Taste for Trouble (36 page)
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 necessarily. 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.
These
past weeks, she’d come to know him as a man of immense courage. Just tonight,
she’d seen him give more than he had to give, lift more than he could carry,
and endure beyond endurance. Now she understood why. He belonged to something
greater than himself alone. He had a family.
A
family to which Bel didn’t belong. Maybe she couldn’t force him to include her
in that sacred circle, but neither could she love him with anything less than
the strength and courage he’d shown her family deserved.
“Oh
Bel.” Annie squeezed her hand. “Is there anything we can do for you?”
Bel
smiled. “I wish, but no. I think I’m probably as good as I’m going to—”
“Actually,
there is something.” Bel jumped—they all did—and turned to find Bob strolling
across the moonlit lawn toward them.
“Bob!”
She patted her thundering heart. “Where did you come from?”
“A
chat with Kate.” He smiled but it looked grim and hard. “An unpleasant one.”
Bel
shook her head. “Don’t worry. I know I’m fired. Ford’s already offered to take
up breach of contract proceedings but I’m not going that route.”
“Good.
I was thinking along different lines anyway.” He sat down on the bench beside
her with a weary sigh. “Grab your lawyer and listen up, kid.” He patted her
knee. “I have an alternate proposal.”
When
the sun cracked the horizon the next morning, James finally allowed himself to
head down to the kitchen. To Bel. He knew she’d be there. Knew it the same way
he knew which direction a goalie would dive, or a defender would attack. He
just knew it in his bones.
He
forced himself not to jog down the stairs. He couldn’t seem too eager. He
couldn’t compromise his values. But he’d spent the sleepless night after Bel’s
staggering confession of love—she
had
said she loved him, hadn’t she? In
her usual, sideways sort of way?—thinking. Really thinking. And thinking wasn’t
James’ usual forte.