Suddenly, he raised his head and twisted, his ears perking up as he stared out the window intently with a low growl. He began barking his little heart out.
“He was. But every once in a while, he’s just loud.” She moved, trying to see what had the dog’s attention. “It’s weird. He barks when I see absolutely nothing to bark at.”
She could almost picture Kinley’s shrug. “Animals are more sensitive to their surroundings than humans. I’m sure he’ll settle in. Belle, I really wish you’d listen to me about your men.”
They aren’t my men. “Sir will be fine eventually, though he isn’t exactly housebroken yet,” Belle sidestepped Kinley’s comment. “But I guess that will take time. Got any good tips?”
Kinley huffed. “Stop trying to change the subject. They’re worried about you. Tate was practically crying. He’s weirdly hot, you know. He’s got that soulful geek thing. He’s longing, Belle. Pining. All for you.”
She closed her eyes, trying not to imagine that look on his face. She was sure Tate would be on her doorstep if she hadn’t made herself scarce…though he was smart enough to track her down. If he wanted her, he would find her. She hoped she had the strength to turn him away.
“It wouldn’t work with just me and Tate.” He must know that, too. And it would be cruel to tear him away from his buddies when she knew their pairing couldn’t last. “I care about him, Kin. I really do, but he needs Eric and Kellan. They understand his quirks and forgive him when he says the wrong thing. Without them, he’d just retreat into his shell. And they need him because he’s logical and honest. I can’t get in the middle of that. It would be like separating brothers.”
“Of course you can’t do that, honey,” Kinley’s voice was soothing even from five hundred miles away. “They’re a set. Besides, you need something from each of them and you wouldn’t be happy with just one.”
It seemed wrong. So many women out there couldn’t find one man, and Belle was insisting on three. Maybe she wasn’t the right woman for any of them. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Does lying to yourself really help?”
Belle sighed. “I just don’t think it’s meant to be.”
“I think you’re giving up awfully easily.” Kinley paused. “Kellan was leading the charge to find you.”
That shocked Belle. “He must feel very guilty.”
“Or he realizes he made a terrible choice.” Her long sigh sounded over the line. “You know, you might be expecting Shangri-la between the three of you too quickly. Riley fought his feelings for me at first. He had things to work through. We talked. We argued. He had a lot of hesitation and second thoughts, but eventually he came around. Maybe Kellan needs more time and you need more patience. Men take their time in coming to conclusions that women just instinctively know. They fight their feelings, especially when they have baggage. Kellan has a whole boatload of it from what I can tell.”
She thought so, too. Still, what she’d overheard from the bathroom in their suite had been very clear. He didn’t want responsibility. He didn’t want permanence.
“I don’t think it’s that simple.”
“Nothing worthwhile is. A relationship like this isn’t easy, and if you’re expecting it to be, you’re setting yourself up for failure. It takes a lot of work and honest talk. You three aren’t communicating.”
Maybe Kinley was right, but honestly, what else was there to say? She couldn’t make Kell want her for more than a night.
Suddenly, Sir’s whole body went on full alert and the barking began anew. Belle frowned as she moved to the window. From here, she had a great view of the courtyard that now swayed with the wind as the weather turned a bit chilly. A pretty orange and yellow tabby cat pranced across the bricks and turned her smug feline face toward the dog, looking deeply entertained by the dog’s irritation.
Belle pulled Sir up into her arms and dropped the shade over the window, hoping the cat would be out of sight and out of mind. It wasn’t working for her when it came to Kell, Tate, and Eric. Weariness set in. “Kinley, hon, I’ve got to go. I still have to get the bedroom ready for tonight and find some kibble for the little beast.”
She hoped she could find a store nearby. It would get dark soon.
“All right. I love you. Promise me you’ll think about calling them, at least to let them know you’re all right.”
Belle bit her lip. In some ways, hearing their voices would be so tempting, but what would it accomplish? What she wanted hadn’t changed. “They’re probably on their flight home to Chicago.” Then something occurred to her. If Kellan was spearheading some effort to find her, then… “They did catch their flight, right?”
“I don’t know. They checked out of the hotel and caught a cab. You know what I know.”
“But if you had to guess?”
Kinley hesitated. “I don’t think they’re folding up their tent and going home.”
The answer filled Belle with both dread and an insidious thrill. “Thanks.”
The phone clicked, and she was alone again. Belle had a feeling the night would be long.
A loud bang shot through the room. She started and let loose a little shriek. Sir scurried to huddle against her breast and buried his face.
What was that?
Dead silence followed. The roof didn’t cave in. No murderous fiend jumped into the room. Nothing.
About thirty seconds passed before Belle let out a breath. A nervous laugh shook her chest. She would have to get used to the sounds this old house made. Maybe the furnace had kicked in.
“Some guard dog you are,” she teased Sir.
When she turned back toward the desk, she noticed a piece of molding hanging from the bottom, just under the alcove where she’d tuck her knees when she sat. Belle frowned. Weird. She hadn’t noticed it when she’d been dusting or sat there earlier.
With a puzzled frown, she knelt and tried to fit the piece back in place. Belle hoped this wasn’t a sign the desk was falling apart and would need replacing. That would be a huge shame. Her grandmother’s antique was a stunning, one-of-a-kind treasure.
As Belle fiddled with the molding, her fingers found a hidden niche the wood had concealed. It was deep under the desk. She set Sir down and crawled under, the Persian carpet a soft cushion for her knees. Though the space under the desk was too dark to see, she could feel the open compartment with her fingers. As she reached into the little space cautiously, she immediately encountered two items tucked inside. With a wince and a ginger tug, she pulled them out and crawled back.
Two old, pocket-size journals, one slightly more faded than the other. Belle frowned. This was her grandmother’s office and her grandmother’s desk. She flipped open the cover of one and glimpsed the handwriting. Decidedly feminine.
“Looks like Grandma wrote her memoirs. Or hid some secrets,” she said absently to Sir as she sat on the rug.
Sir plopped himself down on her lap and immediately went back to sleep. She opened the other volume, the smaller of the two, and rifled through it a bit.
Belle frowned at the slightly yellow pages. Maybe her grandma had been on the crazy side because all she’d written in this journal was a list of long, random numbers that corresponded to even more random words, like “sunny,” “backdoor,” “raincoat,” and “canceled.” None of it made a lick of sense. What did 10056 00099873 have to do with “pink” and “fuzzy?”
Even more strangely, the latter half of the book had been written by a different hand. Same sorts of odd codes, but different penmanship for sure.
Frowning, she laid that one aside. Maybe the odd entries in this book had something to do with her grandmother’s psychic business, though Belle had no idea how. Maybe the code protected her clients’ anonymity? The second book was bigger, and Belle knew what it was the minute she skimmed the first page.
Grandma’s diary.
Belle’s heart skipped a beat.
September 27th, 1955. Her father’s birthday.
Oh, my
baby boy. How I love you.
Tears pierced her eyes as she realized she was reading her grandmother’s uncensored thoughts—those of a stranger related to her by blood about the birth of her own father. Belle thumbed through the pages, her wonder growing. She’d wanted to figure out who her grandmother had been. Well, this would probably be a good start. In fact, after skimming ahead a few pages, it seemed the whole volume was a book of letters written from mother to son.
Her grandmother hadn’t been heartless or indifferent. She’d loved him very much, based on just the first page or two alone. So what had happened? Why the rift?
Belle was willing to bet the answers lay in this book. She slid the one filled with gibberish back in its hiding place and jimmied with the molding until she felt a little groove slide back into a seemingly corresponding tongue. It locked in place easily, as if made for just that purpose.
As she stood to head to the bedroom, she wondered how the strip of decorative wood had come loose like that. It seemed so secure now. And where had the loud bang come from? When she really thought about it, the noise had seemed too close to be the furnace. She’d have to solve that mystery when she wasn’t utterly exhausted.
Sir followed her from the room with a sleepy yawn, and she shrugged away her questions. Since nothing terrible or tragic had happened, did it matter now? She had some reading to do. But not until she washed the sheets on the bed and made sure the house’s many doors and windows were all locked.
As she looked around once more, Belle shook her head. An inch-thick layer of dust, the ancient hot water heater, the peeling wallpaper. Being the owner of a home with so much history and recent neglect was hard work…but at least it might keep her mind off her broken heart.
* * * *
Eric finally managed to get that fucking intern Belle had hired to pick up his phone just as they turned down the narrow, busy street that should lead them to her new home.
Her temporary home.
“Yeah?” Warrington Dash III had an upper-crust name and three judges in his family, which was good for him because Eric was pretty sure the kid had a lot of pot in his system. Without such familial influence, he’d probably be behind bars.
“Sequoia, we’ve been calling you for hours. Why haven’t you been answering the damn phone?”
The kid was all of twenty but had already decided not to go by Warrington, the family name he’d been given. Instead, he’d chosen the name Sequoia in honor of trees or some shit. He was studying to become an environmental lawyer, and that made Eric weep for the planet.
“Dude, I was doing yoga. No phones. It blocks the process. Hey, I could get you in sometime. You three could use some serious introspection.”
They’d have better “process” with another intern. “I need you to handle the calls at the office for a bit. Something’s come up on this trip, and we’re going to be away a few more days.”
Kellan pulled into a parking space and gestured up the street, letting him know they weren’t far from her address. Tate bounded out of the car in an instant.
Eric put a hand over the phone. “Catch him. He’ll run down the street, screaming her name like some Streetcar Named Desire impersonation.” Eric turned his attention back to his call the minute Kell closed the car door. “So I need you to go back to the office and grab the calendar on Belle’s desk.”
“Dude, Belle and I already had this conversation. I’ve already done all of the stuff she told me to do. It’s a total bummer she quit.”
“She did what?”
“Yeah, she called a couple of hours ago and said she wasn’t coming back. Oh, and she faxed her resignation, too. I’m supposed to tell you guys that she found a new home and stuff. Do you think she’s going to want the yogurt in the fridge? I could use that tomorrow because work makes me hungry and it’s the only vegan thing in the office. You guys eat a lot of animal flesh. Do you really think that’s good for you?”
She’d quit—and she’d done it by telling the goddamn intern. She hadn’t even had the courtesy to call them and tender her resignation. “Don’t touch her yogurt. No matter what she told you, she’s coming back.”
He stabbed at his phone to end the call, then hopped out of the car, his heart pounding in his chest. Anger simmered in his veins, mixing with cold panic and encroaching dread.
He jogged up the street, his dress shoes slapping against the concrete, heading for the other two. Kellan had managed to contain Tate, and the two of them stood in front of a three-story house set right against the street with a blue door. In the dark, he thought it might be connected to the little house around the corner, but he couldn’t be sure.
“Belle quit. She called Sequoia and told that pot-smoking fucker she wasn’t coming back,” Eric grated out.
Kellan cursed. “That’s not a good sign. I really expected her to tell me off, then give me the cold shoulder until I groveled.”
And just like this “move,” the fact that she hadn’t more than suggested she really didn’t intend to come back. This wasn’t just a snit. They were about to launch a battle to bring her back…but for the first time, Eric wondered if the war was unwinnable.
Eric stared at the pale stucco house with its bent screen door. It might look a little rundown, but once it had a coat of paint and a few repairs, the place would shine and look like the mansion Belle’s paperwork suggested she’d inherited. In fact, in both location and historical significance, he was looking at pure New Orleans splendor.
Restoring the house would be Belle’s dream project.
“Shit.” Tate stood beside him, shaking his head as he studied the place in the streetlamp lit evening. “She’s never going to want to leave here. We have three bedrooms that she says need paint with ‘personality,’ whatever that means, and a game room she refers to as the man cave. She holds her nose when she walks in there. Do you think that means something?”
“It means you should pick up your damn socks,” Eric groused.
“I’d even be grateful for that,” Kell put in. “But you’ve heard her diatribe about your kitchen. Even if this house needs a lot of work, she’s going to be far more interested in redoing a historic charmer in New Orleans than some suburban abode in Chicago.”
“We’re fucked. Our only saving grace might be that she can’t live here forever. This place is way too big for one person. I looked around for the front door. That guest house behind it is attached, but I didn’t find the main entrance. This isn’t it.” Tate pointed at the little blue door.
Usually, Eric liked to be aware of the problems he faced. This time, the entire conversation just unnerved him.
Kellan studied what they could see of the place. “The taxes will be a killer. I don’t think Belle has a ton of cash, unless that was part of her inheritance.”
“Her grandmother left her some money,” Tate said. “But the amount wasn’t specified in the documents I saw. Those were about the house, but if her grandmother had a lot of money, would the place be in disrepair? Even if Belle sinks her whole bank account into the house, I doubt it will be enough.”
“Before we can worry about the house or her intentions, we need to remember that she ran. Will she even let us in the door, presuming this is it?” Eric hoped there was a hotel nearby with rooms available. Even this late at night, tourists walked up and down the street. They all had to sleep somewhere. He and the guys did too, though he sincerely hoped it would be with Belle.
He scanned the exterior of Belle’s new house, assessing the modest but colorful door flanked by shutters. The rusted screen door flapped a bit in the breeze. He didn’t see any light from the inside coming through the windows. Was she still awake or had she gone to sleep, blissful that she hadn’t had to talk to them all day?
He’d played through about a hundred scenarios in his head, ranging from Belle running into his arms to the one where she found her inner warrior princess and went medieval on their asses.
Now that he was standing outside her darkened hou
se, he really worried. He wasn’t sure how the hell he would handle it if she told them to go to hell.
“Why are the lights out?” Kellan stepped up to a little carriage-style fixture affixed to the exterior that should have illuminated the area.
“The house hasn’t been lived in for months,” Tate explained. “She’ll be lucky if the power is still on.”
Standing here in front of the place, a chill swept through him, much colder than anything the fall breeze had swept in. Just a couple of yards away, the street was lit, looking bright and elegant, but here, a deep gloom clung.
He glanced around the back of the house, looking for any sign of life. Total darkness. There was a thin alley between Belle’s house on one side and a neighbor’s fence on the other. Just enough for a man to lay in wait. Belle wouldn’t see anyone creeping through her yard. No one from the street would see a thing either.
If they couldn’t persuade her to come back to Chicago with them in the morning, they would so be getting some lights to