Lucky Stars (Ghosts and Reincarnation #5)(67)
“Mum,” Jack warned when he felt Belle’s body tense at his side.
“Well, it is,” Joy defended.
“It doesn’t matter. They scare Belle and I don’t want you saying another word,” Jack asserted.
Joy turned to Belle. “Oh darling, there’s nothing to be scared of. I promise, they’re actually quite –”
“Mum!” Jack clipped sharply and Joy jumped.
“Um, I hate to interrupt your chitchat but my daughter is freaking out!” Lila called from down the hall while walking toward them. Her eyes were on Jack. “And you better do something about it, my man, because she’s upstairs, in Belle’s room, packing her things, mumbling about haunted houses and how her pregnant daughter was getting as far as she could from this creepy place.”
“Fucking hell,” Jack muttered.
At the same time, Belle mumbled an alarmingly experienced, “Uh-oh.”
When Lila arrived at their group, Jack made a swift, acutely irritating but necessary decision and asked, “What does she drink?”
Lila blinked up at him and parroted, “Drink?”
“Rachel,” Jack went on with slipping patience. “What does she drink?”
Lila looked at Belle and mumbled, “Better question is what doesn’t she drink?”
Belle giggled, it wasn’t with humour but with nervousness and Jack’s patience slipped further.
“Lila,” he said low and her gaze snapped to him.
“I’d say this was a tequila moment,” Lila answered.
“I think we have tequila,” his mother informed them quickly.
“Get it,” Jack ordered and looked at Lila. “You get Rachel.” Then he told them both. “Meet us back here in the study.”
“Gotcha, big man,” Lila said breezily and moved down the hall.
Joy looked at Jack and asked, “What are you going to do?”
Jack pulled Belle closer to his side and answered, “I’m going to do nothing. You’re going to tell the story of Myrtle and Lewis.”
Before she could think better of it even in the face of Jack’s visibly slipping patience, Joy exclaimed excitedly, “Oh goody, I’m going to call Yasmin.”
“If you call Yasmin, I’ll break your fingers,” Jack clipped out his empty threat with as much menace as he could muster which was rather a lot at that juncture.
Joy ignored the considerable menace and smiled radiantly at him. “No you won’t, darling.” Then she looked at Belle and confided, “Yasmin loves this story. She’s never seen Myrtle and Lewis but she’s dying to. She’ll be so jealous.”
Then Joy hurried away in search of tequila.
Jack looked down at Belle and saw her face was pale and her eyes were locked on his mother’s departing back.
“Poppet,” Jack called and her head tipped to look up at him.
“Do you think the baby could withstand a shot of tequila?” She paused briefly before finishing, “Or three?”
“No,” Jack replied instantly.
Belle’s gaze dropped to his throat.
“I didn’t think so,” she muttered with disappointment.
In any other mood, Jack would find this amusing.
Considering he’d just been interrupted in his continuing efforts to win Belle’s trust at the same time making their situation significantly more complicated, so complicated it was a knotted mess from which she could never extract herself, he was not in such a mood.
Therefore Jack guided Belle back into the study wondering if he could politely rid The Point of his mother, Lila and Rachel without overly upsetting Belle.
At the very least for Sunday afternoons.
Chapter Twelve
The Thunderstorm
Belle
Belle stared out the window of Jack’s study, both her hands resting on her baby bump.
The white-capped waves were rolling out as far as the eye could see and the wind had picked up. Even though there were only fluffy, white clouds in the sky, Belle knew from ten years of living in England, five of those in Cornwall, that the weather was going to turn.
Jack had gone somewhere. He told her he’d return shortly but didn’t tell her where he was going.
Belle only hoped it wasn’t to break his mother’s fingers though she couldn’t imagine Jack would do that even though he sounded like he very much wanted to.
She was contemplating how she felt about her day with Jack (indeed, her last three days with Jack) and everything that had happened.
In other words, she was trying to figure out how she felt about the fact that Jack clearly didn’t dislike her frequent, quiet reveries. This was something Calvin hated and thought was weird and shared these thoughts frequently. Frequently enough for Belle to stop doing it when he was around.
In fact, Jack seemed not only to accept them but, on some strange level, to enjoy them. After Calvin’s persistent avowals of hatred for them, Belle couldn’t believe this was true. Nevertheless, the more she fell into them around Jack, the more she sensed Jack’s contentment when they happened.
She was also trying to figure out how she felt about Jack hiring a shop assistant for her, driving her to work and spending a day in her store not because he wanted to but because (she was certain) he was protecting her from the media.