Just North of Bliss (28 page)

“
This
is what you did!” She waved the
yellow paper in front of his face.

He made a swipe for it, but she snatched it
back. “But . . .”

“Oh, no, you don’t. You’re not going to read
this piece of my personal correspondence, Mr. Win Asher.”

“But what does it say? I swear to God,
Belle, I haven’t sold any more pictures of you.” Not exactly,
anyhow. She didn’t need to know about the arrangements he’d made
with his U.S. agent yet. He had some ruffled feathers to soothe
before he hit her with that tidbit of news.

“Oh, no. Not you. You’re Mr. Perfect, Mr.
Always Honorable, aren’t you?”

“Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to—”

“
Curse
you! Just
listen to this.” Belle lifted the telegram and read. “‘Photo
Blissborough Gazette
. How can do this to family? Ashamed.
Hurt. Crushed. Love, Mother.’”

Win guessed that saved him the trouble of
trying to wrest the telegram out of her hand. “Um, that’s from your
mother?”

“Who do you think it’s from, curse you? Who
else would sign a telegram to me ‘Mother’?” Belle spun around and
hurtled across the room. After pounding her little balled fist
against the far wall, she spun the other way and hurtled back to
him. He braced himself, sure she was going to pound him next. “This
is all your fault! How could you lie to me like that?”

“Now, wait a minute, Belle. I didn’t—”

“You did so lie!”

“It wasn’t a lie. Exactly.”

She was nose-to-nose with him by this time.
Her nearness did funny things to him. Or maybe they weren’t funny.
They were probably more scandalous than funny. At least Belle and
her family would think so.

“You’re a superb equivocator, aren’t you,
Win Asher? You should have been a Jesuit, you’re so good at
it!”

“Say, Belle, that’s a great line. Mind if I
share it with a newspaper friend of mine?”

“What? Oh, you—you—”

Since she seemed to have run out of words
momentarily, and since she was standing smack in front of him, and
since he really, really wanted to, Win did the only thing he could
think of that might offer at least one of them satisfaction. He
reached out, drew her into an embrace, and heard the telegram
crinkle as he crushed her body to his. “Shut up,” he muttered the
second before he kissed her.

She struggled like a tigress for
approximately seven seconds. Then she lost the battle with Win and
herself and melted into his embrace. Weak in the knees, Win started
edging toward the bed. He told himself he wouldn’t take this too
far, although the thought of stripping Belle naked and ravishing
her was wildly appealing. He sat to the accompaniment of a soft
sigh of mattress ticking and a softer sigh from Belle.

Her full breasts taunted him as they pressed
into his chest. Confounded clothes. He wanted to feel her breasts
in the flesh, damn it. He wanted to taste them. He wanted to lick
her from her toes to her hairline. He wanted to plunge his engorged
sex into her body and drive her to pinnacles she didn’t know
existed. He wanted to . . .

A sharp rap on the door brought them both to
attention with unpleasant rapidity. With a loud gasp, Belle pulled
away from Win, her eyes huge and staring. Frustrated beyond
anything, Win tried to haul her back into his arms. “To hell with
the door,” he murmured as she started struggling.

“No!” Belle smacked his arm. “The Richmonds
are waiting for me.”

The smack was a small one. There didn’t seem
to be much heat behind it, but it jolted Win’s senses into renewed
mental functioning. Shutting his eyes and feeling tormented beyond
what he considered just, he released her, whispering a ragged,
“Damn.”

Belle leaped up from the bed as if she had
springs in her legs and raced for the door.

And that was another thing, Win thought
unhappily. He wanted—no, he
needed
—to see those glorious
legs in the flesh. He wanted to feel them, to kiss them. Just
thinking about the soft, warm flesh of her inner thighs provoked a
groan of misery from him.

“Get up!”

Belle’s sharply hissed command made Win
blink and glance at her. Another rap at the door made her jump. “Um
. . . I beg your pardon?”

He saw that her teeth were clenched. “I said
get up from that bed, curse you! I’m not opening this door until
you do.”

“Telegram,” said a voice on the other side
of the door.

Belle lifted a hand and pressed it to her
crimson cheek. “Another one? Oh, my land.”

“Good God.” Win staggered slightly as he
rose from the bed. If Belle’s lunatic mother had hanged herself in
shame over her daughter’s career as a photographer’s model, Win
knew he was doomed. Belle would never speak to him again if
something like that happened.

Belle didn’t wait to see if his legs would
hold him. As soon as he was on his feet, she flung the door open. A
bell boy stood there, holding a tray upon which lay a yellow
envelope. As if she didn’t want to touch it, Belle stared at it for
what seemed like an hour and a half.

At last the bell boy cleared his throat and
said, “Telegram for Miss Monroe.”

Since Belle seemed to have been stricken
dumb and motionless, Win gave himself a hard mental shake and
walked to the door, digging into his pocket as he did so. Removing
a coin, he placed it on the tray and removed the envelope. “Thank
you.”

The bell boy tipped his hat. He looked
relieved. “Thank you, sir.” His stride was jaunty when he took off
down the hall, and Win guessed he ought to have looked at the coin
before he’d put it on the tray. Obviously, he’d over tipped the
boy.

Still Belle didn’t move. Her gaze remained
glued to the envelope. With gentle pressure, Win turned her around,
shutting the door behind them. He guided her to a chair and turned
her around again. She sank into the chair as if she were in a
trance.

“Ah, do you . . .” He’d been about to ask if
she wanted him to open the telegram, but she looked sort of dazed,
so he decided for himself.

She uttered a small squeak when he ripped
the envelope open and removed the telegram. He glanced at her over
the top of the paper. “Don’t worry, Belle. Any information
contained in this wire won’t leave this room unless you want it
to.” He read the telegram before handing it to her. He wished he
could be magically transported to Georgia so he could whip her
family members into behaving themselves.

“Oh,” she moaned as she read. “Oh, my
land.”

It wasn’t a long message. “Exhibiting self
all over world. Shameful. Mother anguish. Father hurt. How could do
this to family? Love, Father.”

Belle let her hands drift to her lap, the
message crushed beneath them. She looked as if someone had taken up
a mental cudgel and battered her with it. Win’s heart ached for
her. This wasn’t fair, damn her family to perdition.

“I have to go home,” she said in a dull
monotone.

He had anticipated this reaction and was
prepared for it, although he had to struggle to keep his anger from
leeching into his voice. He didn’t want her to react to him, but to
give him a straight answer. “Why?”

When she lifted those beautiful brown eyes
and gazed at him, his heart did a crazy flip in his chest. His
anger toward her family intensified. “I’m hurting my family.”

“Applesauce.”

She blinked. “Um . . . I beg your
pardon?”

Win lost the battle with his anger and
started pacing. “Damn it, Belle, you’re not hurting anyone! Except
maybe yourself. And me. Hell’s bells, you’re sending practically
every cent you make home to help support those lazy
good-for-nothings in Blissborough. How dare they send you telegrams
moaning about how you’re hurting the damned family.”

“Don’t swear at me.” Her voice held no
conviction.

“I’m not swearing at you, damn it! I’m
swearing at your family. They’re a bunch of whining idiots, Belle!
Can’t you see that?”

“No.”

“Damn it,
think
for a minute, will
you? From what you’ve told me about your family, they do nothing
but moan about a war that happened a generation ago. It’s over. I
know your family was damaged. Lots of families were damaged, on
both sides. But, damn it, from what you’ve told me, you’re the only
one who’s been willing to let the past remain in the past and move
forward and do something for yourself.”

“That’s not fair, Win.”

“The hell it’s not!
You’re
the one
who had enough gumption to get a job. You even moved to New York
City to help your damned family, and I know you didn’t want to,
because I know you, and you’re a southerner to the tips of your
toes.” He snatched the telegram from her lap and waved it in front
of her face. “And this is how they repay you. They’re worse than
crazy, Belle. They’re downright cruel!”

She shook her head. “Oh, that’s not so, Win.
They love me.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Yeah? They love you
so much they don’t even thank you for improving their lives? They
love you so much they send you letters telling you you’re wrong to
be earning a living and sharing it with them?”

She lifted her hands and let them drop into
her lap again. “They—they just don’t understand.”

“Nuts! They’re just malicious, is what they
are.”

Her head only shook back and forth slowly.
“You don’t understand.”

“I do understand. You’re the one who doesn’t
understand.” Win’s temper flared up a notch when he thought of
something else. He looked at the telegram again. “This is the
second telegram in one day. It costs a lot of money to send
telegrams, Belle. Does your family have that kind of money? And if
they do, where does it come from?”

Again she blinked at him. “Um . . .”

He spared her the trouble of thinking.
Pointing straight at her, he bellowed, “
You!
That’s where they get the money to make you feel
guilty, damn it. They take the money
you
earn and have the gall to blame you for earning it! That’s not only
malicious, it’s downright stupid!”

She straightened minimally, as if he’d
struck a chord.

Pressing his advantage, Win went on. “It
sounds to me as if they’re happy to use you for a while, but they
don’t want you to get accustomed to your independence. Or worse,
change things for them so that they can’t moan and groan any
longer. What they really want is for you to give up your job and go
home again, so they can go back to whining about what the damned
Yankees did to them thirty years ago.”

“I don’t . . .” Again, she didn’t finish her
thought.

Totally disgusted with the Monroes of
Blissborough, Georgia, Win resumed pacing. “It’s as if you’re
taking away their excuses by getting out of that rinky-tink town
and making something of yourself.”

“A nanny?” A short, bitter laugh followed
the two words. “That’s not making very much of myself.”

“Who cares what kind of work you do?” Win’s
shout was so loud it rattled a framed picture of a forest glade
that hung above the bed. “It’s the fact that you’re doing
something
that counts! Your family doesn’t want you to do
anything! They want to whine about what other people did to
them
! Don’t you see that?”

“Um . . . No?”

“For God’s . . .” Win was so furious now
that he itched to haul Belle up from the chair and shake some sense
into her. Instead, he whirled around and started pacing in the
other direction. He was halfway across the floor when a brilliant
notion struck him. He whirled back to face Belle. “I have an
idea.”

She gazed at him dully. “I wish I had
one.”

Her tone of voice was as dull as her
expression. It made Win want to comfort her and spank her beautiful
bottom at the same time. Fearful that if he sat on the arm of her
chair, he wouldn’t be able to resist doing one of those things, he
walked to the bed and plunked himself down.

“Tell you what, Belle. Don’t go back to
Blissborough yet.”

She opened her mouth, Win presumed to ask
him why she shouldn’t, so he answered her before she asked. Holding
his hand up to quell any noise from her, he said, “I think your
family’s attitude toward you stinks. No, no. Let me finish. I know
you love them, and that’s to your credit, but I don’t think it’s
fair of them to cause you this grief because you’re trying to earn
a living and help them.”

He realized his voice had become a little
loudish and made a conscious effort to hold on to his temper. “I’ve
got a reporter friend, H.L. May, the one who wrote that wonderful
article about the fair that went with the photograph of you.”

“That no-good, sneak—”

“Stop it!” He spoke so violently that she
actually stopped it. Win was impressed. He wasn’t accustomed to
Belle doing anything he asked her to do. “I’m going to have H.L.
snoop around a little bit. Find out what your family’s really going
through.”

“Don’t you dare do that!”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s immoral and sneaky, is
why!”

“Applesauce. You deserve to know what’s
going on down there.”

“They’d never lie to me about—”

Again he cut her off. “I’m not saying
they’re lying. I’m sure their feelings have been hurt. After all,
it’s not every day a daughter out-does her parents.”

“That’s not—”

“Fair?” Win snorted. “Hogwash.”

“I don’t want anybody— No! Curse you, stop
interrupting me!”

Win rolled his eyes, but he let her continue
talking.

“I don’t want anybody going down to Georgia
and bothering my family, Win Asher! That would be worse than this!”
She waved a hand at the two crumpled pieces of yellow paper that
had somehow found their way to the floor.

“I know you don’t like it. Let me finish,
will you?”

She glared at him. “Get on with it,
then.”

“Damnation! I’m trying to!” He saw her
expression change to one he recognized and understood that she was
about to explode all over again. He tried to forestall her. “Before
you cut up at me, I have another offer for you.”