What the Single Dad Wants... (14 page)

He sighed, shaking his head. “I always thought that under standing women would get easier the older I got.”

Isabelle stopped and turned around. She was
not
about to put herself out on a limb and assume something. When he said nothing further to follow up on his statement, she prodded, “And?”

“And, I was incredibly wrong,” Brandon confessed. “It doesn't get any easier. Matter of fact, it gets harder.”

Men were always saying that, she thought. But that was because they liked having their mystery plots complicated and their women simple. It didn't work like that. Smiling, she said, “We're not so hard to understand.”

Brandon's eyes narrowed slightly, as if he was trying to fathom the meaning being her words, and then, when he realized she was serious, he laughed.

“Ha!”

Isabelle continued as if he hadn't interjected anything. “We respond to kindness and honesty—and a sense of humor never hurt the situation.”

There he begged to differ. “Unless I laugh at a dress you wear.”

Isabelle inclined her head. He was right there. She stood corrected. “Unless you laugh at a dress I wear,”
she agreed. The moment she echoed his phrase, she remembered. “Speaking of which—”

If she didn't get started soon, she wouldn't be ready by the time he'd indicated that he wanted to leave.

“Laughing or dress?” Brandon asked her, a smile curving the corners of his mouth.

“Dress. I have to,” she reminded him, ready to race up the stairs.

In place of the easy smile, a seductive, sexy one slipped over his lips as Brandon thought of the way she'd been last night. He couldn't remember if he'd told her how beautiful she was wearing only a sigh. He knew he'd meant to.

“Only if you want to,” he told her.

“I want to,” she answered with a laugh. Deep down inside, she was flattered by the look in his eyes. Flattered and aroused. “I have no intention of being arrested for nudity and public indecency.”

“There was nothing indecent about your nudity,” he assured her, sounding so serious when he said it that, just like that, her heart was in serious jeopardy of brimming over.

“Still,” she told him as she headed toward the stairs a little more slowly, “I don't think you need that kind of a news-grabbing headline attached to you. It's not exactly the kind of attention the father of a preteen likes to have drawn to him.”

She could feel his eyes peeling away the layers of her clothing as he regarded her.

“Oh, I don't know. I might be willing to risk it, given the right woman,” he told her with such a straight face, she didn't know if he was being serious or not.

But, whether or not
he
was serious, she had always been the sensible one in any gathering numbering two
or more. That being the case again, Isabelle patted his handsome face and declared, “Well, I'm not willing,” just before hurrying up the stairs.

She was only halfway up when he called to her, and she stopped again.

“Yes?”

“Thanks.”

She could have gotten completely lost in his smile. He
had
to have the most soul-affecting one she'd ever encountered. It took her a moment to locate her brain. “For?”

He was honest with her, something he discovered he could be. Something that hadn't been possible for him with anyone else outside of the two women already in his life. With Isabelle, he could be himself and not worry that she could use it against him, or criticize him. Or laugh when he didn't want her to.

“For pulling me out of a dark place just now,” he told her.

“Don't mention it,” she told him cheerfully. “It's all included in your mother's bill. It's listed right under ‘cheerfulness on demand.' By the way, the first fifty times are free,” she added with a wink he found tantalizingly sexy.

His daughter's parting words to him echoed in his head.

“Maybe you were on to something after all, Victoria,” he murmured under his breath.

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.

“T
his 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.