.

Gus remained in his path. "How's Juliet doing?"

Carlton shifted his bags around. "You asking as her friend or because Spencer put you up to it?"

"The former. I've known her a long time too, remember."

Fair enough. "She's okay. She's thinking things over." That's all he would say. He trusted Guster more than Spencer, but the man had the willpower of a bit of fluff when it came to resisting Spencer's vacuum-esque information-sucking powers.

He nodded. "Good. Good." Still he remained in Carlton's way.

"Anything else, Guster?"

Gus obviously made a decision. "Tell her I said she's doing the right thing."

Carlton felt his eyebrows rising.

"About Shawn. About a divorce."

"Well, now I know Spencer didn't put you up to anything," he said. "You came to this realization because…?"

With a roll of his large brown eyes, Gus said, "Come on. Shawn's not going to be ready for marriage for another thirty-six years. He may be my best friend, and I know he loves Juliet, but that's not enough for someone like her. She needs a man she can count on all the time, not just in a pinch." He hesitated. "She needs... someone like you."

The heat rising into his face warned him he could be in trouble, and Gus nodded slightly at the sight.

"Yeah," he repeated. "Someone like you."

"Why are you saying this to me?" Carlton asked tightly.

"Because Shawn's been complaining about you being there for her every step of the way and it occurred to me... it's always been you. And he knows it's always been you. In fact, sometimes I think he let you be there for her because it meant he didn't have to man up and do it himself."

Of the several immediate reactions Carlton had to this, the first to voice itself was, not surprisingly, a deflection.

"The only person who let me be anywhere for Juliet is Juliet. We're partners. Partners look out for each other."

"Yeah. But they don't all drive eighty miles on their partners' wedding nights. And I saw you bring her home Sunday evening. Shawn asked me to run by her place to see if she was back from wherever she ran. I was supposed to call him if her lights were on." He looked carefully at Carlton. "But when I saw you drop her off, I couldn't do it."

Carlton still felt the heat in his face. In his heart. "Why not?"

"Because she was smiling as you walked her up the stairs, and when she watched you from her window as you left, she was still smiling. She was smiling like someone who... who found her happy place." He half-smiled himself. "I haven't seen her smile like that with Shawn for a long time, Lassiter."

"All right," he said slowly, deeply uncomfortable and certain Spencer might jump out from behind a farmer any second now.

"Some day, Shawn's going to be okay about this. He'll be okay that you're her man, because he already knows you'll take care of her."

Carlton was officially speechless.

"But just so you know," Gus added in a lower voice, looking around as if he also thought Spencer might jump out. "I was never here, and we never had this conversation, and even if we did, all I was doing was telling you off for buying the last really excellent loaf of monkey bread."

For about two seconds, Carlton considered giving him the loaf he had.

Then he turned on his heel and walked as fast as he could toward freedom.

Or at least to his Fusion. He loaded the bags in the trunk and slid in behind the wheel and promptly shoved both hands through his hair restlessly.

Friday at work they'd been too busy to spend time alone, but the truth was he'd been two-thirds crazy since he and Juliet kissed.

As if 'kissed' was a suitable word for what went on in the Crown Vic that day.

As if any word or string of words or even a book full of words could describe the feelings, the sensations, the no-other-term-for-it-but hope he'd felt then and now.

For the future. A future with Juliet.

He put his hands over his face, sighing.

Dear God, he wanted to trust in that hope, and now in what Gus thought he'd seen. He knew it was foolish: on Friday a week ago she had been prepared to marry Spencer. She had feelings for him strong enough to marry the son of a loon, and surely those surpassed the anger she'd admitted to carrying for Carlton.

But she didn't lie, and she wasn't easily fooled (except by Spencer all those years, but everyone has a Waterloo), and for her to say the things she said meant they were true. About him, about them, and all true.

Nuts.

But true.

So.

Now he waited. Upwards of six months, he would wait. Hell, he'd wait ten times longer, but at the moment there was a goal: to see what she wanted from him, if anything, when she was single again.

Of course she might still reconcile with Spencer.

Yet, sitting there two-thirds crazy in his car, with a lifetime of romantic disappointments under his belt, and despite having watched Spencer woo and win Juliet to begin with… he knew there would be no reconciliation.

It was completely unlike him to be optimistic, so he rationalized it by explaining to himself that it wasn't optimism for his own sake, but rather hers: his trust that her own sense of self-worth would keep her from going back to a relationship with a man who simply could not be honest with her.

His phone rang: Juliet. He raked at his hair to restore some kind of order, as if she could see him, and gave her a brisk hello.

"Hi. Are you… would you like to have brunch with me? Or an early lunch? Or a late-morning snack?"

Honesty was crucial. "I would like to have anything with you."

Juliet laughed. "That's very encouraging. I know I shouldn't even ask but I really would just like to see you."

"The feeling is mutual." Holy crap, if she only fully grasped how much it was mutual.

"The last time you said that, I wondered which feeling it was."

"All the good ones," he assured her. "Do you want to meet somewhere or do you want to come over? I just picked up a loaf of monkey bread."

"Ooh, sold. I'll be there in twenty. Is that okay?"

Was it okay? Sheesh.

He started the engine, shaking his head at the ridiculousness of that question.

. . . .

. . .

Juliet had barely knocked on his door when he opened it, and he didn't even try to hide his heart from her. It was in his ocean-blue eyes, and in the husky quality of his hello, and in the tightness of his grasp when she slipped into his arms as soon as the door was closed behind them.

He whispered, "Just once," and kissed her, his warm mouth covering hers with the heat and ardency of a thousand nights in bed, and Juliet hoped to spend at least that many with him in the future.

She gave herself to the kiss, her tongue meeting his, his teeth tugging at her lips, his hands on her ass pulling her to him hard. So much to imagine based on what she felt from his body.

It would be a long few months indeed. She knew without asking that he wouldn't let himself sleep with her, just as she knew she was only a moment away from taking her clothes off.

Never before had "it's just a piece of paper" seemed true to her. Today—and for as much time as it would take to get out from under that paper—it was the most aggravating truth she knew.

"My God," she gasped, as his tongue trailed down her throat. "How in the hell is monkey bread going to top this?"

She was fumbling with his shirt buttons, desperate to touch his warm bare chest, but no sooner had her fingertips found the springy hair she longed to kiss than he drew back and stepped away, out of breath.

"Good Lord," he managed. "So much for self-control."

"Mine or yours?"

Carlton grinned. "I meant mine, but it's flattering to think yours was at risk."

"At risk? Crumbling." She made an exaggeratedly wide berth around him, stopping at the table.

"Do we... need to talk about what I think we don't need to talk about?"

Juliet turned; he was standing where she'd left him, black and silver hair tousled (she'd done that), blue eyes still lit with desire, shirt partially open and his chest calling out to be fondled.

Wrestling her mind back to the question, she said, "If you mean about us not sleeping together yet, no. We don't have to discuss that."

"Okay." He nodded, as if this settled everything.

"And when it's time, talk will be the last thing on our minds," she added.

Carlton flushed with a heat she wanted quite badly to touch with the palm of her hands and feel with her lips on his skin.

"Okay," he said again, a bit unsteadily, and went to make coffee to go with the monkey bread.

When Juliet went home later, having been thoroughly kissed one more time at the door (they agreed twice was better than once), she knew this was the path she was meant to walk.

Now she just had to find the backbone to break things off with Shawn once and for all.

. . . .

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