by Sey, Susan
Okay, so maybe they were Norman Rockwell as interpreted by Jackson Pollack. Bel forced herself to fork up a mouthful of potatoes, chew and swallow. If Kate’s example was anything to go by, pending unpleasantness was no excuse to ruin a perfectly good meal.
After a decent interval, Kate mercifully laid down her silverware. “Belinda,” she said. “Shall we have coffee?”
“Of course.” Bel leapt to her feet to clear the table. She laid out a platter of pretty cookies and dealt out tiny china cups of strong black coffee, then sat down and willed her heartbeat to level out so she wouldn’t pass out and miss Kate’s forthcoming speech. From a purely clinical perspective, it was bound to be a doozy. Not to be missed.
On a personal level, she’d rather have a root canal sans Novocain.
“I understand we have a new addition to the household,” Kate said, smiling benignly down the table at Audrey. Audrey kept her eyes glued to her coffee cup. Smart girl, Bel thought.
“Yes,” James said. “You’ve met Audrey Bing. My new personal assistant.”
“Lovely to meet you,” Kate said.
“Thank you, ma’am,” Audrey said, studiously ignoring Drew’s bolstering smile and Will’s open sneer.
Kate turned back to James. “Whatever prompted you to hire a new assistant? Was Bel not adequate to your needs?”
“Bel’s doing fine,” Drew piped up loyally.
“You bet,” Will said. He gave Bel a broad wink. “Bel’s the cat’s pajamas.”
“But?” Kate’s smile crystallized, its edges suddenly razor sharp.
“But I owed Miss Bing a job.” James smile was steady and, at least to Bel’s eye, sincere.
“Why is that?”
“There was an incident a week or so back. My brother Will, in a fit of misguided loyalty, made a scene at Miss Bing’s place of employment.”
Will raised his glass in silent salute to Audrey then tipped a good ten ounces of wine down his throat. Audrey’s army of meat cubes advanced inexorably on her mashed potatoes.
“Yes?” Kate rested her chin on her folded hands and blinked attentively. “Go on.”
James lifted one shoulder in an easy shrug.
“Said scene resulted in Miss Bing’s being dismissed with some abruptness. When I ran into her again yesterday, I felt fate was reminding me of my duty to make amends.”
“Surely Miss Bing’s engagement into one of our state’s more prominent families assured you of her wellbeing?”
James’ brows came down. “I don’t like to talk out of school, Ms. Davis. You’ll have to ask Miss Bing about her engagement.”
Kate turned to Audrey.
“My personal life is none of your business,” Audrey said, her voice flat and final. “I won’t talk about it with you or anybody else at this table.”
“She will, however, let the occasional big tipper have a gander down her shirt,” Will said. Audrey ignored him without effort.
“All right, dear,” Kate murmured to Audrey, a spark of approval in her dark eyes. “That’s fine.” She turned back to James. “So we’ll just take it on faith, shall we, that your motives for airing Miss Bing’s dirty laundry to the point of forcing her fiancé to abandon her were pure?”
James cast a dark look toward Will. “I won’t say I approve of the methods, but I can’t argue with the outcome. We were worried about Miss Bing and wanted to make sure we hadn’t done her any lasting damage with our stupid antics last week. But nothing we saw or heard yesterday eased our minds on that score. My attempts at private conversation dead ended, so Will got involved and the conversation went a bit more public.”
Beside Bel, Audrey stiffened, the tendons in her neck visible from the corner of Bel’s eye. She wanted to pat the girl’s hand and say I know. They’re unbelievable, aren’t they?
“A bit more public?” Kate said. “What a charming euphemism for a public shouting matching that ended in a broken engagement.”
James inclined his head. “Thank you.”
“Am I to understand,” Kate said, “that you’re pleased with your performance?”
James cast a glance toward Audrey who ignored him. Good for you, Bel thought. Let him twist a little.
“Like I said, I’m sorry for the discomfort I’ve caused, but I do believe I did the right thing.”
“And that’s enough for you?” Kate asked. “Doing the right thing?”
“My conscience is clear, Ms. Davis.”
“Of course it is, dear. But what about the burden clearing it places on others?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean your stubborn insistence on doing the right thing—” She bracketed the words in finger quotes. “—comes at a heavy cost to everybody else. A cost which you’ve blithely failed to consider. Your conscience is easy, but at what price to your loved ones? Or even strangers?”
“I don’t know what else you want from me, Ms. Davis. I mean, I know it doesn’t always show, but my folks did raise me to be a gentleman,” James said. “When it comes to women, I open doors, I say ma’am and do whatever’s in my power to protect them from harm.”
“Including driving off a man whose proposal of marriage she’d already accepted because you didn’t approve?”
James waved a lazy hand through the air. “Proposal, hell. The girl was auctioning off her hand in marriage to the highest bidder. If her heart’s broken, you can call me David Beckham.”
Will jabbed his wineglass toward Bel. “And she can be Posh.”
Kate ignored him. Will shrugged and drained the glass. He reached for the wine bottle but Audrey reached out and knocked it over.
“Oops.” She gave him a sticky smile as wine bled into the white tablecloth. “I’m so clumsy.” Her movements were a minor miracle of grace and efficacy when she snatched the empty glass from his fingers and replaced it with her own untouched cup of steaming coffee. “Here. It’s fresh. Have a cookie.” And shut up. The subtext rang loud and clear for Bel. She gave Audrey a grateful glance but the girl had already gone back to silent tablecloth gazing.
Bel pressed her napkin over the spilled wine and made a mental note to hit it with soda water as soon as Kate stopped dancing around and delivered the death blow.
“Such concern for womankind,” Kate said to James, her voice a low coo of admiration that had Bel’s stomach twitching. Yep, she thought. Here it comes now. “So rare and commendable.”
“Thank you,” James said, his eyes wary.
“Your parents must be so proud.”
“If they were still alive, I’m sure they would be.”
“Your parents would have approved, then, of the series of high-profile one night stands you’ve indulged in these past dozen years or so? In which you’ve been partnered by a string of anonymous women who want nothing more than to bask temporarily in the glow of your fame and the luxury of your money?”
“Hey!” James sat up, stung. “I’m no Boy Scout, but I do not pay for sex.”
Kate laughed lightly. “Of course you do. Not in an actual cash transaction probably, I’ll grant you that. But you think those women aren’t getting paid? You don’t think they’re getting something they need from you? Or do you think they’re all just slayed by your personal charm?”
James gave her a roguish smile. “Well, I am a handsome devil.”
Kate engaged in a polite silence.
Bel closed her eyes and covered them with her hands. She couldn’t watch this anymore. It was like Wild Kingdom when the lions toyed with the baby gazelles. Just cruel.
Finally, Kate pushed to her feet and said, “Belinda, dear. You did everything you could with the materials at hand. The Quists were understandably angry with your overall performance but did admit that the food was outstanding. I’ll give you credit for actually teaching Mr. Blake to cook, and I’ll give you, Mr. Blake, credit for insisting that your brothers join you in relearning the fine art of service.
“This credit, however, is far outweighed by the utter disregard
you’ve demonstrated for Miss Bing’s intellect and autonomy. Offering her a replacement job doesn’t negate the sheer, persistent self-centeredness which made it necessary for you to do so, and I’m not inclined to overlook this.
“Belinda, I’m giving you a guarded pass. But I’m not entirely pleased. However, you, Mr. Blake? You have failed.”
James put a hand to his heart as if wounded. Bel sucked in a deep breath and said, “Thank you, Kate. I’ll do better next time.”
“I’m sure you will, dear,” Kate murmured.
“What is next time?” James asked.
“I’m so glad you asked,” Kate said, her tone indicating that rushing her was perhaps not James’ wisest course of action at the present time. “Given your bent for valuing your own comfort over that of society, this is a particularly appropriate task.” Her smile was wide and put Bel in mind of crocodiles. “You’re going to jail, Mr. Blake.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Monday morning, Bel and James reported to jail as promised. The metal doors clanged shut, sealing them into the Virginia Penal system until further notice. Bel’s stomach took a sick lurch and her intellect switched off just like that. Fifteen years of rummaging around her emotional closet for a party dress, she thought on a bright surge of panic, fifteen years of wearing the damn thing until it was second nature. How could all that protection, all that insulation disappear in a single heart beat?
But the hows and whys hardly mattered. Bel was thirteen again and the animal inside her she’d hoped never to see again—never to need again—was free.
“Good morning,” the woman who’d buzzed them in said. She was tall but soft-looking, with dove colored curls that framed a kind face and smiling eyes. Bel wasn’t fooled. The kind-looking ones hit the hardest. Or maybe it just felt harder against the illusion of mercy. Didn’t matter. Bel knew better than to believe in kind eyes.
The woman gave each of their hands a brisk shake and said, “I’m Jemma Halliday, Educational Director here at County Correctional School for Girls. You’ll want to see the kitchens first, I imagine?”
The animal inside her head whispered hide and Bel obeyed. She scraped every trace of emotion off her face, deadened her eyes and pulled her real self back as far as she could manage. “Fine,” she murmured.
Ms. Halliday nodded firmly, then set off down the hall. The familiar scent of commercial disinfectant had memory snarling and snapping against the locks Bel had buried it under years ago, but her body moved automatically, falling in behind the woman.
Beside her, James tucked his hands into his pockets and tackled the hall at his usual loose-limbed amble, his running shoes a merry squeak against the dull gray tile. His shaggy head swiveled around, taking in the sights with his typical delighted curiosity. It’s reform school, Bel thought, bitterness a vile pressure in her throat. Not fucking Disney.
They followed Ms. Halliday down the winding, windowless hall. Funny, Bel thought. If somebody had asked her even yesterday to name all the little tricks she’d used to get through those two hellish months she’d spent in juvenile hall at thirteen, she’d have come up empty. Genuinely empty. But those plots and charms and stratagems hadn’t been lost. No, indeed. Only hiding.
Because she suddenly found herself walking lightly, her hands held loose and empty, her balance constant, her shoulders tense. She found herself failing to focus on any one object, sacrificing detail for a more acute awareness of movement and change in the entire picture. Her skin tingled with the vicious awareness of each current of air, her entire system on red alert for the tell-tale shock and crackle in the atmosphere that always preceded random violence.
“Hey. Bel.” She turned and found James’ eyes on her. “You all right?”
She shored up her whatever face. “Of course,” she said.
He frowned at her but she refocused on pacing the warden. Because Educational Director, her ass. Bel didn’t care what the woman called herself. She knew a warden when she saw one.
Inside her, the animal chanted. Focus. Smell. Sense. Be aware. Be prepared. Be swift and merciless.
Survive.
“These are our culinary arts stations,” the warden said. She swiped her name badge across an infrared reader and the knob gave way with a shrill beep. She pushed open the metal door and waved Bel and James inside. Bel smiled politely and put a hand on the door behind Warden Halliday’s back.
“Go ahead,” she said.
The warden’s smile didn’t budge but something flickered in her eyes. Awareness. Recognition.
Good, the animal whispered. She knows what you are now.
James sailed into the classroom without hesitation. The warden inclined her head at Bel—perhaps in thanks, but more likely in acknowledgment—and followed him.
Bel followed them both and pulled the door shut behind her.
James surveyed the neat kitchenette. It could have been lifted right out of the little rambler where he’d grown up in West Texas, all the way down to the sparkly Formica counters. Little bitty four-top electric range, oven just big enough for a twelve pound turkey. Any bigger and Dad had to do the drumsticks on the grill in the yard.
Harvest gold sink, laminate cabinets, dorm-style fridge under the counter. Four identical set ups in each corner, connected by a big old octopus of duct work overhead. To satisfy code, he assumed, though barely. He and his brothers had built sturdier go-karts.
He turned to grin at Bel. “Hey, check this out! We used to have this exact same—”
Bel was gone.
Oh, physically, she was standing right next to him. He could have nudged her with his elbow if he’d wanted to. If he’d thought it would do the trick. But her attention hadn’t wandered. She was simply gone. The spirit or energy or whatever you wanted to call the thing that inhabited a person’s body and made them, well, them? Bel’s had vacated the premises.
His breath caught in his throat and an exquisite sense of loss gripped him. Which was stupid. Because he’d gone nearly thirty years without knowing Bel even existed and had gotten along just fine. And suddenly, the girl tunes out for a spell and he’s panicking?
Stupid.
But his lungs refused to receive that message. They stayed hot and tight, enough that he had to really reach for a normal tone when he said, “Bel?”
She turned to him, her face a polite question. But her eyes—those deep, warm eyes that never failed to entertain, to challenge, to engage—were empty and blank. “Yes?”
James flicked a concerned glance at the principal lady who’d led them in. She stood watching Bel, her face stoic, her eyes full of compassion.
“It’s a little dated, I know,” Jemma Halliday said. “But we’re mainly concerned with domestic functionality. Many of our girls come in here having, literally, never boiled water. When they leave, most of them can manage a chicken breast and some frozen peas. The sort of level you’re operating at is going to be something of a stretch for our girls, I’m afraid.”
Bel turned that awful plastic face on her. “That’s fine,” she said. “We’re not asking anybody to produce a state dinner. What I have in mind, however, is going to require a more commercial set up.”
“Commercial?” The principal’s silvery brows drew together but she looked more wary than puzzled. “I thought you were teaching the girls how to cook?”
“I am. But not for themselves.” Bel waved a hand at the kitchenette James had enjoyed so much a minute ago. “I have a client who’s expecting two hundred mini cakes—one for each place setting at her wedding—by the weekend. Your girls will be helping to fulfill that contract.”
“I see.” Ms. Halliday put a hand to her throat, as if she habitually wore pearls. But there was no moonlight or magnolia in her voice when she said, “I’m afraid I misunderstood. When I spoke to Ms. Davis, she implied you would be covering life skills for the girls, not using them as cheap labor.”
“I will be teaching them life skills,” Bel said.
“I fail to see how
producing hundreds of tiny cakes is going to help my girls budget for groceries or prepare balanced meals for themselves and whoever else they find themselves responsible for down the road.”
James had to give the woman credit. She might look soft but she had backbone. And she was not pleased at the idea that Bel might be taking advantage of an already abused population.
“Ms. Halliday,” Bel said, “your girls don’t give a crap about balanced meals.”
James gave a snort of startled laughter. The principal lifted a brow his direction and he said, “I’m sorry. But she said...” He petered off. “Nothing. Excuse me. Please go on.”
He shook his head. Bel West, saying crap to perfect strangers. Good lord, what next? Rivers running bloody? Plagues of locusts? Thunderstorms of frogs?
Bel went on as if James hadn’t just suffered a minor seizure. “What your girls care about is a) getting out of here, and b) getting paid. You want to play Holly Homemaker with them, fine. I’ll leave defrosting peas to you. But I’m here to give them some experience that could open doors for them that don’t lead to jail, the morgue or welfare.” The smile she gave the woman was the barest curve of her lips. No dimples at all. James hated that smile. “And to do that, I’ll need your kitchen. The real one.”
James turned to the principal to see what the estimable Ms. Halliday thought of the bite in Bel’s voice and the ice in her smile but Ms. Halliday didn’t look offended so much as thoughtful. She returned Bel’s flat gaze with measured consideration.
“Fine,” she said finally. She snapped off the fluorescent lights and led them back into the hallway. “The kitchen isn’t a secure location, though. You’ll require supervision.”
“Will I?”
The principal gave Bel that look again, all neutral features and sad eyes. “It’s for everybody’s safety, Miss West.”
“Of course,” Bel murmured.
James wondered what the hell they were talking about.
James was no amateur when it came to sexually aggressive women. He’d survived a dozen years on the pro football tour of England and Europe. He’d been groped, propositioned, flashed and stalked by hundreds of determined women over the years.
