Lucky Stars (38 page)

His eyes moved to his wife as he chewed and swallowed.

“There’s no garlic in these,” he said with soft menace and watched her shoulders curl toward to her ears.

He fucking
hated
it when she did that.

“Yesterday, you told me you wanted pancakes, Calvin. I made sure we had what we needed for pancakes. You changed your mind this morning and we didn’t have garlic,” she whispered.

“Did you at least put cheese in the goddamn eggs?” he went on and she swallowed.

“We only had parmesan but it was fresh parmesan,” she whispered again and his hand flashed out, quick as lightning, the backs of his knuckles striking with perfect, practiced aim on her cheekbone.

She cried out and put her hand to her cheek as he leaned threateningly toward her.

“Go to the fucking store and get some
fucking
fresh garlic and some
fucking
cheddar cheese and make the
fucking
eggs properly,” he clipped and then picked up his plate and threw it across the room where it, and all the food on it, exploded against the wall.

She got up, mumbling, “I’ll be right back.”

She tried to escape but he caught her hand and snapped, “Belle made my eggs
perfectly
. I didn’t even know good eggs until Belle
fucking
made them.”

His wife had heard this before.

Often.

Especially in the last several months when Calvin’s precious Belle had become The Tiny Dynamo.

He threw her hand away from him and she ran from the room.

Calvin picked up the paper and opened it to the picture of Belle and Bennett.

And he sat and waited for his eggs.

* * * * *

Belle

Belle woke in the warm curve of Jack’s body.

He was in her bed with her in her cottage.

Other than the fact that she missed the dogs, she liked this.

She liked it a lot.

Maybe she could lure Jack to her cottage for dinner again.

Maybe that night.

She lay there waiting for him to wake and when he didn’t
she
carefully slid out from under his arm and went to her dresser. She put on a pair of undies and slid on a pair of black yoga pants and a white, shelf-bra camisole.

She went to her linen closet and grabbed her extra supplies. Belle always worried about running out of
anything
just in case of freak blizzards and the like. Not that this had ever happened, but it
could.
So she always kept extra stocks of
everything
.

She got two new toothbrushes, her extra cleanser and moisturiser and a new box of toothpaste.

Then she went to the bathroom, did her morning business, pulling her hair away from her face with a wide, black band.

Then she went to the kitchen.

As she normally did for the last however many months, Belle walked to the kitchen window situated at the front of the house and saw the photographers.

When she did, she sighed.

Then she turned to the coffeepot.

Carol, what she told Belle yesterday was “forward-thinking”, had also purchased eggs, bacon, cheese and bread. “And other bits and bobs”, Carol said.

Belle got to work, making the coffee, setting the table, mincing the garlic, grating the cheese, slicing the bread and was whisking the eggs when Jack walked in. He was barefoot, wearing only his trousers, his glorious chest on display, his hair tousled in a way that was too sexy for words.

She went into an instant trance at the sight of Jack looking like
that
while walking into her kitchen. She decided somewhere in the back of her mind that was still functioning that he
definitely
should be locked up for the betterment of womankind.

And Belle’s druthers would be that he was locked up in her cottage.

She was so in a trance, she barely moved when he hooked her with his arm around her waist, hauling her to his body and his mouth crushed down on hers in a kiss so mind-boggling, it was a wonder her trance didn’t turn into a coma.

When his head came up, he demanded, “Fucking wake me before you get out of bed.”

He sounded not loving morning fresh but irritated.

“What?” she breathed, still not over his kiss.

“Wake me before you get out of bed,” he repeated.

“But,” she whispered idiotically, “that’s rude.”

His face got close. “It isn’t rude if I ask you to do it.”

“But,” she went on, still idiotically, “what if you need your sleep?”

His other arm circled her. “After last night, Belle, I need my sleep. I still want you to wake me up.”

“Why?” she asked.

“It doesn’t matter why,” he returned and his hand came up, tangling in her hair then he went on to command. “Just wake me, kiss me, tell me good fucking morning and then you can get out of bed.”

“Oh…
kay
,” she replied hesitantly but not happily.

Most of his demands were bossy, definitely, but also somehow sweet.

This one was just weird and very concerning.

She dropped her eyes to his shoulder and felt her stomach clench.

His hand tugged gently at her hair, her gaze went back to his and she saw his face had gone soft.

“I’ll get used to it, having you,” he explained and his voice had gone soft too. “Right now, I’m not used to it.”

It dawned on her that she’d run away from him the first morning after they’d been together. Since then she had been either avoiding him or escaping him on a regular basis, including crawling out of bed in the mornings before he woke.

Therefore this particular beast was a beast of her own making.

She pressed closer and wrapped her arms loosely around his waist.

“I’ll wake you,” she promised.

He gave her a squeeze and warned, “You should probably know, even when I’m used to it I’ll still want a kiss before you leave our bed.”

“That won’t be hard to do,” she assured him.

That’s when he grinned.

That was it then. He was done. No yelling, threatening, throwing things or hitting her.

She felt secret relief.

Then she grinned back.

“Do you want eggs?” she asked.

He looked to the counter saying, “I’m starved.”

She gave him a squeeze and when his eyes came back to her, she smiled at him with genuine, unabashed excitement and cried, “Great!”

She exuberantly tried to pull away but got about an inch before he hauled her back against his body.

When she looked at him, he called, “Belle?”

She tilted her head in enquiry, still smiling happily and returned, “Yes?”

His eyes shifted to her mouth for a moment before going back to hers.

“
My
Belle?” he asked.

The question made her breath catch and she didn’t know the answer but she knew what she
hoped
it was.

He also had a strange look on his face, warm even tender but also like he too was in some sort of trance (but apparently, during his trances, he could actually talk, he just couldn’t say much).

“Are you okay?” Belle queried.

“Are
you
okay?” Jack queried back.

She smiled again and answered, “Yes.”

“You seem pretty excited about eggs,” he remarked cautiously.

She tilted her head again and leaned into him. “You haven’t had
my
eggs.”

Then she gently pulled out of his arms, got him a cup of coffee, pulled out two skillets then the butter, put the toast in the toaster all the while babbling.

“My Dad taught my Mom how to make eggs. Then they got in a competition about who could make them best. When I was old enough, they
both
taught
me
how to make them. Everyone agrees mine are the best of them all. Even
me
and I try to be humble but I can’t be about my eggs, they’re that good. And anyway, I get to cook for you. Elaine, or whoever, cooks for you and I don’t get to do anything. Boiling some
veg
and grilling some steaks isn’t the same as really
cooking
.
So,
yay
!”

She threw butter in one skillet, slices of bacon in the other, turned on the burner under the bacon, so busy she hadn’t felt the air turn velvet all around them.

When he didn’t speak, never looking at him, she kept babbling.

“You should know, by the way, if Dad should show up, which he might
considering
the pictures in the paper, that Mom and Dad didn’t have a nasty divorce. They still love each other. They hook up every time they get together. They just got a divorce because Dad’s kind of wild and Mom knew it would drive her bonkers so she let him go rather than let it get ugly.”

“Your Dad is wilder than your mother?” Jack asked in a voice that said he found that hard to believe.

She threw a grin at him over her shoulder. “Yes.
Definitely
.
He’s nuts.” Then the toast popped up, she whirled around, snatched it from the toaster, began slathering it with butter and asked, “Would you get the jam out of the fridge, please?” she paused and then added, “And the grape jelly.”

“Grape jelly?” he enquired and she threw him another grin.

“It’s an American thing. Mom sends it to me.” She looked back at the toast and kept talking. “We have grape jelly. We have grape candies too. We don’t do black currant.” Belle gave a shiver at the very thought of black currant.

She heard the fridge open and Jack said, “I’m guessing you don’t like black currant.”

“No,” Belle replied in a way that left nothing to the imagination about how much she detested black currant and she heard him chuckle.

“You eat jelly for breakfast?” he asked.

She finished buttering the toast, put more bread in the toaster, picked up a wooden spatula and turned to him.

“It isn’t English jelly, we call that jell-
o.
” Belle put great emphasis on the “oh”. “It’s jelly-jelly, like jam, without the bits in.”

Her kitchen was small, Jack’s big frame made it smaller but it became tiny when he suddenly closed the fridge door, took a wide step toward her and got right in her space.

She leaned back as he leaned in and his arms slid around her.

She looked up at him and saw the warmth was definitely in his face as was the tenderness, also definitely, but there was something else there. She couldn’t put her finger on it. It was partially amusement but the rest of it she didn’t know.

But it made him look… happy.

It was, incidentally, his best look
ever
.

Even so, breathless and feeling a trill up her spine even as a strange spiral of fear curled in her belly, Belle said softly, “Jack, I’m making eggs.”

“I switched her on,” Jack replied bizarrely.

“What?”

His face dipped closer and he repeated, “Somehow, I switched her on.”

It was then Belle realised what she was doing, how she was behaving and just how much she was
talking
.

Her eyes slid to his ear and his arms grew tight as he gave her a firm but gentle shake.

“No, love, stick with me,” he said.

“I need to make the eggs,” she muttered to his ear.

“Look at me,” he demanded, her eyes slid back to his and his head bent so his forehead could rest on hers. “I’m looking forward to your eggs. I’m also enjoying learning about your father and grape jelly.” Somehow, even though he was as close as you could get, he managed to get closer when he went on, “You can be this woman with me. You don’t have to switch off, poppet.”

Belle didn’t speak.

Jack didn’t either.

Finally, Jack moved, touched his mouth to hers and then his lips drew away an inch. “Or you can be whoever you want to be.”

At his words, Belle’s soul sighed.

Then he let her go, went back to the fridge, bent into it and she watched him pull out the grape jelly.

He put it on the table, walked to her, put his hand to her jaw, slid his thumb across her cheekbone, dropped his hand and walked out of the room.

Belle dazedly turned back to the eggs.

Then, slowly, she smiled a small smile at them.

By the time Jack returned, the eggs, bacon and toast were done and she was serving them onto warmed plates. He’d put on his shirt, partially buttoned up the front but his feet were still bare.

Silently, she set the plates on the table.

Jack sat, as did she.

They started eating.

After about a minute, Jack called her name and she lifted her eyes to his.

His hand came back to her jaw and he said solemnly, “These are the best eggs I’ve ever tasted.”