Turn Up the Heat (28 page)

Bellamy rang the bell of the elegant, three-story brownstone and waited, fidgeting like mad on the brick threshold. It was cold enough for her to see her breath on every nervous exhale, and she drummed her gloved fingers together to a tuneless beat.

“Bellamy! Oh, sweetheart, why do you ring the bell like that when it's freezing outside? Come in, before you catch your death.” Her mother pulled the door wide, ushering her inside with a warm embrace.

“Hi, Mom. Sorry to barge in on you and Daddy like this.” Bellamy's heart raced against her rib cage, and she hoped her mother couldn't feel it as she returned her hug.

“Nonsense. You grew up in this house. You can barge in any time you want. Have you eaten dinner yet? Maybe we can talk your dad into pad Thai.” Her mom grinned, moving through the living room toward the kitchen.

Bellamy followed, resisting the urge to start fidgeting again. “Oh, uh, I'm not hungry.” She thought of the tons of food she'd had her hands on in the last eight hours, none of which she'd been hungry for. “I actually came because I need to talk to you guys.” In all of the strategizing she'd done over the last few hours, cutting right to the chase seemed to make the most sense. After all, not even her trampled pride could make her a beat-around-the-bush kind of girl.

Her mother stopped short, a few paces away from the kitchen, and turned to stare at Bellamy with round, worried eyes. “What's the matter?”

“Relax, Mom. I'm fine.” Eh. Mostly fine, but she wasn't about to get into her ruined love life with her mom.

“You don't look fine,” her mother protested, drawing her brow in tightly. “Bob!” she called, but Bellamy's father was already in the kitchen doorway.

“She looks beautiful to me. Hi, baby!” He greeted her with his standard hug-and-kiss combo that could still take the sting out of any bad day. A little bit, anyway. Bellamy let him squeeze her a little extra, just for good measure.

“Hi, Daddy.” She blew out a sigh. Holy shit was this going to be hard.

“She has something to tell us,” her mother warned, her green eyes clouding over with concern as she motioned for Bellamy to sit next to her on the living room couch.

“Oh?” Her father's glance darkened a shade, his worry matching her mother's. He came in to sit in a chair next to her mother. “What's going on, Bellamy? Are you all right?”

“I'm fine,” she insisted, tugging at her gloves and sitting down.

“I, uh. I quit my job.”

Silence flooded through the room, and Bellamy counted a handful of deafening heartbeats before her mother finally responded.

“Are you switching banks?”

“No.” Her nice, deep breath barely made it a fraction of the way to her lungs. “I've decided to switch careers.”

“You're leaving real estate?” Her father drew back in his chair, eyes wide.

“I'm leaving business.” Bellamy sucked in all the air she could muster, opting for the blurt-it-out method so she wouldn't lose her nerve. “I know that you guys have always wanted me to go into business like you, and I tried, I really did. I just . . . I don't love it. I don't even think I like it, to be honest. Working at the bank drove me crazy, in a quiet, boring kind of way. No offense,” she scrambled to add, trying not to trip on her words, “but I was miserable there, so I decided to quit.”

Her mother's lips parted in shock. “But what will you do?”

The butterflies that had taken up residence in Bellamy's stomach a few hours ago reminded her again of their presence. “I'm going to train to be a chef.”

“A chef,” her father repeated, sounding certain he'd misunderstood.

Bellamy nodded. “Do you know who Carly di Matisse is?”

“The little Italian gal on that cable show with her husband?” her father asked, blinking.

“Yes. She's the new head chef at the restaurant in Pine Mountain Resort, and she called today to offer me a chance to work for her as a line cook.”

“Is that why you went to the mountains? To get a job?” Her father creased his brow.

Bellamy gave her head a quick shake. “No, not at all. It just kind of happened really fast.” She proceeded to give them a condensed version of her unorthodox kitchen audition with Adrian and the meeting with Carly that had ensued.

“But you haven't even gone to culinary school,” her mother said, confused. “Doesn't that put you at a disadvantage?”

“Yup. It sure does. And I know I'll probably have to go at some point in order to really move up in the ranks.” Truth rang in Bellamy's voice, and it steadied her. “Chef di Matisse made it clear when she offered me the job today that she was taking a flyer on me and if I couldn't hack it, she'd fire me without a second thought. I'm going to have to do a tremendous amount of work on my own time just to keep up, and the reality is that no matter what I do, I still might get canned. But I want this, in a way that I've never wanted anything else. So even if I screw it up, I have to be true to myself.”

A wave of relief washed over Bellamy at the words, but it mingled with the uncertainty on both of her parents' faces, leaving her uneasy.

“And you're sure this is what you want?” her mother finally said, eyes firm on Bellamy's.

Bellamy didn't even think twice. “Yes.”

Her father scrubbed a hand down his clean-shaven jaw. “It's a hell of a risk, sweetheart. But if I'm being honest, you've loved to cook since you were a kid. I always thought it was a hobby, but if you want to make a go of it, then I think you should.”

“
We
think you should,” her mother corrected, nodding.

“Wait, you . . . you do?” Bellamy sputtered around the shock in her chest.

“Of course we do. Did you think we wouldn't support you?” her father asked, starting to smile.

She gave a tiny nod. “Well, kind of. Yeah. It's a little crazy.”

“About as crazy as the day the two of us stood in your grandmother and grandfather's house and told them we were going to start our own business on nothing more than a shoestring and our own determination. But it was what we wanted, and it's obvious that this is what you want,” he answered.

Tears pricked Bellamy's eyes, quickly spilling onto her cheeks. “I really do,” she nodded, letting her mother gather her up for a tight hug.

“You have to be true to your heart, honey. You get that part down, and everything else has a way of falling into place.”

As she stood in the embrace of both her parents with tears streaming down her face, it was all Bellamy could do to convince herself that the only thing following her heart would get her was that job.

Bellamy could hear the shrill electronic ring of the phone in her condo before she'd even slipped the key all the way into the lock.

“Coming, coming, hang on!” she mumbled between her teeth, fumbling to get her key out of the lock and shut the door safely behind her before rushing toward the kitchen.

“Hi, you've reached Bellamy Blake. I can't take your call right now . . .”

She let out a curse under her breath and flipped the phone to her ear. “Hello?” But she was met with the steady hum of the dial tone.

“Oh well. Couldn't have been that important, I guess,” she muttered, checking the caller ID.
Out of Area
.

Right. Didn't telemarketers have anything better to do on their Friday nights?

Bellamy surveyed the contents of her fridge and settled for a bottle of water. What she really wanted was to crack open that bottle of pinot grigio, but she was pretty sure it was upper-level pathetic to drink a bottle of wine all by your lonesome not even a whole day after being jilted by a guy you thought you knew. A guy you thought you might even love.

On second thought, where was that corkscrew?

Bellamy poured herself a healthy glass of wine and trudged down the hall to her bathroom to draw a bubble bath. As soon as she started the water, the sound of the phone interrupted her again, only this time she was prepared. She lifted the phone from her bedside table, glancing at the caller ID.

“Hello?”

“Hey, how did it go?” Jenna asked.

Bellamy let out a little smile and ran a hand through her hair. “Pretty well, all things considered. Aside from the normal parental concern over the whole taking-a-big-step thing, they were kind of excited, actually. Thanks for letting me borrow your car to go see them.”

“No problem. Is it cool with you if I come grab the keys in about half an hour? My roommate's going to be out your way, and she said she could drop me off so you don't have to make a trip tomorrow.”

Bellamy eyed the bathroom door, thinking. “I was going to get in the tub. Why don't you use your spare key to get in, and I'll leave them on the kitchen counter for you.” God, did that bone-weary voice really belong to her?

“That sounds good. You sure you're okay? I can stay, if you want company. We can do the chick-flick, ugly slippers, drink too much wine thing. Talking about it totally optional.”

Bellamy paused for a fraction too long before answering. “No, thanks. I'll be fine. I'm just tired, that's all. I think I'll feel better once I get some sleep.”

Jenna paused equally long, but finally conceded. “Okay. Have a good soak. I'll talk to you tomorrow, but if you need me before then, just call.”

“Thanks.” Bellamy replaced the phone on the cradle and returned to the bathroom. Peeling her clothes off and tossing them into a heap, she slipped into the steaming tub. Her skin tingled, deliciously painful under the borderline-too-hot water, and she let herself sink in against the slope of the porcelain. The tangled ends of her hair fanned around her neck and chest in the water like an intricate blond spiderweb, and Bellamy spiraled her fingers through them with an absent stroke.

Hot tears filled Bellamy's eyes, and she squeezed them shut in an effort to forbid them to fall. She would
not
let Shane Griffin get the best of her.

“Please stop. Please. I just want to forget him,” Bellamy whispered, her voice wavering to give away the lie.

Bellamy dropped her chin into the bubbles and let herself have a good, long cry.

 

 

Shane parked his truck in the visitor's lot, letting his eyes sweep the busy suburban neighborhood just outside of Philly, proper. The outline of the city buildings, visible from the highway, didn't stir Shane's gut like he'd expected them to. They simply stood, sleek and glittering, against the night skyline, just as they had when he'd left, a testament to a place he'd thought he hated. But it wasn't the place he hated so much as the things that had gone on in it.

Hell if Grady hadn't been right. Shane really did have a lot to learn.

He got out of the truck and eyeballed the neat brick buildings until he found the one he was looking for. With his determination brewing, Shane headed toward the well-lit courtyard dotted with a handful of doors set in colonial brick.

“Okay . . . 101, 102, . . . ah, here we go. 103. Bingo.”

Shane stood outside the glossy black door, hand over the tiny brass doorknocker, and took a deep breath. He'd driven all the way down from Pine Mountain knowing full well that the girl of his dreams was going to curse him six ways to Sunday and send him packing, but it didn't matter. Hopefully she'd hear him out first, and he'd get a chance to say what he should've told her from the beginning.

The truth.

“Here goes nothing,” Shane said to himself, but before he could lift the doorknocker, a familiar voice froze him, mid-movement.

“She doesn't know you're here, does she?”

Shane spun around, his heart whacking around in his rib cage like a loose hockey puck. Bellamy's friend, Jenna, stood at the mouth of the courtyard, a bemused expression on her face.

“No. She has no idea.”

“I'm guessing she didn't exactly leave you her card in her rush to leave this morning. Can I ask how you found her?” Jenna's brow pulled in, as if she was trying to figure out a puzzle.

Shane shrugged. “There were three B. Blakes listed in the online phone book for this area. Bonnie Blake assured me she'd never heard of a Bellamy sharing their last name. The second B. Blake was a man. Bernard, I think. He'd never heard of her, either. But the third one was her machine, and since the address was listed right along with the phone number . . . here I am.”

Jenna cocked her head at him, clearly thinking. “I'll give you points for being clever and consistent, but you still did a number on her. I doubt she'll want to see you.”

His gut plummeted toward his boots, but he stood firm. “I know. But she's got it all wrong. I might've kept some things from her, but she knows exactly who I am. I didn't lie to her about what matters.”

“I figured.”

Shane's brows popped. “You did?”

Jenna nodded. “Any idiot can see you're crazy about her, even if you have a weird way of showing it.” She sighed. “You're not going to break her heart, right?”

“No. God, no. I just want her to hear me out.”

“Well today's your lucky day.” Jenna held up a set of keys, and they jingled softly against her palm. “Here's what we're going to do.”

 

 

As soon as her tears slowed to a dull trickle, Bellamy wiped her face with the back of her hand and sank into the water, letting the bubbles cover everything but her face. It swished over her ears, distorting the sounds around her into a series of creaks and thumps and groans. One big one in particular caught her attention, and she jerked out of the water to listen.

“Bellamy? You still in the tub?” Jenna's voice floated through Bellamy's bedroom and past the cracked-open bathroom door.

She sighed with relief. At least she didn't have to go all bathtub Ninja and figure out how to get to the can of Mace in her bedside table. “Yeah. The keys are on the counter. Thanks again.”

“No problem. Listen, I'm leaving something here for you. But don't let it sit for too long, 'kay?”

Bellamy's face creased in confusion. “What?”

“You'll understand when you see it. I'll call you tomorrow, sweetie. Bye!” The front door thunked shut before Bellamy could respond.

Huh. That was weird. Maybe Jenna had stopped at Mr. Wong's Szechuan Gourmet for Chinese takeout. Jenna knew that hot and sour soup was Bellamy's favorite comfort food, and it did get kind of nasty when it was cold. Her stomach growled, sending up a rude reminder that it had been a while since Bellamy had thrown anything down the hatch other than a few sips of wine.

“Okay, okay, I get it,” she grumbled, starting to salivate over the possibility of the soup. She popped the drain on the tub and dried off, throwing on a pair of ratty pajama pants and a three-sizes-too-big Philadelphia Phillies T-shirt. No need for pretenses like a bra for hot and sour soup, thank God. Bellamy jammed her feet into her purple fuzzy slippers and twisted her wet hair into a thick knot. She cradled her glass of wine in her palm, letting the stem dangle between her fingers as she padded out of her bedroom and down the hall.

“If you tossed in spring rolls, I'm really going to owe you big, Jenna,” she said under her breath, peering into the semidarkened main room from the mouth of the hallway.

“Hey.”

“Oh, God!” Bellamy yelped, clapping her free hand over her heart and sloshing wine all over the other. She blinked, hard and fast, at the source of the voice coming from the living room couch, and her pulse sped up even faster. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Shane stood up, but didn't move toward her. Wow, he looked like hell. Bellamy's heartstrings did a little dance before she could stop them.

He looked at her, seeming to measure his words with care. “I came to talk to you, and I, ah, ran into Jenna outside. I'm sorry if I startled you, but she . . . well, neither one of us thought you'd let me in any other way.”

Bellamy closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath, then another to steady the adrenaline squeezing through her veins. “You're probably right about that,” she said, slapping her resolve into place and blanking her tone. “How's Grady?”

Shane's eyes flickered. “He's okay. Recovering. They moved him out of the ICU today, and he got to eat some normal food. He said it's definitely not your lasagna, but it would do.”

Even though Bellamy tried to resist the urge, a faint smile flitted across her lips. “I'm glad he's okay. I've been thinking about him.” She clutched the stem of her glass, wine turning slightly sticky in her palm.

“Me, too. I've been thinking about a lot of things, actually.”

There's nothing he can say that will make things different
, her pride whispered.

Shane straightened, taking a small step toward her. “I owe you an apology, Bellamy. I never should have kept anything from you.”

“But you did,” she whispered.

“I did, and I wish I could change it. I was . . . foolish.” He paused. “I was scared you wouldn't understand. Hell, I didn't even understand it. And it turns out the whole thing was pretty stupid, anyway. I was afraid of coming back to a place that I thought would define me, but really, everything that defines me has been here all along.” Shane brushed a hand over his chest and took another step toward her. “You taught me that.”

Her head sprang up, sloshing another trickle of wine over the rim of the glass. “I did?”

He gave her a half smile. “Yeah, you did. You kind of snuck up on me, with all that honesty. It threw me for a loop at first, but then it made me realize what an idiot I've been. I just didn't know it until it was too late.”

Bellamy felt a tremble work its way from the center of her body and start to radiate outward. “So you came all the way out here to tell me that? Why didn't you just call me?”

The half smile became a familiar chuckle. “Because you'd have hung up on me, which I'd have deserved. And because I wanted to come here, to the city. To you. I don't want to be without you, even if that means being here. I don't want to leave Pine Mountain, I really don't, but I don't want to be without you more. So whatever I have to do to make that happen, I'm going to do, even if it means being here.”

Shane met her eyes, unwavering and strong. “You want to know who I am—who I really am? I'm the guy who's in love with you, Bellamy. I'll do whatever it takes. Just trust that you really do know me and give me a chance.”

Bellamy stood, speechless and shaking, in the middle of the floor, measuring the words in her head very carefully.

“Truth?” she asked, not letting go of his dark gaze.

Shane exhaled a shaky breath, but locked his eyes on hers. “Of course.”

“I do know you, and I trust you. Pride be damned. I love you, Shane Griffin, and the last twenty-four hours have been hell on earth. So if you could please come here, I would really like for you to hold me and not let go for a really long time.”

His eyes went wide, and she cracked a grin as he processed her words.

“You . . . hold on . . . you . . .”

“Yes. I'm waiting.” She laughed, and Shane closed the space between them in two long strides. He threw his arms around her, and she buried her face in the gorgeous angle of his shoulder, inhaling the scent of him down to her toes.

“God, I love you. And I really mean it. I'll come here on the weekends, we'll figure something out. I can't be without you,” Shane said, bending down to kiss the damp crown of her hair.

Bellamy laughed again, pulling back to peer up at him. “Oh, you don't have to. As a matter of fact, you might be able to help me out. See, just today I was offered this great new job in Pine Mountain, working in the kitchen with Carly di Matisse. Maybe you've heard of her?” she said with a wink. “Anyway, I have to start next week, but I don't have a place to stay. Can you recommend anything?”