She got up, mumbling, “I’ll be right back.”
She tried to escape but he caught her hand and snapped, “Belle made my eggs perfectly. I didn’t even know good eggs until Belle f**king made them.”
His wife had heard this before.
Often.
Especially in the last several months when Calvin’s precious Belle had become The Tiny Dynamo.
He threw her hand away from him and she ran from the room.
Calvin picked up the paper and opened it to the picture of Belle and Bennett.
And he sat and waited for his eggs.
* * * * *
Belle
Belle woke in the warm curve of Jack’s body.
He was in her bed with her in her cottage.
Other than the fact that she missed the dogs, she liked this.
She liked it a lot.
Maybe she could lure Jack to her cottage for dinner again.
Maybe that night.
She lay there waiting for him to wake and when he didn’t she carefully slid out from under his arm and went to her dresser. She put on a pair of undies and slid on a pair of black yoga pants and a white, shelf-bra camisole.
She went to her linen closet and grabbed her extra supplies. Belle always worried about running out of anything just in case of freak blizzards and the like. Not that this had ever happened, but it could. So she always kept extra stocks of everything.
She got two new toothbrushes, her extra cleanser and moisturiser and a new box of toothpaste.
Then she went to the bathroom, did her morning business, pulling her hair away from her face with a wide, black band.
Then she went to the kitchen.
As she normally did for the last however many months, Belle walked to the kitchen window situated at the front of the house and saw the photographers.
When she did, she sighed.
Then she turned to the coffeepot.
Carol, what she told Belle yesterday was “forward-thinking”, had also purchased eggs, bacon, cheese and bread. “And other bits and bobs”, Carol said.
Belle got to work, making the coffee, setting the table, mincing the garlic, grating the cheese, slicing the bread and was whisking the eggs when Jack walked in. He was barefoot, wearing only his trousers, his glorious chest on display, his hair tousled in a way that was too sexy for words.
She went into an instant trance at the sight of Jack looking like that while walking into her kitchen. She decided somewhere in the back of her mind that was still functioning that he definitely should be locked up for the betterment of womankind.
And Belle’s druthers would be that he was locked up in her cottage.
She was so in a trance, she barely moved when he hooked her with his arm around her waist, hauling her to his body and his mouth crushed down on hers in a kiss so mind-boggling, it was a wonder her trance didn’t turn into a coma.
When his head came up, he demanded, “Fucking wake me before you get out of bed.”