LITMIR.BIZ

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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

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