Fairytale Come Alive (Ghosts and Reincarnation #4)(20)

“When are you going to eat?” he asked.

“Pardon?”

“You said you’d make dinner and come up here. When are you going to eat?”

“I’ll bring something up with me.” Then she wondered if he wouldn’t like that, these were nice rooms, clean and tidy, maybe he didn’t want food up there. “If that’s okay.”

Then he said something completely bizarre.

“So it’s the martyr.”

She was so stunned, she couldn’t control her reaction and she blinked.

“Pardon?” she repeated.

“Your game this time. The martyr.”

It felt like he slapped her and reflexively her hands clenched into fists at her sides.

“I’m not playing the martyr,” Isabella denied softly.

“You had no dinner last night, no breakfast this morning, unless you had something at Fergus’s. You’re behaving like you’re chained to these rooms.”

“You told me you wanted me to spend my time in your house…” she lifted her hand and flicked it out, “in here.”

“I believe I said ‘as often as possible’, not every f**king minute.”

“Isn’t ‘as often as possible’ pretty much the same as ‘every f**king minute’?” Isabella asked, genuinely perplexed.

“Don’t play word games with me, Isabella. I have a university degree. I own a business, a home. I know the f**king English language.”

There it was again, the non-physical slap.

There was one thing Isabella Austin Evangelista knew how to do. She knew how to retreat from anger.

Therefore, she whispered, “All right, Prentice.”

His brows drew together over angry eyes and he stared at her. She calmly held his stare and her breath.

Then Prentice murmured, “Christ, it’s like I’ve never met you.”

She wasn’t surprised at his reaction. Twenty years ago their relationship hadn’t been totally perfect.

What it had been was passionate.

They’d fought and they’d been good at it.

Back then, she would never have backed down. She knew he wouldn’t hurt her with his anger. How she knew this, she didn’t understand, in the beginning.

Later, she would realize it was love.

Therefore, she felt safe fighting with him.

Isabella wanted to tell him that he hadn’t ever met her. She wanted to tell him that the girl he knew never really existed.

He’d created her.

Well, Annie did by asking her to spend that first summer in Scotland.

But Prentice had breathed life in her.

This was the real Isabella.

Instead, she remained silent.

They continued to stare at each other.

Then he looked away, opening the door, muttering, “Eat dinner downstairs, up here, I don’t give a f**k.”

She watched him walk down the stairs and turn on the landing, out of sight.

Then she started breathing again.

Then she wondered if maybe her doctor had been right and she really shouldn’t have stopped taking her medication.

Then she turned, picked up her yoga mat and blew out the candle.

Chapter Four

Chicken Bits

Isabella

Isabella waited half an hour (exactly) before she went downstairs.

In that time she decided to keep her hair up in the messy knot because it wasn’t that attractive, with bits sticking out everywhere, and it might look like she was trying to be all girlie-perfect in order to cook a simple dinner if she did something with it. She also decided to stay in her yoga clothes because she’d look like an idiot if she changed clothes; she wasn’t going to make dinner for the queen, just a family.

She did, however, put on a forest-green tunic that had wide sleeves and a deep slash down the neckline that opened across her collarbone, fell in a hood at the back and exposed her plum camisole.

She kept her feet bare.

In that time she also decided that Prentice had given her permission to be around the children.

Well, not exactly permission, as such, but pretty much, or, at least, she was going to go with that thought.

So Isabella wasn’t ever going to be Sally’s new best friend and watch her grow into a beautiful young woman whilst Sally shared her secrets about boys she had crushes on and Isabella imparted crucial wisdom on Sally like how to know when your mascara tube was drying out.

But Isabella at least didn’t have to hide from her and break her little girl heart by acting like a cool, remote, American bitch.

Isabella no sooner got out of her room when she heard a discordant plucking of guitar strings.

By the time she made it to the great room, she noticed three things. The first, Prentice was at a drafting board in his study with the double doors that led to that room off the great room open. The second, Sally was sitting on the floor by the huge, square coffee table in front of the big, fluffy royal blue couch, drawing. The third, Jason was lying on the couch plucking, and not very well, on Fiona’s guitar.

Isabella looked at the guitar and she felt tears crawl up her throat.

She’d forgotten about Fiona’s guitar.

Fiona didn’t take the guitar everywhere but she wasn’t often separated from it. She loved it. She’d strum it when they were sitting in a pub and she’d often play it while they were lounging on blankets around a bonfire on the beach.