opposed to stilettos, but they were still high heels. He’d never seen her wearing anything else. He’d asked her about them once, saying that he would have thought that sneakers would have worked better for her. She’d replied that she felt more stable and in control of the situation in heels. Thanks to life with his mother and Victoria, he knew better than to argue with a woman when her mind was set.
“How about it? Are you game to go for a walk on the beach now?” he asked.
Rather than answer him, Isabelle put her hand on his arm to help her maintain her balance as she slipped off her shoes. The hem of her white slacks was a hair’s breadth from touching the gazebo’s wooden floor.
Holding her shoes by their straps as proof, she declared, “Game!”
The quick grin that accompanied her declaration fluttered directly—and almost lethally—into Brandon’s stomach.
He did his best to disregard the feeling and the very real, very strong sexual pull he experienced. This wasn’t the time or the place.
“Okay, it’s this way,” he needlessly told her, pointing to a path that ran past another, far more image-conscious restaurant. The path was narrow and winding, and had once been painstakingly paved with colored bits of concrete, but any intended patterns that had been pressed into its surface were long gone, worn away by years of foot traffic and the sun.
The path’s incline was also steep enough to make her feel as if she could easily pitch forward if she wasn’t careful or moved too quickly. She deliberately kept her gait measured and slow. To insure her stability, Isabelle slipped her arm through Brandon’s.
The sand, when they finally reached it, was a pristine shade of almost white, the result of many vigilant patrons and neighbors who took pride in keeping it clean. The sand felt beguilingly warm against the soles of her bare feet the moment she took her first step. By then, Brandon had stopped to take off his own shoes—and socks—as well.
As they began to walk along the uncrowded beach, she had no doubt that the sand had found its way into the cuffs she had carefully rolled up. The thought didn’t really trouble her. Being here was well worth the minor inconvenience.
With so few people around, the beach seemed somehow larger to her. As if it truly did go on forever.
Isabelle slanted a glance toward the man beside her, wondering if it made the same impression on him that it did on her.
“Does this make you feel small?” she asked, curious. “Like a speck?”
There was a hint of a smile on his lips as he shook his head. “No, it makes me feel special. Like someone seeing paradise for the first time.”
She liked the way he thought. As she opened her mouth to say so, she stopped, convinced that she not only smelled rain, she felt it as well.
Was it her imagination?
Looking up at the sky, she saw no dark clouds hovering about ominously. The sky was still an exquisite shade of blue. It continued to retain its color as, out of nowhere, rain began to fall. Somewhere within the heavens, a leak had suddenly sprung.
Grabbing her hand, Brandon made a mad dash back up to the winding path.
It required more energy to go up than come down, especially at a pace that was three times as fast. As if determined to keep pace, the rain seemed to increase with every step they took until they finally made it up to the shelter of the gazebo.
“I think I just burned off dessert,” Isabelle commented, doing her best to regulate her breathing once more.
As they stood beneath the gazebo’s wooden roof, the sun shower turned noisy. Instead of raindrops, Isabelle thought she heard the roof being pelted. Really pelted. She looked at Brandon quizzically.
“Is that hail?” she asked him.
“Sounds like it,” he answered. “Looks like it, too,” he added, pointing to the ground behind them just outside the gazebo. A blanket of icy drops was swiftly forming, covering the grass between the gazebo and the sidewalk.
Isabelle brushed her wet bangs away from her eyes. She had to look a mess, she suddenly realized. Dropping her shoes to the floor, she stepped into them, then ran her hands up and down her arms, brushing away some of the raindrops.
“God, I think I’m soaked to the bone,” she observed.
Rather than stare at her very wet body and the way her cotton blouse clung to her upper torso as if she was a contestant in a wet T-shirt contest, Brandon made himself look at her face.
He dug into his back pocket and took out his neatly folded handkerchief and, to the obvious surprise registered in her eyes, carefully wiped the moisture from her face.
Brandon held out the handkerchief to her, and she graciously took it.
She dabbed at her throat and the damp swell just above her breasts. At that point, the handkerchief was too wet to do any more good.
She flashed a smile at Brandon as she offered the handkerchief back to him. “Thanks. I feel totally dry now.”
He laughed, slipping the wet handkerchief into his wetter jeans. Even as he did so, they could see that the hailstorm had all but abated.
In the next few minutes, the sun shower retreated, as well.
Less than fifteen minutes after the rain had started, it dispersed. Except for the few remaining patches of hail clumped together here and there on the ground, it was as if they’d both just shared a mutual hallucination. “What was that?” she asked Brandon, peering up uncertainly at the blue sky.
He could recall experiencing maybe three hail storms in his lifetime, none of them while the sky was a crystal clear blue.
“I’m not too sure,” he admitted. “But as long as a torrent of frogs doesn’t start falling from the sky, I’d venture to say that things are still pretty good and that God’s not mad at us.”
“Nice to know,” she murmured.
It was only now, in retrospect, that she realized that Brandon had grabbed her hand to make sure she kept up as he’d run back for shelter. Taking her hand rather than silently declaring, solely by his actions, that it was every man—and woman—for him-or-herself.
The man was chivalrous under fire, as well as heart-throb handsome.
Perfect in every way, Isabelle couldn’t help thinking. So far, she hadn’t found any flaws in the man. He was good to his mother, clearly loved his child, had a sense of humor and was witty and intelligent. The perfect package.
But, she knew, remembering her father and the aura that he had shattered, no man was perfect.
What was Brandon Slade’s flaw? she couldn’t help wondering.
So far, she hadn’t seen evidence of any shortcoming, and that just wasn’t possible. Men as seemingly perfect as Brandon Slade existed in fairy tales and all answered to the same name: Prince Charming. In other words, they were fictional characters who weren’t even awarded a moniker because why waste a perfectly good name on a character who hadn’t a prayer of existing in the real world?
Brandon’s
