Six More Hot Single Dads!

They were both staring at her now as if they hadn’t really seen her before. And, from her standpoint, they most likely hadn’t. As a rule, on first sight, people tended to regard her as a quiet, reserved shrinking violet. But they soon learned otherwise. She could more than hold her own with the best of them, even if one of those “best” was the dynamic Anastasia Del Vecchio, a woman who could project her voice to the back row of any theater without the benefit of a microphone or any other electronic device.

Two sets of eyes were looking at her, waiting. “I already told you, Ms. Del Vecchio, that I need to check in with my sister and make sure that this arrangement—my living here with you—is acceptable to her. She might have me down for something else.”

Anastasia waved a dismissive hand at the words. “Of course it’ll be acceptable to her,” she insisted confidently. “I said I’d pay you twice the going rate. Three times if I have to,” she added. “And since you’re going to be here ’round the clock, I’ll be paying for your time for that, as well. What businesswoman doesn’t like seeing that kind of a profit coming in?” she added.

Isabelle dug in, answering politely but firmly. “I still have to call her.”

Anastasia was not above manipulating both circumstances and people to get what she wanted. She could wield basic psychology like a sharply honed sword and had said as much more than once.

“Doesn’t your sister like you making independent decisions when it comes to your own work?” Anastasia asked with feigned innocence.

Though he loved her dearly, Brandon knew what his mother was capable of. He didn’t like the idea of an unfair confrontation and placed himself on Isabelle’s side.

“Mother, I know that you don’t know the meaning of the word, but other people do have to follow rules. Let Isabelle make the call,” Brandon urged—and with that one single sentence instantly became Isabelle’s secret hero.

She flashed him an appreciative smile. Not that she wouldn’t have called Zoe with the news no matter what Anastasia intended to the contrary, but it was a great deal easier if the woman wasn’t attempting to impede her efforts to contact her sister.

And Brandon was handling that detail for her, acting as a diversion and forcing Anastasia to focus her attention elsewhere.

Isabelle turned away from the duo to create the semblance of privacy and called her sister’s private cell number.

After four annoyingly long rings, the answering machine kicked in. Isabelle waited as the instructions to “leave a message at the tone” ran its course. The sound of the “beep” made her come to life.

“Pick up, Zoe, pick up.” She gave it to the count of ten and then surrendered to the inevitable. “Since you’re not there, I’m going to have to make a decision without you. Anastasia Del Vecchio is every bit as dynamic in real life as she is on the screen and she’s going to want an answer now.” Isabelle paused for half a second, trying to think of a reason that would cause Zoe to object to what the actress was requesting. She couldn’t come up with a single one. “Okay, she says she wants me to move in with her for the duration of the treatment and is willing to pay up to triple my usual rate, plus expenses. That should go a long way to soothing your bruised ego over having your authority usurped,” she said. “You know where to reach me if you decide you want to give me a lecture for old times’ sake.”

With that, Isabelle terminated the call.

What she’d just said to her sister replayed itself in her head. She still couldn’t believe this was happening. It really did seem more like a dream. Anastasia Del Vecchio, her all-time favorite childhood idol, was insisting that she move in with her. Granted, it was in the capacity of a servant—or so the woman thought, Isabelle amended—but the bottom line was that she was still moving in.

Moving in with Anastasia Del Vecchio. It definitely had a nice ring to it.

So did living in Brandon Slade’s house, even if he hadn’t been her all-time favorite author. But he was. She’d read every one of his ten thrillers, several at least twice. Once for pleasure and once to scrutinize whether or not there were any small holes in the fabric of his plot that she might have missed the first time around. There never were. The man was incredible.

And good-looking enough to stop a woman’s heart, she added now.

The call over, Isabelle closed the clam shell, slipped the cell phone into her pocket and then turned around. If Zoe wanted to get in touch with her regarding having her authority cavalierly usurped, to put it in her sister’s terminology, all she had to do was call. Her phone was always on.

But for the life of her, Isabelle couldn’t think of a single reason her sister would object. Having Anastasia Del Vecchio listed as a former client would do wonders for their references. And their website.

Mentally, Isabelle crossed her fingers that Zoe—once her sister got around to listening to her messages—wouldn’t find some flimsy reason to object to her living on the premises.

The moment she’d put the cell away and turned around, Anastasia was on her. “Well?” she demanded, the violet eyes pinning her in place.

“Looks like I’ll be moving in for a while,” Isabelle replied with a soft smile.

It was obvious by Anastasia’s manner that she had expected nothing less. “Wonderful.” The actress smiled regally, a queen prepared to be magnanimous with her subjects. “Brandon, why don’t you be a dear and show Isabelle just where she’ll be staying? And if she needs help bringing her things over—”

Working with this woman, Isabelle thought, was going to definitely be a challenge. If she wasn’t careful, the living legend would just roll right over her and flatten her without even realizing she was doing it.

“If you don’t mind,” Isabelle said, interrupting the woman before the actress got even further carried away, “I’ll take a look at the room later. Right now I’d like to get started working with you.” Slipping off the light jacket she was wearing, she mentally rolled up her sleeves. “I want to assess just what we need to do so I can work up a proper schedule.”

Anastasia didn’t see the need for all that foreplay. Not when she knew exactly what needed to be done. “We need to get me upright and dancing, of course.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Isabelle caught the smile that curved Brandon’s mouth. Ruggedly handsome, he still had very fine features, and his mouth was just short of being described as delicate. Something, she noted, that he had obviously inherited from his mother.

“Good luck with that,” she heard him tell her almost under his breath.

And just for the space of a breath, they shared a moment as his eyes made contact with hers—and then he winked.

Isabelle felt the ripple of that wink right in the pit of her stomach. Dedicated and no one’s pushover, she was still very much a novice when it came to socializing outside of her work. She could hold her own in any conversation as long as certain parameters were in place. As long as she was Isabelle, the physical therapist, talking to a client or a member of the client’s family, she was fine. More than fine. She was sharp, knowledgeable, even witty at times. But always as Isabelle, the physical therapist.

Once that comfortable aura was taken away from her, once she was just Isabelle Sinclair, single female, in a one-on-one situation, she was tongue-tied and self-conscious, at a definite disadvantage inhabiting a world where she had little to no experience.

With effort Isabelle forced herself to clamp down on her reaction to the wickedly handsome writer and focused on the one reason she was here in the first place. To get Anastasia Del Vecchio “upright and dancing.”

“All right, Ms. Del Vecchio,” Isabelle said briskly. “Let’s get to work and see what you can do.”

Forty-five minutes later, Isabelle knew exactly what her client could do. She could hit high Cs as she registered her distress each time pain—or the promise of pain—shot through her.

The last, particularly loud, protest had brought them an audience. A very concerned-looking audience.

“Gemma, are you all right?”

The question came from a worried-looking young girl who appeared to be around fifteen. Victoria Slade was actually younger. Twelve going on twenty-one was the way her father had described her in a recent interview, done in the name of publicity for his last book.

Mature in a way that young ladies had been decades ago when such development was necessary, Victoria was the light of both her father’s and her grandmother’s lives, and neither made any secret of it. Incredibly enough, Victoria continued to be exceedingly levelheaded.

“Gemma?” Isabelle questioned, looking quizzically from the girl to her client, waiting for an explanation as to why Victoria referred to her grandmother by a name that wasn’t hers.

Loving any sort of audience, Anastasia complied. “When she was little, Victoria couldn’t say ‘Grandmother.’ Or even the shorter, somewhat mundane name, ‘Gamma.’” Anastasia sniffed, clearly at odds with the label. And then she smiled as if the end of the story symbolized some sort of breakthrough. “‘Gemma’ was the closest she could get. So I became Gemma.” Finished, Anastasia briefly laced her fingers together in her lap, then turned toward her granddaughter to finally answer the girl’s initial question. “I’m being tortured, my darling. But other than that, I’m fine.”

There was love here, Isabelle thought. She could hear genuine affection in every word the famous actress uttered when speaking to her granddaughter. Heard, too, that affection being reciprocated in spades.

The girl with the long, flaxen hair nodded, as if taking the explanation seriously.

“As long as I know,” she murmured. Then Victoria walked up to the one person in the room she didn’t know and introduced herself. The smile on her lips was a direct copy of her father’s, except that there was a shred of shyness woven through it. “Hi, I’m Victoria Slade.”

Isabelle was accustomed to children who made noise when they played and had to be physically ushered out by a family member in order not to get in the way.

Impressed, Isabelle took the offered hand and shook it. “I’m Isabelle Sinclair, your grandmother’s physical therapist.”

“She’s going to have me dancing around the stage,” Anastasia announced happily, then added with a studied pout, “once she gets tired of torturing me.”

“That torture is going to be what helps get you supple so that you can dance around the stage,” Isabelle informed the older woman in a patient voice.

The actress’s goal was a lofty one. Most patients only wanted to be able to walk without a limp. But it was always good to have something to aspire to, Isabelle thought. The line from a poem by Robert Browning floated through her head: A man’s reach should exceed his grasp or what’s a heaven for? applied to both men and women.

Victoria, it seemed, had appeared just at the right moment. They would stop here. “All right, I think that’s enough for our evaluation session,” Isabelle told the woman.

Already back in a horizontal position on the sofa, Anastasia sighed dramatically and fanned herself with a magazine from the coffee table. One that, conveniently, had a flattering photo of her on the cover. The caption, Beloved Icon Down But Definitely Not Out, ran along the bottom of the cover.

“Thank God,” Anastasia declared. “I don’t think I could have gone on another moment.”

She not only could have, she would have, Isabelle thought. The woman wasn’t fooling her. She was a born trouper—even if there had to be a lot of noise and fanfare accompanying her every effort.

“By the way, Ms. Del Vecchio,” Isabelle began, her eyes sweeping over the woman’s long, still very attractive legs, legs that had once been the subject of an enamored famous stage actor’s poem. The man had gone on to become one of the actress’s many lovers, if she remembered correctly. “Where are your white cotton surgical stockings?”

Anastasia looked down at her legs as well, as if she expected the subject under discussion to suddenly materialize. “You mean those hideous white, cottony things they gave me in the hospital?”

“Yes, those hideous white, cottony things they gave you at the hospital,” Isabelle repeated patiently. “Where are they?”

The actress gestured carelessly toward the back of the house and the general vicinity of the room she was presently sleeping in. “In the wastebasket in my bathroom. I threw them away,” she added needlessly.

Isabelle had suspected as much. She looked at her client pointedly. “You need to un-throw them away,” she informed the woman firmly in her soft, gentle breeze of a voice.

“Why?” Anastasia asked. “They make my legs look chunky and so—so old lady-ish,” she complained disdain fully.

Okay, more patience, Isabelle silently coached herself. “The stockings aren’t meant to be worn as some kind of a fashion statement, Ms. Del Vecchio—”

“Anastasia,” the actress insisted.

Isabelle deliberately ignored the slight thrill that had just zipped through her—she was on a first name basis with the great Anastasia Del Vecchio!—and focused on the fact that she had a very stubborn, very willful client on her hands.

“The stockings are meant to help you bounce back faster. And to make sure you don’t develop any blood clots.”

The magnificent violet eyes narrowed. Anastasia needed convincing. “Really?”

Rather than launch into a long and tedious explanation, Isabelle merely repeated the single word the actress had just said, uttering it with conviction. “Really.”

Another huge, resigned sigh escaped the near perfect lips. Anastasia Del Vecchio was no one’s fool, and she knew when to retreat. It was how she went on to fight another day.

“Oh, very well.” She shifted in her seat to get a better view of her granddaughter. “Victoria?”

Victoria was on her feet. “On it, Gemma,” the girl responded. As she turned on her heel and passed Isabelle, the girl said in a low, congratulatory voice, “Score one for your side.”

Isabelle couldn’t have explained why the approving words pleased her so much—after all, they were coming from a child—but they did.

Several minutes later, the girl returned with the crumpled white cotton stockings. Isabelle took them from her and proceeded to carefully slip them, one at a time, on her patient.

Once they were back on, Anastasia eyed the knee-high stockings with more than a little contempt. “You’re sure about this?” she asked Isabelle.

“Very sure,” Isabelle answered firmly as she anchored the second stocking in place with what could have once passed as a garter belt. Unlike the ones that were advertised on the pages of catalogs highlighting a thousand and one ways to seduce the man in your life, this particular item was not the last word in sexy.

Finished, Isabelle stood back and smiled. “You did very well for a first time.”

Anastasia looked at her as if there could be no other outcome. “Of course I did.”

The woman gave new meaning to the word confidence, Isabelle thought. Uncertain how to respond, Isabelle decided the safest reaction was to smile and then go on to a different subject.

“Well, if I’m going to be staying here for a while, I’d better go home and throw a few things together.” She picked up her purse and began to leave the room, heading for the front door.

“You are coming back.”

Even though the sentence was more of a statement than a question, just for a split second Isabelle thought she heard a sliver of uncertainty in the woman’s voice. She supposed that Anastasia had her share of people who, unable to take her larger-than-life personality, had abruptly fled her employ.

Not gonna happen here, Isabelle thought.

“Nothing could stop me,” she assured the actress—and was rewarded by the return of the woman’s confident, brilliant smile.

“Tell Brandon I said to help you,” she called after Isabelle.

Right, as if she was about to do that. Out loud Isabelle said, “I’m sure he’s busy, Ms. Del Vec—Anastasia. Besides, there’s not much to pack. I shouldn’t be too long.”

She thought she saw the actress smile again in response. With just a little luck, this would work out well, Isabelle told herself.

As she left the room and turned toward the foyer and the front door, she came within a quarter of an inch of slamming right into the very man the actress had told her to summon for help.

The close call abruptly launched her heart into double time.

Chapter Three

Caught off guard, Isabelle swallowed a scream as she stumbled backward. Her heel caught on the corner of a scatter rug that had been thrown down on the travertine floor without, apparently, regard for exact placement. It moved beneath her heel, ripping away the last shred of her stability.

As she tried to regain her balance, there was every indication that she would completely embarrass herself by falling. At the last moment, she was saved from her projected fate, not to mention from sustaining some very colorful bruises in hidden places, by two very strong hands that grabbed her, one clamping down on each of her slender arms.

The air whooshed out of Isabelle’s lungs, not because of the sudden, jerking movement forward but because of the close proximity that had unexpectedly materialized after the save. She found herself approximately four, perhaps five, inches away from the novelist’s very handsome face, classic cheekbones and all.

Brandon smelled faintly of some kind of musky cologne or shampoo, and she would have said “sex” if it didn’t sound so utterly insane. Her heart slammed into her ribcage, then did a little back and forth ricocheting before finally just settling into an unnervingly fast tempo.

She would have liked to have blamed this erratic rhythm on the sudden jolt to her torso, but she knew better than that. She was athletic and agile and could sprint long distances without really getting winded or breaking much of a sweat.

It wasn’t the jolt but the man causing it that was responsible for the uneven, wild beat that had taken possession of her body.

Amused, Brandon grinned at her. “I didn’t think that I was that scary.”

Completely lost in the jungle of her thoughts, Isabelle blinked. Replaying his words failed to bring any sort of enlightenment or clarity. “Excuse me?”

“You screamed,” he reminded her. “I didn’t think that I was that scary to look at.”

Now it made sense—sort of. The man had to have looked in the mirror in the past decade. After all, he did shave.

“Oh, no, no, you’re not. You’re very good-looking. I mean—” This was becoming one of those nightmares she used to have where she discovered that her clothes were disappearing, piece by piece, from her body. She could usually make herself wake up before she was entirely naked. But this time she couldn’t wake up because she wasn’t asleep. She was just making a fool of herself.

Taking a breath, doing her best not to stare at the way his mouth curved invitingly as he smiled, Isabelle tried again. She cautioned herself not to sound like one of those vapid airheads who fawned over celebrities and resembled zombies as they followed them from place to place.

“I’m sure you’ve looked into a mirror lately,” she managed to say more calmly. “You know what you look like.”

Her body temperature rose a full ten degrees as his smile deepened and traveled straight to her gut, swirling about like a corkscrew.

“Oddly enough, I find I really don’t have the time to spend staring into mirrors.” He held up his hand just in case she was about to contradict him. “And before you bring up the obvious subject of shaving, my mirror is usually pretty cloudy from the steam when I shave in the morning. Most of the time I do it in the shower,” he clarified. “I’ve got a little mirror attached to a shower rack.”

The thought of Brandon, standing naked and dripping in the shower as he shaved, succeeded in transforming her already wobbly knees into something that would have made Jell-O appear rock solid by comparison.

Heat swept around her, threatening to burn her into a crisp.

Get a grip, Isabelle. You’re good at what you do, you’re a sensitive, caring, busy physical therapist, not a mindless groupie with no life. Stop acting like one.

That was only half-true, she realized ruefully. Granted, she was a topflight physical therapist—she was always taking classes to keep up on any new, ground-breaking techniques rising up in her field, not to mention absorbing any new theories coming down the pike—and she wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination a mindless groupie, but she also had no actual life outside of her work.

How else could she agree to just pick up and deposit herself here, in her client’s home, without so much as a minor hassle, other than what clothes to pack and what to leave behind?

After this assignment, Isabelle promised herself she would take some time off and do something. Go somewhere. Anywhere. Just so that she could say she had gone.

Pulling together her thoughts, Isabelle forced herself to focus on the conversation and not on the fact that she could, at this very close proximity, actually feel the heat coming from Brandon’s body.

Or, at least she thought she did, which, in this case, was just as bad.

“You just startled me, that’s all,” she said, addressing the explanation to his shoes. It was easier than looking into his brilliant blue eyes. “I didn’t expect to find anyone in the hallway.”

He continued to look amused with her. “You always scream when you’re startled?”

“Actually,” she replied truthfully, “I don’t scream. This was my first time.”

He would have laughed at her expression if it wouldn’t have hurt her feelings. “Well, then, maybe we should go somewhere to discuss this,” he proposed with as straight a face as he could manage. “First times are special. Or so I’ve been told.”

Why was it that every single one of Brandon’s deep, modulated words felt as if they were cascading slowly down the length of her skin, like the gentle fingers of a questing lover?

Not that she would know firsthand what that was like, she thought ruefully. But she did have a very vivid imagination and could think herself into that sort of a situation.

Oh, no, you don’t.

Isabelle took another deep breath. Something else she was going to do on that vacation she would take after this. Find out what it felt like to have a lover. Even if it was only for one wild, hot, mind-boggling weekend.

She was tired of wondering what that felt like—to have a man caress her, cherish her, make love with her. If things didn’t change in her life and soon, it was only a matter of time before someone snatched her up, stuck her on a plate and put a glass dome over her, displaying her as the last living twenty-eight-year-old virgin in captivity.

She forced a smile to her lips, hoping she didn’t look like some kind of a grinning idiot to him. How long before she became immune to the fact that he was Brandon Slade, famous writer?

Probably a lot faster than she would become immune to the fact that, no matter from what angle she looked at him, Brandon Slade was nothing short of drop-dead gorgeous.

It would be one thing if the man was handsome in a sterile way. This was Southern California, and there were gaggles of pretty boys everywhere, looking to make a name, or a career, for themselves. If you looked at one of them, they might be momentarily breathtaking, but there was nothing behind the eyes. They had no more depth to them than a thimbleful of water.

But Brandon, Brandon was another story entirely. Brandon was warm-handsome. Friendly-handsome. There was something incredibly boyish and appealing about him. Some special x-factor in addition to the man’s chiseled chin, high cheekbones and bone-melting sky blue eyes that undermined her entire foundation and reduced her to a pile of sand.