It dawned on her that she’d run away from him the first morning after they’d been together. Since then she had been either avoiding him or escaping him on a regular basis, including crawling out of bed in the mornings before he woke.
Therefore this particular beast was a beast of her own making.
She pressed closer and wrapped her arms loosely around his waist.
“I’ll wake you,” she promised.
He gave her a squeeze and warned, “You should probably know, even when I’m used to it I’ll still want a kiss before you leave our bed.”
“That won’t be hard to do,” she assured him.
That’s when he grinned.
That was it then. He was done. No yelling, threatening, throwing things or hitting her.
She felt secret relief.
Then she grinned back.
“Do you want eggs?” she asked.
He looked to the counter saying, “I’m starved.”
She gave him a squeeze and when his eyes came back to her, she smiled at him with genuine, unabashed excitement and cried, “Great!”
She exuberantly tried to pull away but got about an inch before he hauled her back against his body.
When she looked at him, he called, “Belle?”
She tilted her head in enquiry, still smiling happily and returned, “Yes?”
His eyes shifted to her mouth for a moment before going back to hers.
“My Belle?” he asked.
The question made her breath catch and she didn’t know the answer but she knew what she hoped it was.
He also had a strange look on his face, warm even tender but also like he too was in some sort of trance (but apparently, during his trances, he could actually talk, he just couldn’t say much).
“Are you okay?” Belle queried.
“Are you okay?” Jack queried back.
She smiled again and answered, “Yes.”
“You seem pretty excited about eggs,” he remarked cautiously.
She tilted her head again and leaned into him. “You haven’t had my eggs.”
Then she gently pulled out of his arms, got him a cup of coffee, pulled out two skillets then the butter, put the toast in the toaster all the while babbling.
“My Dad taught my Mom how to make eggs. Then they got in a competition about who could make them best. When I was old enough, they both taught me how to make them. Everyone agrees mine are the best of them all. Even me and I try to be humble but I can’t be about my eggs, they’re that good. And anyway, I get to cook for you. Elaine, or whoever, cooks for you and I don’t get to do anything. Boiling some veg and grilling some steaks isn’t the same as really cooking. So, yay!”
She threw butter in one skillet, slices of bacon in the other, turned on the burner under the bacon, so busy she hadn’t felt the air turn velvet all around them.
When he didn’t speak, never looking at him, she kept babbling.
“You should know, by the way, if Dad should show up, which he might considering the pictures in the paper, that Mom and Dad didn’t have a nasty divorce. They still love each other. They hook up every time they get together. They just got a divorce because Dad’s kind of wild and Mom knew it would drive her bonkers so she let him go rather than let it get ugly.”
“Your Dad is wilder than your mother?” Jack asked in a voice that said he found that hard to believe.
She threw a grin at him over her shoulder. “Yes. Definitely. He’s nuts.” Then the toast popped up, she whirled around, snatched it from the toaster, began slathering it with butter and asked, “Would you get the jam out of the fridge, please?” she paused and then added, “And the grape jelly.”
“Grape jelly?” he enquired and she threw him another grin.
“It’s an American thing. Mom sends it to me.” She looked back at the toast and kept talking. “We have grape jelly. We have grape candies too. We don’t do black currant.” Belle gave a shiver at the very thought of black currant.
She heard the fridge open and Jack said, “I’m guessing you don’t like black currant.”
“No,” Belle replied in a way that left nothing to the imagination about how much she detested black currant and she heard him chuckle.
“You eat jelly for breakfast?” he asked.
She finished buttering the toast, put more bread in the toaster, picked up a wooden spatula and turned to him.
“It isn’t English jelly, we call that jell-o.” Belle put great emphasis on the “oh”. “It’s jelly-jelly, like jam, without the bits in.”
Her kitchen was small, Jack’s big frame made it smaller but it became tiny when he suddenly closed the fridge door, took a wide step toward her and got right in her space.
She leaned back as he leaned in and his arms slid around her.
She looked up at him and saw the warmth was definitely in his face as was the tenderness, also definitely, but there was something else there. She couldn’t put her finger on it. It was partially amusement but the rest of it she didn’t know.
But it made him look… happy.
It was, incidentally, his best look ever.
Even so, breathless and feeling a trill up her spine even as a strange spiral of fear curled in her belly, Belle said softly, “Jack, I’m making eggs.”
“I switched her on,” Jack replied bizarrely.
“What?”
His face dipped closer and he repeated, “Somehow, I switched her on.”
It was then Belle realised what she was doing, how she was behaving and just how much she was talking.
Her eyes slid to his ear and his arms grew tight as he gave her a firm but gentle shake.
“No, love, stick with me,” he said.
“I need to make the eggs,” she muttered to his ear.
“Look at me,” he demanded, her eyes slid back to his and his head bent so his forehead could rest on hers. “I’m looking forward to your eggs. I’m also enjoying learning about your father and grape jelly.” Somehow, even though he was as close as you could get, he managed to get closer when he went on, “You can be this woman with me. You don’t have to switch off, poppet.”
Belle didn’t speak.
Jack didn’t either.
Finally, Jack moved, touched his mouth to hers and then his lips drew away an inch. “Or you can be whoever you want to be.”
At his words, Belle’s soul sighed.
Then he let her go, went back to the fridge, bent into it and she watched him pull out the grape jelly.
He put it on the table, walked to her, put his hand to her jaw, slid his thumb across her cheekbone, dropped his hand and walked out of the room.