pack a few things if I’m going to stay here awhile.” Isabelle glanced at her watch to see what time it was. “I’m sure your mother is already expecting me back.”
He laughed softly. “You show promise, Isabelle Sinclair. Only here a couple of hours and already you’ve gotten to know Anastasia well.” He found himself liking this down-to-earth girl-next-door that the physical therapy agency had sent. It was rare to find someone good who was also sensible—and could get along with his mother. “My mother has many attributes, but patience was never listed among them,” he admitted.
She liked the way Brandon said her name. Hell, with a voice like that, she would have liked the way he read the supermarket bill, she thought ruefully.
She was doing it again, she chided herself silently. She was making noises like some love-struck groupie, and that had to stop.
Just as soon as the man stopped being so perfect.
No one’s perfect. He’s got flaws—somewhere, she told herself.
This wasn’t like her. She had to snap out of it and start moving, her inner voice argued.
Words found their way to her lips. Finally. “So then I should get going,” she told him.
She’d taken exactly two steps toward the front door when she heard him say, “Why don’t I come with you?” Surprised, she turned around to look at him. He was already walking toward her. “In case there’s any heavy lifting involved.”
He probably didn’t understand that not all women had the inclination—or the money—to go on shopping sprees.
“I don’t own enough clothes to create any heavy kind of lifting,” she told him. “I just thought I’d get a few changes of clothing and a few books to read at night.”
She saw no reason for the last part of her statement to bring such an amused grin to his lips. “You’re an optimist I take it.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Excuse me?”
“Thinking that you’ll have the time and the energy to read at night,” he explained. “Mother will take up most of your time. She has a habit of monopolizing people,” he told her. It wasn’t a criticism or a complaint. It was just the way things were. It certainly didn’t detract from any of the affection he bore the woman who had given him life. “She loves having audiences and you will be brand-new, virgin territory for her.”
In response to his words, Brandon saw the deep pink blush creeping up the woman’s neck and face at a breathtaking rate.
Was that his fault? “I’m sorry, did I say something to—”
“No, no,” she said, cutting him off before he could begin guessing at the reason she wasn’t able to hear the word “virgin” without feeling some sort of personal failure on her part. She told herself that she really didn’t care that she wasn’t part of a duo, that she’d never really been with a man in that very special way that counted.
That sort of thing bothered Zoe, but not her, Isabelle stubbornly maintained. But it did bother her to be regarded as some kind of oddity in this very progressive, outgoing society where couples met on an elevator, and by the time they reached the ground floor, they were hermetically sealed to one another in a passionate, fiery embrace that only promised to be more so once they had some privacy.
“It’s just warm in here, that’s all.” To add weight to her argument, Isabelle pretended to fan herself with her hand.
“I guess you’re more hot-blooded than me,” he told her.
She looked at him for a long moment, trying to ascertain if he believed her or was just having fun at her expense. She couldn’t tell and gave up, hoping it was the former.
“Anyway,” he continued, “things go twice as fast with an extra set of hands helping and you’d be doing me a favor.”
How could helping her pack be doing him a favor? “Oh? How?”
“Well, if I’m helping you get your things together, I’ve got an excuse for not sitting at my computer, working,” he confided. “Or, in this case, suffering,” he added.
She stared at him, completely confused. She’d read his interviews. The man loved what he did. So, how could he refer to it as suffering? Was that just for show?
“Don’t you like writing?” she asked him.
“No. Well, that didn’t exactly come out right,” he said, reexamining his one-word response. “I like coming up with the idea, love jotting things down in the middle of the night as they come to me like storm troopers parachuting out of the sky. These are all things that I’m going to write,” he emphasized. “I also like having written something—you’ll note the past tense,” he pointed out. “Love rereading the finished product. Tweaking here, fixing there, making it all sound better, ring truer. That part I absolutely love,” he said with feeling.
“But the actual writing process—the sitting there, staring at the empty screen and desperately searching for the right words or semi-right words to finally fill up that awful, empty screen?” It was a rhetorical question. “No, can’t say I like that part of it. Nope, not at all,” he declared with a shake of his head. “That’s the agony part of this whole gig I’m in. It’s pretty much like—well, like sitting down at the computer, opening up a vein and just bleeding.”
When he put it that way, it seemed positively awful. “Doesn’t sound like something anyone would want to do willingly,” Isabelle observed.
He nodded his agreement. “Glad you see my side of it. So, can I come along?” he asked.
He was actually asking her to “tag” along. Boyishly and charmingly asking her. As if he thought there was a chance in hell that she would possibly consider telling him no.
Was he kidding?
What woman in her right mind would say no to him? Especially when he looked so damn appealing asking the question.
“Are you sure your mother won’t mind being left alone like this?” she asked.
“She’s not alone,” he corrected her. “Victoria’s here.”
He was referring to his daughter. She’d always liked that name. It sounded so regal, so cultured. Unlike her own name which struck her as just being sturdy. Isabelles were the workers of the world. Victorias, on the other hand, were the princesses.
Isabella was the queen who gave Columbus money, and he discovered a brand new world, remember? she reminded herself. Without Queen Isabella you wouldn’t be standing where you are.
It made no difference.
“Your daughter,” Isabelle said with a nod.
“You’ve met Victoria?” he asked, surprised. Funny, Victoria hadn’t said anything, and up until now, his daughter told him everything. He was going to miss that when she hit her teens and became a card-carrying stranger for the next x-number of years.
“Yes, she came in just at the tail end of my evaluation of your mother’s condition. She looked more poised than she did in that photograph
