She looked like she could be photographed for a magazine.
Instead, she was casually standing in the doorway of his study in his home gazing at him with soft, weary eyes and, if he took six steps, she could be in his arms.
On that tempting thought and to take his mind from it, his eyes fell to her hands something he didn’t realize he habitually did and he saw she was not clenching them in fists (something he did realize she habitually did) but she was carrying a magazine.
“Is something on your mind?” he asked, his gaze going back to her tired face.
“Um…” she started then she stopped.
This annoyed him.
The first time she came back she seemed cool and in control except, of course, when they were bickering but even then she’d seemed in control.
This time she seemed less sure of herself, more hesitant and it irritated him because it made her warmer, more approachable and unbelievably appealing.
He watched as she looked to the ceiling then asked, “Is Sally okay?”
“Aye.”
Her gaze came to him and her head tipped to the side. “Jason?”
“Aye.”
“Are you okay, um… after all of this?”
He liked it that she asked. Especially since she asked in a way that indicated she cared.
That familiar heavy, warm feeling hit his gut.
He ignored it and repeated, “Aye.”
She stopped speaking then she took in a breath.
With little patience, wanting to be out of her presence, wanting to be outside with his whisky, Prentice asked, “Elle, what’s on your mind?”
She swallowed and then ran the tip of her tongue along her upper lip. His body responded strongly to the sight of her tongue.
More of his low volume of patience ebbed away.
“Elle, I’m tired. I want to wind down after –”
“I have something to show you,” she said quickly, taking two steps into the room before she halted. Then he watched as she visibly lost courage, looked at his whisky and asked, “Can I have one of those?”
Careful to shield his still ebbing patience, he poured her a whisky. They walked toward each other, closing the distance between them and he handed it to her.
She took it and belted back a healthy swig.
Too healthy.
After she swallowed, her mouth dropped open, she sucked in breath as if it burned and tears sprang to her eyes.
“It’s meant to be sipped,” Prentice advised but as he was talking she took another healthy swig.
He stared in surprise.
This was something the crazy Elle who was friends with the mad Annie would do twenty years ago.
They’d get up to anything.
Much like her comment earlier about voting to push Annie off the cliff.
Elle and Annie, twenty years ago, would say practically anything as well (Annie still would), most of it hilarious.
She finished the whisky on a third swig, shut her eyes tight and winced.
When she opened her eyes to look at him, she breathed, “Good stuff.”
God, she was cute when she behaved like this. And he didn’t need cute Elle sleeping under his roof either.
No, he especially didn’t need that.
“Elle –” His patience was running out.
“I have to show you something,” she blurted, interrupting him.
“All right.”
“You’re going to be angry.”
His eyes went to the magazine. Then they returned to hers.
He didn’t speak.
“Likely very angry,” she went on.
He still didn’t speak.
“Probably very, very angry.”
“For Christ’s sake –” he clipped but didn’t finish as she flipped open the magazine and showed him a page.
He couldn’t believe his eyes. On it was a photo of Elle, Jason and him walking into hospital days before.
Jason, he noted with pride, held his body with surprising confidence for a boy his age and, even though he looked worried, he was still a handsome lad.
Elle, he noted with annoyance, held her body with unsurprising poise and, even though she looked worried, she was still a beautiful woman.
He didn’t bother studying himself.
Prentice pulled the magazine from her hand and read the caption.
Then he exploded, “Fucking hell!”
“I knew you’d be angry,” Elle replied swiftly.
He narrowed his eyes on her and snapped dryly, “Oh, you knew that, did you?” Flipping to the front of the magazine and seeing it was a celebrity gossip rag, published undoubtedly on a variety of continents he exploded again, “Christ!”
“Annie says I should talk to you. Explain how I deal with this kind of thing,” Elle said quickly.
He looked at her and his tone was biting when he asked, “Aye? You have sage advice on how I should deal with the fact that my son, without my knowledge and against my wishes, has his photograph in a trashy magazine? You have experience with that, do you?”
He watched her face pale.
Fuck.
His anger and impatience, this fucking situation, the last fucking week, hell, the last fucking month, had pushed him over the edge. He hadn’t thought about his words and he’d gone too far.
Way too far.
“Elle –” he started, instantly filled of regret.
“No,” she cut him off, cute Elle gone, warm, appealing Elle vanished, cool and aloof Isabella in her place.
He wouldn’t have said it two minutes ago but he wanted the other two back.
“As you know, I do not,” she went on. “However, I know what it’s like having my photo in trashy magazines without my knowledge and against my wishes. Nonetheless, I’m not a parent so you’re correct, I don’t have any sage advice for this.”
She bent to put her glass on the table and he knew she intended to leave.
He should have let her go.
But Prentice was fucking tired of letting her go.
Therefore, he didn’t let her go.
He slammed his glass beside hers, caught her upper arm in his grip and was surprised at her reaction.
It was violent.
She twisted her arm in a way that he had to release her or he’d hurt her. Which meant to keep her from leaving he had to find other purchase.
So he did.
He put both hands to her hips and yanked her toward him.
Her body slammed into his.
It felt fucking great.
Before he could react to this, she tipped her head back, he saw her eyes flash and she demanded in a voice that was not cold at all. It was heated.
And loud.
Loud enough for the children to hear.
“Take your hands off me, Prentice Cameron!”
Damn, but she looked fucking gorgeous when she was angry.
He didn’t do as she asked.
He shuffled her back toward the open doors. Sliding an arm tight around her waist, he held her front against his side as he reached out, grabbed one door then the other and pulled them to.
Then he pinned her in front of him against the doors.
She was breathing heavily, her breasts pressing against his chest with each breath.
Through gritted teeth, he said, “Now, if you’ll give me a fucking second before you run away, again, I’ll apologize for being a thoughtless bastard.”
“Fine. Apology accepted. Now step away,” she snapped, giving him a push with her hands at his waist.
He resisted the push by leaning further into her which pressed them together from hips to chests.
Her hands stilled and she tilted her head back further to look at him. He could see from the healthy pink in her cheeks that he had her attention.
“No,” he belatedly replied to her demand. “Now, you’ll explain how I deal with seeing my children and myself in those magazines when we’re with you.”
“You won?
??t,” she returned, her voice still hostile but now also breathy.
“You can promise that?”
“Yes, I can since you won’t be with me.”
Her words felt like a knife twisting in his gut.
She continued before he could react to that as well. “They’ll probably bother you for awhile after I’m gone. Then they’ll lose interest. You just have to learn to ignore it. It gets worse if you react. Trust me.”
He wasn’t listening. His mind was stuck on her telling him he wouldn’t be with her.
And stuck on her telling him she’d be gone.
“You’re leaving?” he asked.
“Of course,” she said shortly, her tone still that mixture of antagonistic and out of breath.
“When?”
“In a few days.”
“Why?”
Her lips parted and Prentice’s gaze riveted on them.
Therefore he watched them form the words, “Prentice step back.”
His eyes went back to hers. “Elle, answer me.”
She seemed puzzled for a moment then shook her head as if to clear it.
“Because…” She stopped and her gaze slid to the side.
He pushed closer. Her gaze snapped back.
“Sally’s fine,” she answered. “She’s going to be okay. And this isn’t my home, this isn’t my life. I have a home and a life in Chicago. I need to get back.”
He stared at her.
When she spoke again, it was softer and the hostility was gone. “They shouldn’t get used to me.”
“Too late,” Prentice returned, watched as her eyes closed and felt his already heightened anger rising even further. “So this is it?” he asked. “This is what you’re going to do now?”
Her eyes opened again and he saw confusion.
“Pardon?”
“Slide into their lives, light up their worlds, slide out, leave me to deal with their disappointment while you send boxes filled with expensive presents from wherever you are, making certain they’ll be thinking of you even though they’ll never be certain they can have you?”
Her face filled with shock and her mouth opened to speak but she didn’t when his anger boiled over.
He let her go and took a step away.
“All right, Elle, if I can guide them through losing their mother, I can guide them through losing you, repeatedly. At least I have practice with that.”
He regretted his words again when her face assumed an expression like she’d just been struck.
But he was angry enough that he didn’t take them back. Furthermore, they were the fucking truth.
He watched as she rearranged her features but she couldn’t quite hide the hurt.
Then she whispered, “What do you want me to do?”
“Don’t leave,” he replied instantly.
Her eyes grew wide.
“You want me to… to… to move here?”
Christ, how had this come about?
But he knew. This came about because this was Elle and every situation with Elle deteriorated to something out of his control.
He glared at her for a long moment before he answered, “No. I don’t want you to move here. But I want you to stay until Sally’s fit again. Until there’s a good time to explain the situation so they know what you are to them and what they can expect.”
“What am I to them?” she asked him, now sounding confused.
He simply stared at her.
She definitely was mad.
When she continued to gaze at him in that baffled way, he enquired with disbelief, “You’re serious?”
“I –”
He tried to gentle his tone when he said, “Think about it, Elle. You lose your mother and, a year later, a glamorous woman who understands your loss floats in the front door baking cakes and telling stories about your Mum and varnishing your fingernails. You lost your Mum, Elle. If you had a woman like that come into your life, what would she be to you?”
Her eyes skittered to the floor; she examined it for awhile before she sighed.
Then she murmured in a voice so soft, he barely heard her, “I really messed this up, didn’t I?”
For some reason her words disturbed him so much his anger immediately evaporated. They were uttered in a way that made it seem she took sole responsibility for everything that befell her, Prentice and his children when practically none of it (but her leaving him the second time) had been in her control.
Before he could stop himself, his hand came to cup her jaw and his thumb stroked her cheek.
At his touch, her gaze went back to him.
“You didn’t mess anything up, Elle,” he replied quietly. “This is bloody life. Life is always messy. Now, we just need to sort it out.”
She nodded, the soft skin of her face moving against his hand, her eyes still confused and tired but they’d grown warm.
Before he did what very much he wanted to do, slide his thumb along her lower lip then put his lips where his thumb had been, he dropped his hand.
“Go to bed and get some sleep. We’ll talk when you’re less tired.”
She nodded, pulled in a breath and with a heavy tone, she whispered, “Prentice, I’m so sorry about the magazine.”
There was more weight to those words than was required. She hadn’t sold the fucking photo to the magazine.
“It isn’t your fault,” he pointed out the obvious.
“I’m the reason –”
His hand came back to her jaw and she stopped speaking.
“It isn’t your fault, Elle,” Prentice repeated firmly.
“Okay,” she replied quickly but not very convincingly and before he could say another word, she said, “Goodnight.”
He watched her whirl, open the door and then disappear.
Prentice stared at the door, feeling a vague sense of unease about that entire scene and not for the obvious reasons one would be uneasy about that scene.
His eyes on the door, he tried to call up what troubled him.
When he failed, he strode back to his glass, grabbed it, went to the cupboard, tagged the bottle of whisky by the neck and took the whole fucking bottle up to his balcony.
* * * * *
Fiona
You should read her journals, Fiona told her husband as she floated with her arse close to the railing of the balcony where he was standing.
She was floating as if she was sitting there, her ghostly elbows to her ghostly knees, her ghostly eyes on his brooding face.
He didn’t respond because he didn’t hear her.
Nevertheless, she kept talking.
You’d understand if you read her journals.
Prentice kept his eyes to the sea as he took a sip from his glass (the third glass, Fiona was counting).
She sighed a ghostly sigh.
Then she said, I don’t know why the powers that be did this to me and I hate it. But I love you enough to want you to have the world and she’s been your world for twenty years. If I wasn’t already dead, that would kill me. But even I can see that you two were meant to be. Why can’t YOU see? Why don’t you FIGHT for her?
Prentice continued to stare at the sea.
You don’t want her to leave, Fiona told him.
He didn’t respond.
Quietly, with all the feeling a dead woman could feel for the live woman who made the words true, Fiona stated, She’d lay down her life for our children.
“Aye,” Prentice said softly to the sea.
Fiona melted through the railing.
Swiftly, she bolted back.
Did you hear me?
No response.
Prentice! Fiona shouted, Did you hear me?
He threw back the remainder of his whisky but didn’t give any indication he heard her.
Fiona didn’t give up.
Read her journals! Look at her palms! TRY to understand her, Prentice! She shouted. Don’t let her go again. She needs you to fight for her! Fight for your happiness, for her happiness
, for our children’s happiness! Fight so Bella can be free. Fight for ME to be free!
Prentice set his glass next to the three that were sitting on the railing.
Naturally, he took the bottle inside and put it on the bureau before he changed and went to bed.
Fiona glared at her husband as he lay in bed for a long time, arms crossed behind his head, head on his hands, eyes to the ceiling, sleep eluding him.
You’re an idiot! she snapped.
“Aye,” he murmured, rolled to his side and fell asleep.
Fiona considered throwing something at him which she could do.
Instead she dematerialized and materialized in Bella’s room.
Bella was lying on her back, arms crossed on her belly, eyes to the ceiling, sleep eluding her (again!).
You two are doing my head in! I wish you’d found some other dead woman’s husband to fall in love with! Fiona shouted.
“I do too,” Bella whispered, rolled to her side and fell asleep.
Fiona glared at her.
Then she spent the rest of the night with Sally.
Chapter Twelve
You Can Call Her Elle
Isabella
It was the blood.
It was always the blood.
It wasn’t her nudity, her open, lifeless eyes, her blue, bloodless skin.
It was the glaring red against the clean, stark white of the tub.
All she saw was all that blood.
Isabella screamed.
“Elle!”
When she heard her name, she jolted awake.
Prentice was crouched before her beside the couch, his hand on her arm shaking her, his face a mask of alarm.
She jumped to her feet, nearly knocking Prentice off his.
She wasn’t thinking. Her mind was in turmoil as it always was after those dreams.
He surged up and caught her on the run. His arm curving around her waist, he pulled her in front of him, his arms locking tight around her.
She struggled violently. His arms grew tighter.
“Jesus, Elle, what the fuck?”
Suddenly, she felt his warmth, his strength, his arms holding her captive against his solid, strong body.