by Sey, Susan
She gazed up at him and the silence strung out between them. It stretched, thinned, then narrowed to an achingly fragile thread. It went on and endlessly on, beyond awkward and into irretrievable. His throat tightened with shame—well-deserved—but he cleared it away. All he could do was deliver the apology. It hers to accept or—
And then Bel did something so unexpected, so outrageous that Will failed to even comprehend it at first. One second he was standing there in an agony of shame, the next her arms were around him and the vanilla and cinnamon smell of her hair was flowing into his lungs like oxygen and forgiveness. And only then did it register that she was hugging him. She’d just thrown open her arms, all warm and strong and welcoming, and Will had fallen into them. And now she was laughing and hanging on and maybe he was, too. Or maybe he wasn’t making a single sound, because nobody had hugged him quite like this since his mom, and his throat was a little tight. Hard to say.
“Will! Oh, Will,” she said into his collar. She pulled back and squeezed his hands, her smile a thing of beauty and wonder. “Welcome home.”
Now his heart was tighter than his throat and he could only beam back at her like an idiot. Then James was pounding his back and squeezing him. Then Drew was on him, too, and even Ford and Annie got in on it. It was chaos of the very best kind, and it buoyed him up and over all the rocky places still left in his heart. Even if just for a minute.
“Hey, Bel,” he said finally. “Listen. I have something for you.”
“You do?” Her eyes were bright and interested.
“Delivering it is my first official act as an agent.”
Her brows rose. “As my agent?”
“As Kate’s.” He drew a sealed envelope from his inside pocket. It was the size of a thank you note, and had a large snow flake embossed on the flap. He handed it over. “For you.”
Bel blinked, exchanged a glance with James that said huh, and slid her finger under the flap. She withdrew a piece of thick, creamy stationery and unfolded it. She read, then turned troubled eyes up to James. “She wants us at the taping of her Christmas special tomorrow.” She shifted that sharp gaze to Will. “Why would she want that?”
Will shrugged. “I honestly don’t know. I’m just the messenger boy.”
James slung an arm around her shoulders, took the paper and inspected it himself. “Guess we’ll find out tomorrow, won’t we?”
“Guess we will,” Bel said.
But Will wasn’t listening. Because sometime during the laughing and the weeping and the hugging, Audrey had slipped away. He’d felt her go—his Audrey radar was evidently still powered up and sensitive as hell—but didn’t try to stop her. He’d go after her later. Because what he had to say to Audrey, what lay between them still?
That business would be dealt with in private.
Coward, Bob said.
Damn straight.
***
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SNEAK PEEK!
Want a quick look at Will’s story?
Read on….
Blake Brothers Trilogy Book 2:
Talent for Trouble
TALENT FOR TROUBLE
Blake Brother’s Trilogy, Book 2
By Susan Sey
William Blake’s fresh start went live bright and early the morning of December third. Not that he’d done anything to deserve a fresh start. Had he needed one? Oh, yeah. Desperately. Deserved one? Not so much. But while people said a lot of things about Will—the majority of them unrepeatable—nobody had ever suggested the man was stupid.
So when Hunt House’s door bell rang at precisely eleven-oh-two a.m., Will was right there waiting for it. Had been for the past fifteen minutes, just in case they were early.
He pulled the door open and found his brother and the woman who would surely become his sister-in-law one of these days standing on the front porch. “Hey, James. Bel. You’re right on time.”
“You sound surprised.” Bel grinned at him, her elegant cheekbones flushed with cold, her hair a sleek swing of maple.
“Well, I figured you for the punctual sort.” He gestured them into the soft gleam of the foyer that millions of viewers would recognize from Kate Every Day, the south’s answer to The Martha Stewart Show. “My brother, though?” He shook his head. “That’s some powerful laziness right there.”
“Hey, I practically jogged over here.” James nudged Bel over the threshold and followed her in, blowing on his hands. He kicked the door shut with one heel. “It’s cold out there.”
Will cocked a brow. “It’s December.”
“It’s Virginia.”
Will rolled his eyes and reached over to help Bel out of her coat. She blinked in surprise but turned her back and allowed it. “It could be high summer,” Will said, his arms now full of navy wool that smelled like frosted sugar cookies. “If not for Bel cracking the whip on your lazy ass, you’d be sitting in the Annex kitchen in your shorts right now, eating last night’s pizza for breakfast.”
“Wouldn’t that be nice?” James shrugged out of his own coat with a wistful sigh. “She didn’t even let me comb my hair.”
“James.” Bel ruffled snowflakes from his shaggy blond head with a fond hand. “You never comb your hair.”
“True enough.” James sent his coat to Will on a no-look pass and gazed soulfully at Bel. “But given an extra fifteen minutes, I might’ve.”
She pursed her lips. “I gave you an extra fifteen minutes.”
“Mmmm. You did, didn’t you?” He smiled, slow and hot. He slid an arm around her waist and began to reel her in. “And I gave you—”
“The question is,” Bel cut in brightly, the color in her cheeks rising, “what are we on time for?”
She jammed an elbow into James’ gut, a move his brother allowed with an easy cooperation that suggested he really had started off his morning with—ahem—a bang. Bitterness was an automatic pinch in Will’s gut. How long had it been since he’d talked a woman back into his bed after the alarm went off? A long damn time. Longer yet since he’d had a woman in his bed he’d care to see there when the alarm did go off. In his imagination, though? He had a woman there. God, did he. Whether he wanted her there or not.
He didn’t, in point of fact, want her there. But there she was anyway—that impossible face, that silvery hair, and a set of curves like to break a man’s heart. And those eyes? Yep. Present and accounted for. Wide, heavily lashed, and so deeply blue they were almost purple. And filled with cold dislike.
Will’s imagination was nothing if not accurate.
Oh, cry me a river. Are you listening to yourself, you self-pitying pussy?
His imagination also excelled at channeling the voice of the late Bob Beck, the man responsible for Will’s recent and wholly undeserved fresh start.
Because I am. I’m listening, and it’s turning my stomach. And I’m dead, Will. It’s hard to turn a dead guy’s stomach.
Will would take that one on faith.
James is a lucky bastard, no question, but that’s not why he’s got a pretty girl in his bed and you don’t.
I know why I don’t have a girl in my bed, Bob.
Will wondered vaguely when he’d starting talking back to the voices in his head. Wondered if it was a sign of an imminent mental breakdown or if he was just indulging in talk therapy for the terminally introverted.
Your bed’s cold and empty because you’re an asshole, Will.
I know, Bob
. Thanks for the news flash. Now shut it, will you?
Bob shut it. Will sent up a brief prayer for his sanity. He wasn’t the praying sort but figured it couldn’t hurt. Then he shoved the Bob situation aside to deal with the Bel-and-James situation in his lap. One mess at a time, right?
“So, Mr. Mysterious.” James draped a friendly arm around Will’s shoulders and gave him a hearty squeeze. “To what, exactly, have we been summoned?” Then he stopped, eyebrows shooting up over that beaky nose of his. He leaned in, peered suspiciously at Will’s jaw. “Hold that question. I have a better one: Are you wearing makeup?”
“Makeup?” Bel’s eyes went wide and she leaned in, too. Will felt himself flush. “Good lord, he is! Will, you’re camera ready.”
“I know,” he muttered, mortified.
“Is Kate putting you on air?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes went wider. “During the Christmas special?”
Will gave her a weak smile. James grinned broadly. “I’m totally calling Drew.” He dug into his pocket for his cell, presumably to call their other brother and make Will’s humiliation complete. “Makeup! Good God.”
“Will?” Bel’s eyes were dark and uncomfortably shrewd. “What’s going on? Are you—”
“I don’t have time to explain.” He glanced at his watch and winced. “Come on.”
Bel frowned at James, who shrugged a hell, I don’t know and put away his phone with an air of deep regret. Will shoved the coats into a handy closet then headed down the hall at a near-trot. They followed him as he punched through the heavy door into the kitchen. Or what would look like a kitchen on-camera, anyway.
He put Bel and James beside one of the cameras, right where Kate had requested. They stood there in the dimness, lucky slobs, facing a massive counter that stood like an island in a broiling puddle of light. Will stepped up to the counter and faced the camera.
The heat was instant and engulfing. Terror seized him by the throat, shrinking his airway to pin-prick proportions. Millions of people were watching him, he knew. Or would when the tape went live. He could feel them already, those millions upon millions of cold and avid eyes. He felt them mercilessly observing the sharp elbows, the skinny chest, the knees and ankles that could never and had never agreed on a single direction when Will decide to ambulate. They would see his Adam’s apple ratcheting uselessly up and down his pencil-neck in a doomed effort to dredge up even an ounce of the sunny charm or easy coordination that came so naturally to James. They would see him fail. And they would enjoy it.
The impulse rose up inside him, savage and fierce, to go to war. To shed blood and make those eyes look elsewhere. If he couldn’t be admired, at least he wouldn’t be pitied.
Will swallowed with a small click and forced his lips into a genial smile. He nodded to the camera person he couldn’t see and waited until the little red light blinked on, indicating that they were rolling tape.
“Hello, everyone,” he said to the camera’s red eye. “My name is William Blake. Some of you may know of the recent death of Kate Davis’ dear friend and long-time agent Bob Beck. Responsibility for Bob’s client list has passed to me.” Jesus. It was still a shock, that one. “As Kate’s acting agent, it’s my duty to inform you all of Kate’s retirement, effective immediately.”
Will couldn’t see shit beyond the cameras but he heard Bel’s sharp, shocked oh. Kate had very recently and in no uncertain terms refused to retire, thereby blowing to hell her promise to hand Kate Every Day over to Bel, her acknowledged successor. So the news of Kate’s retirement was surely a surprise, but Will was counting on Bel’s deep attachment to personal dignity to get them all through this without a scene. Or—God forbid—a second take. He kept his gaze steady on the camera and hurried on.
“It also falls to me to share with you the letter Kate left in my possession to be read aloud at the conclusion of her annual Christmas special.” He withdrew a folded sheet of stationery from the inner pocket of his jacket, a creamy, snowflake-embossed card identical to the one he’d put in Bel’s hand yesterday inviting her to today’s taping.
“To my at-home family,” he read. “It grieves me to leave you, to take this final step away from this wonderful community of friends to discover what else life might hold for me. It’s a journey I’ve been afraid to take for many years, and one that I hope will sustain me and feed me for many more now that I’ve found the courage to begin it. But I want to assure you that I’ve left you in extremely capable hands.”
There was an agitated rustle beyond the pool of light and Will thought shit, I should have warned her. Because Bel was probably out there thinking he was about to give her dream job to somebody else. Kate could be cruel like that.
“In Belinda West’s hands, to be specific.”
The rustling went still and Will hoped that meant she was listening, not unconscious. “Belinda has earned the right to take my place,” he read on. “She’s earned it dozens of times over through her endless ability to endure and to love, to give and to forgive. Through her ability to place family above all else, the family she’s chosen, the family of her heart. Because she won’t allow her dreams to be taken from her, not by fate, not by the family she was born into, and certainly not by bitter old women who are too afraid to love and be loved. But I’ll be working on that in the south of France. With love, Kate Davis.”
Finally the lights went dim and the cameras went blind. Will wondered if he was sweating through his suit coat or—Christ—through his makeup. Then he wondered how Bel was taking the news that she’d just been granted the job she’d worked and waited for, the job she’d earned that she thought Kate Davis had refused her. Kate Every Day was hers.
He squinted into the shadows and found Bel. She stood right where he’d left her, her hand limp in James’, her eyes unfocused and vague. Will came and stood in front of her.
“She okay?” he asked James.
“Not sure.” James jiggled Bel’s hand. “Bel? Hon? You in there?”
“I’m fine,” she said slowly. “Shocked, though.” She lifted her eyes to Will’s. “The south of France?”
“I know,” Will said. “Didn’t see that one coming.”
“But...why? She was so set on keeping the show. I can’t imagine she had a change of heart this dramatic.”
“I don’t think she did,” Will said. “Not entirely.”
“What does that mean?” James asked.
He shrugged. “I can only speculate, but I did a little research last night. As it turns out, the highest rated episodes over the past three years were by far the ones featuring Bel. And the segments featuring Bel’s almost-wedding knocked Kate’s solo shows out of the park. There may have been some sentiment behind it, but Kate’s a pretty shrewd business woman.” He lifted a shoulder and shifted his eyes to Bel. “Younger viewers wanted you, Bel, and Kate gives the viewers what they want.” He smiled then. “Especially when Kate’s retaining a producer credit and the pay check that goes with it.”
That was it, Will thought. He could almost hear the internal click of the last puzzle piece falling into place in Bel’s head. That was what she’d been waiting for before she could believe—evidence that Kate was still Kate. Because the Kate they all knew didn’t give anything away. Not unless there was a healthy profit margin in it for her down the line.
“Oh, and one more thing,” Will said, flipping Kate’s note over in his hands. “It says ‘P. S. Enjoy the Dower House.’”
The Dower House was the third spoke of what had once been a massive estate surrounding the pond in the back yard. The first spoke was Hunt House, the gracious pink-bricked mansion in which they were now standing, the home of Kate Every Day. The second spoke was the Annex, the sprawling white-slatted plantation house the Blake brothers called home. The Dower House was a little cottage separated from Hunt House by a lavish rose garden, originally intended as a honeymoon suite of sorts. During the three years that she’d worked as Kate’s on-air baking maven, Bel ha
d lived there.
Will handed the note to her. “Any idea what that’s all about?”
Bel stared at the note in her hands, dumbfounded. “She gave me the Dower House?” She lifted baffled eyes to James. “Kate gave me the Dower House.”
“Well, no,” James said. “I did. Merry Christmas.”
“Merry—” She broke off, stunned. Then, “You bought me a house?”
“Well, yeah. The Dower House. You love that place.” He stuffed his fists into his pockets and looked amazingly awkward for a guy whose athletic ability had made him a millionaire several times over. Will watched, fascinated, as color mounted his brother’s cheeks. “And since Kate was leaving—”
Bel’s eyes went narrow. “You knew Kate was leaving?”
James shifted his feet. “Will might’ve mentioned something.”
She turned on Will. “You knew Kate was leaving?”
“Of course I knew,” Will said. “I’m her erstwhile agent, aren’t I? But I didn’t let it slip.” He shot James a poisonous glance. “Your beloved is a sneaky little eavesdropper.”
“That’s true.” James tried an innocent smile. “I am.”
Bel pressed a thumb to her forehead. “I don’t understand. James, why would you buy me a house? We already have the Annex, and it’s huge—” She broke off suddenly and two spots of color flared on those sharp cheekbones. “Oh,” she said softly and looked down. “Oh, of course. I see.”
Will glanced at James who frowned at the perfectly straight part on Bel’s bent head.
“You do?”
“James, of course.” She lifted her head and smiled bravely. Will didn’t like that smile, and James looked downright alarmed. “We’ve barely known each other three months. Take out the three weeks I spent playing assistant to Bob, and I completely understand. It’s too soon to live together. But you didn’t need to buy me a house, for heaven’s sake.”