Ramon shook his head. "That's crazy. You're going to do something about it?"
"Of course, but it will take time. The man behind it is a snake. I need to handle him carefully."
"If you need anything from me, Nate, you only have to ask." Ramon looked me straight in the eye. "Anything at all."
"Thank you."
He nodded. "Anyone who hurts you or Miss Juliet will answer to me."
Well that was interesting. I'd never heard such vehemence in his voice. It made me more grateful than ever to have him by my side. Clearing my throat, I gestured toward the computer.
"Shall we get on with it?"
By the time Ramon and I had finished planning out our strategy for the next six months, the morning was gone. I returned to the house and found Juliet on the porch. Her phone was face down on the table beside her. She looked up as Iapproached, her expression revealing she already knew about the photos.
"You saw?"
"My mother sent me a link to the article," she said. "She's demanding I come home." She glanced at the phone. "Apparently it's one thing for people to think you kidnapped me but another for them to be speculating about whether or not I'm some sort of drunk you're having to take care of. She says there are some wild stories circulating, and she isn't happy."
"I guess that's what Kane wanted."
Juliet nodded. "It's so disgusting. The photo from the dance was taken from just outside the tent. Surely whoever took it was trespassing?"
"Unless it was one of the seasonal workers who was at the dance."
That was a possibility I didn't want to entertain. Having our privacy invaded by some random photographer was bad enough, but it was worse to think someone I'd welcomed onto my property could have betrayed our trust.
"I'm not going home," Juliet said, speaking more to herself than to me.
She glanced up at me, her expression hardening.
"We need to take Kane down," she said. "By the time we're finished with him, I want him to rue the day he was born."
It was almost amusing to hear this sweet woman demanding vengeance, but I didn't laugh at the vehemence in her voice. Instead I took her hand.
"We'll make him pay for all the shit he's pulled, Juliet." I squeezed her hand as I made my vow. "He won't even know what hit him."
Chapter Fifteen
Juliet
The water had gone cold by the time I thought about getting out of the bath. I was just so contented. The air smelled of the relaxing lavender oil I'd found on the shelf above the tub, and the bubbles had mostly dissolved, leaving just a faint shimmer on the surface. Outside the bathroom window, the afternoon light was flat and grey, clouds having come in over the valley sometime in the last hour. It suited my reflective mood.
Nate and I had spent the afternoon walking the trail, up through the lower vines and into the tree line where the path narrowed, and the outside world seemed to disappear. He'd taken my hand somewhere along the way, his fingers closing around mine, making me feel like we were a real couple.
We'd stopped among the trees where it was cool and quiet, the smell of pine and damp earth around us, and he'd kissed me in a way that still made my spine tingle when I thought about it. For reasons I couldn't explain, it felt like he'd laid claim to me in that moment, out there among the trees with nobody else around.
On the way back to the house, he'd pointed out the places where the property needed work before winter, a section of fence that had come loose along the eastern boundary, a spot where the path flooded when the rain came in heavy off the ridge. I'd listened and asked questions, and somewhere between the rows of vines, I realized I was happy here.
As I thought about it now, while lying in the cooling bathwater, it scared me a little to know that there were people out there who wanted to rob me of this contentment.
While I contemplated that, my phone rang. I leaned over the side of the tub and saw my friend Bea's name on the screen. Leaping from the bath so fast I sloshed water all over the floor, I snatched up the phone and answered it.
"Bea, hi."
"Finally," she said as I struggled to wrap a towel around myself with one hand. "I thought you'd fallen off the face of the earth."
"No, I haven't gone that far." I sat on the edge of the tub, water dripping from me onto the tiles. "I'm sorry I haven't called."
