Taste for Trouble (29 page)
“You
surprised me, too,” she said. “I guess that makes us even.”
“Good,”
he said gruffly. “Fine. Now go.”
She
snatched up her purse and sailed out the door, too preoccupied with heirloom
tomatoes to notice that James hadn’t kissed her back. Or to wonder why.
“For
the love of Pete, Bel! Would you get out of here?” The caterer flapped an oven
mitt at Bel, shooing her away from a tray of pumpkin pecan tartlets cooling on
the counter. It was the night of the Fox Hunt Ball and Bel’s nerves had drawn her
irresistibly to the kitchen. “You’re going to ruin that pretty dress of yours
and I won’t have it on my conscience.”
Bel
snatched her hands back from the tray with a guilty start. There was no reason,
aside from observing her staff operate with a gratifying efficiency, for her to
be here. Every inch counted in a working kitchen and, given the amazing
circumference of her vintage hoop skirt, Bel was taking up considerable acreage
that wasn’t hers to waste.
“Oh,
Lillian, I’m sorry.” She forced a little chuckle. “I’m making a nuisance of
myself, aren’t I?”
“Oh,
honey, no.” Lillian laughed, her round, lived-in face merry. “Jim and I were
just saying last night how wonderful you’ve been to work with.”
Lillian
gave her husband a fond glance across the kitchen as he shouldered an enormous
tray of thin-shaved Virginia ham, country cheese, and pickled beans and made
for the door. He winked at his wife, who swiped her oven mitt at him this time.
“We
know it must be killing you to turn over control of your kitchen to somebody
else when the pressure’s on. Lord knows it would kill me. The kitchen is the
heart of your house. It’s where you live.” She gave Bel a sympathetic smile. “It’s
hard to walk away from your heart, even temporarily.”
“Oh,
this isn’t—”
My kitchen
, she was going to say.
This isn’t my kitchen
.
But her heart snatched the words out of her mouth and tore them into tiny
pieces. This
was
her kitchen. Her heart had sunk its thirsty roots deep
into the soil of this place and made it her own. It was hers. She loved it.
“Of
course it is, dear.” Lillian bent to pull a tray of ham and egg pastries from
the oven, blissfully unaware of the reeling shock she’d just delivered. “You
don’t bake someplace every day for any length of time without leaving a good
chunk of yourself behind. It belongs to you as much as you belong to it.”
Bel
stared at her, denial an anxious beat inside her head. “But I don’t—”
I
don’t want to love it
, she thought.
I don’t want to love
him.
“Doesn’t
matter,” Lillian said cheerfully as if she could read Bel’s panicked mind. “That’s
just how it is for people like us.” She slid the tray onto the counter and
fanned herself with the oven mitt. “Now, go on. Guests are due to start
arriving any minute. We have dozens of servers and all systems are go. Leave
this up to Jim and me.”
Bel
looked longingly at her apron hanging on a peg behind the door. Suddenly she
wanted nothing more than to slip it on and bury herself elbow-deep in some
bread dough. “Are you sure? Maybe I should—”
“Bel.”
Lillian gave her a stern look. “We’ve been at this since before you were born. We
know what to do. Besides, a hot kitchen is no place for a lady in a hoop skirt
and a corset. You’re going to set yourself on fire or something and I’ll have
no idea how to get you out of that thing.”
Bel
fingered the heavy cinnamon-colored velvet of her skirt. “Yeah. Me neither. It
took me nearly half an hour just to figure out how to put it on.” Even so, a
swish of giddy pleasure swirled through her at the rich fabric against her
skin.
Lillian
smiled. “Go find your young man and have a glass of champagne. Jim just
finished pouring on the patio.”
“Right,”
Bel said, stretching her lips into something resembling a smile. “Of course. I’ll
just...get out of your way.”
“Have
a nice time, dear.”
Bel
walked in her soft dancing slippers—which went a long way toward making up for
the corset—down the short hallway from the kitchen to the foyer. She
should
go out to the patio, she thought. One last time before people arrived. She
could make sure the champagne was properly chilled and the hors d’oeuvre
stations were spaced adequately to encourage mingling. Because the last thing
she wanted was for people to clump together or, God forbid, stay inside. After
all the work James had gone to putting the gardens back together, the least
people could do was—
She
faltered at the foot of the steps, her thoughts scattering like autumn leaves
as James came bounding down that grandly dramatic staircase two risers at a
time. He was...good lord, he was beautiful. For once his hair seemed to have
obeyed orders rather than chewing up and spitting out the comb. A few thick
golden waves tumbled over his forehead but the majority had been confined to a
civilized queue at the nape of his neck. Black riding boots polished to a mirror-like
finish hugged muscular calves while a pair of buff trousers clung to powerful
thighs and narrow hips. A deep blue jacket stretched without a wrinkle over shoulders
that looked about a yard wide, while snowy white lace bloomed at the collar and
wrists.
He moved
like a thoroughbred pacing the track, all lean lines, smooth muscles and easy
confidence. This was a man who’d found his way back to the top of his game, and
everything in Bel yearned for him the way she’d yearned for the damn kitchen
two minutes ago.
She
laid a hand over the sudden aching void in her chest. God. She was in big
trouble. Because after tonight, it was over. Her time here. Her time with
James. It was all over, and she was a fool for thinking that it was the damn
kitchen breaking her heart.
“Hey,
Bel.” He stopped short on the bottom step, his eyes bright and shrewd as they
raced over her. “Well, my goodness. Look at you.”
She fingered
the trio of fat curls gathered at the nape of her neck, suddenly aware that
while an extravagant amount of spice-colored fabric had been dedicated to her
skirt, considerably less had been expended on her bodice. And courtesy of
Audrey’s merciless assault on her corset laces—she’d been forced to cling to
the bedpost like Scarlett O’Hara—an unprecedented percentage of her bosom now
rose cheekily above the neckline.
In
the privacy of her bedroom, she’d actually admired the effect. For a woman more
used to angles than curves, it was something of a miracle to see cleavage
manufactured out of thin air.
But
now, with James’ eyes hot and assessing on her...well, on her
everything
,
she wasn’t so comfortable.
“Too
much?” She plucked at the folds of her skirt. “I’m more used to being in the
kitchen at stuff like this, but Lillian kicked me out and I—”
“It’s
perfect.” He took that last step and caught her hands up in his. “You’re
perfect.”
She
laughed, his approval seeping into her bones like summer sunshine. “I’m hardly
perfect.”
“Any
more perfect and I’ll have to dig up a set of dueling pistols to defend your
honor after some jerk tries to take liberties at that damn fountain.”
“It’s
not my fault you moved the naked frolickers into the garden. I told you it
would give people ideas.”
He
tucked her hand into his elbow and began a slow stroll toward the patio. “Which,
under normal circumstances, I’d be fine with.” He patted her hand. “Then I saw
you in that dress.”
She
shook her head, ridiculously pleased. “You’re looking pretty good yourself,”
she said. “You’d never know you used to have a Whopper habit.”
He
gave her a pained look. “I still miss them.”
“With
the way I feed you?”
“I
know,” he said. “It’s a terrible weakness. It makes no sense. I’m appropriately
ashamed.”
“Don’t
sweat it. We all have our little foibles.” She hesitated, then leaned into him
and whispered. “I like instant cocoa.”
“Seriously?”
She
shrugged. “I can’t understand it.” She thought of the kitchen that wasn’t
really hers. Of the man that wasn’t hers either. “Sometimes the heart wants
what it wants.”
“Yeah,
but your heart doesn’t even acknowledge the existence of processed food. What’s
next? Velveeta?”
She
shuddered. “Not in my kitchen.”
He
laughed, a full-bodied peal of amusement that rang up to the ceiling and warmed
her from the inside out. “I do like you, Bel.”
Something
hungry and persistent inside her gobbled up the words and cried for more. Like
wasn’t enough. Not anymore.
She
shrugged it off and squeezed his arm.
“I
like you, too, James,” she said. “But the DC Statesmen have dibs. They’re going
to be proud to have you back, you know.”
“I
know,” he said. “They ought to be. I haven’t been in shape this good—mind, body
or spirit—since I was fifteen.” He turned to her, his eyes green and intense. “I
owe it all to you, Bel. You’ve been...good for us. For me.”
Want
twisted in her gut, mixed with the horrified certainty that if he tried to say
goodbye right now she would humiliate herself by bursting into tears.
“I
got something for you,” she said abruptly. Better to seize control, right? If
she couldn’t avoid the punch, at least she could get herself into the best
possible position to take it.
“You
did?” Surprised pleasure raced across his face.
“I
did.” She reached into the little crocheted reticule dangling from her wrist
and withdrew a small box. “This is just one of them. I left the other two
upstairs, one for each of the Blake boys.”
He gave
her a mystified smile, then pulled off the silky bow and cracked open the
little velvet jewelers box. Bel held her breath as he frowned down at the
contents for a long moment.
“They’re
cufflinks,” she said, unable to bear the weighted silence another second. “See?
It’s the Blake family crest.” She pointed to a small coat of arms etched into
two of the four heavy gold circles.
James
ran a gentle thumb over the raised printing on the other two circles. “And
this?” he asked, his voice quiet.
“
Clann
thar gach ní
,” she said, unease heavy in her chest. “Blake’s a
traditionally Irish name so I went with Gaelic. It means Family First. At least
I hope it does. I went to a professor of Irish studies for the translation but
he was about six hundred years old. It could be verse ten of “Molly Malone” for
all I know. He looked like the sort of guy who might have one over on me.”
She
was babbling. She knew she was babbling but had no idea how to stop herself. The
longer he stared into the box, not moving, not smiling, not even breathing as
far as she could tell, the faster the words bubbled out of her.
“You
don’t have to wear them,” she assured him quickly. God, she was a fool. What
had she been thinking? Unless a guy was yours by either marriage or blood, you
didn’t give him
jewelry
. Wasn’t that a rule or something? If Miss
Manners hadn’t written it down, surely Kate had. How could Bel have flaked out
on such a basic piece of etiquette? “I won’t be offended. I know your daily
life doesn’t have much call for cufflinks. It was just, I don’t know, an
impulse. It doesn’t mean anything. I only wanted to—”
“Bel.”
His arms came around her with a swiftness that took her breath away, and then
she was crushed against him, enveloped in the strength and heat of him, her
chin hooked over his shoulder, her arms wrapped around his broad back. He
lifted her nearly off her feet, buried his face in the crook of her neck. “Thank
you.” The words were rough and low against her neck. “Thank you.”
He finally
set her down, pulled back far enough to gaze down at her with something
heart-stopping and searching in those deep green eyes. His mouth hovered inches
from her own, and everything in Bel yearned to rise up on her toes and press
her lips to his, to obey the snapping desire he’d ignited in her that he’d been
oddly unwilling to feed these past two weeks. She could count on one hand the
number of times he’d touched her of his own free will since their last dinner meeting
with Kate. And on the few occasions he had, he’d leapt away from her the instant
he realized what he’d done, as if she’d burned him.
For
a moment, she thought the fast was over. Inside the loose circle of his arms,
she watched him sway toward her, his beautiful mouth so close she could feel the
sweet wash of his breath against her cheek. She leaned into him, a yearning
heaviness low in her belly.
He
startled and hopped back a few feet. Bel swayed, caught off-guard by the move,
and he snatched up her hands. He held them between their bodies like a life
preserver and gave the wrinkles he’d put in her skirt a rueful smile.
“Sorry
about that,” he said. “I got a little carried away.”
“No,
you didn’t,” Bel told him with painful sincerity. “You definitely didn’t.”
“It’s
just, I was surprised. This—” He tapped the cufflinks lightly against her
knuckles. “—was such a beautiful gift, it...I guess—” He pulled in a breath,
seemed to search for words.