But she had her long, thick hair (and it pissed him off but he had to admit that he liked the blonde, it looked too fucking good on her) tied up in one of those haphazard knots that made her look effortlessly beautiful (which she, unfortunately, was) rather than coolly beautiful.
She wasn’t dressed in some ludicrously expensive designer outfit that made her look untouchable but track pants and a tunic that made her look real as well as sexy as all hell.
She laughed uproariously and uncontrollably when Sally had her incident with the flour and, he further hated to admit it, but Isabella’s face in abandoned laughter was, just as he remembered it, stunning.
And she hadn’t made his daughter feel a fool for her childish mistake.
She’d smiled often at both Sally and Jason during dinner, engaging with Sally in her jabbering and carefully drawing out Jason like she was a qualified grief counselor.
And she cooked like a fucking dream.
But she completely ignored Prentice like he didn’t exist.
Completely.
Prentice found this annoyed him.
Then he found the fact that this annoyed him annoyed him even more.
Now he found the fact that he was thinking about it at all annoyed him even more.
He sipped from his drink.
Isabella seemed determined to insinuate herself in his children’s hearts.
And she was, as ever, fucking good at it.
Sally was already half in love with her and Jason hadn’t talked about his mother with anyone but Prentice since she died.
Prentice took another sip from his drink.
He had two choices; kick her out or let her do her worst with his children and pick up the pieces when she left them behind.
Kicking her out meant breaking Annie’s heart and Annie had enough heartbreak in her life, she didn’t need any more.
And his children had been left behind by a far better woman than Isabella Evangelista and they were surviving.
And, even though Isabella was a part of it, Prentice liked hearing laughter in his kitchen and seeing his son grin. Jason hadn’t grinned for months.
He took another sip of the whisky.
He had no choice really and he found that annoyed him most of all.
“Fucking hell,” he muttered to the sea.
* * * * *
Fiona
You can say that again, Fiona’s silent words were lost on her husband.
She floated with him as he finished his drink, his beautiful eyes never leaving the sea.
He’d found that piece of land for them, paid a fortune for it and carved a house out of a cleft in the cliff.
Fiona hadn’t wanted to be out of the village even though it was only a ten minute drive away. But Prentice wanted privacy and space for his family.
And he needed the sea.
So she had no choice, really.
He put the glass on the railing which irritated her.
He always did that when he was out on the balcony brooding which wasn’t often but it happened.
Prentice could be moody, mostly about work stuff and lately about having a dead wife stuff.
She’d find his whisky glasses, sometimes days or even weeks later and they’d be filled with rainwater and mucky. It was ridiculous. Why couldn’t the man carry his glass inside?
He walked into the room, pulled off his sweatshirt and got into bed.
She knew the minute he fell asleep which was a long time after he lay down.
Then she hovered by his alarm clock poking the “off” button again and again, her finger going through each time.
It was late. He’d had the episode with Jason, he’d found his daughter had not gone to his bed for safe haven but she’d been cuddled with his ex and he’d brooded and brooding had to take a lot out of him since he did it so damned well.
The kids were out of school the next day so they could attend Annie and Dougal’s picnic, he didn’t have to get up early.
And he needed his sleep.
Fiona poked and poked and poked and then, when she lost her temper and gave it one final poke, the button depressed, the light indicating that the alarm was on went out and Fiona smiled a gleeful, triumphant smile.
Then she laughed a gleeful, triumphant (but silent) laugh.
Then she laid a ghostly kiss on her husband’s cheek which caused him to turn with agitation in bed which was what he always did which was so very not what he’d do when she’d kissed him while he was sleeping when she was alive, so she wondered why she did it while she was dead.
Then she went to her son’s room and hovered beside him while he slept.
Chapter Five
The Picnic
Prentice
Prentice opened his eyes to see the late September sun shining through the windows that made up one wall of his bedroom.
He stared through the windows.
Then his eyes cut to the alarm clock.
He leaned toward the clock; saw the alarm which was never turned off had, somehow, been turned off.
He’d slept in.
“Shit,” he muttered, throwing back the covers and knifing out of bed.
He needed to get the children up, fed, showered, dressed and he needed to get some work done before the picnic.
Not to mention he needed to do laundry or the children wouldn’t have any clothes to wear to the picnic.
He walked out the door to his rooms and stopped dead.
He heard Sally’s chatter then he heard Jason’s low mumble then he heard Isabella’s laughter, not wild and uninhibited but softer, more controlled and also clearly genuine.
He felt something settle in his gut at hearing those sounds in his home and that something, to his surprise, was not unpleasant.
Regardless, this annoyed him.
He strode to the stairs and surveyed the scene in the great room as he walked down.
Sally and Jason, both still in pajamas, were sitting at stools at the counter, their backs to him and they appeared to be eating.
Isabella was at the stove and, as Prentice made his way down the stairs, she turned, skillet in one hand, spatula in the other.
She caught his movement and did a little stutter step, stopped dead and stared up at him with her lips parted.
From the depths of his memory, he recalled that stutter step. She was grace personified but when she’d get surprised, become uncertain or was overwhelmed by her own enthusiasm, she could be clumsy.
Back then, Prentice found it adorable.
It was no less adorable now.
Fucking hell, he thought.
“Daddy!” Sally shouted, obviously following Isabella’s gaze. “Mrs. Evangahlala made us nanola pancakes!”
“Gra-nola,” Jason corrected, looking and sounding not surly and exhausted as he usually did the morning after an episode but instead rested and more like his normal self than he’d been in well over a year.
Sally looked at her brother and repeated, “Na-nola.”
“Gra-nola,” Jason reiterated.
“That’s what I said,” Sally retorted impatiently. “Na-nola.”
Jason’s gaze slid to Isabella and he muttered, “See? Mental.”
Isabella smiled a dazzling smile at Jason. A smile which, upon seeing it, Prentice also felt in his gut and that wasn’t unpleasant either which further annoyed him. Then she slid what appeared to be an enormous, perfect, golden pancake out of the skillet and onto Jason’s plate.
Prentice stopped at the side of the counter and studied the pancake. Jason was wasting no time buttering and pouring golden syrup on it. And Prentice was right, the pancake looked perfect.
Prentice turned his study to Isabella.
Her hair was up in another messy knot but one long, thick tendril had fallen out of the knot and was curling along her neck, down past her collarbone to rest against the skin of her chest.
She was wearing a satin dressing gown much the same color as the track pants she wore yesterday. It w
as cut in a man’s style but came down only to the tops of her thighs. It was tied at the waist but the front had come open, wide and gaping, to expose a black lace nightie.
The nightie fit her like a glove, with lace scallops tantalizingly edging the swells of her breasts. Her cleavage itself, although there wasn’t much exposed, was even more tantalizing.
He couldn’t see the hem of the nightie under the dressing gown which meant it had to be shorter than the gown.
A mental picture formed of what Isabella’s nightie looked like without the dressing gown and his body had another physical reaction, not in his gut, it was elsewhere and it, too, was far from unpleasant.
And it was intense.
“I want another one!” Sally shouted, luckily erasing Prentice’s mental picture of Isabella in a short, tight, black lace nightie.
“You’ve already had two, sweetheart,” Isabella responded.
Sally grinned. “I know but they’re yummy and I want another one.”
“Why don’t you let Mrs. Evangelista have one,” Jason emphasized the proper pronunciation of Isabella’s name and then went on, “And, maybe Dad might want one too.”
Prentice watched his daughter give his son a hilarious, wrinkled-nose “go-to-hell” look.
Prentice watched his son roll his eyes at Sally’s hilarious, wrinkled-nose “go-to-hell” look.
Prentice nearly laughed at their interplay, something he had done very rarely in the last year because they’d very rarely done anything to laugh about or, more accurately, Jason hadn’t.
“Give it time and let those settle in your belly, Sally,” Isabella advised softly as she turned back to the stove. “You don’t want to be overfull for the picnic.”
“Okay,” Sally agreed readily which was also surprisingly.
Prentice watched Isabella walk to the stove, his eyes captivated by her ass swaying beneath the satin then captivated by her long, tan legs moving gracefully through his kitchen.
She turned when she’d made it to the stove and her hands came up to pull her robe tightly closed. “Would you like pancakes, Prentice?”
His eyes snapped to her face.
It was not open and engaging as she looked at his children. It was cool and remote.
“Please,” he replied and walked to the coffee.
The pot was mostly full.
Fiona always made the coffee and his wife made great coffee. Prentice’s coffee, as was his cooking, was crap.
When Fiona was sick and after she was gone, nearly every morning Prentice had to make the coffee except for the mornings his mother, Fiona’s mother, Debs or Morag were there which, at his request, in order to try and get the children back to a different kind of normalcy once Fiona died, his family hadn’t been coming around to help for months.
It had been a long time. He hadn’t woken to a pot of coffee since…
Prentice didn’t finish his thought as that feeling intensified in his gut.
Fucking hell, he thought again.
He poured himself a cup while Isabella slid butter into the hot skillet which melted immediately. He watched while she poured batter on the butter and saw her coffee cup was sitting by the stove, the cup mostly full as the pot had been.
She’d been so busy feeding his children; she hadn’t had time for a cup of coffee.
Fucking hell, he thought yet again.
Sally chattered, Jason ate, Isabella concentrated on his pancake and Sally’s blather and Prentice felt, like last night, that she’d forgotten he was even there.
For reasons unknown to Prentice but likely because he found her new game immensely irritating and he decided instantly he too could play a game, he walked to the side of the stove, close to where Isabella was working. Turning his back to the counter, he rested his hips against it and sipped his coffee.
The coffee was fucking heavenly.
Christ.
“Will you give me a manicure before the picnic?” Sally asked Isabella.
Prentice turned to look at her and saw, to his surprise, that Isabella was fidgeting. Moving the handle of the skillet this way and that, she was twirling the spatula in her other hand in an absentminded way. Her eyes, however, were not on the skillet; they were on the counter behind Prentice.
“I can’t, Sally,” she answered the counter. “After breakfast, I’ve got to get to Annie’s to help with the picnic.”
“Can I go?” Sally yelled. “Can I, can I, can I?”
Isabella didn’t respond.
She stepped around him then halted in a jerky way. She tipped her head to the side, surveyed the counter, sighed, then tilted it back and looked at him.
Her face a mask of good manners, she said softly, “I’m sorry, Prentice, do you mind? You’re standing in front of the granola.”
He examined her makeup free face and, even with that detached expression he thought, since she’d been back, she’d never looked lovelier.
Feeling the need to be perverse, instead of moving out of her way, as she clearly wanted him to do, he twisted, grabbed the bowl of granola he was blocking, twisted back and handed it to her.
She took it.
“Thank you,” she said quietly and politely.
She moved to the stove and used a graceful hand to sprinkle granola on the pancake before she set the bowl aside, in the opposite direction to Prentice, and flipped it expertly.
Prentice watched her do this like it was fascinating which, bizarrely, it was.
“Well?” Sally shouted.
Prentice stopped watching Isabella’s hand and looked at his daughter.
“Can I go too?” Jason asked quietly, his eyes on the tiled floor of the kitchen.
Prentice froze at this request from his son who hadn’t been willing to participate in much of anything since his mother died.
Strangely, he felt Isabella freeze at his side too. Slowly, she turned and looked at Jason. Her profile was not polite and detached. It was soft and warm and unbelievably striking.
Again, Prentice felt that weight hit his gut.
Then her head twisted, her features rearranged swiftly back to aloof and she looked up at Prentice enquiringly.
“Sorry kids, you need clean clothes and I need to do laundry,” Prentice answered.
“No you don’t,” Sally proclaimed. “Mrs. Evangahlala and I’ve been doing laundry all morning.”
Prentice’s body turned to stone.
All except his eyes which narrowed and sliced to Isabella.
Instantly, Isabella whirled to the stove and started to fidget with the skillet on the burner.
“We’ve done two loads!” Sally announced triumphantly.
“You’ve been very busy,” Prentice murmured and he watched Isabella’s body get stiff, her hands fisted tightly and she moved to a cupboard. Unfisting her hands with visible effort which Prentice found peculiar and vaguely disturbing, she pulled down a plate, got cutlery, slid the pancake on the plate and handed it all to Prentice.
“The butter and syrup are on the counter,” she informed him softly, tipped her head to the counter and then immediately dismissed him and moved away.
Prentice put his coffee cup down next to Isabella’s, walked to the other counter and, while he prepared his golden, fluffy, delicious-looking pancake, he said to his children, “We’ll all go.”
Sally threw her hands up so fast she nearly teetered off the stool as she shouted, “Hurrah!”
Prentice smiled at his daughter.
He’d hoped that Annie and Dougal’s wedding would bring some happiness to his family, cutting through the undercurrent of despair Jason was always emanating that Prentice, for the life of him, had no idea how to chase away, likely because he couldn’t cut through his own.
It appeared this was working, even for Jason.
Regrettably, Isabella was the catalyst for it.
But Prentice would take what he could get.
Including her doing the laundry which was a chore he detested, something else Fiona did. A
nd her brewing fucking heavenly coffee.
Prentice decided if Isabella wanted to play house and that came with good food and clean clothes, he’d fucking well let her.
Once he’d finished with the butter and syrup, he walked back across the kitchen and resumed his position next to Isabella while she cooked another pancake.
He thought, but wasn’t sure, he heard her suck in an exasperated breath.
This pleased him.
Then he tasted his pancake. It was superb.
He trained his eyes on his children. “If you’re done, dishes in the sink, beds made, showers, let’s go.”
Jason slouched off the stool and slunk to the sink, carrying his plate. Sally followed him doing the same but with much more enthusiasm.
Jason headed up the stairs.
Isabella gracefully strolled across the kitchen and took Sally’s plate from her.
“When are you going to give me a manicure?” Sally asked as Isabella turned to the sink and deposited Sally’s plate in it.
“We’ll find some time, honey.”
“Can we do it before the picnic?” Sally pushed.
“Sally,” Prentice warned but Isabella’s hand had lifted and she grabbed a thick hank of Sally’s hair and started twisting it gently around her finger.
She leaned down and smiled at his daughter, getting close to her face, this, unfortunately, gave Prentice an indication of just how short her nightie was as her dressing gown rode up and he saw more of her shapely thigh but he still didn’t catch a glimpse of the nightie.
Isabella spoke softly, taking his mind off her thigh (and ass and nightie).
“We’ll see, Sally. Do as your father said now. Okay?”
Prentice’s daughter knew that no’s came swiftly and maybes usually meant yes. Therefore she beamed at Isabella, nodded, turned and raced up the stairs.
Prentice finished his pancake while Isabella cooked the next one, alternately tidying the kitchen.
When it was done, she wordlessly slid it on his plate as if he was a statue holding a platter to display her glorious pancake. She switched the stove off and slid the skillet to another burner.
“Aren’t you having one?” he asked as he walked back to the counter for the butter and syrup.
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