“I assume you didn’t order room service for dinner?”
“Nope.” Maybe she should. She hadn’t eaten all day, too preoccupied with the Juliet of it all.
“Maybe you shouldn’t answer.” A nervous undercurrent slipped into Emerson’s voice. “Someone random could have found out what your room number is.”
Darcy’s hand had just landed on the door handle. “I think it’ll be fine.”
Besides, she was going to peer through the hole in the door; she wasn’t insane.
“Whisper,” Emerson said back, in her own whisper. “So that they can’t hear you.”
Though a lot of Emerson’s practices were born from anxiety, she wasn’t necessarily wrong. But it was… trying… for Darcy, who did not feel that same level of concern.
If someone was at her door that she didn’t want to see, she’d tell them to get lost. If necessary, she’d call security. But nothing like that had happened to them in the last eight months.
“Whoever it is already knows I’m in here if they’re knocking,” she pointed out.
“Yes. I do know you’re there,” Juliet’s voice came from the other side of the door.
She knew what Juliet sounded like; of course she did. It would be nearly impossible for her to mistake Juliet Jacobs. But why the hell was shehere?
Darcy whipped the door open so quickly, she would have maimed herself if she didn’t slide her leg back to narrowly miss being slammed with the door at the last moment.
Standing right there in the bright lights of the hotel hallway was, indeed, Juliet.
“I guess I should have whispered,” she muttered to Emerson, flatly.
“Oh. Huh. Well. I’m going to let you go,” Emerson breathed out, her dislike of meeting new people extending to even talking to them over the phone. “Bye. And bye, um, Juliet.”
“Have a lovely evening,” Juliet returned, glancing down at the phone in Darcy’s hand.
When it was clear that Emerson had hung up, Juliet slid her gaze back to Darcy’s. She held up a large bag between them. “Can I come in?”
Darcy narrowed her eyes at the bag, suspicion crawling through her. “Why? What’s in there?”
“Dinner, what do you think?”
Darcy still didn’t step back and let Juliet enter, because this was ringing all of her alarm bells. “How would I know? You showing up on my doorstep tonight asking me to have a meal with you is one of the very last things I’d have envisioned for my evening. Unless it was poisoned.” She darted her eyes to the bag again. “… Is it poisoned?”
Juliet hummed, arching her eyebrow up at her. “And why would I tell you if I did that? An admission of guilt? How stupid do you think I am?”
“Uh, yeah, so I had been kind of kidding, but I’m actually highly suspicious, now.” Darcy thought that was very valid.
She expected Juliet to snarl at her, to throw some sort of verbal barb back at her. That was, after all, exactly how Juliet had presented herself to Darcy in the last couple of months.
But Juliet lifted her chin, her expression bafflingly placid. “It is not poison. Obviously. It’s a peace offering.”
Then, in the most perplexing move, Juliet gave her a smile that absolutelyglowedwith radiance as if to cap her statement off, as if to reassure Darcy.
It was so stunning, she felt momentarily blinded by it.
In this moment, she saw the Juliet Jacobs she’d been publicly presented with for almost a decade.
That was, of course, only for a moment. Because Darcy now knew that was a façade.
She folded her arms over her chest, holding her ground. “Juliet, can you just drop whatever sweet act you’re putting on? I really don’t have the patience for it. In fact, I’d rather you be rude to me than be fake to me.”
Even if she was on bad terms with someone, she’d rather know it than pretend and play games.
