Lucky Stars (12 page)

“Go and close the
fucking
door!” James shouted and Belle heard everyone move around her, including Miles. Someone closed the door but she was still pushing against his arm with her hands and her weight.

Once the door closed, James used his arm to shake her gently.

“Calm down,” he ordered, his mouth at her ear, the heat of his body pressed against her back.

“Let me go,” she demanded.

“Belle, I don’t know what Miles said to you –”

“Miles didn’t say much of anything except he called me a fucking whore,” Belle snapped, gained an inch but only so James could turn her to face him then both his arms locked around her. She stopped struggling, looked up at him and added, “Twice.”

“That’s unfortunate, love, but –” he began but she cut in.

“
Unfortunate?
You call that
unfortunate?
I’ve never been called a whore
in my life!
” she screamed.

“Belle –” he started again but she kept talking.

“And I deserved it. He was right. I know it, you know it. That’s
exactly
how I acted.”

He gave her another gentle shake as she watched his face grow hard. “Don’t say that.”

She changed themes and accused, “You said you’d take care of everything.”

“It wasn’t me who wanted you to go to your room,” he shot back.

He was right.

So right.

She was
such
an idiot.

Then again, if she hadn’t, she wouldn’t have known who he was. He would have kept using her and lying to her to rub his brother’s nose in it.

Until he lost interest.

And she would have loved every second of it.

Until he broke her heart.

“You’re right,” she told him. “It’s my fault.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

She was losing the will to fight so again she switched themes.

“Let me go,” she demanded.

That earned her another gentle shake. “I’m not letting you go.”

“Let me go!” she shouted.

“You have to give me the chance to explain.”

“I don’t have to do anything, James,” she retorted.

At the sound of his name, his arms tightened and she knew he was getting angry with her.

“Stop calling me that,” he warned.

“Okay, I will.
Gladly.
I’ll stop calling you
anything,
” she returned.

“Cut the crap, poppet, you know, between us,
it’s
bullshit.”

She was right, he was angry with her, she could tell.

And for some reason, she didn’t care.

And furthermore, she didn’t know anything.

Except there was no “us”.
There was a one night stand, something else she’d never done in her life and something else that caused her extreme humiliation.

“I don’t know anything of the sort except you and Miles take sibling rivalry to unprecedented extremes and I got caught in the middle.”

“That isn’t fucking true,” he snapped.

“No? So you’re saying me and my winning personality knocked you clean off your feet?” she asked sarcastically.

His eyes narrowed even as he admitted, “Something
like
that.”

She felt anger tear through her at his lie and got up on tiptoe to hiss, “You are so full of it.”

He glared at her a moment then his gaze moved to the ceiling as his hand slid up her back and tangled in her hair.

She steeled herself against how good his touch felt, how sweetly familiar it was even though she’d only had it for one night.

When his gaze came back to hold hers, his anger had disappeared and with one look at his gentle face, she had to
re
-steel herself.

“You’re full of surprises,” he murmured.

“Funny, I was thinking the same about you,” she snapped back and this, for some insane reason, made him grin.

His head dipped closer and her body froze.

“Who would have thought the woman I met last night who could barely bring herself to look in my eyes, could stand here this morning in my arms arguing with me?” he asked a question to which he didn’t want the answer and he did it in a voice that said this no longer annoyed him. Instead, it said he found it adorably entertaining.

It occurred to her what he was doing and she felt tears sting her eyes yet again.

“Don’t,” she whispered.

His face got even closer, so close their foreheads were nearly touching.

“Don’t what?” he asked softly.

“Don’t do this,” she told him. “You don’t have to worry. I won’t go flying into Miles’s arms. That ship has sailed.”

She watched his eyes flare before he lowered his head so their foreheads were now, actually, touching.

It hit her in a way that wounded her deeply that she liked that.

It felt nice.

Calvin had never done that to her. Calvin’s intimacy and affection began and ended in bed.

“Poppet,” he muttered. “That’s not what I’m doing.”

“Don’t, James. Just stop it.”

“Belle.”

“You played your game, you won. Just score your point and let me be.”

“That isn’t what’s happening here.”

“I’m not stupid,” she whispered. “I know who you are. I know who I am. The man you are can’t possibly want the woman I am. You can’t think I’m that stupid.”

His arms gave her a squeeze. “I don’t think you’re stupid and I don’t want to hear you talk about yourself like that. You need to give me the chance to explain.”

“I need to leave.”

“You don’t want to leave.”

“I do.”

“You don’t.”

“Trust me,” Belle returned with feeling. “
I do
.”

She felt his body go still and his face moved away from hers.

“You mean it,” he stated quietly, something weird in his voice.
Something that sounded like surprise and maybe affront.

She didn’t reply. She just nodded.

He stared at her a moment before asking in soft, awful voice, “You’re telling me you think what happened last night was all an act so I could best my
fucking brother?
”

The way he said it made it sound ludicrous.

Then again, it was.

“Wasn’t it?” she enquired and went on even though his face now held an expression that made him look like he’d been struck and hard and it hurt her to say what she said next but she did it anyway, (self-defence, as it were). “You should feel proud, James. You did a bang up job. I’d convinced myself you were half in love with me.”

At that, he let her go and took a step back. He did this so swiftly she swayed for a moment without his arms around her.

She righted herself even as she felt that maybe, just maybe, she’d made a colossal mistake.

She stared at him for one hopeful second, trying to read his face.

It was hard and it was cold.

“You want to go, Belle?” he asked, she kept quiet and he finished, “Then go.”

Belle studied him, suddenly unsure. He was holding his body stiffly as if he was stopping himself from doing something, what, she couldn’t imagine.

She looked into his eyes, usually warm and gentle or soft and amused, now they were blank.

She waited for a sign, any sign, that she hadn’t misread her lucky stars.

He gave her none.

Nothing.

Just stared at her, his face hard, his eyes blank.

That was it then. He was done.

Challenge accepted, mission accomplished and he was through.

She swallowed the lump that formed suddenly in her throat and turned. She reached down to grab her bag and walked to the door. She felt his eyes on her but she didn’t look back even as she hoped she’d feel his hand on her wrist, his arm hooking about her waist, making an effort, any effort, to stop her.

She opened the door and walked through.

James (as far as she could tell), didn’t move.

Joy and Yasmin were in the hall but they weren’t far away. Miles had disappeared. There were others there, people she’d met at the party, just a few of them likely woken by the shouting, moving slowly down the hall, pretending to be on their way somewhere but looking curious.

She ignored them and kept walking even as both Joy and Yasmin called her name.

She just kept going, head bowed, eyes to the floor. She moved as swiftly as she could down the stairs, across the massive hall, through the huge, studded wooden doors that it took all her strength to shift even a few feet so she could slide through.

The taxi was waiting and only when she saw it did she start running.

* * * * *

Lewis and Myrtle

At the top window of the eastern-most turret, two children, a black-headed boy and a fair-haired girl, stood holding hands and looking out the window at the pretty woman wearing jeans, a man’s shirt that was way too big on her and funny-looking shoes that weren’t really shoes but they also were. They were something they heard people in these times call “flip-flops” which they both thought was very funny and they’d made a game of the words.
Hiding themselves, closing their eyes and one calling “flip” and the other calling “flop” until they found themselves again.

They watched as she ran to the black taxi shining in the sun like a rabid dog was close at her heels.

 
The taxi driver barely had a chance to get out before she had the back door open. She threw her bag in then she did the same with her body and slammed the door.

The driver wasted no time and drove off with a squeal of wheels.

The little girl, named Myrtle, turned to the little boy, named Lewis, and dropped his hand.

“She doesn’t look very happy,” Lewis remarked.

Myrtle wrinkled her nose. “If Miles was my boyfriend, I’d run from the castle too.”

Lewis grinned.
“Only because you
love
Jack.”
He put great emphasis on the world “love” and Myrtle punched him in the arm and looked back out the window.

“She looked sweet with Jack last night when we saw them walking to the stables,” Myrtle commented.

“Yes,” Lewis unusually concurred with his sister. Then again, he liked the look of the blonde lady, she was very pretty and she reminded him vaguely of his long since dead Mum. “Though, maybe something happened because when they came back, they were walking really quickly.”

Myrtle giggled. “I know! He was practically
dragging
her.”

“I wonder why they were in such a
hurry?
” Lewis asked and Myrtle bit her lip.

“Did you see them kissing?” Myrtle whispered.

 
Lewis didn’t look at his sister when he answered back in a whisper, “Yes.”

Myrtle’s voice was worried when she asked, “Do you think Miles found out Jack kissed his girlfriend?”

Lewis’s eyes moved to the window and he looked down the road, the taxi long gone.

“I hope not. He can be not very nice and I don’t think he’d like Jack kissing his girlfriend,” Lewis replied and felt his sister shiver beside him.

As he’d been doing for quite a number of years (over two hundred of them), he tried to protect his sister from anything that might distress her.

So he leaned in, bumped her with his shoulder and shouted, “Flip-flop!”

Myrtle needed no further encouragement. She shot up several inches from the floor and darted across the room, her ghostly body melting through the wall. She did a forward spin and headed down and through the stairs.

Then, when she found her hidey-hole, she shouted, “Flip!”

And some ways away, she heard her brother’s ghostly, “Flop!”

Eyes firmly shut, Myrtle floated in his direction.

Chapter Five

Jack Meets Lila and Rachel

Jack

Three months later…

Jack saw movement out of the corner of his eye.

He turned his head to see his assistant, Olive, and her short, squat body. She was wearing a heavy tweed skirt even though it was the middle of a very warm summer. One tail of her blouse had come
untucked
. And her short, naturally grey but dyed peach (for some reason unknown to him) hair was spiked as if she’d been running her hands through it with severe agitation.

Olive Mayfair could singlehandedly plan a successful war with multiple fronts but she wouldn’t be able to do it without displaying a great deal of tremendously disorganised, blatantly obvious stress.

She stood at the windows to the conference room where Jack was sitting in a meeting and she was gesticulating wildly, like she was guiding a plane in to land and didn’t quite know what signals to make so she was making it up as she went along.