Juliet's Law by Ruth Wind Page B

to look at him.
    â€œEasy.” He moved his big hand up and down her arm. “You don’t have to go anywhere. Your sister will be here in a hot second.”
    â€œI’m—this is…oh, I’m embarrassed.” She bent her head. “Thanks. I’m sorry.”
    â€œYou don’t have to apologize.” His rumbling voice again rolled down her spine, easing the tension there, and his hands kept moving on her arms in a most soothing way. Steady. Gentle. “You don’t have to say anything at all.”
    Juliet bent her head. He wore dark brown leather hiking boots, sturdy-looking with laces and hooks and eyes and a sole that looked as if it could withstand six inches of ice. Her feet in their thin California boots looked insubstantial, tiny even, and with a glimmer of pleasure, she thought one of the reasons to like a man so big was so that you could feel small next to him. And she was not normally a small woman.
    She wanted to offer an explanation, to say something to excuse her weird behavior. The flashbacks were hateful, like a scar, and it made her feel overwhelmed to imagine telling him. Where to start? “Thanks,” was all she said.
    He released her and in the next instant, Desi came out, offering breath mints to everyone. Juliet moved away, vaguely aware of him watching her. “We’d better get to the courthouse,” she said. “Get this taken care of.”
    â€œYep. Let’s do it. “
    Juliet glanced up at Josh. “See you later.”
    His eyes were steady and sober and saw far more than she wished. “Right.”
    Â 
    The homeschoolers left after their weekly practice, and Josh took advantage of the fact that he had a dayoff from his job as a tribal policeman on the reservation—they worked three on and two off—and the fact that his mother had Glory for the morning to do some cleaning at the dojo. He could have hired a service to do the work for him, but he found the rote actions of dusting, sweeping, mopping to be a healthy way to order his own mind.
    He opened the doors and windows to the blaze of fresh mountain air, sweetened by the now-melting snow. In predictable autumn capriciousness, the sun was now warm enough to warrant the dread-locked boys taking off their shirts.
    There were several layers of things on Josh’s mind this afternoon. The first was Desi and Claude. It was a dangerous situation and getting more dangerous by the hour. Until now, Claude had kept his little assignations quiet, or at least somewhat under the table, and although some of the ex-mistresses were a little volatile, Claude had managed to keep them under control. The new one, Christie Lundgren, was a well-known professional skier, a woman much younger than Claude, and well known for her scathing and destructive temper. By all accounts, she was wildly smitten with her handsome, artistic, exotic lover.
    Now Claude had gone public, humiliating Desi and, Josh was afraid, others. Claude’s layers of women were like those Russian dolls, another and another and another. Someone had been cast aside for Lundgren.
    On the plus side, Lundgren had plenty of money from endorsements, and Claude would no doubt want to keep her happy. Maybe he’d accept the restrainingorder with something resembling respect, at least until the divorce settlement could be hammered out.
    Or not.
    Trading a feather duster for a spray bottle filled with vinegar and water and a bag full of clean rags, Josh sprayed the first of the big windows in the room. It had once been a mother-in-law house behind a bungalow. Josh had knocked out most of the internal walls to open it up, and hung mirrors along the far wall. These old windows had ancient glass, with ripples and imperfections he genuinely loved, and he liked the action of making them shiny.
    The next thing on his mind was his daughter’s absolute refusal to speak of her time with her mother at all. Not with a counselor, not