Six More Hot Single Dads!

Reaching the top, Isabelle turned around one last time. She thought she heard him say something, but she wasn’t entirely sure it wasn’t her imagination. “You say something?” she asked.

He looked up at her innocently. “Nope.”

Taking the stairs two steps at a time with his long gait, he would have caught up to her—if she hadn’t started running.

Isabelle made it to the guest bedroom before he could make a grab for her.

Her laughter as she eluded him wrapped itself around him, teasing him. Making him yearn at the same time that it made him happy just to be alive.

Chapter Fourteen

“This wasn’t a good idea.”

Brandon sounded so solemn when he said it, Isabelle braced herself for what didn’t want to hear.

She desperately scrambled to sound upbeat, fervently hoping to hold off whatever it was he was going to say to her for a little while longer.

“What wasn’t?” she asked brightly, then supplied a benign answer before Brandon could respond. “Dinner out?”

The restaurant had seemed pleasant enough, but nothing about either the decor or the menu set the place apart. It would either require some sort of a makeover with an interesting motif, or a whole host of friends frequenting the premises nightly in order to keep the new restaurant out of the red until it found its identity.

He looked at Isabelle for a second, absorbing her answer. “What? No, that was okay. I’m talking about ‘this.’” To underscore his point, he waved one hand about. Then, in case his point still didn’t come across, he put a fine point on it. “Dancing.”

After they’d had their meal and Brandon had gone to exchange a few words with his friend and wish the man luck with his new venture, she’d impulsively suggested that they go dancing. The restaurant, as it so happened, was only several blocks away from a club where they actually played music that couples could hear and dance to rather than the mind-numbing throbbing which supposedly passed for music in a great many of the more popular clubs.

As she recalled, Brandon had agreed readily enough. There’d been no arm-twisting required on her part, or even anything beyond a suggestion.

Obviously, between that time and now, Brandon had changed his mind.

Why?

She hadn’t stepped on his toes. Thanks to her obsessive mother who had sent both Zoe and her for extensive dancing lessons when they were girls, insisting that they needed to “move gracefully, not like wild animals about to attack,” Isabelle was fairly certain that she danced well.

So what was it he objected to? Being with her in the first place?

She might as well find out the truth now, she thought, instead of stalling. “I thought you liked dancing.”

He looked down into her eyes as he whirled her about the floor to the rhythm of a very seductive blues number. “I do.”

Okay, she was officially confused. “Then why don’t you think that ‘this’ was a good idea?”

A half smile curved Brandon’s mouth. He would have thought that was self-evident. “Because holding you in my arms like this and not kissing you is damn harder than I thought it would be.”

Oh.

Isabelle breathed an inward sigh of relief and then turned her face up to his. There wasn’t even an inch between their bodies. “Who says you can’t kiss me?” she challenged.

“Here?” he asked, looking around.

He was obviously a lot more formal than she’d initially thought he was. She found it rather sweet. It also made her bolder.

“Here,” she confirmed. “I really don’t think anyone is going to notice.”

Except for her, she added silently. But that was all good. Besides, maybe it was the wine at dinner, but she really didn’t care if anyone did notice. She’d come out of her shell. The private Isabelle Sinclair was no longer a shy, quiet, timid creature that all self-respecting church mice were modeled after. These days she caught herself laughing more and admiring the brass ring she’d managed to snare while on this wild merry-go-round ride. It was a ring she knew she was going to have to give back eventually. But not, apparently, just yet.

“Maybe I’ll just put your theory to the test,” Brandon suggested.

The hand that had been, only a moment ago, pressed to the small of her back now cupped her chin, tilting her face up a little more so that he didn’t have so far to lean down for his lips to touch hers. Cover hers. Draw life from hers.

And just like that, her head began spinning. He stole her breath away, leaving her completely, deliciously disoriented. She felt her body hum.

She could easily get addicted to this, Isabelle thought happily.

If she wasn’t already.

When she realized that her eyelids had slipped shut, Isabelle forced them opened again.

“Maybe you’re right,” she conceded. “Dancing with you like this makes me want to do things that have no business being done on a dance floor.” Her eyes were almost dancing as she said it.

“At least a crowded dance floor,” he amended, feeling the heat from her body reaching out to his.

Why hadn’t she noticed how wicked Brandon’s grin could get? And how wildly her pulse could beat in response?

Pulling her even closer to him, eliminating the last hint of a space between them, he asked her if she was “Ready to go home?”

“Ready,” she breathed, even though she had no idea if he wanted to continue what he’d started just now on the dance floor, or if he was merely making a suggestion that it was time to leave.

All she knew was that she was ready. Ready, with every fiber of her being, to follow this wild, exciting sensation within her to its logical conclusion. When they’d made love last night, Brandon had unlocked something inside of her. Something that had been suppressed all these years. Something that thrilled to the mere hint of his touch, his fingers strumming along her skin as if she was a precious string instrument and he was dedicated to unlocking her secrets.

Leaving the dance floor, they paused by their table just long enough for her to gather her things together. Brandon left a large bill on the table guaranteed to pay for the two drinks they’d ordered plus a heavy tip.

Once outside, Brandon gave his ticket to the valet who in turn promptly ran off to fetch his vehicle. The teen was back within moments. Hopping out, he held the door open for Brandon, then hurried over to help Isabelle into her side of the car.

Brandon left the valet grinning like a Cheshire cat over the tip he’d just been given.

Progressively aware of the pins and needles that she was doing a balancing act on, Isabelle didn’t really remember the trip home. It was a blur wrapped up in gauzy hopeful anticipation.

Conversation was erratic.

“Do you think your mother’s asleep yet?” she asked, trying not to sound as eagerly hopeful as she was.

Brandon glanced at the backlit clock in the dashboard. It was approaching ten.

“Hard to say. I can remember a time when she used to get up at ten to attend some party in her honor back when she was the toast of Broadway.”

“When she did Love Me Sweet and The Lucky Rainbow,” Isabelle put in, nodding her head.

Brandon spared her a glance. Several weeks into this and she was still impressing him. “You really are a fan,” he marveled.

Why did he seem so surprised? “I said I was. Your mother’s part of a dying breed.” He probably took that for granted, seeing as how he’d grown up anchored inside of his mother’s reality. “There aren’t many stars of her caliber left.”

Brandon laughed, shaking his head. “I can see why she gets along so well with you. Just don’t let her get carried away or, before you know it, she’ll have you dragging out her scrapbooks and albums for her own private performance of show-and-tell.”

At least here she was one up on him. “Too late, she already has,” Isabelle told him. “As a matter of fact, it was a couple of weeks ago.”

“And still you’re here,” he pretended to marvel.

She’d been thrilled to death to see the scrapbooks that Anastasia had saved over the years.

“Actually, I considered it an honor. She told me that she doesn’t share those pictures with everyone.”

“No,” he agreed. “Most people can usually outrun her when she’s lugging those scrapbooks out.”

“You’re being irreverent,” Isabelle pointed out, “but I’ve got the feeling that you’re really very proud of your mother.”

That had been a given for a long time. “Well, yeah, I am,” he admitted. “She’s come a long way and managed to get to where she was against a lot of impossible odds. And even though most of my life was spent being raised by strange women with heavy accents, Mother did make it a point to try to be there at bedtime to tuck me in whenever she wasn’t filming half a continent away.” An affectionate, understanding smile curved his mouth. “Anastasia Del Vecchio was the best mother she could be, under the circumstances.” And then he laughed softly to himself.

Isabelle wanted to share his moment, his memory, if only for a little while. “What?” she prodded.

“Mother often brought her characters home. I was never sure if the woman tucking me in would have a southern accent, or talk to me about a new ‘case’ she was bringing to trial—” He saw the slightly confused furrow on Isabelle’s brow and explained. “One season my mother played Katharine Hepburn’s role in a revival of Adam’s Rib.” He grinned. “I guess I’m lucky she never played Joan Crawford in that bio movie based on her life. You know the one.” He paused, trying to remember the title.

Isabelle remembered for him. “Mommy Dearest.” She smiled as she shook her head. There was staying in character and then there was going way too far. She was fairly confident that, despite her tendency toward the dramatic, Anastasia knew where to draw the line.

“I doubt if she would have taken a wire coat hanger to you, no matter how deeply into the part she submerged herself,” Isabelle told him with conviction.

He liked the fact that Isabelle admired his mother. Half the women he’d dated didn’t even know who his mother was. Their sphere of knowledge was very small, limited to the current disposable faces on commercial television, otherwise known as tomorrow’s has-beens, he thought. Isabelle was different. But he already appreciated that.

Turning, Brandon pulled into the driveway. He cut off the engine and pulled up the handbrake.

It was on the tip of her tongue to ask him why he was stopping when she looked around and answered her own question.

Somehow, they had managed to arrive. The trip hadn’t seemed nearly long enough.

She decided that the kiss on the dance floor had some pretty lasting lethal effects. Why else would she have lost track of time like this?

Peering through the windshield, she looked up at the house. There were lights on all over, but that didn’t mean anything. Anastasia liked a well-lit house, said the darkness made her feel sad, so Brandon made a point of leaving them all on while his mother was awake.

“Gives new meaning to ‘keep a light burning in the window,’” Isabelle commented as she got out of the vehicle.

“The power company loves my mother,” Brandon acknowledged. “She uses enough electricity to light up her own midsize country,” he added with a weary sigh. At this point, there was no changing Anastasia or “teaching her a new trick,” and he had pretty much resigned himself to that. He’d told Isabelle the other day that he was a firm believer in the AA credo about having the strength to live with the things that couldn’t be changed. His mother was one of those “things.”

“She still might be asleep,” he told her as he quickly disarmed the security system so that he could unlock the front door. They had to hurry before it engaged itself again. “After you,” he gestured her inside the house.

Isabelle slipped in and then stood in the foyer, listening for the sound of clicking slippers. Though Anastasia was still relegated to wearing the white cotton surgical stockings for another week, she had balanced out her displeasure by beginning to work her way back into her high heels, her footwear of choice “because they make my legs look long and slender” she liked to boast.

“And at my age,” she’d just recently added, “I need all the help I can get.”

There was always a pregnant pause at the end of that pronouncement as the legendary star of stage, screen and television waited to be told that she didn’t need that much help and that she was still as beautiful as ever.

Victoria had gotten very good at picking up the cue and responding. But with her gone, the task, Isabelle felt, fell to her.

She couldn’t help wondering if Victoria would be back from camp when it came time for her to leave the household or if she’d have to tender her goodbyes after the fact.

There was only a week left to the six weeks she’d agreed to when she first came to work with Anastasia. The cutoff point had been a firm goal with no wiggle room. She’d either be well enough to go, or not.

Isabelle had no doubts that Anastasia would be well enough. Beneath the dramatic displays of vanity, the over-the-top glitter and the carefully applied makeup was a very stubborn woman who refused to cry “uncle” in any manner, shape or form. There’d been a couple of minor temporary setbacks, but for the most part, the actress had forged full steam ahead.

That made it her duty, Isabelle thought, to act not just as the woman’s physical therapist, but her coach and have Anastasia not just ready, but raring to go no matter what.

Isabelle knew as she walked into the family room, it was also her duty to make sure that Anastasia didn’t jeopardize her health while she put forth this almost superhuman effort to get ready. It amazed her just how resilient and strong a woman of Anastasia’s age—and what she would guess had been a life of sheer excess—really was.

“I don’t think she’s—”

Whatever Brandon was about to say to her, and she had a feeling it was about his mother, he never got to voice because Anastasia chose that moment to make her entrance from a room she’d dubbed “the library” because there were a number of books on its shelves.

“Ah, you’re finally home,” Anastasia declared. She made a show of looking at her watch. “Getting in a little late for a school night, wouldn’t you say, dear?” The question was addressed to Brandon.

“It’s summer and Victoria’s away at camp,” he pointed out.

“Camp,” Anastasia repeated with a disapproving shake of her head. “Camping out with bugs and furry creatures that eat with their hands.”

“Paws,” Brandon corrected, amused.

That only made his mother shiver. “Disgusting,” she declared. “And completely uncivilized. I don’t know why you sent her.”

He hadn’t sent Victoria anywhere since she was six years old. Wherever she went—school, dance classes, art lessons—she went willingly, because she wanted to.

“I didn’t send her, Mother. She went because she wanted to go. It was her idea, remember?” he reminded his mother. “She thought she’d have fun. And besides, Marisol was going,” Brandon added. The two girls had been fast friends since they’d sat next to one another the first day of kindergarten.

Anastasia moved her shoulders in a careless shrug. She never surrendered when it came to an argument, even if she was proven wrong. She knew how to turn things around to seem as if she’d been right all along.

“Well, I suppose there’s that, too,” the actress conceded loftily. “At any rate, solitude is highly overrated,” she said, waving her hand about to include the whole house. “I’ve gotten accustomed to the sound of you rattling around, making noise.” She drew herself up, as if preparing to go to her room. “Now that you’re home, I can go to sleep.”

Amused despite himself, Brandon couldn’t help asking his mother, “Just what do you do when you’re in your own home?”

Anastasia offered him a very sly smile in response. “Who says I’m alone there?” And with that hanging in the air between them, she majestically turned away and withdrew.

“She really is something else,” Isabelle said, admiration echoing in her voice as she watched the actress disappear around the corner leading to her bedroom.

“Yes, she certainly is,” Brandon agreed. “And someday science will figure out exactly what that ‘something’ is.” And then his demeanor shifted as he turned his attention to her. “But enough about my mother.” He did a fairly good imitation of a radio announcer from a more dramatic, bygone era. “I believe when we last saw Isabelle and Brandon, she was in his arms and he was having a difficult time controlling his desire for her.”

Isabelle laughed, amused. She would have never expected this lighthearted, boyish side of him. “Are you planning on narrating everything that happens between us?” she asked, doing her best to maintain a straight face.

“Probably not.” He brushed his lips against each cheek, then dusted her eyes with one tiny kiss apiece. “Suspense thrillers are my forte, not romantic scenes, remember?”

She smiled up into his eyes as he pulled her into his arms. “Oh, I wouldn’t exactly say that,” she contradicted. “You seem to have a very natural aptitude for romantic scenes.”

“Nice of you to notice,” he told her, continuing to shower her face with tiny, arousing kisses. “I think you should know that no matter what I’m doing, I always try to top whatever I’ve done before.”

Right at that moment, her heart launched into a triple beat. “Well then, in the words of the immortal Bette Davis, I guess I’d better fasten my seat belt because it’s going to be a bumpy night.”

“Don’t bother fastening anything,” he instructed. “I’ll only have to unfasten it.”

Brushing his lips against hers one final time, he then took her hand and led her upstairs to his room, which he’d been dying to do all day.

Chapter Fifteen

“Physical therapist by day, goddess of love by night. You really are the total package, aren’t you?”

Brandon’s breath warmed her skin as he made his half teasing observation.

They were lying in his bed, his arm tucked protectively about her, her nude body still throbbing from the thrill of making love with him just a few short minutes ago. He stroked her hair and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. She hung on to the glorious euphoria that had been wrapped around her for all she was worth.

She heard him laugh softly. “If I pull something because I give myself too much credit for flexibility, you can fix me and put me back together again. Total package,” he repeated with admiration.

“As long as you’re not Humpty Dumpty, I can give it my best shot,” she replied.

The heat of his body reached out to hers, stirred her. Whispered of another go-round.

She could literally feel herself aching for him.

“Your best is more than enough for me,” Brandon told her.

At times it’s almost too much, he added silently. Isabelle could wear him out and then have him begging for more in an incredibly short amount of time, he marveled. What kind of power did this woman have over him? She’d turned a perfectly normal man with ordinary needs into this insatiable creature whose appetite just insisted on growing. This new man had nothing in common with the man he’d thought he was.

Brandon inhaled the fragrance in her hair.

Obviously he’d thought wrong. He was so much more. If he was wrong about one thing, he could very possibly be wrong about other things as well, he told himself as his arm tightened around Isabelle.

For instance, he could be wrong about the way he viewed his future, he speculated. Until Isabelle had entered his life with her sunshine and her laughing eyes, he’d thought he knew exactly the way the rest of his life would unfold. He’d work, attend parties and be there for both his daughter and his mother. The idea of another woman permanently installed in his life was utterly out of the question. Once on the marriage-go-round had definitely been more than enough for him. Besides, he’d reasoned, most likely, he’d make the same mistake over and over again and pick someone like Jean.

Isabelle was nothing like his first wife.

Consequently, for the past couple of weeks he’d begun to have second thoughts about his overall view of the rest of his life in general, and about his view of marriage specifically.

Most of all, he’d rethought the concept of giving up. After all, he hadn’t just thrown his hands up when he’d received his first rejection slip, hadn’t said he’d given it his best shot and stopped trying.

No, like a glutton for punishment, he kept coming back for more. And more. Until he got what he was after. A publishing company that gave him a one book contract and a chance to prove himself.

That, of course, had led to other books, other contracts. After that humble beginning, he never looked back.

Why would he approach marriage any differently? He had picked the wrong person the first time, that was all. Looking back, that had been over thirteen years ago. He’d been an untried kid of twenty at the time. He was far more sophisticated now, more discerning, more versed in analyzing characters and the motivation that went into them.

Moreover, he knew what he was looking for in a life partner, and he was well aware of the danger of just jumping in with both feet without assessing the situation first.

He was assessing it now, and he liked what he saw. Liked the thought of facing each day knowing that Isabelle would be somewhere around within that day—and within all the days to come.

That didn’t automatically mean that the thought of marriage didn’t make him nervous. And it didn’t mean that the prospect of getting married again, of trusting someone else with the care and keeping of his heart, was not scary as hell, because it was.

SCARY in big, bold capital letters.

But, risk nothing, gain nothing—wasn’t that what he’d told Victoria more than once? If it was an edict he felt was good enough for his precious daughter, it sure as hell was good enough for him.

All he had to do, he thought, looking at the woman tucked into the crook of his arm, was get up the courage to ask Isabelle.

But he had a little time before he had to work on getting up his nerve. Right now, Isabelle was still very much in his life and would continue to be as long as his mother needed her.

He found himself torn. He certainly wanted his mother to bounce back to her incredible old self, but her reaching that plateau would do away with the need for Isabelle’s presence.

Brandon smiled to himself. Who would have thought that he’d wind up being a very strong advocate for slow-and-steady winning out in the long run, like the tortoise in the fable?

An uneasiness began to undulate through Isabelle. Brandon had been quiet for a while now. Longer than usual. As a matter of fact, this was the longest he’d ever been quiet without the excuse of dozing off.

Asleep, there was a reason for the silence. But he wasn’t asleep. And he wasn’t talking.

What was he thinking?

Her uneasiness grew, slipping through her veins, putting out the fire that had just been there a few short seconds ago. She went from hot to freezing cold in one heartbeat.

Something was wrong. She could feel it.

Isabelle vacillated between coming right out and asking Brandon what was wrong and ignoring the entire thing.

But that was no way to move ahead. Ignorance was not bliss and anyone who believed that was an idiot. Not knowing was the basis for constant uneasiness and the onset of paranoia.

Still, a little voice inside her voted for ignorance. It whispered that ignorance was better than being forced to face a harsh truth that could shatter everything good at this moment.

So, rather than lie there, speculating, having thoughts bouncing about in her head as if she was the ball being lobbed back and forth in a continuous game of tennis, Isabelle turned into him, bringing her nude body up closer against him and sealing her lips to his. With instant results.