rapid pulse-inducing man presently wandering about her postage stamp-size living room.
She couldn’t exactly put it into words as to why, but having Brandon here, in her apartment, felt almost intimate. She didn’t need to deal with that on top of everything else. Still, she didn’t want to just rush out of the apartment, conspicuously forgetting half the things she’d come back for in the first place.
Since when had she turned into this scatterbrained creature, Isabelle silently demanded, irritated. She was the one who always prided herself on being so stable and levelheaded, so unflappable. Prided herself on always being able to know exactly what to do, at least within the parameters of her career. Zoe was forever lamenting that she was being too serious, too focused, too work-oriented.
If that was true, then where was all this fluttering pulse stuff coming from?
She was too young for a second adolescence—although she hadn’t had all that much time to enjoy her first one. She could remember being this determined, this serious when she was very, very young.
It was, she supposed, all done in an effort to win her father’s approval. Her father had been a neurosurgeon, well-known in his circles, and her mother had been high up on the board of Swan Laboratories. Both had expected great things from their daughters. As far as each of them was concerned, “physical therapist” did not come under the heading of “great things.”
Because Zoe ran the company, her parents saw some merit in her career, but as for Isabelle, well, she was “little better than a glorified masseuse.” At least, that was the way her father had put it. There’d been a disdainful expression on his patrician face at the time.
That had been shortly before her entire world had fallen apart. Before she’d discovered that her father was cheating on her mother. And before learning that this was only the latest “indiscretion” in a very long list of indiscretions.
Finding out that the man who’d always demanded nothing but the best from her apparently didn’t believe he needed to measure up to the same standards himself had taken a huge toll on her. She’d never thought her parents had a loving relationship, but she’d thought it was built on mutual respect and trust. Discovering she was wrong had nearly crushed her. It had made her look to her career for satisfaction rather than to any kind of a relationship.
The breakup of her parents’ marriage had accomplished one more thing. Never close to her mother and now estranged from her father, Isabelle had found herself free to make whatever she wanted of her life. She chose to follow the path she’d originally set out for herself.
That path, she now silently emphasized as she quickly tucked a few essentials into the overnight case lying opened on her queen-size bed, did not include being some starry-eyed fanatical “groupie” who lost the ability to think beyond three-word sentences just because a handsome specimen of manhood like Brandon Slade was sitting in her living room.
Waiting for her.
Waiting for his mother’s physical therapist, Isabelle tersely corrected herself. It wasn’t as if he actually saw her as a woman. She was just a genderless being whose assignment was to get his mother up, walking and then, hopefully, dancing within a finite amount of time.
She’d always liked challenges, Isabelle reminded herself, and this certainly promised to be one.
Stuffing her most frequently used reference manual on top of the rest of her things, she pushed down hard and struggled with the case’s zipper, slowly managing to drag it up and around the three sides of her navy blue suitcase. Swinging the suitcase off the bed, she proceeded out into the living room, listing ever so slightly to one side. The suitcase proved to be heavier than she’d anticipated.
Brandon looked up the moment she entered the room, putting the book he’d been paging through back into its place on the shelf.
“Here, let me,” he offered, quickly cutting the distance between them and slipping his hand over hers in order to take possession of the suitcase handle.
Isabelle swallowed in an attempt to moisten a mouth that had gone powder dry. She could have sworn an intense zap of electricity shot between them. At least, it crackled on her end and jolted her right down to her suddenly curled toes.
“That’s okay,” she demurred, still holding on to the handle. “It’s not heavy.”
The hell it wasn’t, he thought. Brandon continued to keep his hand on top of hers, waiting for her to give up the pretense and surrender the suitcase.
When she didn’t, he asked, “Am I going to have to wrestle you for it?” Amusement curved the corners of his mouth as his eyes captured hers.
Breathe, damn it. Breathe! Isabelle ordered herself. What is the matter with you? He’s just a man. Magnificent, maybe, but still just a man. You know all the body parts. You had to name them on one of your final exams, remember? Get a grip, for heaven’s sake, will you? She hoped against hope that she wasn’t turning a bright shade of pink before Brandon’s magnificent blue eyes. Her skin certainly felt hot enough.
Until this very moment, she’d thought that blushing in such circumstances was just a myth, experienced by socially repressed women of the early last century, not by an educated, capable and independent woman of the twenty-first century.
And yet, here she was, feeling heat creeping up the sides of her neck, slipping over her cheeks and threatening to turn the color of her skin into the same shade as cotton candy.
That’ll impress him.
“No,” she heard herself saying as she slipped her hand out from beneath his and gave up her claim to possession of the handle. “No need to wrestle me.” Not that the idea didn’t have very real, appealing possibilities, she added silently.
The next moment, she tamped down her wayward thoughts and focused strictly on getting back to her patient. It wasn’t easy when the man seemed to fill up every corner of the apartment with his presence.
And his smile.
Leading the way, Isabelle opened the door, then paused to look over her shoulder for a moment.
Standing beside her, Brandon followed her line of vision. And saw nothing amiss. “Forget something?” he asked.
“Just going over a mental checklist to make sure I didn’t,” she confessed.
She’d taught herself to do the mental checklist every time she left the apartment after once accidentally leaving the air-conditioning on high instead of turning it off. It had run almost continuously for thirteen hours, much to the joy of the electric company and the sadness of her checking account when it had come time to pay that month’s bill.
Turning back toward the door, she saw the smile that entered his eyes. “What?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone as organized as you before—myself included,” he told her. After growing up with his mother and the eccentric people who populated both Anastasia’s world and his own, someone like Isabelle was a breath of fresh air.
His voice gave her no clue if he was complimenting her—or mocking her. Everything he said always sounded so upbeat and cheerful.
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” she heard herself asking.
“A
