Lucky Stars (6 page)

Yes, he was for real.

Her eyes skittered away and she quickly exchanged her puppy for a new one.

Her nerves, which had disappeared for several glorious moments, returned and she felt an overpowering, nearly paralysing self-consciousness.

Cuddling her new puppy, she mumbled, “I can’t accept a champion litter dog.”

“You can,” he returned.

Her eyes moved to him but this time she looked over his shoulder.

“I can’t,” she repeated.

“Belle,” he said her name softly, his deep voice wrapping around it like an embrace and the effect made her shiver. He sounded like he was calling out to her even though she was on her knees right beside him.

She moved her eyes to the vicinity of his though she didn’t look in them. She looked mostly at his nose.

He had, she thought somewhat agitatedly, a very nice nose.

When she did this, she heard his delicious chuckle.

“Belle,” he repeated and, against its will, her gaze finally lifted to his eyes and when it did, he repeated, “Pick one.”

“I can’t have a German Shepherd,” she told him.

“Do you have another dog?” he asked and she shook her head, looking away and dropping her puppy to give belly rubs to two bundles who were happily squirming on their backs on the floor. “Do you have a cat?” he went on and she shook her head again. “Do you let your house and they don’t allow animals?” he pressed.

She finally spoke. “I own my place. It’s just that I don’t have a garden and my cottage isn’t very big. German Shepherds are large dogs. They need room to move.” She scooted closer and stroked
Gretl’s
head, continuing in a near whisper. “It’s nice of you to offer anyway.
Very generous.”
Her voice went even quieter before she murmured, “Thank you.”

With that, she stood.

She could take no more. She would prefer Miles’s stifling attention at a shoulder-to-shoulder crowded party (her definition of torture) to playing with puppies in a warm room in a stable with criminally handsome, seemingly very sweet James Bennett.

She took a backward step to the door as he straightened from his crouch.

“I should really be getting back,” she told him, looking behind her toward the door.

It was only a few feet away but the distance yawned behind her like it was a million miles.

The puppies jumped at her ankles.

James spoke and what he said made her head twist around to look at him.

“We haven’t finished the tour.”

“We haven’t?” she asked, wondering what he’d show her next.

Kittens?

Lambs?

An adorable baby rhinoceros?

He shook his head, moved forward, bending low to control the puppies at the same time his hand came to her hip, fingers hot through the fabric as he expertly manoeuvred her out of the room. Baron came with him.
Gretl
stayed put and James managed to get her and his dog out without any of the puppies escaping.

It was a minor miracle.

However, instinctively, Belle thought he was the kind of man who wrought minor miracles on a daily basis.

Once he’d turned out the light and closed the door, he took her elbow again and led her along the stalls toward the door they entered. He didn’t take them to the door. He took them to a ladder that led up to what looked like a hayloft.

When he had her facing it, she heard him say, “Up.”

Fear seized her and Belle stared at the ladder.
Then her head tipped back to examine the open floor of the hayloft facing the stable.
Then she looked at the ladder again.

Then panic coursed through her.

She didn’t do ladders.

She also didn’t do heights.

And she
certainly
didn’t do one full side of the floor opened to a neck breaking fall haylofts.

She turned and nearly collided with him, he was standing so close behind her.

“I can’t go up there,” she breathed.

He was looking down at her.
“Why not?”

She blinked and looked over his shoulder. “I just can’t.”

“It’s safe, Belle. I wouldn’t take you up there if it wasn’t,” he replied.

Her eyes went to his ear. “I’m sure it is. I just don’t do ladders,” she admitted, paused then continued, “or heights.”

Or out of the way, scary haylofts with unbearably handsome men,
she thought a thought that she would never, even if paid, speak aloud.

“You’ll be fine,” he assured her, his voice deeper and gentler and somewhere in her panic stricken brain it registered that he was genuinely trying to assure her rather than force her to do something against her will.

“I –” she started but before she could say more, his hands came to her waist, he got close and all panicked thoughts (indeed, all thoughts, panicked or not) flew from her head.

She looked up at him to see his face was close.

Very close.

Magnetically close.

She held her breath and barely controlled an impulse to lean toward him.

“I’ll take care of you,” he murmured and then his fingers tightened at her waist.

He turned her to face the ladder and before she knew what he was about, he actually
lifted
her clean off her feet. Reflexively her hands shot out to grab the sides of the ladder and her feet found the rungs. His hands slid down to her hips and he put pressure there, urging her to climb.

And she did.

Instantly, she felt him come up after her.

Not a few rungs after her but
right
after her, his arms around her body, hands moving along the ladder sides just under hers and his body warm against her back. She was sheltered from danger by his big, strong frame and her fear of heights (and ladders and haylofts, but not him) completely melted away.

She made it to the floor of the hayloft and stepped in, James coming right after.

Without hesitation, she moved to the safest area available, the centre of the loft, as he strode to its outer wall. She watched as he unlatched a pair of doors and slid one to the side then the other.

He turned to her and ordered quietly, “Come here.”

She didn’t want to. She
really
didn’t want to.

The doors were open to the night. She could easily fall out them and crack her head open. Or break her arm. Or sprain her ankle. None of which she wanted to do.

Even though she didn’t want to, she pulled his jacket closer about her and walked slowly to his side, stopping several feet from the edge.

“Belle,” he called again and she tilted her head back to look at him, her mind filled with thoughts of her broken body at the base of the stables, her knees feeling spongy, like they couldn’t hold her weight. “Look,” he urged and she watched him turn his head.

Her gaze went in the same direction and she caught her breath.

Spread out before her was his castle, huge and imposing on its cliff, many of its windows shown with bright lights, the sea and sky beyond it inky black. The white caps broke the waters and against the sprawling shoreline you could see the foamy surf pounding against the rocks.

It was magnificent.

It was
way
better than the view from the study.

It was even worth the torment of being in the company of wickedly handsome James Bennett.

Without thinking, Belle took a step closer to the edge and breathed, “I wish my grandmother was here.”

“What?” James asked, his voice holding more than a little amusement mingled with surprise.

She looked up at him and repeated, “I wish my grandmother was here. She’s a painter. She could paint this for you.” Belle looked back at the view and went on, “She might even
pay
you for the opportunity to paint this.”

Belle felt him get close to her side. “You’re grandmother’s a painter?”

“Yes,” Belle answered not taking her eyes from the vista. “She’s kind of well-known. You might have heard of her. Lila Cavendish?”

Something emotive stirred the air, emanating from James. It was strong enough for Belle to tear her gaze away from the seascape to look up at him again.

“Your grandmother is Lila Cavendish?” he asked when her eyes hit his face.

Belle nodded. “Do you know her?”

“I have one of her pieces in my office in London,” he replied. “She’s extremely talented.”

Belle felt a sudden, warm burst of pride and murmured, “She is.”

“So you come from a talented family,” he remarked and she kept staring at him and shook her head.

“No, it’s just Gram that’s talented,” she told him.

He got closer, his chin dipping down further to look at her and he asked, “I thought Miles said you made your dress?”

Immediately, Belle looked away.

“Belle,” he called again but she didn’t look back.

Instead she answered the sea, “Yes, I made the dress.”

“It’s beautiful,” he complimented her and she felt that trill go up her spine again. So strong it not only raised the hairs on the back of her neck, it tingled all along her scalp.

“Thank you,” she whispered then sought to find another subject, any subject and luckily her mind found one. “Which piece of Gram’s do you have?”

He thankfully allowed the subject change and replied, “It’s called ‘Sedona Bloom’.”

Belle smiled at the sea and nodded. “I think I remember that one. She did a Sedona series when we lived there. The Arizona desert is remarkable in bloom.”

“So, you’re from Arizona,” he noted and she shook her head, crossing her arms on her chest under his jacket.

“We’re from everywhere.” She kept speaking to the view, finding it easier to hold this conversation when she could pretend he wasn’t there and so damned close. “Mom and Dad got divorced when I was six and Mom and I followed Gram wherever she went.
Which was a lot of places.
”

“Like where?”
James asked.

It was at that moment that it occurred to her that James had known her for barely an evening and Miles had known her for a month. And Miles didn’t know her grandmother was Lila Cavendish or that her parents were divorced or that she moved around a lot.

He didn’t know any of this because he’d never asked.

“Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico,” Belle answered. “Gram went through a New Orleans phase so we stayed there for a school year. And she became infatuated with Savannah so we were there for an entire summer.” She stopped and when he didn’t speak she decided she should go on, so she noted inanely, “It was very humid.”

“Interesting life for a child,” James muttered. “What did your father think of this?”

Belle’s hand came out from under the jacket and she waved it in front of her. “Oh, he didn’t mind. He was a wanderer too. I never saw much of him, really.”

“You don’t sound like you find that upsetting,” he observed.

Belle shook her head. “I didn’t have much of him but he’s a big personality. When I did have him, I had all of him and that was better than most kids have.”

She felt his heat and knew he’d drawn closer.

She tried to pretend that didn’t happen too.

“I hear Lila Cavendish is a bit of a character as well.”

She knew what he meant.

If her father was a big personality and Gram was a character, what happened to her?

She didn’t know why she said what she said next. Maybe it was the sea, the puppies, the several glasses of champagne she had at the party.

Or maybe it was just him.

But she said it.

“I used to wish I was like her,” Belle confided softly. “She and my Mom are cut from the same cloth. They light up a room.”

Forgetting her fear of heights, she walked to the edge and leaned her shoulder against the door, losing herself in the view and kept talking.

“Once when I was young, we visited my great-grandmother in a retirement home. It was the first time Gram and I visited her after Gram moved her in there. We walked in and it was dreary.
Depressing.”
Her voice dropped even lower. “You wouldn’t believe it.”

Belle shut her eyes against the memory, opened them and forged on.

“I remember Gram taking one look at all those old people in their bleak
rec
room and muttering, ‘This will
not
do.’ Then she dug in her purse and pulled out her bag of lemon drops. To this day, she always carries a bag of lemon drops.” This last came out in a barely there whisper.

She twisted her head to look at him and saw he was watching her, his arms crossed on his chest, his face so gentle and striking she had to look away so she’d have the courage to continue.

Belle pulled in a breath and watched a wave break against the jagged rocks of the shore before she went on.

“Anyway,” she said in a brighter voice, “she went around the whole room offering the old folks lemon drops, telling jokes, laughing and talking and livening up the room. That’s all it took.
Gram and a bag of lemon drops.”