Taste for Trouble (Blake Brothers Trilogy)

by Sey, Susan

  “Didn’t want—” Vivi pulled back as if she’d been slapped. Her round blue eyes filled with hurt. “Why, Belinda, that’s an awful thing to say! I flew halfway around the world to be with you and this is how you thank me?”

  “I didn’t want you here,” Bel said again, her voice flat, “and I still don’t. I never will. Please go.”

  James’ mouth dropped open. This wasn’t a difficult mother-daughter relationship. This was rejection, flat out. Bob must have sensed the sour note from fifteen yards off because he touched the back of Kate’s hand and murmured something in her ear. Kate ignored him with her usual regal impatience, her eyes fixed and fierce on Bel. The gossip columnist followed Kate’s gaze with the seeking focus of a blood hound catching a scent.

  Kate didn’t break stride but continued toward them at the same serene stroll. Bob didn’t fight it but his brows were a straight unhappy line. The columnist fingered her cell phone furtively, probably cuing up the camera. James braced himself for company in about thirty seconds, tops.

  He touched Bel’s stiff elbow and leaned in. “Gossip columnist,” he murmured. “On your six.”

  “Of course there is.” She didn’t look away from her mother. “I don’t want you here, Vivi. Please leave.”

  James stared, alarm shifting toward disbelief. What the hell? His Bel had a real gift for polite displeasure, no denying that, but she wasn’t cruel. Farthest thing from it. But giving your mom an unflinching get lost in front of the national press? That was cruel. Unquestionably.

  “Oh.” Vivi’s eyes flooded with tears. “Oh. I see.”

  James’ heart squeezed inside him and the fury he’d been saving up for Will’s punching suddenly jumped the tracks. He knew real life had, at best, a vague acquaintance with justice. He didn’t expect a Brady Bunch reunion here. But this woman was Bel’s family. There was no greater good in James’ world—in any world—than family. James would give anything to have his mother annoy him at a party one more time. He’d be damned if he’d let Bel reject hers right in front of him.

  “Hi.” He stepped forward and shot Vivi a warm smile. “I’m James Blake.”

  “Vivienne Pietrantoni.” She held out a tiny hand and returned his smile with a brave curving of her lips. “Belinda’s mother.”

  “Of course you are.” James folded her hand gently into his. Geez, the woman felt breakable. “I see now where Bel gets her dimples.”

  Vivi’s smile deepened. “Oh, you’re sweet.”

  “They’re gorgeous on both of you,” James told her, patting their joined hands. “I’m always after Bel to smile more.”

  Vivi’s eyes went warm and her dimples fluttered. “I am, too.”

  “Then we ought to be good friends, Ms. Pietrantoni.”

  “Vivi,” she said, and hugged him. “Oh, you’re a kind man. I’m so pleased my little girl has somebody like you. I worry about her, you know. She’s so...alone.”

  James cut his eyes to Bel, who simply gazed at them. And she did, in that moment, look strikingly alone. A pale, composed woman who might have been watching a movie for all the emotion in her face.

  “Vivienne?” Kate asked, appearing behind the woman’s shoulder. She beamed her on-camera smile down at Bel’s mom. “Kate Davis. I’m so pleased to finally meet you.” She turned to Bel. “Bel, dear. Why didn’t you tell me your mother would be attending tonight?”

  “I had no idea she would be,” Bel said. She gathered her skirts. “If you’ll excuse me?”

  Vivienne’s head drooped and Kate gave Bel a look of genteel disapproval. The columnist hanging a few paces back snapped a surreptitious picture. James gritted his teeth. “Bel, come on. It’s your mom, for heaven’s sake.”

  She arched a brow that said so? Anger leapt hot and jagged inside him.

  “We’re intruding,” Bob said. He took Kate’s elbow firmly. “We should—”

  “Which means—” James went on as if Bob hadn’t spoken, his voice carefully calm. “—that no matter what the beef is between you two, you owe her at least a thank you.”

  Bel tipped her head, considered. “For what?”

  “Well, for her concern, for starters,” James snapped. “For the impulse that put her on a jet from wherever—”

  “Italy,” Vivi said.

  “—from Italy to see for herself that her daughter, however difficult the relationship between them might be, was all right.”

  “No.” Bel folded her hands in front of her, her face smooth, the erratic pulse in the base of her throat the only sign of life.

  “No? No what?”

  “No, that’s not why she’s here, and no, I absolutely will not thank her for it.” She gathered her skirt and moved around her mother as if she were a stone in the road. “Go home, Vivi. There’s nothing for you here.”

  Vivi made a small squeak of distress that tore at James’ heart with sharp little claws.

  “Belinda,” Kate murmured with a significant glance at the scribbling reporter. “You forget yourself.”

  “No,” she said quietly. “I’ve finally remembered myself. But I do apologize for creating a scene.” She turned empty eyes on her mother. “I sincerely wish it hadn’t happened. Now if you’ll please excuse me.”

  Vivi began softly crying.

  “We’ll discuss this in the morning,” Kate told Bel in tones of dark promise. If Bel picked up on the threat in those words she gave no indication. She simply inclined her head.

  “If you like.” She moved toward the gap in the hedges with a fragile dignity that had confusion twisting together with the snarling anger in James’ gut. She was the one inflicting all the damage here. Why on earth should she look one stiff breeze away from shattered?

  He lunged after her, closing the distance just as she reached the gap. “Jesus, Bel.” He snatched at her elbow. “Would you stop for one stupid minute here and think about what you’re doing?”

  She stopped, her back stiff and unrelenting. Then she turned her head, slowly, until she’d aimed the point of her chin at him with the haughty grandeur of an offended queen. “What,” she asked, “am I doing?”

  “You’re walking away from your mother.” His chest was tight with urgency. She had to understand this. Because if she understood what she was doing, she wouldn’t do it. She couldn’t. How could she? Surely her heart, the heart he held as precious as his own, wouldn’t allow it. No heart worth loving—no heart capable of loving—could. “Your mother, Bel.”

  “That’s right,” she said.

  “No, it’s not right.” Frustration and fear howled inside him. This was wrong. She was wrong. Bel was good, loving, forgiving and patient. This wasn’t her. Not the Bel he knew. Not the Bel he thought he knew, anyway. “God, why are you being like this?”

  She gazed at him with a cool finality that only stoked the anger burning in his belly. “I’m leaving now,” she said. “We can discuss this in the morning, if you’d like.”

  He stared at her, waiting for this cold, stony woman to disappear. Waiting for her to turn back into the Bel he’d fallen in love with, the Bel who understood what family meant.

  He thought about his own mother, her quick smile, her strong, ready hug. The instant application of the flat of her palm to the back of his head whenever she considered it necessary. There wasn’t a day that went by that he didn’t need her. Didn’t miss her.

  He looked over his shoulder at the tiny, sad-eyed woman by the fountain. At the mother Bel refused to even acknowledge.

  “No,” he said, and his voice surprised him. He hadn’t known he was going to speak. The words just leapt from his mouth like a cork from a bottle, shoved out by anger and pain. “There’s nothing to discuss.”

  Bel gazed at him, her eyes dark and remote. “She’s not even your family.”

  “She’s yours,” he said on that same wave of unconscious desperation. “It matters, Bel. And I thought, after what happened in the kitchen with Will, after what it led to right here between us—” He leaned in,
locked his eyes on hers, willing her to remember every touch, every sigh, every lingering, electric taste. “—I thought you understood that. I thought you understood me.” He raked both hands through his hair and huffed out a jagged laugh. “And I thought I understood you.”

  “But you don’t anymore.” Her eyes were deep and wounded. “Because of this.” She waved a hand to encompass the gently weeping Vivi, Kate’s arm around her shoulders, Bob hovering uncomfortably behind them.

  “I don’t even know you, Bel. I thought I did, but this woman who’d hurt and humiliate her own mother in front of an audience? She’s a stranger to me.”

  And because the wrenching, gut-churning pain of that loss threatened to put him on his knees, he let the anger take it. Let the anger turn his pain into sharp, nasty words he could throw at her like rocks.

  “Kate’s been right about you all along,” he said. “You don’t even have it in you to be the heart of a TV show. How could I have possibly imagined you had it in you to be the heart of a family? My family?”

  “I know exactly what it takes to build a family,” Bel said softly. “And I know how to sacrifice everything I have to protect it from harm.” She gave him a faint smile that stole the sharpest edge from his anger and replaced it with a thin slice of dread. “Unfortunately, no family I’ve chosen so far has ever returned the favor.”

  “Chosen?” His stomach went cold. “You don’t choose family, Bel.”

  “Of course you do. People do it all the time. They call it falling in love.”

  “You—” The cold in his stomach turned to solid ice. He cleared his throat and tried again. “You don’t believe in love.”

  “I believed in you.” She gathered up her skirts with calm hands, her eyes full of pain but no surprise. “My mistake.”

  She turned and disappeared through the gap in the hedges. James watched her go, his heart empty and numb inside him.

  Bel moved woodenly along the path. She’d burned herself to cinders tonight, she observed. Icarus flying too close to the sun. She’d been yearning for things she could never have, things that mere mortals just didn’t get. Stupid. She wondered if it was possible to erase the entire last hour from her memory. Just slice it out like a surgeon would excise a tumor.

  “Bel?”

  At first she didn’t recognize the voice. It had been too long. A life time. Then she turned and found Ford and Annie standing there, their fingers still tangled together, having just rounded the corner of the hedge maze only to find awkwardness itself lying in wait for them.

  “Ford,” she said. “Annie. You’re back.” This, she realized, was who James had been trying to prepare her to see. But I’m not going to leave your side, he’d said. So everything will be fine. Bel tried not to dwell on how very alone she was. “How was your honeymoon?”

  Ford cast a worried glance down at Annie, who frowned and stepped closer to Bel.

  “Bel?” she said again. “What’s wrong?”

  “Wrong?” Bel laughed lightly, aware she sounded more broken than amused. “What could possibly be wrong?”

  Ford reached for Annie’s elbow. “It’s too soon,” he murmured to his wife. “We’ll go,” he told Bel. “We’re so sorry. We’ll just—”

  Annie shook off her husband and moved a step closer. “For heaven’s sake, Ford,” she said. “Look at her. This isn’t about us. This is bigger than that. Way bigger.” She reached out and touched Bel’s elbow, her eyes warm with compassion and understanding. “Your mother found you?”

  “Hmmm? Oh, yes.” Bel nodded, idly wondering why this final humiliation—being confronted with her ex-fiancé, her ex-assistant and their happiness—didn’t sting more. Perspective, she supposed. Her heart knew what real pain was now, thank you very much. “Yes, she did. She flew all the way from Italy the instant she heard. To comfort me in my time of heart break, you understand.”

  “Yes, I can see that.” Annie’s lips twisted. “What’s difficult to see is how she managed to rustle up an authentic period costume and crash the biggest single event on the Kate Every Day roster when she was so busy rushing to your side. I assume there was press?”

  “And Kate and Bob and James. And several strangers.” Bel waved a hand. “You know Vivi.”

  “By reputation only. I assume the shine wore off her Italian prince or duke or whoever and she needed a little fresh juice. Some new drama.”

  “And then my fiancé happened to run off with my assistant on live TV.” She gave Annie and Ford a wan smile.

  Ford stepped forward, compassion warm in his eyes. “I really am sorry, Bel. We both are. I hope one day you’ll be able—if not to forgive us—at least to understand.”

  Bel patted his arm and it was still solid and comforting under her hand, just like always. “I already do, Ford. We would have been a monumental mistake. I know that now.”

  “You do?” He glanced down at Annie, surprise clear in those straight-ahead brown eyes of his.

  Annie’s gaze went shrewd on Bel’s face then she swooped Bel into a fierce hug. Bel sank into it for a moment, into the sheer, unlooked-for comfort of a loving touch, then Annie pulled back. “You do understand,” she said, studying Bel. “It’s finally happened. You’re in love.”

  “I am,” Bel said. No point wasting wishes on things that couldn’t be undone. She was in love. She might never be out of it.

  “Have you told him?”

  Bel replayed it in her head, the horrible moment when she had all but confessed her love to James after it had already become apparent that he didn’t love her back. Not the way she loved him. She closed her eyes against the jagged rush of humiliation and pain and wished with all the strength left in her battered heart to undo it. To take back those pitiful, plaintive words—I believed in you. To erase the flash of startled realization they’d put in his eyes. She could almost hear him now. Wow, Bel. That’s...I mean, geez. I’m flattered. But when I said I loved you, I meant—

  She cut off the James in her head. Couldn’t bear to hear it, even in her imagination. She’d spent her entire childhood wanting too much. Expecting too much. Loving too hard. Hadn’t Vivi taught her anything? Love was a game. A thrilling, entertaining rush, but it wasn’t permanent. The minute it wasn’t fun anymore, the minute it felt like work, it was time to move on. Time to find a new job, a new man, a new passion. Time to abandon everything—including your thirteen-year-old daughter—and seek your bliss on a new continent.

  “I could’ve picked a better moment to share the news,” she said finally.

  Annie’s mouth went hard. “Tell me.”

  So she did. Annie threaded an arm around her waist and they walked, keeping to the darkest corners of James’ new garden while Bel told them everything. She started with moving into the Annex and brought them clear through to tonight. To Will’s bizarre kiss and James’ refusal to accept betrayal. She covered her impulsive decision to have wild, mind-blowing, ruin-her-for-all-other-men, completely unprotected sex with James under an extravagance of twinkly stars. Then she wrapped it up with his uncompromising position on the poison that was Vivi.

  When Bel was done, she found herself on a stone bench in one of the cozy, secluded arbors overlooking the pond, her hand firmly in Annie’s. She accepted a clean white hanky from Ford and mopped at her face.

  “What are you going to do?” Annie asked.

  “What is there to do?” she asked, forcing a bright note. “I mean, lesson learned, right? I’m going to just walk away from this whole mess. Pretend it never happened. I’m going to wake up in the morning and start fresh. Fresh heart. Fresh life. Fresh dream. God knows, I’m going to need one.” She gave a shaky laugh. “I received the distinct impression that Kate’s going to fire me again—for good this time—bright and early.”

  “The bitch,” Annie said.

  Bel shrugged. “People don’t take homemaking advice from people whose homes are broken beyond repair, Annie. It’s a fair point.”

  Ford shook his head. “Not nece
ssarily. If you want to take legal action, I think there are probably sufficient grounds for breach of contract. I’d be happy to draft—”

  “Oh, Ford, thank you. But no.” Bel squeezed his hand and gave him what she hoped was a brave and plucky smile. “There’s no point trying to hang on. It’s all part of an old dream now. I’m putting it behind me. Him, too. James. The whole thing.”

  Even as she said the words, heartbreak gushed up inside her ugly and fresh. It flooded her eyes and swamped her fragile little boat of calm.

  God, what a load of shit. Putting him behind her? Even if she somehow managed to ignore the death throes of her broken heart, she could hardly fail to notice that one leg was still soaking wet from the knee down after her impetuous decision to screw the love of her life on the edge of a gaudy Italian fountain. No, James had written himself on every inch of her skin tonight and no matter how much her heart wanted to forget, her body remembered.

  “Oh honey.” Annie sighed. “You are not okay.”

  “No, I am. Seriously.” Bel flicked at the tears that spilled onto her cheeks and gurgled out a soggy laugh. God, that fountain. “I’m sure I’ll have regrets when I look back on how I handled this whole godawful mess but walking away from a boss I can’t please won’t be one of them. And God knows I should but even now I can’t regret James. Okay, maybe the unprotected bit was a mistake, and maybe the aftermath isn’t pretty but for a minute there, it was really beautiful. The kind of beautiful I didn’t know existed. The kind I thought people were making up.”

  Annie’s hand found Ford’s and Bel suffered a small but stinging slap of jealousy. She’d always cultivated the cool, empty spaces around her heart. They’d kept all threats at a safe, sanitized distance, like a well-tended moat. But James had blown past her moat like it didn’t exist, had blasted right into the sacred, secret core of her as if he had every right to be there. As if he belonged.

  And he had. For that brief instant, he had belonged to her and she to him. She would cherish that for the rest of her life, that sense of utter belonging. Of family.