Taste for Trouble (45 page)

You’re
right. This is some hard shit. Let’s forget it and go get a facial
.

Will
almost smiled at that one. He and Bob hadn’t been close but he’d appreciated
the guy.

Or
a drink
.

Ouch.
Below the belt, Bob. Because, Jesus, that was exactly what he wanted.

Are
you going to do your job or not
?

Yeah.
He was going to do his damn job. He stepped through the open front door and
pulled it shut behind him. He was disgusted to discover his hands weren’t
precisely steady on the knob.

Almost
immediately, they were on him. Bob’s people. Mourners, funeral goers, whatever
the hell you called the black-draped crowds that cooed over caskets like morbid
birds. He suppressed a shudder—last funeral he’d endured had been his parents’—and
found himself shaking sympathetic hands, accepting shoulder pats and exchanging
cheek-pecks.

It’s
not that hard when you’re not being a dick
.

Thanks,
Bob. I’ll remember that.

“Hey,
listen.” He grabbed the nearest shoulder. He had no idea who it belonged to,
though the guy seized his hand and shook it like a fucking pump handle. “Any
idea where Bel and James are?”

Seconds
later, he was standing outside the closed study doors. Rumor had it they were
all in here. James, Bel, Drew, Ford and Annie. And Audrey. The whole package, God
help him. He wiped clammy palms down the seams of his black suit—it was a
funeral, after all, and he wasn’t a total asshole—and let himself quietly into
the study.

Bel
and James were in front of the desk, locked in a steamy embrace just this side
of get-a-room territory. The rest of his family stood around gazing at them
with fond, damp eyes. He wondered what he’d missed. A showdown with Vivi? A
marriage proposal?

Good
God, marriage. Wouldn’t that be a kick in the pants?

His
heart ached, just a little, faint and bittersweet. James—the sunny, funny
middle child who skated through life with fucking rainbows on his feet—was
getting married. Manning up.
Growing
up.

A
sharp pang of envy came next. But why? Because James had grown up and left him
behind? Or because James had lucked into a woman who smelled like sugar cookies
and sported the deepest, sweetest dimples Will had ever seen? A woman who
looked at James and all his shit and saw somebody worth loving?

It
was possible that a sigh escaped him. Small and, yes, pathetic. It couldn’t
have been more than a breath of sound but it was enough. Audrey saw him first. He
knew the instant she registered his presence. Her spine went instantly and
hostilely stiff. She turned slowly, regally, nostrils flared like she smelled
something off and was about to check her shoe.

He
braced himself for the slapping he knew he deserved. He thought about trying a
conciliatory smile but Bob said
bad idea
so he went blank and
non-committal.

“Hey,
Audrey.”

“Will.”
A single, frosty syllable was all she gave him but she didn’t wind up for the
slap. That was something.

“Holy
shit,
Will
!” Drew’s eyes went wide, and a grin spread across his thin
face that was equal parts
welcome home
and
this ought to be good
.
Drew did love a scene. He loped forward and threw a skinny arm around Will’s
shoulders. Gave him a solid squeeze and a back thump. He drew back to eye him
suspiciously. “You didn’t bust out of rehab, did you?”

“Nah.
I graduated.”

“Hey,
congrats.”

“Yeah,
thanks.”

Drew
released him, and Will absently accepted similar greetings from Ford and Annie.
Nothing from Audrey but he’d already gotten more than he expected there. No, he
had his sights on James and Bel now.

They
stood at the desk, still loosely wrapped in each others’ arms. Will approached
them slowly, warily. Giving them plenty of time for the wind up if they were
planning to take their shots. James met his eyes, a smile flickering at the
corner of his mouth. Not that it meant anything, Will told himself, sternly
squashing a flare of hope. James was always right next to a smile. It was like
the pilot light on his native good humor. It didn’t mean Will was welcome here.
God knew he hadn’t earned any such thing.

Bel
straightened slowly. James’ hand fell away from her back and she stepped
forward. She looked cool and pretty and grave, not at all like a woman who’d
just kissed his brother into a happy, disheveled stupor.

He forced
himself to keep walking until he was close enough to touch her. Not that he
did. He just wanted her to be able to slap him without reaching for it. He owed
her that, didn’t he?

The
boy can be taught
.

Shut
up, Bob.

“Hey,
Bel.” He didn’t smile. Didn’t have the stomach to even try. He was exquisitely
aware of Audrey, her beauty almost blinding, her eyes cold and watchful on him
as he faced Bel’s judgment. He groped for words, any words. Magic, pretty words
that would put him at rights with this woman his brother had chosen and he’d
wronged. Nothing presented itself—he doubted words that powerful existed,
actually—so he just said, “I’m so sorry.”

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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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.