Six More Hot Single Dads!

But aside from that, being here also allowed her the opportunity to covertly observe the young woman she had “unofficially” made her newest project. Isabelle Sinclair had certainly come a long way from the woman she’d glimpsed just a short while ago. The other one had been pretty in a shy, retiring way. This woman was vivacious. A “knockout” as her father used to say, Theresa thought with a fond smile.

Seeing Isabelle interacting with Brandon Slade gave Theresa every hope that this particular pairing she had undertaken would turn out to be as successful as the handful of others she, Maizie and Cecilia had gotten involved with. So far, their record was five out of five. This, she thought with a smile, just might be lucky number six.

Approximately ninety minutes into the reception, Anastasia, with Victoria in tow, made her way over to her son. As always, he was surrounded by a number of women of various ages. This time, he was telling his adoring fans the story of how he’d received the news of his first book making it to the New York Times bestseller list.

“At first I thought it was one of my friends, making a crank call and pulling my leg. So I hung up. After the person called back a second time, I placed my own call to my agent—and got the same person who very coldly informed me that my agent was in a meeting and she couldn’t be disturbed, but she’d asked him—turns out he was her assistant—to call me with the good news. He sounded very put out. I spent the next fifteen minutes apologizing to him—and then the next forty-eight hours celebrating,” he concluded with a grin.

It was clear that his audience was eager for another anecdote. But the moment he saw his mother approaching with Victoria, Brandon politely extricated himself from the tight circle of women, promising to return with another story “later.”

Crossing to his mother, who was clearly going somewhere, he asked, “What’s up?” He looked from his mother to his daughter, waiting for an answer.

“Brandon, it’s getting late. It might not be a school night, but Victoria and I are going home,” his mother announced.

He could remember when his mother could party not just all night long but several days running, as well. Back in those days, she’d been unharnessed energy and had given no indication of ever slowing down or growing tired.

Age was a bear, he thought with a touch of sadness. For form’s sake, because he knew she’d refuse to admit she was tired, he asked his mother, “Is anything wrong?”

“No, nothing’s wrong. But it’s past Victoria’s bedtime and I don’t want her overdoing it,” Anastasia elaborated.

The excuse was paper-thin, but he saw no reason to let her know that he saw through it. In order to spare his mother’s pride, Brandon played along. He glanced over his shoulder at the circle of women he’d just left. They were still waiting for him. One of the women waved at him.

Danger, Will Robinson, Danger, he thought, whimsically calling to mind a famous catch phrase from a bygone era. “Maybe I should go, too,” he said to his mother.

Anastasia looked genuinely horrified. “No, no, you and Isabelle stay here,” she insisted, patting his hand. “Enjoy yourselves.”

“Isabelle’s not going with you?” Sexy or not, the woman was his mother’s physical therapist and as such should really be accompanying her, not him, Brandon thought.

“Why should she?” Anastasia asked, surprised that he would even suggest such a thing. “It only takes one of us to make sure Victoria goes to bed,” she said, draping an arm around the girl’s slender shoulders.

Brandon noticed that his daughter looked as if she wanted to protest but was prudent enough not to. Wise beyond her years, that girl, he thought with pride.

Digging into his pocket, he located his keys. Brandon took them out and held them out to his mother. He knew that her surgeon had just cleared her to drive yesterday. He assumed she was eager to get back behind the wheel again. Control was all important to his mother, it always had been. “Take my car, then.”

She pushed his hand—and the keys—back. “No need. Maura is taking us home,” she told him, referring to his agent. “She was planning on leaving early anyway.” Anastasia waved her hand vaguely. “Something about having to take an early phone call tomorrow. I don’t know,” she confessed. “I wasn’t really listening. You know how she can go on and on.”

His agent would just drop his mother off at the curb, never leaving her vehicle. He wasn’t sure if he was happy with that. “You’ll be all right, going home by yourself?” he questioned.

“I won’t be by myself,” Anastasia reminded him, then looked toward her granddaughter. “I have Victoria. What more could I ask for?”

Brandon smiled. There were indeed times when it felt as if Victoria was the adult and his mother, and occasionally, he supposed, he as well, were the children. His daughter was born with an old soul, which was fortunate for him because he wouldn’t have known what to do with a typical rebellious teenager.

Walking in at the tail end of the conversation, Isabelle joined Brandon and his family. “I should be going with you,” she told the actress.

That was exactly what Anastasia didn’t want. She wanted the two of them to be alone together—as alone as was possible in the middle of a packed reception.

“Nonsense, dear. This is the shank of the evening for you and you’re only young once—trust me on this.” The woman patted Isabelle’s cheek with her heavily ringed hand. “Enjoy yourself. Keep an eye out for Brandon and make sure some overendowed, eager fan doesn’t get it into her head to make off with him,” she requested. “He has trouble saying ‘no.’ To anyone except his poor mother.”

Brandon laughed. “There’s absolutely nothing ‘poor’ about you, Mother.”

Anastasia took it as her due. “Thank you, dear.” As she spoke, she looked around for Brandon’s agent. “Ah, there she is. Maura,” she called out, raising her arm and waving from side to side to catch the woman’s attention. “We’re ready to go.”

His agent, a short, sensible-looking woman wearing a blue sequined dress that transformed her squat torso into a walking blue flame, nodded.

“Then let’s go.” She put a hand to the small of each of their backs. “I’m parked in the first row,” she informed her charges as she herded them both off.

Now what? Isabelle wondered.

She looked after the departing actress, clearly torn between her sense of duty and a very strong streak of desire, a streak that insisted on growing with every breath she took.

“I really should go with her,” she murmured to Brandon.

“No, you shouldn’t,” he contradicted. She looked at him, puzzled. “It took me a while to get versed in Anastasia-speak but if she tells you she wants you to stay, then she wants you to stay. Really.”

Isabelle still had her doubts as she watched the two women and Victoria weave their way through the crowd and inch over to the front of the bookstore. “She’s leaving because she’s tired—”

“Which is exactly why you shouldn’t accompany her,” he pointed out. “She’s using Victoria as an excuse to leave. This way, she can slip into bed without damaging her reputation as the queen of the all-nighters. If you go with her, she’ll be forced to stay up and pretend that she could have gone on all night—when she couldn’t.”

“That’s pretty convoluted.” But, she supposed, in an odd sort of way, that did make sense.

“So’s my mother,” he pointed out. “Trust me, it’s better this way. Besides, she’s just a little tired, it’s not like she’s going to need a blood transfusion once she’s home. There’s no real reason for you to go with her.” It occurred to Brandon, as he made the case for her to stay, that there could be another reason why Isabelle might be trying to leave. “Unless you don’t want to stay.”

“Not want to stay?” she echoed. How could he even think such a thing? Maybe this was old hat to Brandon but not to her. “I’m feeling a little like Cinderella at the ball. I don’t get to go to many parties in my line of work,” she told him, silently adding that, counting this one, it brought the grand total up to one—if she didn’t count the one that Zoe’d thrown to celebrate their fifth year in business last month.

“Then I’m not making you remain against your will,” he concluded. “Good. Feeling adventurous?” he asked completely out of the blue. There was amusement in his sky blue eyes.

Isabelle could feel her heart suddenly hitching in her throat even though there was no logical reason why it should.

“Okay,” she replied tentatively, stretching the word out.

He grinned. “Can I interest you in sampling some appetizers with me?” He indicated the center of the buffet table against the far wall.

He, Isabelle thought, could interest her in sampling chocolate-covered worms. The idea didn’t even make her cringe. Since she’d taken on the famous screen icon’s case, it had all seemed like one giant adventure to her, and she secretly hoped it would never end, even though she knew it had to.

There were less than three weeks left before the tour for Anastasia’s play, A Little Night Music, was to begin. That was the deadline she’d been given to get the actress into “top dancing condition.”

Which meant that there were less than three weeks for her to be part of this world that seemed like a fairy tale come true to her.

She realized that she hadn’t answered Brandon and he was still waiting. “Sure, why not?” she said gamely.

The three large platters of artfully arranged appetizers formed an exotic array. They each took five different ones, giving them a total of ten to sample.

“Oh, wow, you have to try this one,” Brandon enthused, after taking a small bite of an appetizer that, in Isabelle’s estimation, apparently tasted far better than it looked.

Rather than have her go back to the table to get one of her own, Brandon held out the second half of the one he’d sampled and fed it to her.

She hardly tasted it.

All of her senses were otherwise occupied as the intimate moment—despite the people milling all around them—registered all the way into the deep recesses of her soul.

For just that one precious moment, there was nothing and no one else but the two of them and a canapé that involved marinated chicken, guacamole and some unknown, sweet ingredient that seemed to explode on her tongue into a wild spectrum of flavors.

Not the smallest of which was desire.

Breathe! Breathe, damn it, or you’re going to pass out right here at his feet, dummy, she chided herself as she realized that she’d literally stopped exhaling for more than just a beat.

“Good?” he asked, peering closely at her face.

Exquisite. Beyond anything I’ve ever felt. Isabelle nodded her response, not trusting her voice to come out in anything except an unintelligible squeak.

He took another two canapés and slipped them onto his plate, intent on sharing each with her. “I don’t know who the caterer is, but I’m having them do my Christmas party this year,” he declared. “By the way, you’re invited.”

It was an offhanded invitation that she was certain he forgot the moment he offered it. Surely he’d forget by the time the season rolled around.

But she never would.

They wound up staying until the very end. Brandon, the epitome of energy, gave every indication of going on forever. And when the reception finally did wind down and then break up, Brandon looked almost sorry that the party was over.

As he said his goodbyes to the bookstore owner, a heavyset man who pumped his hand and thanked him twice over for coming, Brandon turned toward Isabelle. All sorts of ideas were forming in his head.

She was even more beautiful right now than she’d been at the beginning of the evening—and it wasn’t the wine talking because he hadn’t had any for the past hour and a half. He hadn’t had much before then, either. He liked having a clear head.

Isabelle was fumbling with her shawl, and he slipped it around her shoulders for her, his fingers brushing against her arm’s bare skin.

The contact was electrifying. He wondered if she’d felt it, too.

“I don’t feel like going home just yet,” he told her. “You up for a walk on the beach?”

She resisted the urge to tell him that if he wanted to run off to the circus, she was up for that, too. Instead, she said, “That sounds very nice. Count me in,” and left it at that.

The sound of the ocean, its waves sliding in to flirt with the shore before coquettishly withdrawing, promised to have a very soothing effect. She welcomed the thought. Right now she felt as if she was still fully charged and about to go off like a misfired rocket at any moment.

The beach, as it turned out, was located not that far from the bookstore. They gained access to it by taking a path that started directly behind the store and cut across an alley between two summer homes before it finally brought them straight down to the beach.

There was a full moon out, casting its light onto the waters.

Just for us, she thought, watching the moonbeams glimmer along the dark waters.

“There’s a full moon out tonight,” she commented.

“Like it?” Brandon asked, weaving his fingers through her hand as he deadpanned, “I ordered ahead for it.”

She looked at him for a long moment. The man was heart-stoppingly gorgeous, she thought, not for the first time. “I guess you can get pretty much anything you want,” she speculated, only half tongue in cheek.

“Tell you the truth, I have pretty much everything I want.” And then, as if to prove it, he enumerated. “I’ve got the career I’ve always wanted. A really terrific daughter I sometimes feel I don’t deserve and then, of course, there’s Mother.”

A fond smile curved his generous mouth as a slightly distant look came into his eyes. “She’s a hoot and I can’t say she’s even remotely typical, but life with her was an education from the very first moment. I don’t think I’d be where I am if I’d had a typical mother.”

He was forgetting about his determination, about his drive. “I think you might be,” she told him.

“Oh?” he asked, curious. “And why’s that?”

It was hard for her to think, to complete a thought, when he held her hand like that.

“Because we all carry the seeds inside of us of what we are and what we have the potential to become.” She warmed to her subject. “You take two people with the same set of circumstances in their background. One grows up to be a success, the other becomes a bitter, complaining failure, blaming everyone else for the fact that he never got anywhere in life instead of putting the blame where it belongs. At his own feet. The only difference between them is one is motivated to make something of himself, maybe even despite his famous parents, the other feels he had three strikes against him from the very start and doesn’t even try.”

Brandon wondered if that comparison was made for his benefit. “Let me guess, you minored in psychology.”

Only if she expanded her campus to include her life. “No, but your mother isn’t the first celebrity I’ve worked with.” There were so many children of privilege who had the air of entitlement about them. He had no idea how lucky he was to have Victoria turn out the way she had—or maybe Victoria was the lucky one to have a parent like Brandon raising her. He might be her father, but part of him was also her best friend—a position she knew he was going to miss in the years ahead after the girl had grown up. “You get to see a lot in my line of work,” she said vaguely.

The writer in him prompted Brandon to ask, “Anything you can talk about?”

He sounded so interested, she couldn’t just turn him down flat.

“A couple,” she allowed. “Without naming names.”

He shook his head. “Not interested in names, just situations,” he told her. “I write fiction, not a gossip column—although, at times, that seems to be one and the same,” he commented.

“As long as I don’t have to use real names, then sure.”

And as they walked, she talked, telling him about a couple of her more challenging cases and the family dynamics that went along with them that she’d found intriguing. When she worked with a client, Isabelle liked to think she worked with the whole person, not just his or her condition. That involved getting to know and working with the client’s family—such as it was. At times, she thought the client would be better off without his or her family.

That wasn’t the case here, she mused. All three family members were who they were because of the effect they had on one another.

Brandon proved to be a very attentive audience, quietly listening to her as she talked and only speaking to ask an occasional question whenever she paused.

When she came to the end of the third case she shared with him, Isabelle stopped to “scrutinize” her audience. She was convinced that Brandon was just being polite, letting her ramble on.

“You can’t possibly find all this interesting,” she protested.

“Yes, I can,” he countered.

And the stories weren’t the only thing he found interesting, Brandon added silently. As he listened to her talk about her interactions with the families of some of her clients, Brandon found himself also thinking about the woman, as well.

Thinking about her and discovering that he hadn’t just imagined it. He was very much attracted to her. Strongly.

At that point, they’d already turned around and were on their way back to the bookstore. He’d left his gleaming white vehicle parked in the lot behind the chain store.

Approximately half a block away from the bookstore, he abruptly stopped walking. She watched him carefully, but said nothing.

“Would you mind if I kissed you?” he asked.

Mind? It was all she’d been thinking about for the past ten minutes. So much so that it had become difficult for her to hold on to her train of thought and continue with her story.

“You didn’t ask the first time,” she pointed out quietly.

The last time had been by accident. This was by design. “I’m asking now.”

The exquisite rush began before Brandon ever took her in his arms. Before he even lowered his mouth to hers.

Anticipation could stir up the blood to incredible heights. At times, she was aware, anticipation could lead to disappointment, but not this time. She already knew that.

Knew that the man’s kiss was like being bathed in a shower of sparklers.

Her eyes on his, Isabelle murmured, “Permission to come aboard granted,” just loud enough for him to hear above the sound of the ocean.

He grinned as he drew her to him, his body heat reaching out to hers.

“Doesn’t that have something to do with boarding a ship?” he asked, amused.

“Whatever.”

Isabelle was aware that the word sounded utterly lame, but it was the only comeback she could manage right now. Her brain had moved passed conversations and was already otherwise engaged as she rose up on her toes and slid her arms around his neck.

Brandon touched his lips to hers. Very slowly, he lifted her off the sand and folded her into the kiss that was already, even now, claiming his soul as well.

Chapter Eleven

She’d always been an old movie buff, and the classic scene From Here To Eternity, of two lovers lying on the beach lost in one another’s embrace and kissing, flashed through Isabelle’s brain just before she lost the ability to form coherent thoughts. How could one kiss do that? How could it just make the entire world go away?

She hadn’t the energy to even attempt to figure that out. All she wanted to do was enjoy this moment, this sensation, before it—and possibly she—disappeared forever. Brandon knew, knew, he shouldn’t be doing this. Shouldn’t be giving in to his urges. The urges might be basic, but Isabelle was his mother’s physical therapist, and if things between them went awry, life could become very awkward….

But what if they didn’t?

What if things didn’t go awry or veer off the track? Then living with Isabelle just down the hall, seeing her each day, interacting with her, could only be a plus. After all, at its longest this interlude would probably only be for a little less than three more weeks.

Three more weeks and his mother intended to be completely recovered because she had every intention of going on that tour with the rest of the cast of A Little Night Music. Knowing his mother, the woman was stubborn enough to will herself fit enough to go on tour. With Anastasia away, the dynamics of his household would go back to what they’d been before the accident. Just Victoria and him and, once every two weeks, the cleaning crew that put the house back into order.

That would be life as he knew it. Life as he enjoyed it.

So why shouldn’t he allow himself to savor this surprisingly exquisite, unselfconsciously seductive woman while he could? Their paths would stop crossing very soon.

The situation was perfect.

As was this palpable chemistry that had been generated between them.

His arms tightened around Isabelle even more, as if he were trying to absorb her—because, maybe, just for this moment, he was. Absorb her enthusiasm and her very exuberant essence. And this incredible—and unusual—spectrum of happiness she brought out in him.

Isabelle could feel her head spinning, and her body had stopped whispering its demands and was now all but screaming them. With all this work in the past six months or so, she’d almost forgotten she was a female. A woman. And, since she was living and breathing, she did have certain needs. Needs that hadn’t really ever been addressed.

Her body now reminded her that its education had been sadly neglected. She didn’t intend for that pitiable state to continue a second longer.

This strange, all-but-consuming hunger threatened to swallow her up whole unless she did something about it.

Isabelle pressed her body into his, holding on to Brandon so tightly she was surprised he could still breathe. She certainly was having difficulty getting air in. As she shifted, she took the opportunity to press against him even more urgently, fitting her soft curves against his hard contours.

She felt his response immediately.

Her mouth curved beneath his. The next moment, she was kissing him even more passionately, stealing away the last of his breath. Sacrificing hers as well.

Brandon drew back his head. Breaking contact came under the heading of one of the hardest things he’d had to do. But it had to be done on the very slim, outside chance that Isabelle didn’t realize she was about to push him entirely over the edge, emulsifying the last of his control.

“You keep doing that and I’m not going to be responsible for what happens next,” he informed her hoarsely.

There was no other way to describe it. The grin that curved her lips in response to his warning was nothing short of wicked.

It placed her in a completely different light in his eyes.

“Doing what?” she murmured innocently, her breath warm and teasing on his lips.

“Kissing me mindless.” The answer was tendered with effort. He struggled to hold himself in check when all he wanted to do was lose himself in her, to make love with her until he could no longer move.

She placed a hand to his chest, her fingers lightly feathering along the hard ridges.

Isabelle smiled up into his eyes. “I doubt if anything could render you into a mindless state.”

Now there she was wrong. “Keep kissing me like that and you’ll find out,” he promised.

Laughter entered her eyes. “A challenge. I love a challenge,” she whispered huskily.

The next moment, she was kissing him again. Or was that him, kissing her? Brandon wasn’t sure. All he knew was that she’d lit a fire within him. A fire that gave no indication that it could be quenched in the near future.

He wanted to take her now, here, in this place, while desire ravaged his body. But this was a public beach, and although the public appeared to be either asleep or elsewhere, he wasn’t about to take a chance that one of Newport Beach’s finest would somehow show up next to them at the worst possible, inopportune moment.