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 was 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.