She recognized more than one face.
Each recognized face caused her heart to contract and her breathing to go erratic.
She curled her fingers into her palms, tight, feeling her nails dig into the flesh painfully.
And familiarly.
The pain, as it often did, calmed her breathing, if not her heart.
“Isn’t this quaint!” Mikey declared also staring out the window and Isabella bit back the desire to explain that the British didn’t like it overly much when Americans described their homes as “quaint”.
She bit back the desire because he was very excited and she loved him.
There were two people she loved on the entire earth, Mikey Bruce and Annie McFadden. Therefore, she’d rather slit her own wrists than do one, single thing that might quell his incalculable glee.
And, for Isabella Austin Evangelista, that was saying something.
“Picnics and dinner parties and log throwing,” Mikey kept talking, “I can’t wait!”
Isabella struggled with her earlier thought because Mikey could be stubborn and so could Annie (to say the least, about both of them) and she wanted to try to curb his disappointment and Annie’s annoyance because they’d had, Isabella knew, about five hundred conversations about the Highlands Games demands Mikey was making on the upcoming festivities.
Therefore, she said softly, “There isn’t going to be log throwing, Mikey. Annie explained that.”
Mikey turned his gaze to Isabella and waved his hand. “I’ll talk her around.”
“Please, she has everything planned as she wants it. It isn’t like you can throw together an event like that on the spur of the moment.”
Mikey’s eyes narrowed and Isabella pulled in a breath.
“I’m sorry but this is a romantic fairytale come alive. A Scottish romantic fairytale come alive. When that happens, you can do anything you want! And a Scottish romantic fairytale come alive means log throwing!” Mikey declared.
He was not wrong. Well, he was about the log throwing, but not about the other stuff.
Annie and Dougal getting married, after twenty years and all that had happened in between, was most definitely a romantic fairytale come alive.
Even though she was happy for her friend, very happy, staggeringly happy, Isabella’s fingers tensed and the nails embedded deeper into the flesh of her palms.
Mikey looked back out the window and so did Isabella.
* * * * *
Twenty years ago, as her father had told Prentice, they’d gone back to Chicago the very day Prentice walked out of Fergus’s house.
So confident in their love, so confident in Isabella, he didn’t even look back.
The next week had been the worst in her life (until the week after, of course).
And this was also saying something.
One could say Isabella’s life had been filled with “worst weeks”.
That was just the worst of them.
Her father had been furious at her “tryst” with “the fisherman” and also about her keeping it from him for over a year. He took every opportunity (and when there weren’t opportunities, he made them) to describe to Isabella his extreme displeasure.
And when he did, he did this at length.
Sometimes for hours.
Isabella had been heartbroken.
So heartbroken, for the first time in her life, her father’s verbal tirades barely affected her.
All she could think of was Prentice and that awful, awful, awful meeting in Fergus’s living room. The way he looked, his anger, his disbelief, his frustration, all of it pouring off him in waves and crashing against her.
And there was not one thing she could do about it.
Not that first thing.
Not that she would have.
She knew better.
And, it must be said, Prentice deserved better.
However, in an unusual moment of courage, three days after their return, she approached her father and told him he’d been wrong. It wasn’t a “tryst” and Prentice wasn’t just “a fisherman” and even if he was, she didn’t care. She loved him, she wanted to marry him and she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him in his village and that was that.
Her father struck her.
Open-handed and brutal.
When her head swung back he did it again.
He had struck her before in her life, not often, seventeen times to be exact (she’d counted, adding those two, it made it nineteen).
But he’d never done it twice in a row.
She’d been stunned and her courage fled as quickly as it came.
She’d been weak. Such a coward.
Always, all her life, a coward.
Just like her mother.
Prentice deserved better than that. She knew that to the depths of her very soul.
“I’ll not listen to you speak of him again,” her father had told her.
She didn’t speak of Prentice again.
Never again.
Her father’s blows had left a bruise and Isabella had learned her lesson.
And she knew whatever happened in his life, Prentice would have a better one without the likes of her in it.
Two days after that, she got the call that Dougal and Annie had been in a car accident.
By some miracle, Dougal had come away unscathed except for a few cuts and bruises.
Annie had not fared so well.
In fact, for two days, it was touch and go if she would survive.
Isabella’s father forbade her to return to Scotland to be with her friend.
It nearly killed her to be away from Annie and Prentice and Dougal.
But she didn’t disobey her father.
Something happened while Annie fought for her life. Not only did Fergus blame Dougal and Annie’s mother, Clarissa (who was divorced from Fergus and still lived in Chicago but she flew to Scotland when Annie was injured) blamed Dougal, but also Dougal blamed himself.
The minute Annie was stable; Fergus had her moved to a hospital in Edinburgh. The minute Annie was able; Clarissa had her flown home to do her rehabilitation.
Annie did everything she could within her limited power at the time to convince everyone that Dougal wasn’t at fault (and she failed).
However, she didn’t do anything to try to convince Dougal she still loved him.
Her face had been scarred, quite badly.
And her body…
It didn’t bear thinking about.
One day when Isabella had taken her to rehab, on the way home, Isabella had gently tried to find a way through Annie’s disheartening stubbornness.
“Really, Bella, do you think Dougal, Dougal, should be saddled with me? Like this?” She pointed to her face then lifted up her weakened arm and jiggled it, before she dropped it and looked out the window. “He’s a Scottish god. He’s the best looking man I’ve ever laid eyes on. He should marry a supermodel, not a freak show.”
“Annie –” Isabella tried, her already broken heart splintering.
“Shut it!” Annie had snapped, her tone nasty, something, at that time, Isabella was used to. Since the accident, Annie had been nasty, very nasty and very often, to everyone including (and especially) Isabella. “I don’t want to talk about it.” She paused for emphasis then finished, “Ever.”
Being a coward, Isabella didn’t bring it up again.
However, two years ago, Annie had had to go back to Scotland. Fergus was ill and he needed his daughter.
Unsurprisingly, Annie had run into Dougal.
She’d had plastic surgeries (three of them) and the scarring had been significantly diminished (but there was still some minor disfigurement). She’d gained back the full use of her arm but, when she grew tired, her gait would weaken and she’d walk with a slight limp.
Miraculously, with a good deal of patience exhibited by Isabella, Mikey, Clarissa and Fergus, Annie had also regained her zest for life and her sense of humor (but, unfortunately, she’d kept
her stubbornness).
Dougal, Annie reported to Isabella, was ravaged by the very sight of her and did anything he could to avoid her and did it spectacularly well, much to Annie’s dismay. Although she never said this, Isabella knew it to be true by the sheer amount of time Annie spent talking about it.
In the intervening years, Dougal had been married and divorced.
The divorce, Annie found out (much later), was because the woman he married hadn’t been Annie.
Within months, with Isabella’s subtle guidance during Annie’s many telephone calls which centered mostly on Dougal and the lack of times she’d run into him, which she found increasingly frustrating since she was spending any time away from her father in the attempt to run into Dougal but telling herself she was doing errands or the like, Annie had decided to win him back.
This was an effort doomed to fail.
Dougal, evidently, could be stubborn too.
Heartbreak, it was Isabella’s vast experience, did that to you.
Fortunately for Annie (distressingly for Isabella, though she never said a word, and Annie did her best to be gentle whenever she mentioned it), Annie recruited Prentice and his wife, Fiona.
Four years after Isabella left, Prentice had married Fiona Sawyer.
Isabella knew Fiona and she liked her a great deal. Fiona was pretty and lively and very, very funny. They’d been friends and Fiona often spent time with Annie and Isabella or, with Fiona’s boyfriend Scott, they’d be a threesome going to movies or the pub or to the beach to build a fire and sit in the sand and snog.
Scott and Fiona, obviously, had broken up.
Prentice and Fiona had two children, Jason and Sally and, according to Annie, Fiona had not lost any of her spirited liveliness.
Isabella was glad to hear that, as much as it killed her. Prentice deserved that.
Prentice deserved everything.
With Prentice and Fiona in the mix, Dougal didn’t stand a chance.
And the Scottish romantic fairytale came alive, which would, this week, end in happily ever after.
Unfortunately, Prentice and Fiona’s romantic fairytale was not to be that long-lasting. After Fiona complained of headaches she’d been diagnosed with a brain tumor and, shockingly to everyone (most especially Prentice, for obvious reasons) she’d been dead within months.
That was a year, one month, three weeks and four days ago.
Fiona didn’t live to see her two friends blissfully wed in a week’s worth of festivities to celebrate the happy ending it took twenty years to come about.
And Prentice was a widower with two motherless children facing a week’s worth of festivities as best man to his best friend whilst the girlfriend who’d heartlessly jilted him was maid of honor.
No, Isabella thought, this was not fun and exciting.
This was agony.
She came out of her upsetting thoughts and realized they were approaching Fergus’s stately manor house.
The last time she’d come from America and approached this house, she’d not been in a limousine. She’d been in the backseat of Fergus’s Jaguar and she’d been jumping around more than Mikey.
Dougal’s beat up old truck was in the drive.
So was Prentice’s beat up old Harley.
Dougal was sitting on a step.
Prentice was standing at the top, arms crossed on his wide chest, his beautiful eyes on the Jag.
Sometimes, when Isabella was feeling maudlin, she’d take out the photo frame she carried everywhere with her, she’d study Prentice’s picture and she’d try to determine the color of his eyes.
When she’d been with him, she’d done it up close.
She could, she thought then (and now) do it for hours.
They were neither green, nor gray, nor brown, nor blue.
They were all of them in an equal mixture.
They were the most beautiful eyes she’d ever seen in her life, before, or since.
Fergus had barely stopped the car when Annie was out the door, flying toward Dougal, who’d stood and was walking with long-legged strides toward her, a huge smile on his handsome face.
Isabella would have done the same but, such was her excitement, her fingers were all thumbs and she was having trouble getting her seatbelt unfastened.
At home in Chicago with her father, she was unfailingly sedate, quiet and unassuming, as her father liked her to be.
With Annie in Scotland and at university (where they’d met), she was anything but sedate, quiet and unassuming.
And, with Prentice, she could be anything she wanted to be.
Which meant, with Prentice, she could be free.
Something she’d never been in her whole life.
Prentice had not walked with long-legged strides to her when she’d finally exited the car. His eyes didn’t leave her but he didn’t smile.
Isabella felt a moment of uncertainty, even though he’d never given her any indication in the months they’d been separated that their summer romance of the year before had cooled.
She felt her step stutter as she walked toward him. He noticed it, his gaze dropping to her feet.
Then he shook his head and grinned.
That was all she needed.
She flew at him so fast he got only one step toward her before she collided with him. His foot went back to brace their bodies, his arms came around her, fierce and tight, and his mouth crushed down on hers.
“Oh for goodness sake, don’t they have boys in America?” Fergus interrupted the Snog Fest, his voice filled with amusement.
“Not like they do here, Dad,” Annie retorted, her voice happy and teasing.
Isabella didn’t reply, she was too busy looking in Prentice’s eyes and counting the colors.
“Missed you, baby,” he’d whispered and her eyes closed.
She loved it when he called her “baby”.
Isabella pressed deeper into him and opened her eyes.
“Not as much as I missed you.”
An extraordinary warmth came to his face as he gazed down on her, he grinned again and shook his head.
He had no idea every word she said was utterly true. She was the living dead when he was not with her. His presence, his touch, his kiss, brought her to life.
Like Sleeping Beauty.
Another fairytale come alive.
Or so she thought.
Now, Isabella watched the house get closer and she reckoned she was most likely not going to get the same greeting.
Annie had been home to Chicago three times in the last two years, two of those times she’d been back together with Dougal and, one of them, Dougal came with her.
Isabella did not see Dougal.
Although Annie made excuses, Isabella knew Dougal had no interest in seeing Isabella.
In fact, Fergus had cooled toward her after what she did to Prentice and when she didn’t come back after Annie’s accident. He’d cooled substantially.
It wasn’t until years later, after Fergus had come to Chicago and he and Annie had dinner with Isabella and her father and Isabella had run into some colleagues from work that Fergus’s warmth toward Isabella had come back.
Regardless of the outcome of the evening, Isabella found it supremely humiliating the way her father had behaved.
Her colleagues had been in a good mood, having been out for drinks, and they were loud and happy, asking Isabella to join them some time, any time.
They trotted on their merry way and her father stared daggers at them.
Then he’d turned to his daughter.
“You will not join those ridiculous people for a drink. For God’s sake, every last one of them was publicly inebriated. How crass,” her father had snapped.
“They’re just having fun,” Isabella, very unwisely, had stated quietly.
Her father halted, turned, and leaned into her threateningly (and not unusually) and Isabella could actually feel Fergus and Annie get tense.
“Are you contradicting me?” Carver
Austin asked in a lethal voice that didn’t threaten punishment if her answer was incorrect, it promised it.
“Of course not,” Isabella whispered back immediately, feeling her face getting pale right before she felt the blood rush painfully into it.
“I didn’t think so,” her father replied, looked at Annie, giving her a head-to-toe, and then to Fergus. “Firm hand, good man. Doesn’t matter how old they are.”
Then he’d walked into the restaurant, arrogantly expecting them to follow.
“I think –” Fergus started, his voice sounding weirdly strangled.
Annie cut him off. “Dad, I told you about this.”
“It’s okay, Mr. McFadden,” Isabella had leapt to her father’s defense. “Honestly. He just a little –”
“Don’t say another word, Bella,” Fergus clipped and Isabella’s mouth snapped shut, mainly because he hadn’t called her “Bella” since that last summer (and no one called her “Elle” except Prentice, not in her life and she loved it when he called her that too). “Not another word.” Fergus’s eyes went to where they last saw her father, he muttered, “Christ,” under his breath and then he ushered the two women in, his arms protectively held around both of them.
As humiliating as that scene had been, Isabella was glad that Fergus didn’t hate her anymore. She’d always liked him a good deal. He was lovely, a wonderful man, a doting father, something, at least from afar, Isabella could definitely appreciate.
She was also glad he’d won his battle over cancer.
And lastly, she would be happy to see him again.
At least there was one thing to look forward to.
“Look at that house!” Mikey cried from beside her, craning his neck and moving around in the backseat, trying to get a look at the house as they rode at a crawl next to it. “It’s something out of a movie!”
“Or a modern day fairytale,” Isabella teased, Mikey looked at her and smiled a beautiful, gleaming, happy smile.
She smiled back but it felt funny on her face.
With great exuberance, Mikey vaulted out of his door.
Isabella took a deep breath and, with far less enthusiasm (in fact, none at all), she exited hers.
* * * * *
Fiona
Prentice Cameron stood staring out the window at the sleek limousine, watching as the effeminate man bounded out one side and continuing to watch as the beautiful, elegant woman sedately exited the other.