LITMIR.BIZ

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saw no reason for the last part of her statement to bring such an amused grin to his lips. “You’re an optimist I take it.”

      Her eyes narrowed. “Excuse me?”

      “Thinking that you’ll have the time and the energy to read at night,” he explained. “Mother will take up most of your time. She has a habit of monopolizing people,” he told her. It wasn’t a criticism or a complaint. It was just the way things were. It certainly didn’t detract from any of the affection he bore the woman who had given him life. “She loves having audiences and you will be brand-new, virgin territory for her.”

      In response to his words, Brandon saw the deep pink blush creeping up the woman’s neck and face at a breathtaking rate.

      Was that his fault? “I’m sorry, did I say something to—”

      “No, no,” she said, cutting him off before he could begin guessing at the reason she wasn’t able to hear the word “virgin” without feeling some sort of personal failure on her part. She told herself that she really didn’t care that she wasn’t part of a duo, that she’d never really been with a man in that very special way that counted.

      That sort of thing bothered Zoe, but not her, Isabelle stubbornly maintained. But it did bother her to be regarded as some kind of oddity in this very progressive, outgoing society where couples met on an elevator, and by the time they reached the ground floor, they were hermetically sealed to one another in a passionate, fiery embrace that only promised to be more so once they had some privacy.

      “It’s just warm in here, that’s all.” To add weight to her argument, Isabelle pretended to fan herself with her hand.

      “I guess you’re more hot-blooded than me,” he told her.

      She looked at him for a long moment, trying to ascertain if he believed her or was just having fun at her expense. She couldn’t tell and gave up, hoping it was the former.

      “Anyway,” he continued, “things go twice as fast with an extra set of hands helping and you’d be doing me a favor.”

      How could helping her pack be doing him a favor? “Oh? How?”

      “Well, if I’m helping you get your things together, I’ve got an excuse for not sitting at my computer, working,” he confided. “Or, in this case, suffering,” he added.

      She stared at him, completely confused. She’d read his interviews. The man loved what he did. So, how could he refer to it as suffering? Was that just for show?

      “Don’t you like writing?” she asked him.

      “No. Well, that didn’t exactly come out right,” he said, reexamining his one-word response. “I like coming up with the idea, love jotting things down in the middle of the night as they come to me like storm troopers parachuting out of the sky. These are all things that I’m going to write,” he emphasized. “I also like having written something—you’ll note the past tense,” he pointed out. “Love rereading the finished product. Tweaking here, fixing there, making it all sound better, ring truer. That part I absolutely love,” he said with feeling.

      “But the actual writing process—the sitting there, staring at the empty screen and desperately searching for the right words or semi-right words to finally fill up that awful, empty screen?” It was a rhetorical question. “No, can’t say I like that part of it. Nope, not at all,” he declared with a shake of his head. “That’s the agony part of this whole gig I’m in. It’s pretty much like—well, like sitting down at the computer, opening up a vein and just bleeding.”

      When he put it that way, it seemed positively awful. “Doesn’t sound like something anyone would want to do willingly,” Isabelle observed.

      He nodded his agreement. “Glad you see my side of it. So, can I come along?” he asked.

      He was actually asking her to “tag” along. Boyishly and charmingly asking her. As if he thought there was a chance in hell that she would possibly consider telling him no.

      Was he kidding?

      What woman in her right mind would say no to him? Especially when he looked so damn appealing asking the question.

      “Are you sure your mother won’t mind being left alone like this?” she asked.

      “She’s not alone,” he corrected her. “Victoria’s here.”

      He was referring to his daughter. She’d always liked that name. It sounded so regal, so cultured. Unlike her own name which struck her as just being sturdy. Isabelles were the workers of the world. Victorias, on the other hand, were the princesses.

      Isabella was the queen who gave Columbus money, and he discovered a brand new world, remember? she reminded herself. Without Queen Isabella you wouldn’t be standing where you are.

      It made no difference.

      “Your daughter,” Isabelle said with a nod.

      “You’ve met Victoria?” he asked, surprised. Funny, Victoria hadn’t said anything, and up until now, his daughter told him everything. He was going to miss that when she hit her teens and became a card-carrying stranger for the next x-number of years.

      “Yes, she came in just at the tail end of my evaluation of your mother’s condition. She looked more poised than she did in that photograph I saw of her in People Magazine.”

      It took him a second to remember the article the therapist was apparently referring to. “Oh, right. The four-page spread last year,” he recalled, nodding. “That was written just as And Death Do Us Part came out,” he recalled. “Victoria was eleven when it was written, and as she likes pointing out, she’s ‘matured’ since then.”

      And was in oh such a hurry to grow up, he thought as a sadness tugged on his heart. He knew he couldn’t keep Victoria a little girl forever, but he’d secretly been hoping that he was going to find a way to slow time down. No such luck.

      He smiled at the very thought of his daughter. He’d fallen in love with her the first moment he saw her—and could never understand how Jean, his ex, could have walked out on her. But that was Jean’s loss, he thought. Right from the beginning, he’d made sure that Victoria would never feel as if she’d been abandoned—the way he had been. His ex-wife’s cavalier behavior had left a scar on his heart, but from that first moment, he was determined that it would do no such thing to their daughter. He liked to believe he had succeeded.

      “She keeps me on my toes,” he confided. “And her grandmother on hers. I’d say that of the three of us, Victoria’s easily the oldest one.” He laughed, shaking his head. “I don’t know if that speaks well of us or not, but it makes my mother happy. She has no use for numbers unless they apply to box office takes or residuals from previous airings. Definitely not when they apply to something as ‘mundane’—her word—as age.”

      As Isabelle listened to him talk, she had to struggle not to get lost in the sound of his resonant voice.

      Emerging from her semi-euphoric fog, she suddenly realized that, if he accompanied her, the writer would, perforce, wind up seeing her apartment. That instantly sobered her.

      The idea of having someone like Brandon Slade over to her small, crammed flat when he lived in a house that could easily accommodate half a dozen of her apartments didn’t exactly thrill her. She didn’t consider herself vain, but neither did she like to appear poor or become some kind of an object worthy of his pity.

      Isabelle bit her bottom lip, thinking. Maybe she could talk him into staying in the car while she threw a few things into a suitcase.

      He’s a man, not a pet to leave in the car while you run an errand. Besides, it’s hot today, unseasonably hot. You want him to get sunstroke?

      You’re not supposed to be vain, remember? Especially when you have nothing to be vain about.

      Having convinced herself, she lifted her

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