Love at First Flight (15 page)

Jeremy

Juliana read the letter again. All the
things she had waited years to hear, mixed in with a few things she could have
lived forever without knowing. He had longed to be free. Free of her. And it
had taken him just two days to go out with someone else—the same day he sent
the roses. He sure had been busy that day.

After several minutes spent processing
the letter, she got up to flip the chops and pour a glass of wine. When
everything was ready, she pushed the food around on her plate without really
eating much of it. She made a plate for Michael, wrapped it in foil, and left
it in the oven on warm. The doorbell rang just as she finished cleaning up the
kitchen.

Looking through the peephole, she
swallowed hard and had to think for a second about what she should do.
Reluctantly, she opened the door.

“Who are you?” Paige asked, pushing past
Juliana. She carried a large shoulder bag and disregarded Juliana the way she
would the hired help.

Juliana cleared her throat and extended
her hand to the other woman. “I'm Michael's roommate, Juliana.”

Paige ignored her outstretched hand. “Michael
doesn't have a roommate.”

Juliana dropped her hand. “He does now.”

“Where is he?”

“At work.” Juliana noticed that Paige
still wore her enormous diamond engagement ring.

“Fine.” Paige took off her coat and
plopped down on the sofa. “I'll wait.”

“Suit yourself,” Juliana said on her way
upstairs.

“Thank you, I will,” Paige said in a
bitchy tone.

Juliana closed the bedroom door and
reached for her cell phone.

“Hey,” she said when Michael answered. “Where
are you?”

“Why? Do you miss me?”

“Really. Where are you?”

“Juliana? What's wrong?”

“Urn, Paige is here.”

He groaned. “Tell me you're kidding me!”

“Sorry.”

“Oh, God, that's the last thing I feel
like dealing with tonight.”

“I shouldn't have let her in, but I
didn't know what to do.”

“It's fine. She would've waited for me.
At least this way I'm warned. Are you okay? Was she nasty to you?”

“She wasn't thrilled to discover you
have a roommate, especially a female roommate.”

He laughed. “I don't imagine she was.
I'll be home in about fifteen minutes.”

“Should I make popcorn?”

“I'm glad you're enjoying this,” he
joked.

“I'm only kidding. I'm not enjoying it.”

“I know.”

“Michael?”

“Yeah?”

“Don't let her hit you again.”

After a long moment of silence, he said,
“I won't.”

***

Michael parked on the street and rested
his head on the steering wheel. He had put in a fourteen-hour day, and all he
wanted was to have some dinner, put his feet up, and just be with Juliana.
Instead he was steeling himself for yet another showdown with Paige.

Crossing the street and giving himself
one last moment to prepare, he stepped into the living room.

Paige jumped up. “Oh
God
, Michael! What did you do to your
hair?” She made a face. “Well, it'll grow back before the wedding.”

He counted to ten before he allowed
himself to speak. “What are you doing here?” Inside the front door, he dropped
the bag of work he hoped to get to that night and pulled off his coat.

Paige followed him into the kitchen. “Who's
that girl who says she's your roommate?”

“My roommate.” Reaching for the phone
book, he smelled something mouthwatering coming from the oven, and his stomach
let out a hungry growl. In the yellow pages, he found what he was looking for
and picked up the phone. “Yes, I need a taxi at 8 South Chester Street. Thirty
minutes? Okay. Thanks.”

“Michael, what are you doing? We need to
talk.”

“We're not going to talk, but you
are
going to listen.” He took a deep
breath to summon the calm he needed to get through this. “I'm starting what'll
probably be the biggest trial of my career on Monday. Today's Thursday. That
means the trial starts in three days.
I
do not need this right now!
So you're leaving in...” He checked his watch. “Twenty-eight
minutes. Go home and leave me alone. Am I clear? Is there
any
part of that you didn't understand?”

“Where am I supposed to go at nine
o'clock at night?”

Michael shrugged. “Not my problem.”

“I'm not leaving. The least you can do
is let me spend the night here.”

“You're not spending the night. Check
into a hotel. I don't care what you do, but you
are
leaving.”

Her eyes widened. “
Oh my God!
You've got someone else! All this time I've been in
Florida, you've been seeing someone else. She's living here!”

Michael forced himself to remain calm. “I
have
not
been seeing someone else.”

She ignored him and stormed into the
living room. “Get her down here! I want a better look at the woman who's been
fucking my fiance!”

“That's enough!” Michael's control
finally snapped. “This is my home, and I don't want you here!” He opened the
front door and tossed her bag onto the sidewalk. “I want you out.
Right now!
”

“Why? So you can fuck your whore?”

This time Michael saw it coming and
grabbed her arm in midair before her hand could make contact with his face. “I
don't think so, Paige. I let you get away with that once but not twice.” While
he had her hand he slid the engagement ring off her finger and put it in his
pocket. “I'll take that back, just so you're absolutely clear on where we
stand. Now get out.” He released her arm.

She snatched her coat off the sofa. “You'll
be sorry, Michael! You're going to regret this!”

“No, I won't.”

“Everything all right, Mr. Maguire?”
Officer Tanner asked from the sidewalk.

“It is now. Ms. Simpson was just
leaving. A taxi will be coming to get her in a few minutes.”

Paige brushed by him.

The moment she was outside Michael
slammed the door closed and leaned his head against it for a minute. He turned
around to find Juliana coming down the stairs.

She held out her arms to him.

Like a man who had found water after
forty days in the desert, he went to her.

Standing on the second stair from the
bottom, she held him close to her.

When he pulled back after several
minutes, he was able to look directly into her eyes. His hand curled around the
back of her neck, and this time when he kissed her he held nothing back. If
kissing Paige had been about fire and heat, kissing Juliana felt like coming
home. The heat was there, too, but it was almost secondary to everything else
he felt when she responded with equal ardor. Coaxing her mouth open, his heart
almost burst as her tongue tangled with his. He only ended the kiss when he
remembered what she had said about him looking for a rebound. That was the last
thing he wanted her to think.

“I'm sorry.” He leaned his forehead
against hers. “I didn't mean to do that.”

She caressed his face. “She was so
horrible to you.”

“To both of us.”

“I know. I heard.”

He winced. “I'm sorry you had to hear
that. I never saw how truly awful she can be until this last week.”

“She hid it from you.” Juliana kept her
arms around him.

“Either that or maybe I just chose not
to see it.”

“She'll get the message after tonight.
Are you all right?”

“I was all right the moment I turned
around and saw you coming down to me.” He tightened his hold on her and buried
his face in her hair.

“Michael,” Juliana said breathlessly. “I
made you some dinner.”

“I know. It smells good.” But he didn't
release her. Five minutes passed or maybe ten before he was ready to let go. “Thank
you.”

“For what?”

“For being here, for offering comfort.”
He kept an arm around her as they walked into the kitchen.

She retrieved his dinner and shut off
the oven.

“What's this?” He picked up Jeremy's
letter from the counter.

“Oh. A letter. From Jeremy.”

Michael handed it to her without looking
at it and sat down to eat. “He's not giving up either, huh?”

Juliana shook her head. “He feels really
bad about what happened last weekend.”

“It'll seem self-serving for me to say
he
should
feel bad about it. This is
fabulous, by the way. Thanks.”

“I'm glad you like it.” She brought two
glasses of wine to the table and sat with him. “He went out with someone else.”

Michael's fork froze in midair. “He
told
you that?”

“I figured out from when the letter was
written that he went on a date the same day he sent me the roses. He said the
date was awful because it wasn't with me.”

Michael took a long sip of his wine. “I
can't be a good friend to you in this situation. I can't say what I really want
to.”

“It's all right. There's nothing you
could say that I'm not already telling myself.”

He took her hand. “I'm sorry.”

“Are you?” she asked as she laced her
fingers through his and flipped her soft brown eyes up to meet his.

Michael tugged on her hand and brought
her to sit on his lap. He wrapped his arms around her. “Not really. He's a
fool. I already told you that.”

Juliana rested her head on his shoulder.
“He said he wants to fix this before I meet someone else.”

Michael kissed the top of her head. “Too
late.”

CHAPTER 14

“TELL ME MORE ABOUT YOUR FAMILY,”
JULIANA SAID. They had folded the laundry she'd done earlier and were finishing
the bottle of wine from dinner.

Michael stretched and rested his head
against the back of the sofa. He had changed into a Red Sox T-shirt and sweats.
“I told you I have three sisters, right?”

“Uh huh. Where are they now?”

“They all still live within blocks of my
parents' house in Newport, and they married guys we grew up with. Let's see,
Mary Frances is the oldest. She married John Doncaster. They have five
kids—Connor, Colm, Cormac, Catherine, and Clara,” he said, ticking off the
names on five fingers.

“I love the Irish names.”

“There're more coming. Maggie married
Luke O'Shea, and they have three kids, Patrick, Sean, and Emma. Then my sister
Shannon married Hughie Sullivan, but we're not supposed to call him Hughie
anymore. They have Lauren, Ailish, Hannah, and Grace.”

“Wow, four girls!”

Michael laughed. “I know. Hughie—I mean
Hugh—is totally overwhelmed by them. He was the roughest kid. It's so funny to
see him with all those women.”

“What are your parents like?”

“My mother, Maureen, loves being a
grandmother. She has at least three kids trailing behind her whenever she's not
working as a housekeeper for the Preservation Society. They take care of
Newport's famous mansions. My dad, Sean, is the city's deputy fire chief.”

“They must be so proud of you.”

“They are, but I think they wish I'd
married a girl from the neighborhood and stayed close by like the others did.”

“And had six Irish kids?” Juliana asked
with a teasing smile.

“I'm more than happy to let my sisters
produce the grandchildren. My dad was disappointed that I didn't follow him
into the fire department. His father, his brothers, and their sons are all
firefighters, but it just wasn't for me. I wanted to go to school.”

“Where did you go?”

“Boston College. Then I worked in Boston
for a few years to save some money before I went to law school.”

“Did you always want to be a lawyer?”

“For as long as I can remember. And I
always wanted to go to Georgetown. A recruiter came to my high school when I
was a junior, and from then on I was just hooked on Georgetown and the idea of
living in the District. I didn't get in as an undergraduate, which was bitterly
disappointing. But I kicked ass on the LSATs—the test you have to take for law
school—and got in.”

“Did it live up to your expectations?”

“Totally. I loved every minute of it.
Well, except for the nonstop studying. That got old fast, especially since I'd
had a few years off from school by then and had lost all my discipline.”

“I always wanted to go to college,” she
said wistfully.

“Why didn't you?”

“No money,” she said with a shrug. “My
dad was a bus driver for the city, so we barely had enough to make ends meet.
It also didn't help that my brother Vincent flunked out of Towson, which made
my father crazy. He would go on and on about the money he wasted. After that, I
knew he'd never pay for me to go.”