Taste for Trouble (Blake Brothers Trilogy)

by Sey, Susan

  Will, for reasons unknown, had backed his brother into a corner and issued the perfect ultimatum: Love or family? Lust or loyalty? Bel or me? But James—good heavens—James had come up with the third alternative. He’d chosen them both. He’d declared his love for Bel while simultaneously proving his love for Will by refusing the betrayal. He simply refused to accept that Will was capable of hurting him in such a profound and fundamental way. Logic dictated, therefore, that Will must have reasons of his own—twisty and incomprehensible, yes, but reasons nonetheless—for kissing Bel in the kitchen. For some reason, he wanted James to reject him.

  And the amazing thing? Bel thought James might just be right about that.

  She gazed at him in pure wonder. He might say Will was their brain, Drew was their heart, and he was simply the muscle but now Bel knew better. James was their courage. He was a soldier of the first order, a knight in shining armor who’d pledged himself to his family and would do whatever it took to keep that pledge. To uphold his own sacred truth.

  He was a throw-back. An honorable man. The kind Bel had simply assumed no longer existed. The kind she didn’t think had ever really existed in the first place.

  But she’d been wrong. Dead wrong. And the thrill of witnessing that kind of courage and loyalty in action had zapped clear through all the protective layers of jaded disbelief she’d accumulated over the years and arrowed straight into the vulnerable heart within her. The heart that longed to join the circle of family James was willing to protect with everything he had. Everything he was.

  The heart that wanted—more than safety, more than security, more than comfort—to belong to him.

  It was what she’d always wanted, honestly. To be part of a family that worked. She’d just never expected to find one. Had never expected it to look like this even if she did. But life was just full of surprises, wasn’t it?

  A thrill of optimism sparkled through her. She was going to make this work. No matter what it took, she was going to make this work.

  She would have her family, finally.

  And it would be James.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  “Everything all right, Bel?”

  James turned to find the caterer hovering at the edge of their tense little circle.

  Bel’s hand twitched in the folds of her skirt but she gave the woman a reassuring smile. “Of course, Lillian. Something just...came up.” She didn’t so much as look at Will.

  “Not the food?” Lillian asked.

  “No, of course not. The food’s been marvelous. Everybody’s raving about it.” She smiled. “Mrs. Vernon-Smithe asked for your card.”

  Lillian pressed a hand to her generous bosom. “Not the Mrs. Vernon-Smithe?”

  “The very one.” Bel’s smile spread into something more natural. James’ chest loosened a bit at the sight. That smile of hers was one of God’s good gifts. The dimples just sealed the deal.

  Not that the beast inside him wasn’t still out for blood. But something about Bel soothed it. Soothed him. He didn’t know if it was that square, serious face of hers, the smile that transformed it into something exceptional, or just her implacable conviction that decent people exercised self-control. Whatever it was, it propped up his badly shaken better self, and reinforced his determination to do the right thing.

  “Anything I can do to help out?” Lillian asked Bel now. “With your, uh, situation?”

  Bel shook her head. “I don’t think so, Lillian. There’s not much we can do tonight anyway.”

  “Then y’all get out of my kitchen and enjoy the party.”

  James smiled at her. “Smartest idea I’ve heard all night.” He turned to his brothers. “We’ll talk in the morning.”

  “Sure thing,” Drew said. Will just shook his head.

  “You, too,” he said to Audrey. “This is going to be an all-hands-on-deck sort of event at Blake House.”

  She nodded, her exotic face drawn. “I’ll be there.”

  “But for now,” James said, “all of you need to get back out there and act like you’re having the time of your life. And you—” He pointed at Will. “—avoid the bar.”

  “I’ll babysit,” Audrey said grimly.

  “We’ll double team,” Drew said.

  “House arrest,” Will said. “Awesome.” He threw up his hands under the weight of four different stares. “Fine. Whatever. I’ll sit next to Bob. He can share his tonic water and lime and tell me about the benefits of his new fish and seaweed diet or whatever.”

  James watched them leave the kitchen. He looked back at Bel and found her beautiful face turned up to his, her honey-colored eyes cool and unreadable. Crap.

  “So.” He tried a smile. “We probably need to talk about, um—” The fact that I just—Jesus—threw love on the table. Unless, of course, you’re too busy running for the hills to chat it out. “—about what happened here just now.”

  “James—” She bit her lip, then tumbled the words out in a uncharacteristic rush. “God, James, I’m so sorry. I swear I didn’t do anything to encourage—”

  “Geez, Bel, I know that.” He put out staying hands. “I know you didn’t. I never even thought it.” Which was true. He trusted Bel absolutely. He had no idea what was wrong with Will, let alone how to put it right. But at this moment, with Bel’s dear face tight with worry for him—for him when she was obviously the injured party—he didn’t care. “We’re okay here, Bel. You and me? We’re good.”

  “We are?” The worry shifted into skepticism. “How?”

  He laughed, a wary joy creeping into his stomach and crouching down alongside the throbbing anger. “Ah, Bel. You’re so...dependable.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You sure know how to butter a girl up.” She tucked her hand into his elbow. A zing shot up his arm and clear into his head. Bel, touching him? Of her own free will? God, he must look worse than he felt.

  “Come on.” She gave his arm a little squeeze. “We’ve got work to do. Let’s get back out there before you turn my head with your pretty words.”

  “You don’t want to talk about—” He circled a hand between them, then cocked a thumb at the breakfast nook and everything that had happened there.

  She laughed. “God, no.”

  He frowned. “Why not?”

  She shook her head and drew him toward the door. “That’s going to be some conversation. This isn’t exactly the time or place.”

  “Oh. Right. Of course.” He told himself to be relieved. The L-word was out there way ahead of schedule but evidently she wasn’t taking it any more seriously than she’d taken Will’s kiss. Which was a good thing, right? Maybe he could salvage Plan A after all. So why did he feel vaguely uneasy?

  He allowed her to lead him through the door and into the foyer. Then memory rushed up and James pulled back. “There’s something else, Bel,” he said. “And this one can’t wait. I need a minute. Now. In private.”

  “Okay.” Bel looked around the deserted foyer and cocked a brow. James steeled himself to deliver the news. Guess who’s back from his honeymoon, looking tanned, fit and in love? Two hints—he used to be engaged to you and he’s in the ballroom right now enjoying the auction with his new wife, who—sorry—used to be your personal assistant until she stole your fiancé on live TV.

  He hesitated and his courage fled. “Not here.”

  “All right.” She lifted those smooth, bare shoulders—God, he was dying to bite one of them—and said, “How about outside? The guests are all busy with the auction, and I haven’t seen the gardens since they’ve been finished.”

  “The gardens? But the gardens are—”

  She waited with perfect patience for him to finish his thought, one finger threaded through the fat curl nestled against the swell her breast. The impulse to put his mouth right there, just there where all that autumn-colored velvet rode high on the plump curve of her breast grabbed him by the throat but he battled it back.

  “—dark,” he finally managed. “It’s dark outsi
de.”

  “Yes.” She nodded slowly. “Because it’s nighttime.” Her brows slowly rose. “Is that a problem? The gardens are lit, aren’t they?”

  “No. I mean, yes. I mean—” He pulled one hand down his face, shoved out a breath and ordered himself to pull it together. “Yes, the gardens are lit.” And they were. With fanciful little fairy lights that would make her far too kissable. “No, it isn’t a problem.” Total lie. His self-control was already on the ropes. Strolling around in the fairy-twinkled dark with Bel would almost surely deal it a fatal blow.

  “Well, then.” She gave his arm a companionable squeeze. “Let’s go. Privacy awaits.”

  “Right. Okay.”

  James concentrated all his energy on acting as if her breast weren’t snuggled up to his biceps as they walked beyond the soaring foyer and out a pair of French doors onto what used to be the patio. He stepped onto the crushed oyster shell path that bisected a manicured sweep of lawn bordering the formal gardens, her skirt swishing companionably against his boots.

  “You did some really extraordinary work here, James,” she said as they entered the garden through an arching arbor twined with grape vines.

  “Not me. I just sign the checks.” But he hardly heard himself speak. He was too busy staring down at Bel.

  He hadn’t been prepared for this, he thought a bit wildly. To see Bel here, like this. Oh, he’d known it would suit her, the strict geometry of an English garden. She thrived here like a perfect, pink-cheeked tea rose, just the way he’d known she would.

  But he hadn’t anticipated the moonlight. He’d braced for fairy lights but, Jesus, the moonlight. He hadn’t braced for that. How could he have? How could he possibly have anticipated the way it would steal Bel’s practicality and crush it into glittery dust? The way she would glow under it with a serene, mysterious beauty?

  “You always say that,” she murmured. “Like other people have all the talent, and you just make the money. Like you’re nothing special.”

  “What can I say?” He concentrated on keeping their pace, unlike his heartbeat, smooth and even. “It’s the truth.”

  “Believing what you say doesn’t make it true.”

  “No?”

  She shrugged, and James tried to avoid the view it afforded him down her dress. God, that dress was killing him. It had nearly flattened him in the soft light of the ballroom, about undone him in the industrial brightness of the kitchen, but here in the moonlight? With nothing but the cool night air and James’ embattled self-control between them?

  Stick to the plan, he told himself firmly. Break the news about Ford and what’s-her-name. Be a kind and loving friend. A hands-to-yourself friend. A no-crazy-monkey-sex-in-the-outdoors friend. A friend. Period

  Not that his feelings toward Bel were at all platonic. Not hardly. James knew love when he felt it and this was it. Capital L love. The grown-up, for-real, down-on-one-knee-with-a-diamond-solitaire kind. James wanted Bel’s groceries residing in his fridge on a permanent basis and wouldn’t rest until they did.

  Which was hardly a secret anymore, thanks to Will’s big scene in the kitchen. God, was he going to enjoy the punching later. Not that it would change anything.

  The bottom line was that the current state of his life would cause a girl like Bel to run—not walk—to the nearest exit. As well it should, considering that his idiot brother had gone ahead and laid a fat wet one on her without so much as a beg your pardon.

  A hot sliver of rage with Will’s name on it wedged itself into chest but he ignored it. He didn’t have the time or energy to deal with that right now. Right now he was working the plan.

  And the plan—the best he’d been able to come up with over the course of the past two weeks—involved keeping Bel at arm’s length until the time was right. Until his home life was a little more appropriate, which meant straightening out this thing with Will, getting Bel her job back and taking his team to the World Cup Finals for the first time since the Great Depression.

  That was Phase One. Phase Two involved luring her into his bed and keeping her there until she was too weary, too sated, too undone with sexual satisfaction to even consider leaving.

  And then he could move on to Phase Three, in which he somehow transformed all that crackling lustful energy between them into something more solid and meaningful. Something more like love.

  Simple, right?

  But until then, he’d keep her close and work the friendship angle. Even if it killed him, which was seeming more and more likely.

  “Listen, Bel.” He forced himself back to the unpleasant task at hand. “I have to tell you something.”

  “Oh!” She broke off as the path under their feet opened up to a broad circle centered on the marble fountain that used to grace his front lawn. “Oh, James, this is gorgeous! I didn’t realize I was looking for the fountain while we were walking, but I must’ve been. I could hear the running water, I guess, on some subconscious level. Funny how your brain works, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “It is.” He’d wondered himself why the original landscaper had hidden the centerpiece of the garden inside a ten foot tall ring of shrubbery, but it was just like Bel said. The sound of unseen water drew people. Called them into the mazes and alcoves, and rewarded the persistent with this lush, intimate surprise of a space. The illusion of isolation capped with nothing but the endless night sky. The sort of place where men lost their heads and women lost their inhibitions.

  The sort of place he should avoid like the plague with Bel on his arm, beaming up at him with pure delight. He stared down at her, trying to ignore the way the curve of her breast pressed warm and inviting against his sleeve. The way the heat of her seeped through his coat and into his skin. The way want danced to life inside him, sparkled hard and fast through his gut.

  “Dance with me?” she said.

  “What?” His brain felt half-awake, sluggish. Nothing at all like the rest of him.

  “Dance with me,” she said, laughing. “Can’t you hear it? The water?”

  He frowned at the burbling fountain. “What about it?”

  “It’s waltzing.”

  “It’s what?”

  She laughed. “Seriously, listen.” She slid her hand up to James’ shoulder, seized his other hand and eased him into a gentle one-two-three sort of thing around the wide, gracious path ringing the fountain. He followed, his feet moving more out of an unconscious imperative to stay near her than any actual desire to dance.

  And then he heard it. Burble beeble beeble, burble beeble beeble. The water trickled along in some primitive, gravity-driven rhythm that ticked through his veins and had him sinking his hand into the small of her back, drawing her into him and taking over the lead.

  “There you go,” she murmured. She nestled her cheek into his shoulder and they sailed over the path in a perfect unity of motion and spirit. And inside him, something caught fire. Want surged up, fierce and undeniable, and he didn’t have an ounce of self-control left to put out the flames. He’d used most of it not kissing the hell out of Bel the minute she’d walked into the foyer in that dress. Not punching Will had finished him off.

  Now he just wanted. Wanted with an aching, searing need that drowned out the better angels pleading for caution inside his head. And what he wanted—more than a happy family, more than a successful career—was her. Bel. Her faithful heart, her tidy soul, her elegant body. All of her.

  Her breath fanned against his throat, sweet and warm, and that beautiful earnest face tilted up to his. And that mouth of hers, that impossible mouth was right there. It pulled him and he swayed into her, dipped his head. What would it hurt? Just a taste—

  He stopped. Stopped dancing, stopped breathing, stopped moving in for that kiss he could almost taste. “Bel,” he said, a desperate panicky edge to his voice that even he could hear. He took her by the shoulders and set her carefully away from him. “Listen, I really need to tell you something—”

  “No.” Her mouth turned
down in a sulky pout that utterly short-circuited his internal pep talk.

  “No?” James gazed at her, enthralled as she stepped toward him. He shook his head. “Wait, what do you mean, no?”

  “I mean no, I don’t want to talk.” She took another step toward him. He could feel her now, the heat of her shimmering in the cool night air.

  “But I—”

  “What I want—” She slid her hands up the front of his jacket. “—is for you to kiss me.”

  James’ jaw dropped and his brain simply stopped. His conscience threw up its hands and when she took that last step forward, his arms automatically circled her, his palms cruising toward the small of her back. “You want me to, um, what?”

  She rose up on her toes, put that gorgeous mouth a wish from his and slid her fingers into his hair. “Kiss me.”

  It was all the invitation he needed. The beast inside him surged ahead, snapped its leash, and yanked a grateful James along behind it.

  He dragged her to him, let all that satiny cool skin, all those neat angles and plump curves, slide over his body like running water. He pulled the scent of her deep into his lungs, feasted on the vanilla-and-cinnamon smell that clung to her hair even when she hadn’t baked in days. He plunged himself into her mouth, her hot, willing, beautiful mouth, all honey and spice and lush welcome.

  Plan A could go screw itself.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Bel fell into the kiss, dizzy with success and fear and love. This was what she wanted. His hands streaking over her with undeniable want. His mouth hot and commanding on hers, the force of his desire bending her like warm wax to his will. Enclosed in the circle of his arms, safe inside his want, his need, his love.

  She twisted her hands into the stiff fabric of his jacket and pulled herself higher onto her toes. More. God, she needed more. She opened her mouth beneath his and a trembling glory shook through her when his tongue touched hers. She dragged in a deep breath, and it was hot with the scent of him. Clean, masculine, his breath swift and sweet on her face, in her mouth.