Joy looked to Jack. “Maybe Jack should try.” Then she turned fully to her son. “She’ll listen to you, darling, you know she will.”
Jack nodded and replied, “I’ll have a word.”
Joy smiled at her son and then murmured, “I better go find her.”
She left the table and this heralded a mass exit, Jack stopping Belle on her way up the stairs to her mother’s room.
When she’d tipped her head to look at him, he told her, “If you want to join me in the study later, you don’t have to knock.”
Then he leaned in, brushed his lips against hers and he was gone.
She stood where he left her for a moment, still feeling his mouth against hers and wondering if his open invitation to his study meant as much to him as it did to her.
Then she turned and climbed the stairs.
Gram was in her mother’s room when she arrived and Belle knew immediately her mother didn’t want “a word”. Instead, Belle was going to get what they both referred to as a “talking to”.
She walked across the room to the windows, saying, “I’m not sure I’m up to this, guys.”
“Probably not but then again, when would you be up to finding out you were likely the conduit to release the spirits of two children bound to earth for hundreds of years, sending them straight to heaven?” Gram remarked.
Belle ignored her grandmother’s remark, looked out the window and saw the rain had stopped. She also saw Jack, Baron and Gretl heading up the cliff path. Jack was wearing a dark rain slicker, his head bare, the wind blowing his thick hair.
Jack, Belle noted, looked good from behind in his rain slicker with the wind blowing his hair. She liked the way he walked, even on the slick path, with long, confident strides, his body at his command.
“Earth to Belle, come in Belle,” Mom called and Belle turned to see Gram at her side, peering out the window.
“She’s mooning over Jack,” Gram informed Mom.
“Lots to moon over,” Mom commented. “The man’s got a fantastic behind.”
Gram turned from the window, looked at Mom and shared, “I like his hands.”
Mom grinned. “Yeah, he’s got great hands. And, from Belle’s look this afternoon, I’m guessing he knows how to use them.”
“Mom!” Belle snapped as she walked from the window and threw herself on the bed in front of her mother.
She rolled to her back and her mother leaned over her. “It’s just my way of saying I’m happy for you, honeypot.”
Belle sighed and asked, “Can we not talk about Jack’s hands?”
“Okay,” Mom agreed happily. “Let’s talk about his behind. That’s a much better subject.”
Belle rolled her eyes.
“Or his eyes. That man has unbelievable eyes,” Gram noted as she joined them on the bed. “I was convinced they were contacts when I first met him but I don’t think they are.”
“They’re not,” Belle informed her, Gram smiled and Mom giggled.
Then Gram said gently, “I think you found yourself a good one this time, my sweet.”
Belle was beginning to think her grandmother wasn’t wrong.
And this budding knowledge scared the dickens out of her.
Therefore, she broadened her limits on the evening’s subject matter. “Can we not talk about Jack, at all?”
“Sorry, baby, can’t do that. That’s why we called you in here,” Mom told her.