“Something like that, except you won’t be able to run that fast,” Brandon informed her, amused. “But the good news is that the surgeon used the newest approach to this surgery on you—”
“You let them experiment on me?” Anastasia cried, alarmed.
“Not experiment, Mother. This was a proven method. It’s called Anterior Hip Replacement and what I’m trying to tell you is that you’re going to bounce back faster because there were no muscles cut with this approach. They were just stretched. You’ll be walking by the time I get you home,” he promised her.
By this time, twelve-year-old Victoria had been brought to the hospital by his agent and had sat, looking worried, until her grandmother had opened her uniquely violet eyes.
Brandon rested his hands now on his daughter’s slight but sturdy shoulders as they both faced his mother with the news. “Oh, and by the way, I’m having your things moved into the guest room.”
Anastasia frowned, then sighed wearily. Numbed and a little fearful, she fell back on what she knew. Drama and bravado. “You don’t know what things to move.”
Brandon took her resistance in stride. He was on familiar ground. “No, I don’t,” he admitted. “But I’m sure you’ll tell me if I’ve forgotten something.”
Sullen, Anastasia reached out for Victoria’s hand. Her granddaughter was quick to respond. The role reversal was obvious and unselfconscious. “It’s easier just leaving me at home and getting me a nurse.”
“You know no one would be able to put up with you on a round-the-clock basis but me,” Brandon pointed out, suppressing a grin. “Besides, who will you have around to help smooth out all those feathers you’re going to ruffle?” His mother was far from the easiest person to deal with when she wasn’t feeling at the top of her game, and this circumstance promised to keep her from that height for at least a month under the best of conditions. Undoubtedly more. “No argument, Mother. It’s a done deal.”
“I’ll disrupt your well-ordered life,” Anastasia protested for form’s sake. It was easy for Brandon to see that he’d already won the argument. But his mother being what she was, she had to go through the motions so she had something to point to later, should he have a complaint about her staying at his home. “People will be coming and going. Loud people,” she emphasized.
“I’ll make the adjustment,” he promised. “Now, the surgeon said we needed to make arrangements for you to begin physical therapy sessions as soon as possible.”
Anastasia balked at the image that suggested to her. “That’s for old people,” she protested, this time in earnest.
“No,” Victoria told her in her quiet, wise voice. “That’s for people who take one too many steps backward off a stage.”
Also in the room while this verbal three-way tennis match was going on was Cecilia Parnell. Initially just providing a cleaning service, she’d transformed into something more: Anastasia’s occasional confidante and friend.
“You know,” Cecilia began, “I know the name of an excellent physical therapist. She’s very dedicated and comes with a long string of recommendations,” she threw in for good measure.
This was his only mother, and as blasé as he could sometimes sound, Brandon wasn’t about to take a chance when it came to the woman’s well-being.
“I’d like to see those recommendations,” Brandon told Cecilia.
“Oh, Brandon, don’t be so uptight,” Anastasia chided. “If Celia says she’s good, she’s good. You want to be useful, make the arrangements,” she dictated. Her violet eyes shifted to the woman who cleaned her house to a spotlessness beyond reproach. “They promised me I could go home in two days. See if this miracle lady can be at the house by Wednesday morning. I need to be on my feet—and able to dance—in six weeks. There’s a bonus in it for her if she can get me there in less time.”
“It doesn’t work like that, Mother,” Brandon said patiently, exchanging looks with Celia.
“I am filthy rich, Brandon. It works any way that I tell it to work,” Anastasia countered with complete confidence.
Cecilia smiled as if to convey how a little miracle was about to be set in motion.
At ten o’clock Wednesday morning, when Brandon opened the door to admit the physical therapist that Cecilia Parnell had recommended, he wasn’t exactly certain what to expect. Subconsciously, he had just assumed that Isabelle Sinclair would be a woman of the sturdier variety, big-boned and strong enough to be able to catch an average-size patient. He knew it would probably be viewed as stereotyping, but, like most people, he associated strength with size.
The woman he stared at could probably catch a falling chipmunk. A small one.
He definitely was not expecting a petite, delicate young blonde who looked as if she would blow over in the first high wind that blew through the Newport Beach community. So he could be forgiven if he came to the conclusion that this willowy woman on his doorstep was here for some other reason than to begin his mother’s physical therapy regimen.
Maybe this was a nurse sent by the physical therapy agency to assess his mother’s needs and condition before the actual therapist could be dispatched to begin her work, he thought.
At first, Isabelle didn’t recognize him. Oh, she was aware that she was looking up at a tall, dark-haired, charmingly handsome man with a definite boyish streak going for him—and that he was giving her a very deep, thorough once-over almost down to her bones—but she didn’t actually recognize his face for at least a good thirty seconds.
And then it suddenly clicked into place.
Of course.
He was Brandon Slade. The Brandon Slade, author of—at last count—ten bestselling thrillers. And that was in addition to being the son of the movie icon she’d been sent to work with. She didn’t know who she was more bowled over by—her client or her client’s son.
In awe of Brandon Slade’s talent—she’d read every single one of his books at least once if not more—and definitely not unaffected by his looks, Isabelle Sinclair felt as if she’d just won some kind of fortuitous celestial lottery.
So this is what you meant by saying “Happy Birthday” when you handed me this assignment, Zoe.
At the time, she’d just thought it was her sister’s very strange sense of humor kicking in. Now she understood. She was being sent to the home of a writer she admired to work with his mother, an actress who had been her personal heroine when she’d been a child laid up in a hospital bed for an intolerable number of months, thanks to a car accident that had left everyone else with scratches and had all but broken every one of the bones in her body—or at least it had felt as if all her bones had been broken.
Watching Anastasia Del Vecchio take command of every situation she was in had provided her a vicarious thrill—and had ultimately given her a role model to attempt to emulate.
Since the woman in the doorway wasn’t saying anything, Brandon asked, “May I help you?”
Oh, God, yes. In so many ways. But, for the sake of decorum, she kept that response to herself, and instead,
