Blue Waltz (15 page)

When he reached her, she sucked in her breath, then turned back to the window. They stood that way for some time, both looking out to the street, Belle's breath shallow, Stephen's thoughts raging.

He wanted to touch her.

130 Linda Francis Lee

It was late afternoon. The murky, overcast skies were brightened slightly by the sun, which lurked somewhere in the distance, unseen, casting the world in shades of silvery gray. Partly ethereal, partly eerie.

Yes, he wanted to touch her, but not to offer comfort. He wanted to hold her, feel her, press her close until he could feel the pounding of her heart. He wanted to touch her in much the same way he had wanted to touch her the night he had brought her in from the rain. Before seeing her leg.

Unease swept through him. That night. Her leg. Craziness.

He started to leave, to seek the respite of his home and a glass of brandy to calm his raging thoughts, but then she spoke.

"This must be the time of day when people decide to kill themselves."

At her words, his heart seemed to still in his chest. His mind raced. What did she mean? He searched for something to say. Something, anything. But nothing would come. He could think of nothing that would help him see into her mind—or to ease his. "Belle—"

"See over there." She pointed out through the French door.

He was a few inches behind her and a few more to the side. He looked not out the window but at her. He took in her hair, her cheekbones, and the delicate curve of her ear. So fragile, so easily broken.

"Over there," she persisted, as if knowing he wasn't looking, the tip of her finger pressing insistently against the glass. "That ledge across the way."

At length Stephen looked out and found the granite balustrade that surrounded the balcony of the home across the side street. "Yes, I see it."

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"They say a woman tried to walk the ledge." Belle breathed the words in a delicate whisper. "But a gust of wind came out of the skies like the careless hand of an impatient God, sweeping her away, off into the wind, tossing her like an unimportant plaything to the earth." Belle cast her glance down to the. street. "What do you think she thought about when she knew she was going over?"

Her voice wrapped around him like the delicate threads of a spider's web, seemingly fragile, though actually relentless, unwilling to let him go. "I've never heard that story in all the years I've lived in Boston or even in the years since I've lived on this street." His tone was overly sharp, indignant, and he wanted to step away, yet didn't.

Belle turned back. She looked up at him, her head tilted, the back of her head resting against a glass pane. They stood so close together he could feel the warmth of her. If he moved ever so slightly, they would touch. Thoughts of suicide and impatient gods vanished. He wanted to kiss her, wanted to taste the sweet promise of her full, red lips. He wanted to run his fingers up her arm to the curve of her breast. To feel the soft fullness pressed against his hand.

She watched him, and he had the strange feeling that she knew just exactly what he was thinking. But if that was the case, he couldn't tell if she returned the sentiments. Her face was more a mirror to his own feelings than a window to hers.

He leaned closer. "Belle," he murmured.

She met his gaze, her own intense. "Of course you haven't heard the story."

Her words dragged his mind back to places he didn't want to be. Frustration mixed with desire.

"If someone had tried to tell you," she continued, "you wouldn't have listened, or you would have put it from your mind as if it never existed. You don't like things that don't fit into your perfect, well-ordered world, Stephen."

His sharp intake of breath hissed through his teeth. His jaw clenched and his eyes narrowed.

But then, suddenly, she laughed, the lightning quick change threatening his balance. "Or perhaps I made the whole story up."

His mind stilled. She stood before him, watching him, one long sweeping curl having escaped her chignon to fall down her cheek, beckoning him, teasing him, before she slipped underneath his arm and quit the room, leaving him alone with unsettled feelings and the pounding desire that he so frequently felt whenever she was near.

CHAPTER 11

She entered his house like the wind, through the front door, buffeting, disturbing, never unnoticed—breaking things, Stephen thought uncomfortably, though he doubted it was sofas or chairs or tables and such that were at risk. He had the unexpected notion that it would be something closer to his heart.

He cursed out loud. Belle Braxton, forever twisting his thoughts into unrecognizable musings.

He sat in his study, bracing himself against her impending onslaught. But he braced himself for naught. She didn't enter his haven. Only her voice wafted in from the foyer, making it clear that she wasn't there to see him. He cursed again for caring.

She hadn't been invited to his house this day, nor had she been expected. She never came when he invited her, nor when there was a real reason to come. He should have been annoyed. But he wasn't. He was thrilled she was there.

It was often that way, he realized. Again and again, Belle Braxton didn't have to do much to spin his mind off with contradictory thoughts—merely arrive at his door, or turn him away, or look at him with those little-girl-lost eyes that whispered of a dark stain on her heart. And whispered of pain. There was always the pain in her eyes, even when she laughed. Or perhaps it was there espe-

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cially when she laughed, when there was no anger to keep the pain at bay.

He had avoided her each time she had come over. He snorted at the thought, for if truth be known, avoided was an exaggeration. Actually, whenever she arrived she provided him with no opportunity to avoid her—but, by God, if she had tried to walk into his study over the last few days, you can bet he would have sent her on her way, door slammed in her face just as she had done to him.

As it was, she had never bothered to come near enough to his study door for slamming it to have made an impression. She always came to see Adam or Cook. Even Wendell had spent time with her, though being the professional that he was, the butler had only nodded as Belle spoke, until she would give up and leave, or move on to someone more inclined toward conversation—though never Stephen.

He snorted at the thought as he sat back in his leather desk chair. Today, apparently, it would be the same, he determined, when he heard her enter the front parlor where Adam sat at a table, getting ready to play poker with an assortment of friends of which Stephen wanted no part. He would have told his brother as much if a tentative peace hadn't settled between the two of them recently. Stephen, despite the unruly men now seated in his front parlor, was disinclined to ruin that fragile truce.

But truces, just then, were the least of his concerns. Belle was. He set his pen aside, careful not to let the blue-black ink splatter his crisp clean files, and listened to Belle's deep throaty laughter and her fine silken voice sway toward him like a song on the breeze.

Her words always wrapped around him, just as their conversation about the woman who had supposedly been

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swept off the ledge wrapped around him—and hadn't let him go. Every time he started to think about the story he tried to push it from his mind, just as she had said he would. As a result, he would force himself for a few uncomfortable minutes to consider the possibility that the story was true. It usually happened at night, just when he was drifting off to sleep, filling his dreams with images of faceless women plunging to the earth. Always, just before the ground turned them into hopelessly broken toys, the indistinct features of the woman would sharpen until they were Belle's, who would laugh and fly away, up into the heavens.

Stephen seldom woke feeling rested. This day was no different. Though, oddly, the very voice that caused him so much turmoil at night drifted over him now like a soothing balm.

He nearly laughed aloud. From experience he had learned that it wouldn't last. She soothed from a distance, when he imagined her silky hair and stunning eyes, or heard her mellow laughter. Up close, she disturbed him in ways he wasn't interested in examining.

Abruptly he stood, as much to escape his thoughts as to find Blue Belle Holly. His determined stride took him out of the study and across the marble foyer to the parlor where he found the poker players. He nearly choked on the smoke that engulfed the room, making it appear more a tawdry saloon at midnight than a respectable parlor at noon. But even through the haze, he couldn't miss her.

His mind jarred as he tried to register the fact that her hair—pulled up in a loose design of curls at the back of her head, revealing the long, sensuous column of her neck—was lighter, seemingly gray, and her clothes, another velvet dress, though this one made up in deep

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hunter-green, were covered in . . . dust. But that sight was usurped by the sight of her hand resting softly on Adam's shoulder, her hip resting casually against the arm of his chair as she looked down at the cards he held in his hand.

Heat churned in Stephen's gut, and he must have made some sort of a noise, for without warning everyone at the table including Belle turned to him.

"Stephen!" Belle called. "You're here!"

His brain registered the pleasure of her face, but another part of him, his heart, he thought fleetingly, was still fixated on her delicate hand resting on his brother's shoulder.

"So it would seem," he said, meeting her gaze, his tone short. "As are you. Though why you're here this time I can't begin to imagine."

Adam, along with the rest of the card players looked decidedly uncomfortable. Belle only laughed. "For someone supposedly so intelligent and successful, you have the imagination of a gnat, and that I'm afraid is being unkind to the gnat."

The poker players gasped and choked as Belle and Stephen stared at one another, deep pools of darkness clashing with amused blue. Adam dropped his head down onto his hands, unmindful of the cards.

"Surely," Stephen began, "a gnat is an exaggeration."

Belle tilted her head and seemed to consider. "Oh, all right," she scoffed with a teasing smile. "A mayfly."

The room grew silent. Stephen's ominous stare would have slain a lesser person, but Belle didn't even bat one of her long silky eyelashes, yet again bringing a grudging bit of respect for her to the surface. "Larger body, virtually the same size brain," he responded.

"So," she said, with an arch of brow, "you're smarter

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than I thought. No wonder you're so successful. And there just might be a sense of humor in you somewhere after all."

"Don't count on it," he stated curtly.

Belle threw her head back and laughed out loud, up at the rafters, uninhibited. "I won't."

Stephen shook his head. Without conscious intention, his dark features hardened into disdain. "Didn't anyone ever teach you about little things like being polite to your host?"

"Of course. Though I was also taught that the host is supposed to be polite to the guest. But, alas, I'm not here to be hosted." She extended her hand in which she held a cup. "I've come to borrow, not to socialize. I need some sugar. I ran out, and I need some more to make my icing." She ran the back of her hand across her cheek, leaving a swipe of creamy skin exposed beneath the dusting of white on her cheeks.

"Sugar? You need sugar?" Stephen asked, perplexed. "And what is that all over you?"

She glanced down at her skirt. "Flour," she said proudly, as if she wore a badge of honor. "I'm cooking. Or at least I'm helping Maeve cook. Soon we'll be icing."

"Good Lord," Stephen muttered. "You look like you know as much about cooking as I know about imagination."

Adam groaned.

But Belle was delighted. "Touché, Stevie."

"Stevie?" Stephen repeated, with a look of disbelief stretched across his chiseled features.

Adam groaned even louder, while his friends muttered uncomfortably.

But Belle was no longer interested in the discussion. She turned back to the table. "What is it you're playing, Adam?"

"Poker," Lewis supplied when no one else in the room seemed inclined to answer.

"Really?" She glanced at one vacant seat. "Who is going to sit there?"

"We had hoped Stephen would join us," Lewis offered.

"Stephen? Playing poker? I find that hard to believe. No wonder the seat is empty—just waiting for me," she added. "I'll play instead."

"You?" Adam asked.

"Yes me."

"But ... we play for money."

Belle held her hands out palms up, the empty cup hanging from one finger, and shrugged. "I have money."

At this Adam laughed. "True. But we play for keeps, Belle. If you lose, you lose for good, or until you can win it back."

"What do you take me for?" she scoffed. "A dolt?"

Red crept up Adam's neck. "Well, of course not. It's just that . . ." He glanced up and met Stephen's hard stare.

"It's just that what?" she demanded.

"It's just that I would never want you to feel taken advantage of."

Belle waved his words away, set her cup on the table, and plopped down in the empty chair. "If I were you, I'd be worried that I might take advantage of you. Now, deal. I'm ready to play."

"No."

Everyone froze. Belle sat very still for one second before she turned very slowly around. "No?" she asked Stephen.

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"Correct," he responded, never having moved from his place in the doorway. "No, you can't play."

"And why ever not, Mr. St. James?" Her tone was as formidable as Stephen's had been.

"I'll not be responsible for a woman . . . gambling in my home."

Belle narrowed her eyes. "Who made you my keeper?"

She was correct, he realized. Who, indeed, had made him her keeper? He wasn't, nor would he ever be. And he certainly didn't care one whit if she was fleeced out of every penny of her fortune.