you bring a suitcase?”
She nodded. “I, um, left it by the front door.”
He inclined his head a few degrees and his gaze drifted impassively down her wet form. “I’ll take it upstairs for you.”
“I can—” But he’d already turned on his heel, walking away. Soundless, even though he was wearing scuffed cowboy boots with decidedly worn-down heels.
If she hadn’t had a stepfamily full of men who walked with the same soundless gait, she’d have spent endless time wondering how he could move so quietly.
She looked back at Lucy and smiled. A real one. She’d enjoyed Lucy from the day they’d met half a year ago in the P.E. class Belle had been substitute teaching. And she’d be darned if she’d let her feelings toward the sweet girl be tainted by the past. “So, that’s a lot of ribbons and trophies on that shelf over there.” She gestured at the far wall and headed toward it, skirting the pink canopied bed. “Looks like you’ve been collecting them for a lot of years. What are they all for?”
“State Fair. 4-H.” Lucy rolled her chair closer.
Belle plucked one small gold trophy off the shelf. “And this one?”
“Last year’s talent contest.”
Belle ran her finger over the brass plate affixed to the trophy base. “First place. I’m not surprised.” Belle had still been in Cheyenne then with no plans whatsoever about coming to Weaver for any reason other than to visit her family. Her plans back then had involved planning her wedding and obtaining some seniority at the clinic.
So much for that.
“Won’t be in the contest this year, that’s for sure.”
“Because you’re not dancing at the moment?” Belle set the trophy back in its place. “You could sing.” She ignored Lucy’s soft snort. “Or play piano. I thought I remembered you telling me once that you took lessons.”
“I did.”
“But not now?”
Lucy shrugged. Her shoulders were impossibly thin. Everything about her screamed “delicate” but Belle knew the girl was made of pretty stern stuff.
“Yeah, I still take lessons. But it doesn’t matter. If I can’t dance then I don’t want to be in the contest. It’s stupid anyway. Just a bunch of schoolkids.”
“I don’t know about stupid,” Belle countered easily. Most talented school kids from all over the state. “But we can focus on next year.” She took the towel from her shoulders and folded it, then sat on top of it on the end of Lucy’s bed. She leaned forward and touched the girl’s knee. The wicked scar marring Lucy’s skin was long and angry. “Don’t look so down, kiddo. People can do amazing things when they really want. Remember, I’ve seen you in action. And I already think you’re pretty amazing.”
“Miss Day.”
Belle jerked a little. Cage Buchanan was standing in the doorway again. She kept her smile in place, but it took some work. “You’d better start calling me Belle,” she suggested, deliberately cheerful. “Both of you. Or I’m not going to realize you’re talking to me.”
“The students called you Miss Day during the school year,” he countered smoothly.
“You’re not a student, Cage.” She pointedly used his name. More to prove that she could address the man directly than to disprove that whole ogre thing. The fact was, she knew he was deliberately focusing on her surname. And she knew why.
She was a Day. And he hated the Day family.
His eyes were impossible to read. Intensely blue but completely inscrutable. “I need a few minutes of your time. Then you can…settle in.”
Belle hoped she imagined his hesitation before settle. Despite everything, she wasn’t prepared to be sent out on her ear before she’d even had a session with Lucy. For one thing, she really wanted to help the girl. For another, her ego hadn’t exactly recovered from its last professional blow.
She was aware of Lucy watching her, a worried expression on her face. And she absolutely did not want to worry the girl. It wasn’t Lucy’s problem that she had a…slight…problem with the girl’s dad. “Sure.” She rose, taking the towel with her. “Then I’ll change into something dry, and you—” she gently tugged the end of Lucy’s braid “—and I can get started.”
The girl’s expression was hardly a symphony of excitement. But she did eventually nod, and Belle was happy for that.
She squeaked across the floor in her wet sneakers and, because Cage didn’t look as if he would be moving anytime this century, she slipped past him into the hall. He was tall and he was broad and she absolutely did not touch him, yet she still tamped down hard on a shiver.
Darned nerves.
“Kitchen,” he said.
Ogre, she thought, then mentally kicked herself. He was a victim of circumstances far more than she was. And he had painted his bedroom pink for Lucy, for heaven’s sake. Was that the mark of an ogre?
She turned into the kitchen.
“Sit down.”
There were three chairs around an old-fashioned table that—had it been in someone else’s home—would have been delightfully retro. Here, it obviously was original, rather than a decorating statement. She sat down on one of the chairs and folded her hands together atop the table, waiting expectantly. If he wanted to send her home already, then he would just have to say so because she wasn’t going to invite the words from him. She’d had enough of failure lately, thank you very much.
But in the game of staring, she realized all too quickly that he was a master. And she…was not.
So she bluffed. She lifted her eyebrows, doing the best imitation of her mother that she could summon, and said calmly, “Well?”
Interfering, Cage thought, eying her oval face. Interfering, annoyingly superior, and—even wet and bedraggled—too disturbing for his peace of mind.
But more than that, she’d managed to make him feel out of place. And Cage particularly didn’t like that feeling.
But damned if that wasn’t just the way he felt standing there in his own kitchen, looking at the skinny, wet woman sitting at the breakfast table where he’d grown up eating his mother’s biscuits and sausage gravy. And it was nobody’s fault but his own that Miss Belle Day—with her imperiously raised eyebrows and waist-length brown hair—was there at all.
He pulled out a chair, flipped it around and straddled it, then focused on the folder sitting on the table, rather than on Belle. This was about his daughter, and there wasn’t much in this world he wouldn’t do for Lucy. Including put up with a member of the Day family, who up until a few years ago had remained a comfortable distance away in Cheyenne.
If only she wasn’t…disturbing. If only he hadn’t felt that way from the day they’d met half a year ago.
Too many “if
