Becoming Bella

by Sarah Hegger

  Understandable. The man had walked away without a thought for his family.

  “That ain’t right, I thought,” Patti said. “He left me and his children and a pile of debts higher than the roof of our mortgaged home. But I guess when a body’s gone about as low as they can go, there’s only one way and that’s up.” Patti’s shrill chuckle filled Bella’s dining room. “I took my pain and I hugged it tight to me, and I said this is my pain, my hurt. I own this.”

  Ping went the light-bulb sound they played every time someone reached that point in their story.

  “Own your life.” Dr. Childers’s raspy voice washed over Bella. “Say it with me. This is my life. Nobody has the power to steer my destiny but me.”

  “This is my life,” Bella said. “Nobody has the power to steer my destiny but me.”

  Except maybe for Nana and her constant interfering in the store. Well, Nana was sweating through endless mah-jongg games in Florida, and by the time she got back, there would be nothing she could do about it. Even the thought made Bella a little breathless.

  Bella opened her web browser and found her site. Her brand-new, beautiful site where she planned to yank Bella’s Boutique into the age of online shopping. She’d dropped boutique from the name, and it felt right. More like hers, despite the fact that it had been named after Nana, the original Bella. Of course, if life had gone the way it should have, it would be the twins, Bella and Gina, working side by side in the store. Bella liked to believe Gina would have wanted to freshen and update as well.

  Regardless, tonight she took her baby online.

  Wheeler Barrows had designed the site for her and saved her a ton doing it. Unlike the rest of his family, Wheeler had determination and ambition.

  Bella traced the large white orchid on the right top corner of her screen. Simple, elegant, and tasteful, and so right for where she wanted to take her store—out of the eighties and straight into the now.

  Patti’s story murmured on in the background, but she’d heard most of it before, so Bella tuned it out.

  Her finger poised above the Enter key, mouse arrow hovering over the Publish icon.

  Click.

  The room spun, then righted itself. The earth didn’t open under her feet and a lightning bolt straight from Nana didn’t strike.

  She’d done it.

  The empty kitchen nearly popped her bubble of excitement. No, she couldn’t allow that. Tonight, she’d taken a huge step forward and she should celebrate hitting what Dr. Childers called a keystone moment.

  Light shone from Liz’s kitchen window. She could go over and invite Liz to share her triumph, but their acquaintanceship felt too new for that. Her good mood hovered on the edge of an anticlimax. What would Dr. Childers do? She would open her own bottle of wine and toast her own success.

  The doorbell rang as she pulled the bottle of wine out of the fridge.

  Maybe Liz had decided to come over and say hi.

  Levering herself onto her toes, Bella spied through the clear glass diamond in the center of her front door. Her heart thudded and she jerked back. Nate Evans stood on her doorstep.

  “Hey, Bella,” he called. “You gonna let me in?”

  God, how her sixteen-year-old self would have died to hear that. She checked her smile in the entranceway mirror. She managed friendly, welcoming, and not idiotic before she opened the door. “Hey, Nate.”

  He stepped back and jerked his head upward. “Just wanted to tell you I’m going to finish hanging your lights.”

  “Oh.” One summer she’d spent most of it imagining Nate arriving on her doorstep, laden with gifts. Sometimes he brought flowers, other times chocolate or a book she liked, and on one doozy of a fantasy day, he’d brought a puppy. The words were always the same, though: Hey, Bella. I’ve just realized that you really are the love of my life and rushed right over to tell you. She couldn’t totally blame the town for the legend when she’d done her fair share to build it. But that was over, starting tonight. “You don’t have to do that,” she said to the real Nate, standing at her front door and looking a bit wary at her long silence. “I’m sure I can get someone else to do it.”

  He frowned at her. “I said I would.”

  “Right.” He had, when he’d talked her off the roof.

  “It’s mostly done.” He stepped back and surveyed the roof. “Just this one more string on the other side of the door and then around the other side.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  “No worries.” He winked at her. And how he could wink and make it not creepy she had no idea.

  She stood in the doorway.

  He stood on the lawn.

  Somebody had to break the silence, so Bella said, “Um . . . maybe you’ll let me thank you when you’re done.”

  He glanced at her.

  God, that sounded like a proposition. “I meant with a beer.” Her voice came out all shrill and stupid. “I meant a beer, not anything else.”

  “Like what?” He raised his brow.

  “Well, you know, like . . . I meant . . .” She caught the naughty gleam in his eye. “You’re messing with me.”

  “Yeah.” He nodded. “And a beer would be great.”

  “Great.” God, she sounded like he’d solved world hunger. She tried to tone it down a light-year. “I meant, if you have time. I’m not doing much anyway.” Now she sounded plain sad and desperate. Best she shut up. “I’ll see you after.”

  Bella slammed the door and leaned her back against it. Sweat coated her palms and she rubbed them on her jeans. Clearly, she and Dr. Childers needed some more quality time together.

  “He’s just a man,” she said. A smoking-hot, make-your-knees-melt, good-looking man, but he put his pants on over that fine ass one leg at a time like everyone else. Her imagination had built him into something he couldn’t possibly be.

  The ladder scraped against the gutters, followed by dull thuds from the roof.

  Her heartbeat sped up. As puberty had set in, some of her Nate fantasies had gotten a bit naughtier. She was fairly sure one had started with a ladder outside her bedroom window. However, she hadn’t been wearing her oldest jeans and a tatty old sweatshirt in any of them.

  Too late; he’d already seen what she was wearing. Changing now would look desperate, or more desperate than usual.

  Bella dashed to her bedroom. A little subtle makeup couldn’t hurt. Everyone said men didn’t notice specifics.

  No. She stopped herself, mascara wand in hand. Getting hold of her life meant moving on. Not prettying herself up in case Nate had a sudden attack of Bella lust over his beer.

  Everyone wore mascara. It didn’t mean anything. And look at that? It was already on her lashes, so too late.

  Gloss?

  This stopped now. She forced her reluctant feet back into the kitchen and sat down in front of her laptop. Wiping her sweaty hands on her jeans, she opened her browser. Her new site was so pretty. Browsing it almost kept her mind from the thumps on the roof and what they meant. Should she bake something? Except she couldn’t bake worth spit.

  “This is my life,” she said to the computer screen. “Nobody has the power to steer my destiny but me.”

  By the time he tapped on the kitchen door, for the most part she had it together.

  Nate stepped into her kitchen. Forget together; please God, let her not make a fool of herself over jeans that clung to his butt and muscular thighs. He carried his coat in one hand and his long-sleeved Henley had a love affair going on with the sculpted planes of his chest and abdomen.

  Could life do her a solid here and just once, could he not look like he was on his way out of or into someone’s bed?

  “All done.” He smiled. “You should come and see.”

  “Really?” Kill her now for that squawk alone.

  Nate followed her outside and stood next to her as they stared at the house.

  Bella looked and looked at the neat row of twinkly white lights marching across her eaves and pushing back the ear
ly dark of winter. A bit more snow and she’d have Christmas in her yard. “It’s beautiful. Thank you.”

  “No worries.” He slung an arm over her shoulder.

  The lights must be made of fairy dust. Bella tensed all her muscles to stop them from melting into Nate.

  “Now.” He gave her a small shake. “How about that beer before I freeze my balls off ?”

  Bella nodded and ducked away to hide her flushed cheeks. Nate could always make her blush, and from the chuckle that followed her into the kitchen, he knew it too.

  She buried her head in the fridge for a second or two longer than it took to locate the longnecks on the bottom shelf.

  “What’s this?” Nate’s voice came from behind her.

  Bella brought his beer to the table, not even bothering to ask if he needed a glass. They’d grown up in a small town together, so she knew how he drank his beer, that he liked coffee with lots of cream and sugar, that he hated brussels sprouts and considered chicken a vegetable. All stuff her mind had hoarded away in case she might need it.

  Nate stood by the table, his gaze on her laptop.

  She handed him his beer and picked up her wineglass. Earlier, she’d been looking for someone to celebrate with; why not Nate? They’d been friends, of a sort, before he went away. “Actually, I’m celebrating.” The website felt like a big step in the right direction. “I started a website for Bella’s.”

  “You did?” He glanced at her over his bottle. “You did this?”

  “Well, not all of it.” Bella joined him at the table. On the screen her new baby sent a thrill through her all over again. “Wheeler Barrows did all the technical stuff, but I chose all the images and the stuff on it.”

  “Huh.” He clicked the link to formal dresses and went quiet for so long Bella ended up drinking half her wine. He thought the site was lame. That must be why he wasn’t saying anything. “You sell these?”

  “Yup.”

  “Huh!”

  “I changed some of the inventory when I took over. Actually, I’ve slowly been changing most of the stuff we sell.” His silence unsettled her. “Nana had lost touch with what today’s women want. So I started replacing a few of her items with others, and . . .” It was time to shut up.

  “And your grandmother let you?”

  “Not quite.” Bella pulled a face. Not at all, in fact, and if Nana even suspected the extent of the changes she’d made, there would be war right here in this kitchen. “But it’s my store now, and I need to do things my way.”

  He looked up and smiled at her. He clinked his bottle against her glass. “Well done, Bella.”

  “Thanks.” Darn, there went her cheeks again.

  “I don’t know much about women’s clothes.” He jabbed a thumb at her laptop. “But that stuff looks nice.”

  “You think so?” He liked it, and that made her want to dance around the kitchen.

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “Thanks.” It took a moment for awkward to creep back into the room, and when it did, Bella took another sip of her wine. “And thanks, again, for hanging the lights and talking me off the roof.”

  “No worries.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You said that already.”

  “Yup.” She wanted to crawl under the kitchen table. For a split second there, things had felt normal between them.

  “Actually, I’m glad this came up.” Nate surprised the hell out of her by pulling out a kitchen chair and sitting down. “It’s been a while since we spoke.”

  “Really?”

  “Uh-huh.” His face dared her to lie her way out of it. “Most of the time, when I see you, you’re running in the opposite direction these days.”

  “Well . . .” Bella took a seat before she fell down. Dr. Childers’s little ping sound went off in her head. A keystone moment. Recognize the moment, own the moment, engage the moment. Honest dialogue, Dr. Childers believed, opened the way to honest relationships. Bella scraped up her courage. “That’s probably because I’ve been avoiding you.”

  Nate blinked at her. “You don’t say. Care to tell me why?”

  “Not really.” Bella chugged the remainder of her wine. She didn’t have the backbone for a keystone moment.

  Nate chuckled and topped up her glass. “Tell me anyway.”

  “It’s embarrassing.” As if he couldn’t tell by how hot her face was.

  “As embarrassing as the time I got caught without my pants outside the locker room?” His gold eyes gleamed, lazy and full of confidence, like a lion.

  As she recalled the pantless incident, Nate had carried it off with a laugh and a shrug. Smashing her teen heart to bits when she found out his current girlfriend had stolen his pants in mid-tryst. She’d had enough of pining. It gave her the behind kicking she needed. “I’mtryingtoburythecrushthing.”

  “Say what?” He raised a brow at her.

  “Don’t make me say it again.” He needn’t think she wasn’t an expert on every one of his facial expressions. He’d heard her all right. Probably wanted to make her squirm saying it all over again.

  “You had a crush on me?” He did his best to look surprised.

  “Nate . . .” He needn’t pretend, especially as neither of them was convinced.

  “Okay, then.” He pulled a face. “But you got over that. Right?”

  “Yes.” It came out way too loud. “Years ago. Ages ago. Not since high school. It’s people in this town.” All the times she’d said this speech in her head, wasted. “People gossip and they still think . . . Well, you know what they still think.”

  He nodded. “Is that why you avoid me?”

  “Yup.” She pressed her lips together to keep them shut.

  “Right.” Nate sipped his beer. “Yeah, that’s probably for the best.”

  “It really is.” She slapped a bright smile on her face. “And for the record, I did have a thing for you, but it was more of a low-grade thing, not an all-consuming one like everybody said it was. I mean, I had boyfriends. I had a life.”

  “Hey.” He caught her flapping hand. “I get it.”

  It would be awesome if she shut her mouth now. “It’s not like I spent the last twentysomething years pining away for you or anything. That would make me pathetic and weird and—”

  “Bella.” He squeezed her hand. “We live in a small town. People decide who and what you are and stick to it.”

  Nate would know all about that too. From town bad boy to sheriff took a lot of attitude adjusting. The irony of Nate comforting her didn’t escape her, and Bella laughed. “You’re trying to make me feel better about this?”

  “Hey.” He let go of her hand. “It was flattering, in a strange way.”

  “Hmm.” She didn’t believe that, but this ease between them felt good.

  “So, does this mean we can be friends again? No more running away from me?”

  Was there a woman alive who could resist that smile? Not in this kitchen, at any rate. “We can be friends again.”

  Nate shifted and cleared his throat. “In the spirit of honesty and friendship, can I ask you something?”

  Knowing she might regret it, she still nodded and said, “Sure.”

  “Why me? And why so long?”

  “That’s two things,” she said, mainly to give herself time because she didn’t really have the answer. She’d asked herself those two questions enough times that she should know the answer, but she really didn’t.

  Nate watched her and sipped his beer.

  “Well, there’s the obvious.” Her face must be radioactive by now with all the blushing. “Your . . . looks . . . and all that.” God, how could it be so hard to tell him what they both knew? The man had a mirror, for the love of God. “But it was more than that. Like the time you punched Grady because he stole my pencil. Or the way we both loved the same movies and music.” She sounded lamer by the second. “I don’t know really. I guess I liked you as well. No matter how cocky you got, underneath I always saw how kind yo
u were, and how hurt you were after your dad passed. You always had so much more about you than the obvious.”

  Nate stared at her, his face blank. Then he took her limp hand in his. “You know, Bella. That guy, the one you had a crush on, that’s not me.”

  “I’m pretty sure it is . . . was.”

  He chuckled, gave her fingers a quick squeeze, and let go. “No, I mean, I’m not the man you think I am. I wish I was.” He stood. “But I’m really not worth a crush like that.” His smile seemed a little sad. “Not from a girl as sweet as you anyway.”

  Chapter Four

  Nate waved good-bye to Bella and climbed into his cruiser. That had worked out well. Confused and a little pissed by her constant duck and weave, he’d been waiting for the chance to tackle her about it.

  The drapes twitched across the road.

  “Good night, Mrs. Powell,” he called, and then, because he knew she would be watching as well, “ ’Night, Liz.”

  When they were kids, he’d known about Bella’s crush. Who the hell hadn’t? The way she’d looked at him, it was impossible to miss. As she was the closest thing to a positive influence in his life, some part of his teenage self had recognized that and wanted to hold on to it. And he’d liked Bella, really liked her. Liked her enough to recognize she was just about the sweetest thing in Ghost Falls and he had no business messing with that.

  She still smelled awesome. Like honey and flowers and a touch of spice that the horndog in him had always appreciated.

  Through the wild years, the one thing he’d prided himself on was not taking her up on that silent, tempting offer. Bella’s honey ran all the way to the bone, and he’d crushed more than his share of hearts. You didn’t put a spun-sugar fairy into a pair of Neanderthal hands and expect it to survive.

  With Bella, he hadn’t pushed the friendship thing too hard either. He didn’t do friendships with women anyway because it got too complicated. Marriage was not in the cards for him; he didn’t do that sort of love. The sort of love that left his mom a wreck after his dad died. The sort of love that had tied his dad in knots when he was still alive. Nate had told her the truth tonight. He couldn’t be the guy she saw because he didn’t have it in him.