Taste for Trouble (40 page)

Ring
the damn bell
, she told herself.
There’s
no time for nerves
.

Which
was true, she thought, a wave of grief breaking inside her. There was hardly
time for anything anymore.

She
sucked in a deep breath and punched the doorbell. “And I Will Always Love You.”
The Dolly Parton version, she had to assume. God. Hope-laced terror rose inside
her, crested then crashed into disappointment when Audrey rather than James answered
the door.

“Bel!”
The young woman stared, then launched herself over the threshold. She threw her
arms around Bel, groceries and all, squeezing her with a joyful strength that
had Bel blinking back tears. “Oh my God, you’re back!” Audrey drew back to beam
into Bel’s face, and what she saw there had the welcome fading into caution. “
Are
you back?”

“I
don’t know,” Bel said honestly. She glanced beyond Audrey’s shoulder into the
house. “Is James here?”

“No.”
Audrey pulled her inside and closed the door behind them, as if afraid Bel
might escape. “The Statesmen are done for the season, but the US Team starts
World Cup training camp in January. He’s been doing two-a-days these past
couple weeks. Wants to make sure the whippersnappers respect their elders, or
something like that.”

Bel
tried to smile but it trembled around the edges. Audrey had the courtesy to ignore
that small fact. She nudged Bel toward the kitchen. “I’ll go make up your room,
just in case,” she said. “Why don’t you park your butter and eggs?”

James
tramped into the house and dumped his disgusting practice bag in the corner. Every
muscle in his body ached. Every ligament, every tendon, and every
twenty-eight-year-old joint made a point of expressing its displeasure at
James’ callous treatment as he headed toward the kitchen.

So,
okay, two-a-days weren’t exactly fun but if that was what it took to fall into an
instant, dreamless sleep the minute his head hit a pillow, he’d deal with the
physical pain, and happily. Because thrashing around alone in his bed,
torturing himself with wondering what the hell Bel had found out there that was
better than coming home to him? Yeah, he’d had about enough of
that
.

Fuel,
he thought, shaking off the melancholy that dogged him whenever he stood still
more than a minute or two at a time. He needed fuel. And about a gallon of
orange juice. Because after three hours of hard-core drills and another half an
hour in a steamy hot shower, he felt about ready to dry up and blow away. Which
meant he needed to zip through the kitchen.

That
was how he’d trained himself to think of the kitchen lately. A pit stop. He’d
taken to making himself plates of food and taking them upstairs to eat on the
couch in front of the TV with Drew rather than try to endure the cold, empty
kitchen Bel had left behind. Audrey tried, God bless her, grilling the
occasional cheese sandwich, slapping together an adequate meatloaf every now
and then. But she wasn’t Bel.

He
shoved through the swinging doors, allowing himself to think of nothing more
than the ham sandwich he was about to create, then froze. Just stopped dead,
like he’d been shot or stunned. Because unless countless fantasies had suddenly
obliged him by taking corporeal form, she was here. Bel was
here
, moving
around his kitchen with that efficient grace and serene purpose, tucking those
fancy little packages of unidentifiable foodstuffs into his refrigerator as if
she’d never left.

A
wild joy exploded inside him, sang through his veins and electrified muscles
that, two minutes ago, would have sworn they couldn’t move one more inch. The
urge to go to her geysered up within him, hard and strong. He wanted to gobble
her up, gorge himself on the smells, the textures, the sweet small pleasures of
her that he’d missed like he might miss air or sunshine. The smell of her hair.
The sound of her laughter. The taste of her kiss. God, he’d been starving for
so long.

But
no. He forced himself to stop, to take a minute. To wait. To watch. To
think
.
He needed to think. This was Bel, and he’d already screwed up so many times. He
needed to get this right.

“You’re
thinner,” he said, surprising himself with a perfectly normal tone of voice. Then
he closed his eyes and cursed himself for an idiot.
Way to think before you
talk, James
.

She spun,
a stick of butter clapped to her chest, her beautiful mouth a soft
oh
of
surprise. “James!”

“Hey,
Bel.” He drank in the sight of her with hungry eyes. “Putting up your
perishables?”

She
dropped her eyes to the butter. “This looks bad, doesn’t it? Presumptuous.” She
set it aside, then came to the island counter. She braced the flats of her
palms on the granite as if preparing to make a stand.

“Your
room is just like you left it,” he said. “I hope you’ll stay.” He forced his shaking
hands to unknot, forced his feet to stay planted, tried to blank the naked hope
and need out of his face. “I’ve missed you.”

She
stared at him. “Are you
kidding
?” she asked, and James’ heart dropped
into his stomach. He’d screwed up. Again. How, he hadn’t the faintest, but
there was no mistaking the disbelief in her eyes. Exhaustion chased the hope
out of his heart and he didn’t have to work so hard to stand still anymore.

Okay,
so maybe this wasn’t exactly the fantasy he’d hoped for. But she was here, and
that meant something. He’d be damned if he’d let her disappear again before he
had a chance to tell her how he felt.

Bel
stared at him across the island counter. He looked...different. He’d honed his
body down to the absolute essence of speed and strength, and though every line
spoke of weariness and wear, his eyes glowed with determination and something
else. Something warm and forgiving and utterly foreign.

Welcome,
she realized with a dull shock and a hefty side of confusion. It was
unconditional welcome. How could that be?

“Listen,
James,” she said, nerves and fear putting an unfamiliar edge on her voice. “I
bolted three weeks ago with a pretty firm
leave me alone
. Now I turn up
out of the blue without even a phone call and you’re all
there’s the fridge,
here’s your room
? Aren’t you angry with me? Don’t you want an explanation?”

He
shook his head, a small smile kicking up one corner of that beautiful mouth. “You’re
home, Bel. For now, that’s plenty.”

Home
. She backed away from the counter, the confusion in
her gut twisting into something she didn’t recognize. Something with wings of
hope and streaks of joy and a black shadow that said
it’s a trick, there’s a
price, there’s always something
.

“My
mother—” she began, then broke off, something ugly and choking in her throat. She
shook herself, cleared it away and forced herself forward. Maybe she was going
to look like a fool when this was over but she’d be damned if she’d shirk the
work of loving him. Maybe Vivi was in her, but Vivi wasn’t
her
.

“I
know about your mother,” James said, taking a step forward, then stopping
abruptly, as if catching himself. “You don’t have to tell me anything if you
don’t—”

Bel
shook her head. “No, please. I need to say this. I need to understand what this
is, this thing you’re doing.”

“Okay,”
he said, his eyes so kind and patient that Bel had to clear her throat again.

“My
mother was—
is
—dramatic,” she said finally. “She needs high drama, big
emotions, constant chaos. She can’t function any other way.”

“Yeah,”
James said. “I got that.”

“She
wasn’t really suited to raising a kid like me.”

“A
kid like you?”

“Serious.
Steady. A perfectionist.”

He
smiled at that. “No. You?”

“I
know. Hard to believe.”

“I’m
agog. Go on.”

“She
didn’t ignore me or abuse me,” Bel said, searching desperately for the right
words, “if that’s what you’re thinking. I just wasn’t enough.”

“Enough?”

“Enough
to keep her entertained on a daily basis. But every now and then—between
boyfriends or blow-outs with her friends at the yacht club or whatever—she
turned to me to fill in the gaps. She lavished all that energy and love and
attention on me. She loved me with this ferocious focus until I loved her
back.” She smiled wryly. “It never took very long.”

“And
then she fell in love with somebody else,” James said quietly. “And she broke
your heart over and over.”

Bel
lifted her shoulders. “By the time I was ten I’d figured things out. Or so I
thought. Love didn’t exist. It was just an excuse to do what you wanted to do
and damn the consequences. A socially acceptable get-out-of-jail-free card she
could play every time she forgot to come home. Every time she wandered in at
dawn while I was fixing myself breakfast and getting myself ready for school. Every
time she hopped up on the counter, reeking of cigar smoke and whiskey, all
bright-eyed and breathless, telling me she was in love again and she’d be
speaking to my principal about transferring my records to a new school. Again.”

Bitterness
welled up inside her at the memory but she pushed it aside. That wasn’t her
point.

“She
didn’t like that, I’ll bet,” James said, encouragement quiet in his voice. “Your
cottoning on to her game. Refusing to play.”

“No.”
Bel tried a smile. “No, she didn’t. Maybe I hadn’t been enough to hold her
attention in the long term, but she sure liked having an adoring audience handy
when she needed one. And once the adoring part dropped out of the equation,
well. Vivi does need her scenes, regardless of whether they’re positive or
negative.”

“How
negative?” James asked, concern darkening his eyes to the ominous green-gray of
an unsettled sea.

“Let’s
just say that if I’d ever pulled anything on her remotely like what I just pulled
on you, there would be no way on God’s green earth I’d have gotten an
invitation to put away my groceries and go visit my old room. There would’ve
been endless tears, hours of recriminations, days of deliberating over whether
to accept my apology and take me back, at least conditionally. So this whole
thing?” She twirled a finger in the air to sum up everything that had happened
between them in the past twenty minutes, the forgiveness, the mercy, the
incomprehensible, radical welcome. “This is foreign to me and I don’t know what
it means.”

“What
do you think it means, Bel?”

“I
don’t
know
!” She fisted her hands beside her ears, as if she could reach
inside her head and pull out the tangled thoughts and emotions and straighten
them out. “I know I love you, and that makes me totally unreliable when it
comes to figuring out what you’re talking about.” She drew in a shuddering
breath and forced what was inside her out. Forced herself to form the words
that would push her over the edge into complete, bald vulnerability.

“I
want so badly for this to be what it looks like, James.” He moved toward her,
but she shot out a hand, stopped him there. She needed to say it or it would
never come out. It would lie between them always, unresolved, a question she
needed to ask now before the price of honesty skyrocketed. “I want that, more
than I can tell you. But I also know I’ve done nothing to deserve it and
nothing in my experience says I should expect it, so if there’s something else
going on here, if there’s a price I need to pay, if you need your pound of
flesh or whatever before you take me back, will you please just
tell me
?
I’ll pay it, I’ll do anything you want, but please don’t make me guess what it
is.”

He
stared at her in silence, but she forced herself not to run. Not to hide. Her
heart beat wildly inside her, but she stood before him, raw and naked, his to
take or leave, to punish or forgive.

For
an endless moment, they stood frozen in the shadow of that tense, brave
question. Then time shot off the mark like a world-class sprinter, and before
Bel could think or blink or breathe, James was there, his arms locked around
her, the good, dear strength of them filling something aching and needy in her
soul, the clean, freshly-showered scent of him making her lightheaded and
giddy.

“Bel.”
He breathed it into her hair, like it was a prayer or a song. Like she was something
sacred and valuable and treasured. It sparked a small, quiet flame inside her,
a flame that both destroyed and healed. “Bel. My God.”

“I
love you, James.” It was her own prayer, a song of thanksgiving and gratitude,
of humbled astonishment. “I do. It’s real and I know now how to tell the
difference. I thought love only existed the way Vivi did it, but now I know—”

He
made a noise, anguished and deep, then slipped from her arms onto his knees on
the hard tile floor. She gazed down in astonishment at his bent, golden head
pressed to her belly. She touched a tentative hand to those unruly curls. “James?”

He
jerked back and gazed up at her with wild green eyes. He seized her hands in
his with a fierceness that both startled and thrilled her. “I thought you’d
left me, Bel. God. I thought I’d finally done it. Driven you off with my stupid
temper and my stupid mouth. I thought I’d lost you.”