by Sey, Susan
Color rushed into her cheeks while something both resigned and livid leapt in her eyes. Bel caught her breath and thought this is not going to make Jeff happy.
“You know what? This one’s on the house.” Audrey elbowed her boss aside and stuffed Will’s money into the breast pocket of his tux. Bel winced. There went the perfect crease she’d ironed into his hanky. “You want the truth? Okay, fine. You caught me. I lied to your brother last night. I’m not going to Tucson. Not now, not ever. It was a big, fat lie. So sue me. I didn’t figure anybody would mind. Why would they? The more we lie, the more you pay. You think all those boobs are real? The hair? The tans? The interest? Right.
“But since you’re suddenly hell-bent on the truth, try this on for size. I didn’t give your brother my number because I didn’t like him. Or you. Or your famous brother. You’re all pathetic losers with more money than class who have to pay to see a girl shake her goodies and I don’t want anything to do with you apart from dropping off your drinks and picking up my tips. Is that honest enough for you?”
Will ran his tongue over his teeth as if checking for blood. “Yeah, that ought to do it,” he said. He turned his gaze to the horrified manager. “You really get what you pay for around here, don’t you?”
Jeff grabbed Audrey by the arm. “I’m so sorry. Please excuse her behavior, gentlemen. I’ll take care of this.” He cut urgent eyes toward the nearest waiter, who trotted over to thrust a tray of champagne at the Blake brothers. He hauled Audrey off and Bel sighed, making a mental note to come back tomorrow to salvage the girl’s job if she could.
She finally caught James’ eye and he gave her the tired shrug of somebody who’d done this too often to summon up the outrage it called for. Will checked his watch, smiled and tossed back the entire glass of champagne in one swallow.
“We’re leaving,” James announced.
“So soon?” Will set aside his empty glass. “I was just hitting my stride.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I know.”
CHAPTER NINE
Will rode shotgun on the way home, his face to the window. He watched the lights of DC stream by in a fluid blur and tried to ignore the silent condemnation filling up the truck like poisonous gas. It radiated off his brothers and their pretty new nanny in thick, baffled waves, pressing him deep into his seat like one of those lead blankets they put on you at the dentist. Every time he swallowed, he tasted shame and sour champagne.
“For God’s sake,” he said finally. “It was just a stripper.”
“She,” James snapped. “Not it, Will. She. A person. A whole human being.” He steered with one hand and landed a solid punch on Will’s upper arm with the other. Will’s head threatened to split open and his stomach turned over dangerously. Fucking champagne. As a rule, he and alcohol got along just fine. Better than fine, in fact. But champagne was the exception that proved the rule, and Will added that last glass to his growing list of tonight’s regrets. “And she wasn’t a stripper. She was a waitress.”
“At a strip club.” Will felt dirty but he blanked his face and met James’ furious eyes. “Excuse me if I don’t split hairs.”
“Split hairs?” James hit him again. Will relished the pain even as he prayed not to puke on the floorboards. “Split hairs? You acted like the girl was a two dollar hooker, Will.”
“Oh spare me the outrage.” Will turned back to the window and concentrated on breathing. “If it had been you doing the asking last night instead of Drew, she’d have tucked her number into your pocket personally and given you a hand job while she was in there. So do me a favor and don’t try to pretend there’s a big moral difference between a whore and a star fucker. It’s all about currency one way or another.”
Shocked silence filled the air again, along with another dose of smothering disapproval. When, oh Jesus, when would somebody just put him out of his misery? He didn’t know how much more of himself he could take.
“Will.” Drew’s voice from the backseat was quiet. Careful. Kind. Will’s stomach cramped relentlessly and oh fuck, were those tears stinging his eyes? “What’s wrong with you?”
I don’t know.
The answer screamed itself inside his head, the words bouncing around like those bullets that exploded after impact, sending shrapnel every fucking where. But nothing came out of his mouth. Because yeah, something was wrong with him. Very wrong. And honest to God, Will didn’t know what it was.
But only because he didn’t want to know.
See, Will’s wrongness lived inside him. It was him—a monster with an appetite for destruction who lived in the darkest corner of his mental cellar. And when that kind of darkness starts creeping up the stairs and scratching at the door, what kind of idiot invites it in for a good look? Not Will. He, like any sane, rational soul, shoved it right back down the stairs. Alcohol worked nicely. Most of the time, anyway. And when it didn’t? Well, then he had to give in and feed the thing.
Often, Will could provoke one of his brothers into kicking his ass. (Usually James, as Drew had always been more inclined to laugh than punch, the lucky bastard.) His subconscious wanted pain? Blood? Destruction? Fine. Here you go. Plus it made him feel sort of normal. Brothers fought all the time, right? Nothing weird about that.
So tonight, when his beast had seized him by the throat, Will had marched off to do some damage in the sincere hope that one of his brothers would eventually consent to bust up his face for him. Unfortunately, James and Drew were too sick of him lately to even bother taking a swing. And the rest of the world was too interested in James’ money to risk punching out his asshole brother. A crazy leap of fear and pain jittered into Will’s roiling stomach and he swallowed hard. He was pushing his brothers awfully close to washing their hands of him, wasn’t he? It was like standing on the edge of a cliff, looking at the drop and wondering.
He dragged his thoughts away from that charming little precipice and sent them elsewhere.
To that little waitress. Hey, how about her? Audrey, wasn’t it? Now that girl hadn’t been afraid to take out James Blake’s big brother. She’d put up her dukes. Dropped the truth on him like a fucking guillotine and—figuratively, at least—Will’s head was still rolling across the floor.
His monster typically viewed verbal abuse as kiddie play but Audrey’s tongue-lashing had been a goddamn work of art. Her scalpel-sharp dissection of his character, plus the unholy beauty of that face calmly spitting fury? It had been like watching a cathedral burn. And it had sent his monster straight back to the cellar.
He’d have to think about that.
They hit the beltway and James laid the pedal down. The truck leapt forward and Will’s stomach cramped again. Christ. He must have made some sort of pained noise because James gave a humorless chuckle. “Serves you right, asshole.”
Will shrugged. “Your floorboards.”
“Don’t you dare.”
Will consulted his stomach. “We’ll see.”
“Fuck.”
Four hours later, Bel stood at the granite island counter, spooning loose leaf tea into a paper tea bag. It was late but she couldn’t sleep. She’d taken the time to put her own linens on the bed in the pretty room she’d chosen for herself in the east wing, but even the comfort of a familiar and elevated thread count couldn’t push her over the edge from exhaustion into sleep.
Every time she closed her eyes, all the day’s misgivings and resentments crept into her head where they started tumbling around together like a pack of cracked out monkeys. Take that along with the pointed silence emanating from the north wing where the Blake brothers had headquartered the bedlam of their lives, and suddenly Bel was dragging on her robe and padding down that ridiculous staircase—fiddledeedee, Ashley—to put on the kettle.
Well, to put on the pot, anyway. She hadn’t had time to unload her own cookware, so she was still using the single pot and pan she’d unearthed in James Blake’s gorgeous waste of a kitchen. She stared into the steady blue flame licking at the sauce pan
and twitched her shoulders under that disconcerting silence.
The Blake brothers struck her as brawlers—hadn’t they already engaged in fisticuffs over a fork, of all things? After tonight’s little showdown, Bel had expected a late night full of stomping and raging and finger pointing. Violent cursing. Possibly the punching of walls.
But no. Nothing.
Okay, not nothing exactly, Bel mused, pouring boiling water over her tea bag. The scent of citrus and vanilla billowed into the kitchen and she leaned into the steam to bask in the comfort of her favorite key-lime custom blend tea. This wasn’t just the absence of sound. It was like a vacuum. A black hole that sucked up everything in its gravitational pull, a menacing void that promised death and destruction, or at the very least, the permanent disappearance of anything unlucky enough to wander too near its sphere of influence.
She wondered briefly if she ought to keep an eye on the driveway. In case there was some furtive attempt at body disposal in the dead of the night.
Maybe one of those bodies would be James’. It was a comforting thought in her current state of mind. Not that she wanted the guy dead or anything, but if he happened to be the unlucky victim of fratricide this evening, some small, mean part of her might think that’ll teach you to play me on the red carpet, buddy. Fate might always ding the good girls, but it did occasionally ding the rich, famous and lucky, too. And if ever there was a night that James Blake deserved to get a little comeuppance, it was tonight.
Because James had played her.
Her cheeks burned as she remembered the perfect innocence and sincerity with which she’d clapped a hand to his behind. She rewound the tape in her head to that exact moment, forced herself to shove away the memory of all that warm, animal sleekness under her hand and concentrate instead on his face. She played it back frame by frame until she was sure she could see the surprise in his eyes melting into calculation and then into a self-satisfied smirk.
Because accidentally-on-purpose showing off your shorts at a gala thrown by the people who paid you to wear them was a public relations gold mine. Nobody would have been embarrassed by that blown-out seam, least of all James. He probably would have gotten a bonus out of it, for God’s sake. But she’d gone ahead and thrown herself—and, let’s be honest, her dignity—into the breach, and grabbed herself a big old handful of James Blake’s behind.
And he’d returned the favor. Her nervous system helpfully provided an instant replay of that big, hard hand cupping her own behind—
She lifted her mug for an abrupt, scalding gulp of tea, which she forced herself to swallow. That way, when heat flashed through her belly, there was a fifty-fifty chance it was from the tea rather than the memory of James’ touch. There was a certain comfort in even odds.
A comfort which evaporated when James suddenly spoke from directly behind her.
“What in the name of God is that smell?”
Her heart crashed into triple time and she clapped one hand to her chest to keep it contained. Pain, bright and burning, flashed through her other hand as tea slopped over the rim of the mug onto her fingers. She dropped the mug in order to flap her burnt fingers in the air while mentally reviewing all the curse words she’d forbidden herself to use out loud.
The mug was no match for James’ imported glazed porcelain tiles, though. It shattered, unleashing yet another wave of boiling tea in the neighborhood of Bel’s bare feet. She gathered herself for a heroic leap back, but found her feet already dangling four inches above the floor.
“Well, that was a little extreme, don’t you think?” James’ voice came, exasperated and amused, just below her ear. His hands were tough under her elbows, his body warm and strong against her back as he carted her bodily toward the sink. He flipped on the faucet and shoved her hand under the gush of cold water. “I don’t happen to care for boiled lawn clippings myself, but that doesn’t mean you can’t drink them.”
She spit a strand of hair out of her mouth and glared over her shoulder at him. “I didn’t intend to drop it, you know.”
He smiled at her, amusement crinkling the corners of those oddly changeable eyes of his, and she was suddenly aware that he hadn’t let her go. Water flowed over their joined hands under the tap while his body nestled comfortably up against her backside. A warmth snaked into her belly that had nothing to do with the recent misapplication of hot tea to her person, so she concentrated on the painfully cold water running over her burns instead.
“Tossed it on a whim, then, did you?” He studied her gravely. “Wouldn’t have pegged you for the impulsive type.”
She glared at him. “I’m not. And if you’d had the manners to announce your presence instead of sneaking up behind me, I wouldn’t have burned myself. Nor would I have had cause to smash the single mug you seem to own.”
“Oh. Well, that’s too bad about the mug.” He pursed up that perfect mouth of his and considered this. Then he peeked over her shoulder and down the front of her robe. “But there are benefits to doing it my way, too.”
Bel glanced down, then seized her gaping lapels together with her free hand. She was wearing a t-shirt under the robe, but it was old and baggy, and from that angle, he’d probably gotten a decent look straight down it. And since Will likely had a point about the—what had he had called them? Star fuckers?—James had probably seen down a whole lot of women’s shirts. Which meant he was used to ogling a female landscape quite different from the flat, prairie-like expanse of blinding white skin she’d just treated him to. But that was no excuse for mocking her. Benefits, indeed.
“I beg your pardon,” she said stiffly. “I realize my dress is inappropriate. I didn’t anticipate company.” She stepped to the side, putting a few badly needed feet of space between her and the easy strength of his body.
“Now, now. No need to poker up. I was just having some fun with you.” He gave her that shucks, ma’am grin she was starting to dislike heartily, flipped off the water and passed her a dishtowel. He nodded toward her hand. “That going to be all right?”
She patted her hand dry, gave it a quick glance and shrugged. “Of course. I bake for a living. I get worse than this twice a week.”
He reached for the hand in question, and though her impulse was to snatch it back and run screaming for the safety of her bedroom, she figured that might be overreacting. And revealing. James clearly had some sort of investment in keeping her off balance, and if she kept stuttering and blushing every time he touched her it would only encourage him to keep it up.
So she gritted her teeth and let him take her hand. It looked small and white against the tanned expanse of his big and blocky palm. Brick layer’s hands, she thought for no reason she could imagine. But his fingers were gentle as they brushed over each scar and nick, learning them as if by Braille.
“You work hard,” he said.
“I do,” she said, and admired her tone. Brisk, appropriate, completely unrattled. Which was great, because her belly was flipping around inside her like a trout. God, when was he going to let go of her hand?
“What’s this one?” He brushed his thumb along a white scar on the inside of her wrist and sent her heart trundling into her throat.
“I, uh, cozied up to a 500 degree oven without an oven mitt.”
“And this?” He trailed a finger along a thin line crossing the knuckle of her index finger.
“That would be my Wusthof.” One dark brow arched into the sunny spill of hair over his forehead and she said, “My first really nice chef’s knife. It cost the world, or so I thought at the time. I julienned everything for weeks.”
“Including yourself?”
“Sadly, yes. But I still have that knife.”
He smiled at her, delighted. “You’re a tool girl.”
That smile, she thought, a little dazed. So easy and sunny and thought-stealing. The way he focused it on her. She was starting to understand how women looked at this man and decided, in spite of all the red flags, to take a flier.
; “Not normally, no,” she said, gripping her focus with both hands. “But this is a Wusthof. A ten incher. It’s a beauty.”
He just kept smiling at her and Bel wondered if she’d missed something, some subtext of the conversation that made it her turn to keep talking. It wouldn’t surprise her. She knew she wasn’t exactly a sophisticate. Getting where she was had required the kind of 24/7 focus that hadn’t left any time for learning the art of light flirtation.
Not that what James did could be called light. The guy laid on the charm the way the Kate Every Day makeup artists troweled on the foundation. If she was going to survive this job and get her career back—get her life back—she was going to have to learn to either shrug it off or convince him to stop laying it on her in the first place.
Which reminded her. She ought to at least try to get her hand back.
She gave it an experimental tug but he held fast, still grinning that sunny grin at her. The urge to smile back was overpowering.
Cripes, Bel, she thought. Snap out of it.
“What?” she asked. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
He blinked, then shook his head. “Sorry. You were saying?” His grin went a little sheepish around the edges. “I kind of lost focus right after you said ten incher.”
“Oh, for pity’s sake.” She yanked her hand back.
“What? I’m a guy.”
“Maybe you haven’t noticed,” she said. “But that I’m a guy thing? Eventually, it wears pretty thin. People get tired of it, usually by the time you hit thirty or so. Then they expect you to get over being a guy so you can be a man instead.”
“A man, huh?” His eyes lit with interest and something else Bel couldn’t identify. But it made her want to step back when he stepped forward.
“Yes,” she said, though it came out a little breathless. Space. She needed space. She’d never liked people crowding her, particularly not men. She edged backward only to discover the cool press of the countertop against the small of her back. “That’s why I’m here,” she said, a little desperately. “To help you.”
