Becoming Bella

by Sarah Hegger

  Nate tightened his grip. He kissed her as if he wanted to inhale her.

  Bella met each stroke of his tongue, each grind of his hips. She wanted. Every part of her wanted and needed.

  Nate tore his mouth from hers, breathing fast. He pressed his forehead to hers. “Shit.”

  Bella dragged herself back into her hallway. Her body responded slowly, still hot and achy. She closed her eyes, desperately clinging to the last few moments of utter insanity. Her heart twisted. What the hell was she supposed to do now? She’d patted herself on the back for how far she’d moved on from Nate, and in one devastating kiss he’d blown her theory to hell and back.

  Nate raised his head. “Look at me, Bella.”

  She shook her head. If she looked at him now, he would see straight into the heart of her, and she couldn’t be that raw. “You need to go.”

  “Bella—”

  “Go.” She dug her nails into her palms. She had about five seconds left before she came apart. Tears already welled behind her closed lids. “Please, just go.”

  His body heat left her and she slumped against the wall.

  Her front door opened. “Lock this behind me,” he said. “We’re not done here.”

  The door slammed shut and his footsteps receded.

  “We are done.” Bella’s legs gave out and she slid to the floor. “We have to be done.”

  * * *

  Nate stopped halfway down her walkway and glanced back. His libido demanded he go back in there and finish what they’d started. He took a deep breath of the cold night air. The bite of snow rode the night and he pulled the chill deep into his body.

  Damn! Shit! Fuck!

  He’d done the one thing he’d promised himself he would never do. He’d kissed Bella. Sugar-sweet, big blue eyes, tempting little body, Bella. That Bella. The one decent thing he’d done all these years was never take her up on the offer she’d held out to him constantly. He sucked at making women happy. Instead, he broke hearts. He always had and everybody knew it. Somehow that had been enough to keep him away from Bella and inflicting his special kind of screwed-up on her.

  Then she’d taken off her dress, and in his head, she’d moved from off-limits to pure temptation. The call from Matt had lit a fire in him. He should never have come around here tonight. Never have let the urge to rip that dickhead from her head overpower him.

  Then he’d seen the prick on her front lawn, and Bella backing up.

  His veneer of civilization had torn away, disappeared under the need to pound his chest and bellow mine. Then he’d gone and kissed her and crossed the forbidden line. Who the hell knew where that left him now? In a new kind of hell.

  He crossed the lawn to his SUV.

  A car started up the street. Habit had him checking it out. The car tore down the road in a flash of silver.

  Caveman Nate balled his hands into fists. He was halfway into his car, determined to chase the bastard down before his head kicked back in. There was no crime in driving down a public street. No crime even in parking outside someone’s house.

  He hoped to God dickhead had seen that kiss.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Bella arrived at Mugged earlier than usual. Around five that morning, she’d given up on sleeping and decided she may as well start her day early. A check on the internet cheered her up. She had a couple more orders than yesterday, all of it on the new stock Nana had fought so hard against.

  One thing about her grandmother she knew for sure: Nana might be a control freak, but first and foremost she knew the value of a dollar.

  Even this early, the coffee shop buzzed with people getting their morning fix.

  “Bella.” She jumped as Adam appeared at her elbow. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  Standing there, she managed nothing more intelligent than, “Oh?”

  Pippa would say something concise and cutting and shake Adam off. Liz would probably let fly with profanity. All Bella managed was a sidle away from him, hoping and praying the four-deep line would disappear.

  Adam smiled at her. “Let me buy you a cup of coffee.”

  “No, really, that’s very nice of you, but I can get my own.” Bordering on a personal-space violation, Bella edged as close as she dared to the woman in front of her.

  “It’s just coffee.” Adam lifted his brow.

  The woman turned around and Bella wanted to shrivel into her new heels as Blythe Barrows smirked at her. “Hey, Bella.”

  Why did Blythe always smirk at her? They’d known each other since first grade. Blythe had smirked then, too. “Hi, Blythe.”

  “And hello to you.” Blythe turned all the way around and beamed at Adam. “I’m Blythe.”

  “Nice to meet you, Blythe.” Shaking her offered hand, Adam amped up the charm. “I’m trying to buy my best girl a cup of coffee.”

  “Aren’t you a sweetheart?” Blythe winked at him. “If she says no, I’ll put you out of your misery.”

  “Or me.” Next to Blythe, another woman turned, wearing nearly as much makeup as Blythe. Her jeans, however, seemed infinitesimally looser than Blythe’s, as in allowing for normal respiration.

  Suddenly, Bella felt like she was twelve again and Blythe and her friends were standing in the school locker room laughing at her training bra. Her head throbbed. Meanwhile, Adam, Blythe, and friend loomed over her and stared. This being short really sucked. Fighting for space in her head, Nana popped up and yelled at her not to be rude.

  “Okay.” The lump in her throat strangled her voice. “I’ll have a vanilla latte.”

  “Vanilla?” Blythe snickered. “I could have guessed that.”

  Behind the counter, Kate came to her rescue as she asked Blythe and friend for their order.

  “You’re still mad.” His breath brushing her ear, Adam leaned closer.

  “I’m not mad.” Out of her depth, feeling gauche, wishing he would go away and make this easier on her for sure, but not mad. Definitely creeped out by him breathing down her neck.

  Adam quirked his brow at her.

  “No, really I’m not.” She moved to the side to wait for their coffees. “I just don’t think we should date.”

  “Can you tell me why?” Adam stuck his hands in his pockets. “I thought we got on fine.”

  “We did.” Reorganizing the sugar packets by ascending size, Bella avoided his gaze. “But you’re . . . a bit . . . intense for me.”

  Adam hummed. Their coffees arrived on the counter and he fetched them.

  “Thanks for the coffee.” Bella did that lame toast thing with her cup. “I need to get to work.”

  “I’ll walk you there.”

  “Really, it’s just three doors down.”

  “Then I’ll walk you three doors.” Adam’s smile looked a bit glued on his mouth.

  Her options looked pretty crappy right now, most of them involving a mad dash for three doors and locking herself in. So she shrugged and left the coffee shop with Adam in tow.

  While she unlocked the door, the perfect gentleman, he held her coffee cup for her. It didn’t look like she could avoid letting him into the store. Clear glass window fronts should keep him in check, for the most part. If he asked her out again, she would have to grow a pair and say no.

  “Thanks for the coffee.” She turned on the register and logged in. “I really do have to get my day started.”

  “You kept my flowers.” Adam stroked the petal of a red rose.

  Oh-kay. “They’re beautiful flowers. It was very kind of you to send them.”

  Adam wandered over to the flowers on her counter. “So, did you do anything last night?”

  He didn’t need to know about the scorching kiss with Nate in her entrance hall. She didn’t want to see Adam again, but that would rub salt in the wound. “Nothing special. Watched a little TV.”

  “Really?” Adam stilled.

  Duster in hand, Bella stopped. Something about Adam’s lack of movement made her nervous.

  “You mean after the
sheriff left?”

  “Yes.” Her heartbeat sped up. The street outside the windows remained empty. She was alone with Adam and he’d been spying on her last night. “After Nate left.”

  The flowers hit the back wall in an explosion of glass fragments, petals, and water. It took her a moment to realize Adam had thrown them. “Adam!”

  “You lie.” His face appeared as calm as ever, but the violence crackled about him like electricity. His gaze seethed as he raked her from head to toe. “I saw you. With him.”

  In shock, she stared at the mess on the wall. A clinging rose slithered down and plopped into the puddle on the floor. “What did you do?”

  “You’re not listening to me, Bella.”

  Water speckled the cashmere sweaters folded on their shelves and spotted the silk blouses hanging nearby. He’d probably ruined them. “You have no right.”

  No right to do any of it. Bella charged over to the sweaters.

  “I have every right.”

  Bella got a very, very bad feeling about this. Never mind the silk blouses. She wanted him out of her store. “Adam.” Holding her hands out in a placating gesture, she managed to keep her voice steady. “You need to go.”

  “You don’t get it, Bella.” He shook his head. “You don’t get any of this.”

  “No, I don’t, but you’re scaring me right now.”

  He stalked over to the other arrangement. “Really?”

  “Don’t!”

  Too late. He sent them flying across the store. The vase hit the racks of accessories and shattered.

  “I gave you flowers.” Adam stalked her. “I took you to dinner. I made you a picnic with all your favorite things.”

  Bella backed up.

  He loomed over her. “And who did you fuck?”

  “What?” She edged closer to the door. “I didn’t have sex with anyone, Adam.”

  “I saw you with him.” He closed in on her. “I saw you crawling all over him like the hot little bitch you are.”

  “You don’t have the right to speak to me like that.” He kept coming and Bella put the divan between them. “Get out.”

  “I’m sick of your games.” Adam kicked the divan and sent it lurching toward her. “You can’t play games with me.”

  “I’m not playing games.” Bella ran for the door and held it open. “And I want you out of my store. Right now.”

  “You’re a whore.”

  Enough! The name-calling lit her fuse and Bella saw red. “Get the hell out of my store!”

  On the street, an older woman stopped, looked, and then hurried on.

  Bella was way beyond caring. “Get out or I’ll call the sheriff. And you’re paying for any damages.”

  Adam stalked past her.

  Bella shrunk away from making any contact with him. While he threw himself into his car and backed out into the street, she stayed frozen. As he narrowly missed clipping her front bumper, Bets Schumaker honked.

  “You okay, Bella?” From the hardware store next door, Hank Baker came out onto the sidewalk. He narrowed his eyes and watched Adam’s Lexus fishtail around the corner. “Who was that?”

  “Nobody.” Bella spat the word. “That was nobody.”

  She went back into the store. Pulse pounding hard, she pressed her hand to her heart. Damn, she was shaking. Shaking so bad, it hit her belly and then crept into her knees until she had to perch on the edge of the divan. Adam had made deep gouge marks on the carpet when he kicked the divan.

  Pippa slid into the store. “Shit!”

  Bella jumped and then let out a shaky breath.

  “What the hell happened here?” Pippa stared at the mess of glass and flowers.

  “Adam.” Bella’s mouth had gone paper dry. “He came in and got mad.”

  “About what?” Glancing at her, Pippa toed a rose out of her way.

  “I told him that I wouldn’t see him anymore. He saw me kissing Nate.” Forcing her knees to hold her weight, Bella stood. “I’d better clean this mess up.”

  “No.” Pippa had her phone out. “Let me take some pictures first.”

  She felt like she was looking at her store through a rainy glass pane. Her brain refused to work. “Why?”

  “Because this isn’t funny, Bella.” Pippa clicked away. “This guy has a problem and you need to make sure you document it.” She looked up suddenly. “Did he hurt you?”

  “No.” Bella waved a limp hand at the debris. “He just threw the flowers he gave me around the store.”

  “You need to file a report.” Taking pictures, Pippa went over to the second shattered arrangement. “He came into your store and damaged your property.”

  Her store clock confirmed it wasn’t even nine a.m. yet. Suddenly, her day seemed way, way too long. “I don’t want to press charges. I just want him gone.”

  Pippa got a set look on her face. “Bella—”

  “Don’t.” Bella went into the back and fetched the broom. “Finish taking your pictures so I can clean this up.”

  “Bel—”

  “Please?” Legs still iffy, she tripped and righted herself as she made her way over to the first piece of glass. “I think I might be in shock. Do you think I’m in shock? What does that feel like anyway?”

  “At least tell Nate.” Pippa bent and helped her pick up glass shards. “At least get it on record somewhere that he did this.”

  “Okay.” That she could manage, but she wouldn’t tell Nate; she’d tell Deputy Gabby. She couldn’t face any of Nate’s I-told-you-sos right now.

  They worked in silence, cleaning up the mess and checking the damage. Two of the silk shirts would need to be looked at when they dried. The store smelled of wet vegetation, but other than that, the damage appeared minimal.

  Pippa helped her drag the garbage bags out to the trash cans in the alley beside the store.

  “There.” Pippa banged the lid on the trash bin. “All done.”

  Bella nodded and went back into the store.

  “I’ll get us another coffee.” Pippa snatched up the one Adam had bought her and tossed it into the trash can. “And then you can tell me what you meant about kissing Nate.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Nate stayed away from Bella for the next four days, not that anyone was counting. The main sheriff ’s office piled enough shit on his plate for a valid excuse. The paperwork would kill him long before some rampaging criminal. He bet Wyatt Earp didn’t have to do performance appraisals.

  When he finally got clear enough to work his way back to Ghost Falls, his day started bad and kept sucking more and more. Most of the last three hours he’d spent outside of Ghost Falls in a tiny berg that also fell within his county, trying to explain that the legalization of marijuana in Colorado didn’t mean a free pass for anybody with a plot of land to start growing and distributing.

  Hauling some dealer into jail would have made his day, but this had been a family. Times were hard; people tried to do what they could to get by. Considering he’d probably spent his day destroying their only source of income, the elderly couple whose operation he’d had to shut down had taken it remarkably well.

  On the way back, he’d gotten a call about a vicious dog and had to take some kid’s beloved pet to the pound. He’d get back out there in a day or two to see if he could calm everyone down. The dog hadn’t done any damage, and Nate had spent a little time at the pound. Basically, the dog needed some training, but it didn’t look like a dangerous animal. In the meantime, the little guy who’d lost his dog would probably cry himself to sleep tonight.

  Big city police work this was not. On days like today, he found he actually missed the city. Not the adrenaline of it, but the anonymity. In cities, faces blurred one into the other and made it easy to keep your distance, not get involved. With the county budget stretched to the seams, it meant everyone knew his face, and most of them knew his name and enough about him to pass the time of day.

  Deputy Gabby’s voice crackled over the radio.

&n
bsp; He didn’t have the patience for it and snatched up his cell phone. “What is it?” he said when she answered.

  “Sheriff ?” Gabby sounded disapproving. “I was trying to raise you on the radio.”

  “I heard.” Low blood sugar always made him bitchy and he’d missed lunch as well. “Lucky for you we have these neat little gadgets called cell phones.”

  A deliberate pause down the line almost made him apologize. Screw it! Gabby needed to fix her attitude anyway. She was a good cop, had great instincts and did her job thoroughly, but she could do with a bit of workplace etiquette.

  “Liz Gunn called. She lives at—”

  “Gabby, I’m there almost every second week. I know exactly where the woman lives. What does she want?”

  “Just following procedure, Sheriff. Making sure you’re aware of all the particulars.” Gabby sniffed.

  “What does she want?” Either he got some food in his belly or he’d rip her a new one.

  “Seems there’s a problem at her neighbor’s.”

  That got his immediate attention. “Which neighbor?”

  “Number—”

  “Give me a name, Gabby, or I swear I’ll have you handing out loitering tickets outside Walmart for the rest of your career.”

  Her sigh traveled down the line. “Bella’s house. If you’re still a ways out, I can run over and check it out.”

  After four days of not seeing Bella, Gabby had handed him the excuse he needed. “I’m on it.”

  “Sheriff ?” It wasn’t like Gabby to sound unsure of herself.

  “What?”

  She cleared her throat. “Before you go over there, you should know Bella filed a report a couple of days ago.”

  Frost crept up his spine. “What kind of report?”

  “Some guy she knows made a mess of her store.”

  Spiking blood pressure did nothing for his mood. “And you’re only telling me about this now?”

  “She wanted to keep it quiet,” Gabby said, sounding surer of her ground.

  “And you agreed to that?”

  “I said if anything else happened, I would have to tell you,” Gabby said, her usual shitty ’tude back in control. “Something else happened and I’m telling you. Bella didn’t want you to know.”