Читать книгу Six More Hot Single Dads! - Kate Hardy - Страница 14

Isabelle Sinclair knew that when people met her for the first time, it usually brought a host of pleasant terms to mind, such as unassuming, laid-back and unpretentious. Those labels, however, did not automatically mean that she was also a pushover or that she was anyone’s doormat. Because she wasn’t.

She was so soft-spoken that people were naturally surprised to discover she also possessed a backbone made of steel and the quiet determination of not only the “little engine that could,” but the never-swayed-from-his-path tortoise of The Tortoise and the Hare fame.

This latter character trait came in particularly handy whenever she worked with clients who were ready to give up and morosely give in to whatever malady had brought them to Healing Hands in the first place.

They might be willing to surrender, but Isabelle wasn’t. She wouldn’t allow her clients to stop until every single goal laid out was met. Only then, when the disabling condition was conquered, did she feel free to consider the case closed and move on to the next client.

This tenacity also applied to her life insomuch as she would not allow herself to be pushed aside or ignored when the matter directly involved or affected her. And this subject that was being bandied about between mother and son most definitely involved and affected her. More important, it involved Zoe. Nothing brought out her protective instincts more then when someone she cared about was at risk or in need. She considered it her personal mission to come to their aid.

So when Anastasia Del Vecchio and Brandon Slade just took her acquiescence for granted and went on to debate which house would be her temporary place of shelter for the next six weeks, she had to stop them. To that end, she had raised her own voice to far louder decibels than was her custom, effectively bringing Anastasia and Brandon’s escalating debate to a skidding halt.

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.