“Of course,” Jack replied with casual patience.
“Who is Olive, anyway?” she queried, not quite recovered from her shock.
“My PA,” Jack answered.
“And she’s available at all times?” Belle went on, still, for some reason, not processing this information.
Jack lost his casual patience and slid into amused impatience.
Therefore his lips were twitching when he said. “Yes, Belle, and she gets paid well into six figures to be available at all times. She’s not an indentured servant. She’s a highly experienced, intensely skilled, extremely loyal, very valued employee who can find a way, on a Sunday afternoon, to hire the best shop assistant in the UK and have her in your store by tomorrow, end of business.”
She stared at him a moment and then breathed, “Oh.”
And while Jack was watching her parted lips at the same time fighting a nearly overwhelming urge to put his own against her mouth, slide his tongue inside and taste her, Belle continued on a whisper.
“Wow.”
Jack won his battle, lifted a hand to her jaw and smiled down at her as he leaned closer. “Wait until you meet her, poppet. Olive is definitely an ‘oh wow’.”
At his words, for some reason, something in Belle’s face shifted, it softened and a fetching radiance came into her eyes.
He understood he scored a point. He just didn’t understand how.
Then she said softly, “I’ll look forward to that.”
She turned and started walking again but he knew, somehow, her mood had lifted considerably, lightening in a way he’d never experienced from her before.
It was as charming as it was surprising.
Therefore ten minutes later (when he made his third mistake), it should not have taken him off-guard when she threw a carefree smile over her shoulder at him and announced, “I’ll show you my new favourite place.”
However, this did take Jack off-guard.
Completely.
He had an excuse for not controlling his reaction.
A smile from Belle was infrequent and it was enchanting. A carefree one, though, was something he’d never seen and that was enthralling.
When she started to scramble onto a dangerous outcropping of rock at a cliff face, Baron and Gretl protectively close to her but also alighting the outcrop with practiced ease as if they’d done it every day of their lives, Jack overreacted.
Strike that, it was when Belle, the woman he considered his woman and the woman who was carrying his child, a woman who was scared of practically everything but that dangerous outcropping of rock, started to scramble onto it that he overreacted.
He followed her quickly, caught her with an arm around her midriff and lifted her off her feet. Her back to his front, he carried her off the outcrop to the far safer cliff path and set her on her feet.
When she whirled around to face him, he demanded curtly, “What did you think you were doing?”
She’d stared at him a second then asked what he thought was bizarrely, “Oh no, you’re not going back to the jerky one, are you?”
Jack decided to ignore her question, focussing instead on his far more important, and sensible one.
“Belle,” he’d clipped. “That outcrop is dangerous. What were you thinking?”
She looked at the rock then at him and stated, “No it isn’t. I go there a lot. It’s where I do my best non-thinking.”
“So you’re telling me you won’t climb a ladder but you’ll scale a cliff?” he enquired with annoyed surprise.
She looked back at the rock then at him. “It’s not a cliff.”
He looked behind him and then back at her. “Belle, it’s a cliff. A rocky cliff. A dangerous rocky cliff.”
She turned to the cliff and studied it as if seeing it for the first time.
Then she muttered, “It is a cliff.”
He didn’t know whether to burst out laughing or shake some sense into her.
He did neither.
Instead he ordered, “I don’t want you to go out there again.” When her gaze moved to his face, he asked, “Do you understand?”
She regarded him a moment and said nonsensically, “No, it’s the bossy one.”
He ignored her again and repeated, “Am I understood?”
“You’re understood,” she replied quietly, turned back toward the house, patted her thigh to call the dogs and started forward.
Their walk, apparently, was over.
As they had moved away from the house, she had not only attempted conversation, she’d freely engaged in it.
As they moved back to the house, she remained thoughtfully and somewhat disturbingly quiet and her lightened mood had vanished.
Therefore when The Point was in view, Jack got close to her side, slid an arm around her shoulders and halted her. He curled her to face him and she tilted her head back to look at him.
“Don’t be cross, poppet,” he demanded softly when her eyes caught his, going on to explain. “I acted out of concern.”
To this she oddly announced, “I hiked the Inca Trail.”
Jack stared at her a moment before asking, “What?”
She put her hands to his waist and repeated, “I hiked the Inca Trail with my Mom. We hiked to Machu Picchu.” When he didn’t speak, she went on, “Which is amazing, by the way.”
He was surprised at this news but also uncertain why she was sharing it.
“That may be so but you weren’t pregnant nor were you alone when you did it. I’d rather you not climb out onto a cliff outcrop when you’re out walking alone.”
He’d also rather she not do it when she was with someone, for instance himself, but he didn’t say that.
She moved a hint closer to him, tilting her head back further. “No. That’s not what I mean. I’ve been trying to decide why I’m not scared of that cliff which I’m not. I never thought about it but it’s weird.” Again when he didn’t respond, she continued, informing him, “I think it’s the sea.”
Although this made no sense to Jack, he didn’t tell her that, he remained silent.
When he didn’t speak, Belle went on, “I feel safe around the sea. And I feel safe around my Mom which was why I wasn’t scared on the Inca Trail. So I tried to find times when I wasn’t afraid of something I’m normally afraid of to see if my theory is right. I remembered that, after a while, when we were up in the hayloft that first time, I leaned against the sliding doors that you opened which is something I wouldn’t normally do and…”