Just One Taste Part 16

"You are going to think that I'm crazy. Perhaps I am. But I want to say before you leave that I fell in love with you last summer. So in love that I felt I had to break it off." She watched Cade frown and open his mouth.

"Hush. I know that doesn't make any sense to you now, but it will. I am not who you think I am. Well, my name is Juliet Barton. No one's ever thought to call me Julie before." She smiled sadly. "I was born in Piddletrenthide, Dorset, England."

"That explains it," Cade laughed. "You know what they say about England and the U.S...two nations separated by a common language? You've got that southern accent going on, but underneath you're really Englis.h.!.+"

"Indeed." She gave him a frosty look.

"Sorry. I'll try to shut up." He didn't look one bit guilty, though.

"When I was not quite seventeen years old, my parents married me off to Sir Joseph Barton."

"Jeez. Sixteen! Isn't that against the law over there?"

Juliet sighed deeply, resigning herself to Cade's interruptions. Americans were a voluble lot. One could find out hair-raising intimate details from perfect strangers in the grocery line if one were so inclined.

"There were no such statutes then. My husband was more than forty years older than I at the time of our marriage. He-we-I'm afraid the marriage was not a success."

"So, you're divorced. Big deal. I mean, he was so much older than you. Not that the fifties are old, but you probably didn't have much in common. He was rockin' to the Rolling Stones while you were into Justin Timberlake."

He looked so earnest and forgiving, poor deluded fool. A divorce would be the least of her worries.

"I am not a divorcee. I am a widow."

"Oh. My G.o.d, Julie, I'm sorry. I'm an idiot." He started to get off the couch but sat back down when she glared at him. "I guess I'm not good at this listening stuff. Just ask my mother. Look, no matter what you went through, we can work it out."

"Perhaps," she said an enigmatic smile on her face. "My husband had-had an accident. He left me very well off. I was free to travel, to explore the world. I've lived in a great many places over the years. Several continents. Several countries. Several states. I've relocated my current business six or seven times since the thirties."

Something about these words should set an alarm bell off. Even if her husband went out in flames on their wedding night, she was only talking about the last ten years or so. And she wasn't thirty yet. He'd seen her driver's license when she got carded at an Old Port bar last spring. She'd laughed hysterically when the waiter told her he didn't think she was twenty-one.

Cade was quiet. He rubbed Rufus' ears. The dog gave a happy wuffling snort.

Juliet observed this charming domestic scene. A man who was good with animals and wanted children would make a fine husband.

If he didn't die.

"Rufus has been my only companion, but this is Rufus the Eighth. Prior to the string of Rufi, as I like to call them, I had Charlies. Five of them. There were at least a dozen Tigers."

"That's a lot of dogs."

"Yes. Over two hundred fifty years' worth of dogs."

It was clear Cade wasn't following from the look on his face. "In dog years, you mean."

Juliet shook her head.

Cade watched her curls bounce and spring back. He'd loved her hair. The color. The smell. He'd like to get his hands in it right now and play with her white girl's Afro. He was sorry she'd cut it, but she still was d.a.m.ned cute. h.e.l.l, she was beautiful. Small but curvy. They could be lying on her sleigh bed right now, Juliet pearly white in her nakedness since she never went tanning, her nipples peaked, her lips swollen from his kisses. He'd be patient as he'd tongue a trail right where she'd beg him to be, her voice husky with desire. He wondered if she still waxed. He couldn't wait to find out. He'd been waiting a long year. His whole life, really. But d.a.m.n. He licked his lips and hoped she didn't notice the s.h.i.+ft in his pants.

"Cade, are you listening to me? Now would be a good time to ask a question."

"Uh, you've had a bunch of dogs. You've traveled a lot. I don't see the problem."

"Ask me my birthdate."

"Hah! You're not gonna catch me there! If there's one thing my mother told me, you never ask a woman how old she is. You told me you were twenty-seven last year. If my mathematical genius still holds, that would make you twenty-eight now. And even if you fudged a little, I don't care." He grinned. "You're very well-preserved." He was alarmed to see the tears build in her enormous brown eyes. "Hey, age is just a number. It's all about your att.i.tude."

"Don't give me T-s.h.i.+rt plat.i.tudes, Cade. I am older than you."

"That's why you broke up with me?" Cade couldn't believe it. What were a few years between friends?

Women were a mystery.

"In part. That, and the fact that every man involved with me for any length of time meets his Maker sooner rather than later. I am cursed."

Cursed? Cade sat up straighter. "Whoa. Just because your husband died-"

"My verbal abilities are proving inadequate. I should have written everything down and read it to you," Juliet muttered.

She picked up the folded papers and pa.s.sed them across the table. "In 1789 my husband followed these instructions, or something very like them, in an attempt to gain eternal youth and potency. The spell went awry and he was killed. I was then seven and twenty. Twenty-seven, that is. I had no idea he was dabbling in magic. I thought he was a man of science. But part of his blasted plan worked. I am as you see me, untouched by time." She took a huge swallow of her drink.

Cade stopped tickling her dog and sat very still. What the actual f.u.c.k? Poor Julie. She was...well, she must be having some kind of psychotic episode or something. He wasn't really up on medical lingo despite writing that drug warning pamphlet last year.

He'd made a lucky escape. He could finish his own beer, be out of here, but she kept talking.

"My birthday is March 5, 1762. I remember the Continental Congress. Both of them. I lost a dear friend at the crossroads of Quatre Bras. Given the choice, Aubrey would have preferred dying in more glory two days later, but it was not to be. I was privileged to hear Miss Nightingale speak, although I had discovered I had no apt.i.tude for nursing in the aftermath of Waterloo." Juliet had been nearly useless. Bereft and frightened. b.l.o.o.d.y hands trembling as she changed bandages, hiding like a coward when more dying young men called out to her. She still lived while the best that was Britain lay suffering or in makes.h.i.+ft graves. She closed her mind to the carnage that still haunted her dreams and continued.

"To celebrate the 100th year of my widowhood, I attended L'Exposition Universelle in Paris to see the Eiffel Tower. I posed for Gustav Klimt in 1908 when I lived in Vienna. With my clothes on, I might add. It's a pity I can't hang the portrait, but it would cause too many questions to be asked. It's a remarkably good likeness. When the stock market crashed, I was in New York City, Lisbon during most of World War Two, many other places in between and since. I am a walking history book. And you, no doubt, think me a Bedlamite." She drained her gla.s.s and looked drained herself.

As she said one crazy thing after another, Cade had watched Juliet get paler until she was the color of the paper in front of him. He could tell she believed everything she said. If she was acting, she was way better than Meryl Streep and that Queen Elizabeth chick who'd played both of them.

It was bad enough before when she threw a shoe at him. This timeline she'd just recited had wrapped around his throat and was choking him to death. He'd thought she was a little quirky and original; now he guessed she was just plain insane.

"You don't believe me," she said in a flat voice.

He tried to smile. "It's a little hard for me to understand, Julie. Are you saying you're a witch or something? You don't think you're a vampire, do you?" His hand went inadvertently to his neck.

She gave a brittle laugh. "Don't be ridiculous! Have I ever bitten you?"

Cade just looked at her.

"Well, apart from ordinary loveplay. A harmless nip here and there. I am not a vampire. In case you've forgotten, it's daylight outside and I haven't yet turned to ash. And I'm most certainly not a witch. Oh, no. I have absolutely no power. Do you think I've liked living through four centuries? I a.s.sure you, it's very taxing keeping au courant. Just when I think I know the game, the rules change. And you must see how inconvenient it is for me to keep moving." She framed her face with her hands. "No amount of plastic surgery could produce this result. While my friends become grandparents, I still look like the au pair."

"So you're not twenty-eight."

"No. And let's not forget I seem to kill off the men I have affairs with. Not that I've been promiscuous. You have nothing to worry about there. Hunt seems to think they died because they were not my true love."

Cade looked at his watch. He needed to go. "Who's Hunt?" he asked, but he really didn't care. He had to get out of here. Stat.

"An antiquarian bookseller in Boston. For the past few decades he's been looking out for magic books for me."

"Decades."

Juliet's face lit up. "Yes! He can tell you how long we've had business dealings together! He was quite as shocked as you are when he discovered my secret. Let me call him." She picked up the cellphone on the coffee table.

"Don't bother." Cade rubbed his temple. He was getting a headache and its name was Juliet. "Look, I can tell you're sincere about this, but-"

"Read those papers, please. Read them and you'll understand."

He'd humor her, and then he'd get the h.e.l.l out. He'd wasted a year of his life pining for a nutjob, a beautiful girl who thought she was going to live forever. Who said she was like some kind of Black Widow who killed her lovers. Maybe she really had whacked somebody. He probably should call the police. Or Social Services or something. He looked up to see her huge brown eyes, pleading with him to read the bulls.h.i.+t she'd written down on copier paper. She was the one who should be writing a novel. She had ten times the imagination he did.

"Okay." He pretended to scan the pages. He couldn't read her handwriting anyway. Funny how he'd never noticed how weird it was. She'd always sent him e-mail or bought him silly cards with just a heart and her initial.

"Yeah, I see what you mean. I wish I could help you, Julie, I really do, but-"

Her eyes were s.h.i.+ning. "You can. I know you are my true love. We can marry and then perform the rites to reverse what Sir Joseph did. The worst that could happen is that I'll blow the house up and die. You should be fine."

Marry. Blow the house up. Die. Should be fine. There were just so many issues to address, Cade was speechless.

Juliet left the chair and snuggled next to him on the couch, squeezing his hand, which was too numb to squeeze back. "I have a little cottage on a lake. It's very secluded, down a dirt road. I bought it in the sixties when it was dirt cheap, little more than a shack, really. I've fixed it up over the years. I came up for a couple of weeks every summer when I lived down south and it was just too hot for sweet tea to work its magic." She giggled. "Magic! Well, southern folks swear by sweet tea, you know. It's the perfect place for us to spend our honeymoon and see about fixing things."

Cade's throat was parched. He longed for some sweet tea himself. Instead he reached for his ale and took a swig. "Umm, Juliet. I'm not sure I'm ready to get married. Maybe we should wait a while. Get to know each other again." He watched her face slowly crumple in defeat.

She slid a few inches away across the cus.h.i.+on. "You're right, of course. You must think me very foolish. A-a-a pushy broad, is that not correct?"

That and more. "You've given me a lot to think about, Juliet. I'll call you tomorrow." He gave her shoulder a little squeeze and left by the alley door.

"He called me Juliet," she whispered to Rufus. "Twice." And her tears began to flow.

Chapter 4.

Cade got up at the b.u.t.tcrack of dawn, not that he'd had more than a few hours of sleep. Today's paper lay in its plastic sleeve on the front porch he shared with his neighbor, delivered by some middle school kid and his bleary-eyed dad.

Cade glanced at the weather report in the upper right-hand corner. Another beautiful September day ahead, crisp, clear, but he wasn't going to set one foot outside.

He let Jack out into the backyard to do his business. No way was he going to the dog park this morning. She might be there, trying to worm her way back into his life, all big eyes and honey hair. He dumped out yesterday's coffee in the sink and watched it go down the drain. He didn't want to be maudlin, but that looked like the story of his life right there, s.h.i.+tbrown and stale.

When he'd gotten up yesterday at this time, a scant twenty-four hours ago, he had been swelling with hope and love. He didn't go in for therapy, but he'd gotten himself to a breakthrough about the break-up. There was no point it letting it chew him up anymore. He'd been stubborn for a year. A whole year. Sure, he'd made a couple of really feeble attempts to contact her. And they had been ignored. But what if she never got the e-mail? Or the Christmas card was lost in the horror of holiday mail? He heard about letters going astray for years, finally arriving after the addressee was dead.

He couldn't trust the post office or the Internet with his future. Cade had to be proactive, an annoying buzz word, but the idea behind it made sense. He needed to see her again with his own two eyes. For, gag on another annoying word, closure. He wanted to get the goods on why Juliet had dumped him. The real reason. He was a man. He could take it.

He wanted to tell her that he still cared, even though he'd worked like h.e.l.l to get over her. He wanted to see if there was a chance...

There was a chance all right. He thought of the book Cloudy with a Chance of Meatb.a.l.l.s he'd loved as a kid. He felt like pancakes and meatb.a.l.l.s were dropping on his head right this minute. That would make as much sense as what he'd heard yesterday as Rufus drooled on his thigh.

Juliet was obviously seriously disturbed. The magic junk she'd ama.s.sed had gone to her brain. And if he didn't get some caffeine into his, he'd never get any writing done today. He spooned some Beech Nut into the filter, filled the carafe with water and waited to wake up. Jack scratched at the door and Cade let him in. He poured the breakfast kibble into his dog's bowl and watched while Jack made a chomping mess, scattering nuggets onto the linoleum like he did every morning. It was just another day. More of the same.

Yesterday had been different enough to last a lifetime.

Cade took his coffee into the dining room alcove where he'd set up his office and powered up his PC. He checked his personal mail first and was relieved there was no weepy message from Juliet proposing again. He was just congratulating himself on his lucky escape when the phone rang.

"Hey, Dee."

"Good, you're up. I shouldn't be the only one awake at this hour."

"Lindsay's still teething, huh?" Cade's cousin's little girl was an adorable imp who was now biting all and sundry with her six new teeth. She'd even taken a bite out of Jack, who had been stoic throughout the ordeal.

"Yup, and Paul's got one of those change-of-season colds, so between the snoring and the coughing and the crying I'm pretty cranky, and I wasn't too happy to get a call from your girlfriend."

Cade put his coffee down. "What?"

"Don't play dumb with me, Cade. You wrote my English term papers. I know how smart you are. She called on your old number, the Gray Matters line. I answered it like any good office manager-slash-administrative a.s.sistant-slash-bookkeeper should, even if most businesses don't open at 6:23 in the morning."

Dee never referred to herself as his secretary, and truthfully she went over and beyond any job description. She'd been enormously helpful with the expansion of his little company.

Cade grimaced "I'm so sorry, Dee. What did she want?"

"You, you big dope."

Cade felt his stomach clench. He was probably just hungry. "You didn't give her my new number, did you?"

"What do you think? I told her-very sweetly I must say, considering-that you were unavailable at that hour and she should call back after nine. Do you want me to transfer her if she calls back?"

"No! No, I really don't. Maybe you can tell her I went out of town."

"Weasel."

"Hey, whose side are you on? I told you what happened."

Deirdre sighed. "I know. The Shoe Shooter. The Flip-flop Fighter. Did you do like I told you and go see her?"

"Yeah. I saw her yesterday." He really didn't want a lecture from his little cousin on love. He clicked on to the New York Times site and tried to read the headlines while she yammered at him.