Taste for Trouble (Blake Brothers Trilogy)

by Sey, Susan

  Wrong.

  Because this kiss, unlike the first one, wasn’t just an exercise in excellent kissing as performed by an expert. No, indeed. It had still broken over her head like a rogue wave, no argument. But it was no generic, I’m-a-boy-you’re-a-girl-let’s-have-fun sort of kiss. This time it was personal. Unequivocally so.

  This time it was James kissing Bel. Watching her, touching her, absorbing her, cherishing her. Throw that on top of what her admittedly limited experience with such things led her to believe were masterly skills, and Bel was suddenly fumbling for landmarks on a previously well-lighted path. A path that led directly to her own custom-designed happy ever after, in which Prince Charming and the fairy godmother had been replaced by a well-diversified stock portfolio and a whole bunch of job security.

  And that pissed her off. She’d worked herself ragged forging that path. Who the hell was James Blake to knock her off it?

  The doorbell rang again. “Stand By Your Man.” Bel snorted in disgust. Stand by your man, indeed. Ha. Like she was going to waste any time or energy standing by James Blake. Hadn’t she just spent an hour this very afternoon explaining to him that his casual, no harm/no foul, we’re all grownups here approach to sex was wrong? That it hurt vulnerable women? What possible excuse could she have for wanting to be one of those women?

  The doorbell rang again—“I Fall to Pieces,” fabulous—and Bel stomped out of the kitchen. First thing in the morning she was having a come to Jesus meeting with James and his brothers in which they would be made to understand that she was not their damn butler. She strode down the short hallway into the soaring foyer, still shaking her head in disgust, and pulled open the door.

  Audrey Bing stood on the porch.

  “Audrey?” She checked her watch. Ten past midnight. “What are you doing here?”

  She gave Bel a grim smile. “Can we come in?”

  We? Bel glanced down and found a suitcase at Audrey’s knee and a little girl holding her hand. The girl gazed up at Bel, her face round and expressionless. No, Bel realized, her heart clutching. The kid had expression. She just didn’t have any expectations. She watched Audrey and Bel with a dispassion that spoke of a lifetime—albeit a short one—of disappointed expectations and adults that didn’t behave.

  Bel looked back at Audrey and saw a bewildered, hunted weariness behind the perfect bones and the brash courage. She smiled at them both and reached for Audrey’s suitcase.

  “Of course,” she said, leading them into the kitchen. She deposited them both on stools on the far side of the massive island counter. Audrey sat carefully, as if worried she might shatter if she moved too quickly. The child simply followed.

  Bel’s heart squeezed as she put on the kettle and took out a couple of china plates. She tore off two generous hunks of the bread wreath and reached into the fridge for a dish of whipped honey butter she’d made up earlier. She slid the plates under their noses.

  “Eat,” she said, keeping her voice carefully brisk, matter-of-fact. She knew exactly how frightening overly hearty strangers were to kids with eyes like those. “I’m going to tackle these dishes, then we’ll see about making up a room for you two.”

  She ran a sink full of hot sudsy water and slowly washed and dried her measuring cups and spoons, her mixing bowls and loaf pans. She brushed the cornmeal off her bread stone that still radiated warmth and comfort, and tucked it back into the oven. Bel had some questions that surely needed answers, but getting this child fed and into bed came first.

  Then she glanced at Audrey, whose head drooped on her slender neck like a flower after the rain.

  She’d get her answers in the morning.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Will missed the old days. He held the memory of them in his heart like a warm pebble, heating him up from the inside out as he padded down the chilly stairs in the half-light of early morning. The days when they all rolled out of bed at the civilized hour of ten and a motherly housekeeper with a tidy British accent had mugs of coffee steaming in their hung over hands by 10:05.

  God, he missed that housekeeper. Mrs. Brimley. Now there was a domestic diva. Somebody sweet and round and unflappable. Somebody who didn’t frown or criticize or judge or fix. Somebody who wouldn’t balk at meeting last night’s stripper over this morning’s breakfast.

  Somebody who sure as hell wouldn’t go around kissing her clients. Bel could take a memo on that one. Because whatever she’d done to James yesterday had him twisted up but good. Good enough that he’d been up at dawn, banging around in his room for several extremely loud minutes before finally (to Will’s everlasting relief) locating his running shoes and trotting off down the drive.

  Not that Will believed Drew’s bullshit about love for one minute. It wasn’t love. That was fairytale foolishness. But it was something. Something worrisome enough to have a full two-thirds of the Blake brothers up well before their preferred hour.

  And Will knew exactly where to place the blame.

  Bel.

  The least she could do was be awake and in the kitchen when he got there. Preferably with a pot of coffee already brewing, because he hated to yell at people first thing in the morning without the benefit of caffeine.

  He idly calculated the odds of this happening as he hit each chilly step with his bare feet. The probability that she was already awake times the probability that she was in the kitchen times the probability that she, as a tea drinker, would have thought to brew a pot of coffee. It wasn’t a complex equation but the results were damned depressing.

  He pushed through the swinging door into the kitchen. At this point, he’d settle for opening the pantry and finding some Lucky Charms. The cereal shelf had become decidedly fiber-focused since Bel’s arrival. He’d have to speak to James’ new assistant about that.

  He smirked to himself in the dimness. Assistant. Ha. He had to hand it to James. He had a knack for lining up the pretty women to do his bidding. Too bad he was so twisted up over Bel. Shame to put the curvy little stripper on the back burner. He’d take a crack at her himself except that she was what, twelve? And the fact that he’d looked closely enough to notice had him feeling more than a little skeevy. And every one of his thirty years.

  He slowed as he approached the island counter. A cloth-covered basket sat in the center, with a note pinned to it that read Eat Me. Will squinted at Bel’s clean, elegant printing. Obvious reference to Alice in Wonderland, yes, but also a sneaky little kiss off to the next guy who stomped into her kitchen looking for a fight.

  Eat me. An unwilling smile tugged at the corners of his lips as he uncovered the basket. Bel might be a pain in the butt, but she was sharp. He’d give her that.

  And, he was suddenly willing to admit, she was damn good at what she did. The scent of sugar and butter and cinnamon rose up and curled around him like a lover and he helped himself to a cinnamon roll the size of his fist.

  He chewed blissfully, his mood going the same direction as his blood sugar. He was headed for the coffee maker when a tiny noise had him turning to peer into the shadows behind the kitchen door. When he registered what he was seeing, shock had him accidentally swallowing an uncomfortably large chunk of half-chewed sweet roll. Because, damn and what the hell, there was a kid over there.

  She sat in what Bel called the breakfast nook—a sort of built-in bench-and-table deal in the space behind the swinging door. Nobody used it because the island counter was so much more appealing, but she’d squirreled herself away back there. Barricaded herself, actually. It was as if she’d made herself a little fortress of it and stared at him from the safety of its walls.

  “What the hell?” Will said. She gazed at him with enormous eyes, the fragile bones of her face pressed tightly against parchment paper skin, a pair of delicate hands frozen above another of Bel’s gooey hunks of cinnamon goodness. He pressed a fist to the wad of dough lodged in his chest and tried to think of something more appropriate to say. Because judging from her silence, the kid wasn’t biting on
his opener.

  “Who are you?” he finally managed. It seemed like an appropriate if not particularly polite question. “And what on God’s green earth are you doing in here?”

  She continued the silent staring but her hands flew into action like startled birds. She folded up the edges of the paper napkin she’d been eating from, bundled away the remains of her roll and deposited it neatly on the edge of the table, ready for trash pickup.

  Will watched, struck. Those hands. Those skinny wrists. He frowned at her. “Do I know you?”

  She shook her head hard and scooted off the bench.

  “Hey, wait!” Will scrambled around the island counter and caught her by one bony elbow before she could disappear. “You’re not going anywhere. Not until you tell me who you are and what you’re doing in my kitchen.”

  She turned and glared at him, fury and terror and hate exploding behind those giant eyes and a shock of recognition stabbed through Will, all the way to his bare toes.

  He wasn’t at all surprised when Audrey Bing flew through the door next, a raggedy t-shirt skimming high on a pair of gloriously naked thighs. A t-shirt that barely—sadly—covered her world-class backside. And yeah, Will felt like a lech for even noticing. He ought to be several years past lusting over women who couldn’t legally drink.

  “Let go of her!” She snatched the child out of Will’s already slack grip and glared at him. Which made two pairs of matching violet eyes drilling him with their laser beams of anger and dislike.

  Will held up his empty hands in surrender and backed away slowly. Audrey pressed the kid to her chest—a pang of envy Will would have preferred to skip raced through him at the sight—then pulled away and looked down into the child’s face. “Are you all right, honey? He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

  The kid shook her head slowly and Audrey brought a hand up to her thin cheek. “Just scared you, then.”

  The kid glanced at Will, assessing this time. She turned back to Audrey and rolled a shoulder as if to say nothing serious. Audrey tucked the kid under her arm and turned contemptuous eyes on Will.

  “Don’t you ever,” she said, each word flash-frozen and carefully enunciated so as to prevent any possible misunderstanding, “ever put your hands on this child again.”

  Will stared at her. He’d been well aware that Audrey Bing was an ethereally, incandescently beautiful woman. No surprises there. And while some women became exponentially less attractive when pissed, Audrey, sadly, wasn’t one of them. Will had learned that one first hand on a few different occasions now.

  But he’d never seen her in a killing fury before. Not like this. Logically, a woman gunning for blood ought to put a guy off. At the very least, it ought to dampen a smart man’s libido. And while his brain had never failed Will before, it failed him now.

  He opened his mouth to respond but nothing fired. No words presented themselves, no dry, cutting rejoinder the likes of which he’d always prided himself on. He couldn’t look at her and think all at the same time. It was too much.

  He finally tore his eyes away and muttered, “I wasn’t molesting her. Jesus.” He winced inwardly. God. Could he possibly sound any sulkier or more defensive?

  “I’m serious,” Audrey snapped. “You don’t touch her. Not for any reason.”

  He forced himself to focus on tiny imperfections in her face and figure. The imprint of the sheet on her cheek. The weed whacker scramble of her moonlight hair. Anything to lessen the monstrous impact of standing two feet from her barely covered curves and the terrible beauty of her face.

  “My apologies,” he said, a deliberately mocking edge to his voice. “I wasn’t aware that we’d experienced an infestation of free-range children over night. She surprised me.” He shifted his gaze to the child. God, how old was this kid? She was tiny but those eyes were ancient and wise and incredibly sad. “As I’m sure I did her.”

  Again, the thin shoulder twitched up and down, an acknowledgement or possibly a non-verbal whatever.

  “But I’d still like to know who she is and what exactly she’s doing here.” Will brought his eyes back to Audrey’s, prepared this time for the breath-stealing punch of that face of hers. “And you. Last time I checked, you were an hourly employee. When it comes to making our lives a regimented and nutritionally sound snoozefest, Bel has the night shift.”

  Audrey gave that same impatient shoulder twitch, one more nail in the coffin Will was building in his head. “Things have changed. I’ll be discussing my new terms with your brother this morning.”

  “Interesting,” Will said, careful to ensure that his tone would imply just the opposite. “And this?” He gestured to the child.

  “This,” Audrey said, her chin hiked into the air, disdain oozing from her perfect pores, “is Jillian. She’s eight years old and she’s—” She broke off, glanced down at the child and lightly fluffed her silvery hair. Hair only a few tones lighter than Audrey’s own. She looked back at Will and said simply, “She’s mine.”

  “Yours.” In spite of everything—the hair, the eyes, those bony, fragile little wrists—he mustered up a skeptical look. “And you’re how old?”

  She gazed at him, temper still licking in her eyes but banked now. Under control. “Twenty-two.”

  He’d always liked math. It was so rigid, so predictable. So unflinching. Emotion simply didn’t factor in. Or so he’d always thought. Right up until he did the inevitable calculation—the one she must’ve seen in thousands of eyes over the years—and arrived at the conclusion that she’d given birth at fourteen.

  He knew it happened. It was a sad story, no question, but one he’d heard before. What shocked him was the dark stab of helpless fury that lodged itself in his gut. The miserable, impotent rage of knowing that some sick bastard had taken such vicious advantage of a child. Any child, of course. But the child Audrey must have been? Her body slim and unformed and graceful, her face already glowing like some kind of fucking star?

  “Mine,” she said firmly. “Any other questions you want to ask that are none of your business?”

  “I do have a few,” he said, but broke off when Bel burst through the door. Even panting and flushed from what he assumed was her sprint down the stairs, she still managed to exude an air of calm competence.

  “Good morning, Will. I see you’ve met Jillian,” she said, her voice as smooth as her glossy ponytail.

  “Yep,” Will said. “Audrey and I were just talking about how exactly she came to have an eight-year-old—”

  He broke off again as James shoved through the door, red-cheeked and sucking wind. “Good lord,” he said, and bent at the waist. “It’s a party.” He patted Bel on the leg. It was all he could reach, Will could see that. Nothing personal but Bel still jumped about out of her skin.

  “Water,” he said. “Please.”

  Bel moved toward the sink with an alacrity that had a grim satisfaction moving through Will. Maybe she’d tied James up in knots, but at least she wasn’t enjoying it. Looked like she had a few knots of her own to untangle. Which she deserved.

  She thrust a glass of water into James’ seeking hand. He straightened up, drained it in one long swallow and plopped down on the tile floor to stretch.

  “God,” he said, going to work on his hamstrings. “When did I get this old? I used to run ten miles for fun. I got to six today before I decided I didn’t feel like barfing before breakfast.”

  He grinned up at the assembled crowd. “Hey, Audrey,” he said. “You’re early today.” He turned his attention to Will. “You, too. What’s got you out of bed at this hour?”

  “There was this ungodly racket in the room next to mine about an hour ago,” he said. “You can’t imagine. Impossible to sleep through.”

  James’ grin widened. “How rude. You ought to speak to the management. She’s up early, too.”

  Bel put up her hands. “Not my issue. I don’t deal with that wing of the house.”

  James stood and grabbed the island counter for balance whi
le he worked on his quads. “Out of luck, I guess. Too bad.” He turned his attention to Jillian. “Hey, who’s this?” He gave her his usual high-wattage smile, as if finding a silent eight-year-old in his kitchen along with half his family and most of his staff at seven a.m. was par for the course.

  Audrey drew the child closer to her side. “This is Jillian.”

  “Hey, Jillian.” James switched legs. “I’d shake but I’m disgusting. Did I mention I ran six miles?”

  Will rolled his eyes and Jillian nodded, a faint smile flickering at the corners of her mouth. Audrey knelt down and took her by the shoulders.

  “Jillian, do you mind going back upstairs with Bel for a few minutes? I need to speak with James.”

  The little girl glanced at Bel, who smiled encouragingly at her. She kept her hands to herself, though, Will noticed. Something he kind of wished he’d done himself, now. The kid’s wide-eyed silence was starting to put another kink in his stomach, the kind he’d felt when he’d done Audrey’s math a minute ago. What had happened to this kid? And why the hell hadn’t her mother, who by God ought to know better by now, protected her?

  “I need to get dressed,” Bel said to Jillian. “You want to help me pick out something to wear? I can never decide.”

  Jillian turned uncertain eyes on Audrey who nodded firmly. “Bel’s okay,” she said. “She’ll take good care of you. I’ll be up in a minute.”

  Jillian gave that one-shouldered shrug again and followed Bel out the door. Bel caught Audrey’s eye as they left and gave her the same smile she’d just given the child, a smile that said courage. Will wondered what the hell was going on.

  Then Audrey turned cold eyes on him. “Do you mind?” she asked. “I’d like a word with your brother in private.”

  Will had expected that, but it still stung. He’d beaten James into the world by two years and had spent the next twenty-eight coming in second. With sports, with women, with success. James was, he willingly admitted, a more likeable, talented guy. He’d accepted that long ago. So why did it suddenly chafe just because a pretty teenaged mother shoved his nose in it?