He was going to kill her. She so would rather deal with Eric’s logic or Kellan’s authority than Tate’s brutal honesty.
She held up a hand. “Stop. I understand your reluctance, but you know damn well that wasn’t Kellan’s problem. Let’s just get some sleep and we can deal with this tomorrow.”
“All right.” He leaned his good shoulder against the doorway, way too close to her for her peace of mind.
At their feet, her puppy hiked a leg.
“Sir, don’t you pee on the floor.”
Tate’s eyes widened. “I wasn’t even thinking about it.”
Then comprehension seemed to set in. He snorted as she held her puppy. “Ah, hello, Sir. That is absolutely the meanest thing I’ve seen in a long time, Belle. You can’t name the dog Sir.”
He couldn’t tell her what to name her puppy. She wasn’t about to let him take away her little revenge. “I already did. And I need to start house training him. Can you walk outside with me while he does his thing?”
Tate grinned, and Belle’s heart did an unwanted flip. “Sure, baby. And I’ll let Kellan wonder a little longer about the mystery Dom Kinley said you left Dallas with. He deserves to stew for a while, but he’s going to spank you for naming that little thing Sir. Is it really a dog? Have you checked to make sure it’s not a rat with a bit of extra fur?”
He wasn’t that ugly. “Be nice to my dog, Tate.”
Tate opened the back door for her. “Yes, ma’am. That’s a beautiful animal you’ve got.”
At least one of them was listening.
She let Sir down, and he ran around the courtyard, looking for a good place to handle his business. She stood by Tate, feeling safer than she had in hours.
She was in so much trouble.
Chapter Nine
Belle woke to soft light filtering through the filmy curtains covering the windows. She glanced at her phone. One of the pluses of having her bosses show up was Eric’s knowledge of fuse boxes. All the plugs worked again, so she’d been able to charge her phone while it sat on her nightstand.
Nine a.m. Wow, she rarely slept that late. She stretched and nudged Sir, who had managed to hop up on the bed with her. She’d tucked him into his little dog bed on the floor, but he’d chosen to cuddle up with her instead.
Despite having three gorgeous men in this house, she’d slept with the dog. Yep. Her life was surely looking up.
Stop it, Belle. You can’t think about sleeping with them. Absolutely not. No way.
She had to be strong because she wasn’t going to be a doormat, a novelty, or a friendship wrecker.
But would Kell drive five hundred miles to walk over a doormat he’d already wiped his feet on? Would Eric come all this way just to rubberneck at the silly virgin again? Would Tate actually tag along with them to declare his undying love once more if he thought their relationship was over? Belle doubted it, but even so she couldn’t pretend that Saturday night in Dallas hadn’t happened—or that it hadn’t crushed her. In fact, that event had been a turning point. She needed to do more with her life than pine over them. Today, she would start.
As she climbed from bed, she glanced around the room she felt sure had been her grandmother’s. The high ceilings with elaborate crown moldings and the fireplace gave the room such grandeur and elegance. All she had to do was rip down the yellow floral wallpaper that looked like spring had puked and the tacky green marble mantle and hearth. Otherwise, the lines of the room were classic and clean. The door to the balcony overlooking the courtyard invited her outside to bask in the bright autumn morning. Belle pictured sipping coffee there and never hearing the sounds of the city or seeing anyone go by. It would be her own private escape.
She needed a distraction, a creative outlet, something to launch her new career that would fund her life away from her former bosses, a project that would help her focus on something besides her broken heart. This place fit the bill. With enough money and a lot of elbow grease, she could make it something to be proud of again. As she made the house a home again, she could unravel the mystery of the past that had shaped her departed loved ones. Already, the snippets she’d read of her grandmother’s journal hinted at the woman’s life. The initial entries Belle had read had waxed positively poetic about how sweet her baby boy was and how much she loved being his mother. But soon, she’d begun repeatedly apologizing to him in her writings.
Her grandmother never once mentioned the child’s father. The journal started the day of the baby’s birth and lacked all mention of a man or her romantic life. Belle had to wonder how hard it had been to raise a child alone back then, when the stigma had been far greater. Her grandmother had clearly possessed backbone.
But how had a single mother afforded this grand house? According to the records Mr. Gates had sent her way, Marie Wright had paid cash for this house in 1960. No mortgage. Even then, this real estate would have been spectacularly expensive. Belle had never heard a whisper about her grandmother inheriting money. Had she been the mistress to a man who’d left her pregnant and given her the money for this house to ease his guilty conscience? Belle didn’t know a lot about the woman, but somehow that scenario didn’t seem right.
“Maybe Grandma really was psychic and she got stock tips from the dead,” she murmured to Sir. “If not, she had to have read a whole lot of palms to buy this place. What do you say we explore it today and start adding to our to-do list?”
Sir wagged his tail and headed out of the room, more likely because he needed to scurry downstairs and heed nature’s call than because he understood her.
As she stepped into her fluffy slippers, Belle kind of hoped the men had overslept or had rebooked an early flight back to Chicago. She wasn’t looking forward to the coming confrontation, so the less time they stayed, the better. But she owed it to them to at least hear what they’d come all this way to say. Those three men had been better than good to her for over a year. One disastrous personal catastrophe shouldn’t undo all her professional goodwill. The very least she could do was give them the courtesy of an exit interview and tips on finding a new assistant.
The idea of some other woman taking care of them made her heart clench and pang, but Belle did her best to ignore it. She’d made her choice to move on and find another happiness.
Sir scampered down the stairs on light feet. She wasn’t quite so nimble, wincing at every creak she made with each step. On the second story landing, she peeked around, wondering where the guys had slept last night. According to the information she’d received when she inherited the house, it had four other bedrooms. No doubt, they’d all been dusty and not ready for guests. Guilt niggled her. Last night, as soon as she’d finished talking to Tate and Eric and they had restored the electricity, she’d run to her bedroom and locked herself in. Otherwise, Belle had feared she would be too tempted to see if there was any hope they could somehow reconcile. But no. She had to strip away her little-girl dreams and stop wishing for a happily ever after.
Running out on them probably made her a coward, but Belle had been so relieved to see them. She hadn’t wanted to give them the wrong impression or lean on them. They made it so easy. Comfort her after a nightmare, secure a screen door, fix a breaker, check the windows… She’d had a long list of things to do and now? Poof. They were done. Last night, some part of her had craved nothing more than to let them shoulder her problems, but it would be unfair to rely on them now—to give Tate false hope, to wheedle Eric into giving her more elbow grease, to force Kell into the uncomfortable position of setting her aside again. Her heart probably couldn’t take it either.