moment later, her sister, Nikki, answered with no ceremony. “So, are you there?”
Belle propped the pillow behind her and scooted back against it. The iron-frame bed squeaked softly, as if to remind her that it had survived years and years of use. It was a vaguely comforting sound. “Yes.” She kept her voice low. The house might be sturdy, but the walls were thin enough that she could hear the rush of the shower from the bathroom across the hall.
She stared hard at the log-cabin pattern of the quilt beneath her until the image that thought brought about faded. “The drive was hellacious in the rain.”
“Well, we’ve heard Squire say often enough that Cage Buchanan doesn’t like visitors, so there’s not a lot of need for him to make sure the road is easy.”
“I know.” Squire Clay was their stepfather, having married their mother several years earlier. She tugged at her ear. “Anyway, I know it’s late. You were probably already in bed.”
“It’s okay. I wouldn’t have slept until I knew you hadn’t been beheaded at the guy’s front door.”
“He’s not that bad.”
“Not bad to look at, maybe. I still can’t believe you took this job. What do you hope to prove, anyway?”
“Nothing,” Belle insisted. “It’s just a job to fill the summer until—” if “—I come back to the clinic.”
Nikki snorted softly. “Maybe. But I’m betting you think this is your last chance to prove to yourself that you’re not a failure.”
Belle winced. “Don’t be ridiculous, Nik.”
“Come on, Belle. What other reason would have finally made you agree to that man’s request?”
“That man has a name.”
Nikki’s sudden silence was telling. That was the problem with having a twin. But Belle was not going to get into some deep discussion over her motivation in taking on this particular job. “Speaking of the clinic,” she said deliberately. “How are things there?”
“Fine.”
Now it was Belle’s turn to remain silent.
“They still haven’t hired anyone to replace you, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Nikki finally said after a breathy huff.
“That’s something, at least.” And a bit of a minor miracle, given the number of patients the prestigious clinic handled. She still wasn’t entirely sure it wasn’t because of the position her sister held as administrative assistant to the boss that Belle had been put on a leave of absence rather than being dismissed.
“And I know you’re wondering but won’t ask,” Nikki went on. “So I’ll just tell you. Scott’s only coming in once a week now.”
She wasn’t sure how she felt at the mention of him. A patient she hadn’t managed to completely rehabilitate. Briefly a fiancé she shouldn’t have completely trusted. “You’ve seen him?”
“Are you kidding? I hide out in my office. If I saw Scott Langtree in person, I’d be liable to kick him.” Nikki paused for a moment and when she spoke, her voice was acid. “She comes with him, now, apparently. Has most of the staff in a snit because she’s so arrogant. Not that I’m condoning what Scott did, but from what people around here are saying about his wife, it’s no wonder the man was on the prowl for someone else.”
Belle plucked at the point of a quilted star. “But you haven’t seen her?”
“Nope. And I consider that a good thing. I’d have something to say to her, too, and then I’d have my tail in a sling at work, just like you.”
Belle smiled faintly. Nikki was her champion and always had been. “Hardly like me. You’d never be stupid enough to fall for a guy who already had a wife.”
“And you wouldn’t have fallen for Scott, either, if he hadn’t lied about being married,” Nikki said after a moment. “Good grief, Belle. The man proposed to you and everything. It’s not your fault that he left out the rather significant detail that he wasn’t free to walk another aisle.”
“I caused a scandal there.”
“Scott created the scandal,” Nikki countered rapidly, “and it was half a year ago, yet you’re still punishing yourself.”
Belle wanted to deny it, but couldn’t. Her relationship with Scott Langtree had caused a scandal. One large enough to create the urgent need for Belle to take a leave of absence until the furor died down. But it wasn’t even the scandal that weighed on Belle so much as the things Scott had told her in the end.
Things she didn’t want to dwell on. Things like being a failure on every front. Personal. Professional. Things that a secret part of her feared could be true.
“So,” she sat up a little straighter, determined. “Other than…that…how are things going at work? Did you get that raise you wanted?”
“Um. No. Not yet.”
“Did you ask for it?”
“No. But—”
“But nothing. Nik, you stand up for me all the time. You’ve got to stand up for yourself, too. Alex would be lost without you, and it’s high time he started realizing it. I swear, it would serve the man right if you quit.” But she knew Nikki wasn’t likely to do that. Alexander Reed ran the Huffington Sports Clinic, including its various locations around the country. He had degrees up the whazoo, and was a business marvel, according to Nikki.
Belle just found the man intimidating as all get-out, but had still worked her tail off to get a position there.
A position she was going back to, she assured herself inwardly.
“So, what’s he like? Cage, I mean. As ornery as everyone says?”
Belle accepted Nikki’s abrupt change of topic. Alex was too sensitive a subject for her sister to discuss for long. “He is not an ogre,” she recited softly.
Nikki laughed a little. “Keep telling yourself that, Annabelle.”
Belle smiled. “It’s late. Get some sleep. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Watch your back,” Nikki said, and hung up.
Belle thumbed off her phone and set it on the nightstand. She didn’t need to watch her back where Cage Buchanan was concerned. But that didn’t mean she would be foolish enough to let down her guard, either.
The bed squeaked again when she lay down and yanked the quilt up over her. Even though the day hadn’t been filled with much physical activity, she was exhausted. But as soon as her head hit the pillow, her eyes simply refused to shut, and she lay there long into the night, puzzling over the man who slept on the other side of the bedroom wall.
When he heard the soft creak of bedsprings for the hundredth time, Cage tossed aside the book he was reading and glared at the wall between the two bedrooms. Even sleeping, the woman was an irritant, and as soon as she was busy for the day, he was going
