Lucky Stars (26 page)

He knew instantly she’d designed it.

Her eyes went to his phone and Jack said into it, “A minute.”

Then he took it from his ear and Belle, a hint of accusation mingling with the embarrassment in her voice, didn’t hesitate in saying, “I thought you said you were sleeping with me.”

Jack controlled his desire to laugh at her disgruntled discomfiture at the same time he fought against catching her in his arms and kissing her breathless.

“I did,” he replied.

She looked down the hall then at him and asked, “Well?”

“I’ve got a call, poppet,” he told her unnecessarily.

Baron and
Gretl
were pressing for her attention and she bent to give them pats while looking down the hall again.

Then he watched her wet her lips.

Then she looked at his shoulder then his nose then his ear.

Then she took in a deep breath and what she did next stunned him to immobility.

She pushed through him and his
dogs,
walked into his room and around his bed to what had become her side. Once there, she pulled back the covers and slid between them.

With some effort, Jack forced himself out of his frozen stance, put the phone to his ear and shut his door.

He talked on the phone while she hung over the side of his bed, petted his dogs and then cooed to them to lie down which they did.

He finished his call while she settled in, facing the windows.

He turned out the lights, slid in behind her and pulled her to him.

When her body relaxed, Jack thought it only fair to try one more time to calm her fears. “Love, you do know there are no such things as ghosts.”

“I know,” she lied and he bit back his laughter but not his smile.

The smile died when her arm came to rest on his at her waist, her hand over his at her belly.

He closed his eyes and pressed his face into her hair.

Minutes later, he felt her drift into sleep.

Minutes after that, he did the same.

He knew the minute she woke.

He waited while she hesitated for long moments, lying awake in the curve of his body and it cost him to let her go when she eventually slid out of bed and left the room.

But Jack was not going to move too quickly and make the same mistake twice.

This time he was going to earn her trust and, when he knew he had it irrevocably, only then would he make her understand she was his.

For he already knew it.

He’d known it since their first night.

She appeared at the breakfast table five minutes after him.

After breakfast, she caught him and his dogs on the way to the stables and told him (or, more to the point, she told his ear) that she was taking a walk.

Jack had intended to ride.

He allowed himself a moment to consider taking Belle with him.

Jack would very much enjoy riding with her in front of him, taking her along the coastline he knew she loved for she walked it nearly every day. His horse, Shadow, could take her farther than she could walk, showing her more than she’d seen and Jack knew Belle would like that.

As pleasant as this thought was, he didn’t want her riding while pregnant even on Shadow who he knew would take care of her. So he changed his morning plans and walked with her.

This did not go exactly well.

His first mistake was to explain to her, when she’d quietly asked about him driving to and from London in a day, that he didn’t drive.

He told her that he flew.

That didn’t garner a reaction until he further explained that he not only flew, he piloted the plane.

This garnered a response.

She stopped, frozen and stared, open-mouthed.

Then she asked in a voice dripping with horror, “
You
flew the plane?”

Understanding her reaction, Jack got close to reassure her. “Belle, I earned my pilot’s license when I was twenty. I’ve been flying for eighteen years.”

She blinked then repeated, “You flew the plane?”

“Belle –”

She cut him off, “Do you have, um… a qualified pilot with you?”

Jack again bit back laughter and explained, “I
am
a qualified pilot.”

“Yes, okay,” she replied swiftly. “But, when you fly, do you have another one, in case of emergencies?”

To win her trust, unfortunately, he had to be honest.

Therefore he answered, “No.”

“Oh goodness gracious,” she breathed.

“Belle –”

To his amused surprise, she shook her head sharply, put her hands over her ears and chanted. “La la
la
, not listening. This conversation didn’t happen. La
la
la
.”

He noticed she had pink to her cheeks, either a reaction to her embarrassment at their conversation or her chanting of denial or both.

She dropped her hands and started walking again, her pace picking up significantly, her bearing stiff and uncomfortable looking.

He lengthened his strides to keep up thinking not only that he thoroughly enjoy seeing her blush, he’d never forget how adorable she was when she let her fear break down her guard.

His second mistake was only ten minutes later when he took her hand and slowed their pace.

Then he asked, “Have you hired another shop assistant?”

He felt her hand jerk in his and she looked up at him in surprise. “No, I haven’t had time.”

Jack looked down at her and enquired with what he thought was a good deal of patience, “I thought I explained I want you off the shop floor.”

Her eyes widened the moment before she bowed her head to study the rocky path they were traversing.

“You can’t hire a shop assistant in two days.”

“Yes, you can,” Jack replied because he knew you could.

She looked at him again, her eyes now narrowed with either annoyed confusion or confused annoyance,
he
couldn’t decide which.

Either one, Jack thought, on Belle was cute.

“No, you can’t,” she told him.

“I can,” he told her.

She stopped walking and started speaking. “Jack –”

He pulled at her hand and kept walking, taking her with him and, he thought, ending this particular conversation by saying, “I’ll call Olive. She’ll have someone at the shop tomorrow.”

She tugged at his hand to halt him but he ignored it and kept them moving.

“Jack,” she called, her voice definitely moving toward annoyed rather than confused. “You can’t call Olive. It’s Sunday.”

“I can. She’s available twenty-four seven.”

Belle’s hand tugged his with a force he couldn’t ignore. He stopped and looked down at her.

“She’s available twenty-four seven?” Belle asked with obvious disbelief and possible accusation as if he was a slave driver cracking a nasty whip.

“Of course,” Jack replied with casual patience.

“Who is Olive, anyway?” she queried, not quite recovered from her shock.

“My PA,” Jack answered.

“And she’s available at all times?” Belle went on, still, for some reason, not processing this information.

Jack lost his casual patience and slid into amused impatience.

Therefore his lips were twitching when he said. “Yes, Belle, and she gets paid well into six figures to be available at all times. She’s not an indentured servant. She’s a highly experienced, intensely skilled, extremely loyal, very valued employee who can find a way, on a Sunday afternoon, to hire the best shop assistant in the UK and have her in your store by tomorrow, end of business.”

She stared at him a moment and then breathed, “Oh.”

And while Jack was watching her parted lips at the same time fighting a nearly overwhelming urge to put his own against her mouth, slide his tongue inside and taste her, Belle continued on a whisper.

“Wow.”

Jack won his battle, lifted a hand to her jaw and smiled down at her as he leaned closer. “Wait until you meet her, poppet. Olive is definitely an ‘oh wow’.”

At his words, for some reason, something in Belle’s face shifted, it softened and a fetching radiance came into her eyes.

He understood he scored a point. He just didn’t understand how.

Then she said softly, “I’ll look forward to that.”

She turned and started walking again but he knew, somehow, her mood had lifted considerably, lightening in a way he’d never experienced from her before.

It was as charming as it was surprising.

Therefore ten minutes later (when he made his third mistake), it should not have taken him off-guard when she threw a carefree smile over her shoulder at him and announced,
“
I’ll show you my new favourite place.”

However, this did take Jack off-guard.

Completely.

He had an excuse for not controlling his reaction.

A smile from Belle was infrequent and it was enchanting. A carefree one, though, was something he’d never seen and that was enthralling.

When she started to scramble onto a dangerous outcropping of rock at a cliff face, Baron and
Gretl
protectively close to her but also alighting the outcrop with practiced ease as if they’d done it every day of their lives, Jack overreacted.

Strike that, it was when Belle, the woman he considered
his
woman and the woman who was carrying
his
child, a woman who was scared of practically everything
but
that dangerous outcropping of rock, started to scramble onto it that he overreacted.

He followed her quickly, caught her with an arm around her midriff and lifted her off her feet. Her back to his front, he carried her off the outcrop to the far safer cliff path and set her on her feet.

When she whirled around to face him, he demanded curtly, “What did you think you were doing?”

She’d stared at him a second then asked what he thought was bizarrely, “Oh no, you’re not going back to the jerky one, are you?”

Jack decided to ignore her question, focussing instead on his far more important, and sensible one.

“Belle,” he’d clipped. “That outcrop is dangerous. What were you thinking?”

She looked at the rock then at him and stated, “No it isn’t. I go there a lot. It’s where I do my best non-thinking.”

“So you’re telling me you won’t climb a ladder but you’ll scale a cliff?” he enquired with annoyed surprise.

She looked back at the rock then at him. “It’s not a cliff.”

He looked behind him and then back at her. “Belle, it’s a cliff.
A rocky cliff.
A
dangerous
rocky cliff.”

She turned to the cliff and studied it as if seeing it for the first time.

Then she muttered, “It
is
a cliff.”

He didn’t know whether to burst out laughing or shake some sense into her.

He did neither.

Instead he ordered, “I don’t want you to go out there again.” When her gaze moved to his face, he asked, “Do you understand?”

She regarded him a moment and said nonsensically, “No, it’s the bossy one.”

He ignored her again and repeated, “Am I understood?”

“You’re understood,” she replied quietly, turned back toward the house, patted her thigh to call the dogs and started forward.

Their walk, apparently, was over.

As they had moved away from the house, she had not only attempted conversation, she’d freely engaged in it.

As they moved back to the house, she remained thoughtfully and somewhat disturbingly quiet and her lightened mood had vanished.

Therefore when The Point was in view, Jack got close to her side, slid an arm around her shoulders and halted her. He curled her to face him and she tilted her head back to look at him.

“Don’t be cross, poppet,” he demanded softly when her eyes caught his, going on to explain. “I acted out of concern.”

To this she oddly announced, “I hiked the Inca Trail.”

Jack stared at her a moment before asking, “What?”

She put her hands to his waist and repeated, “I hiked the Inca Trail with my Mom. We hiked to Machu Picchu.” When he didn’t speak, she went on, “Which is amazing, by the way.”

He was surprised at this news but also uncertain why she was sharing it.

“That may be so but you weren’t pregnant nor were you alone when you did it. I’d rather you not climb out onto a cliff outcrop when you’re out walking alone.”

He’d also rather she not do it when she was with someone, for instance himself, but he didn’t say that.

She moved a hint closer to him, tilting her head back further. “No. That’s not what I mean. I’ve been trying to decide why I’m not scared of that cliff which I’m not. I never thought about it but it’s weird.” Again when he didn’t respond, she continued, informing him, “I think it’s the sea.”