“Right,” Izzy said. “Thanks.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.” What could she say? She couldn’t complain. There were more than half a dozen friends all over the country who never refused her request to store some stuff for her. And she probably could use the clothes.
“Iz?”
“I’m good. Thanks,” she said with false brightness. “You’ve done me a huge favor!”
Emily was looking at her with suspicious eyes. Izzy made her mouth stretch wider into a big smile. Her relaxing respite was over, but her best friend didn’t need to know that. Izzy didn’t want anyone to know how much it dismayed her to think of her belongings catching up with her—especially at Owen’s.
Chapter Five
O wen was enticed down one flight of stairs by the smell of some kind of simmering sauce that had to include tomato, onion, garlic and basil. Two days had passed since Will and Emily’s visit, and he was damn tired of the four walls of the master bedroom suite. He’d started watching medical programs on the Discovery Channel, and the odd conditions highlighted by some of the shows were starting to seriously disturb him.
He found his wife in a corner of the living room, her back turned to the staircase as she bent over a couple of cardboard boxes. Her position tightened her khaki pants across her backside and Owen smiled to himself. Yeah. Way better view than what was available upstairs.
Settling on the last step, he gave himself a few minutes to indulge in a purely masculine occupation—appreciating the physical charms of a beautiful woman. He wasn’t going to feel guilty about it, either. For God’s sake, he was a guy after all, a bored one at that, and it wasn’t a crime that Isabella Cavaletti’s sex appeal could spark a pleasant smolder in the center of his libido.
He might be down, but he wasn’t dead.
Two days ago her attractions had been stretching his nerves thin, but since that visit from their respective best friends, Izzy had been more businesslike. Instead of her cheerful chatter, she’d turned quiet and polite—downright preoccupied.
He’d decided against prying into her change of disposition. It was no concern of his.
So he could just sit on the step and ogle the outside of her appealing package and leave her inside alone. His gaze followed the line of her spine as she went from bent over to cross-legged on the floor beside the boxes. She reached inside one and pulled out a hardback book. Her shiny black hair swung forward on each side, the split revealing a patch of smooth skin at the nape of her neck.
The spot looked soft and vulnerable and was perfectly sized for a man’s mouth. He let his mind wander to the idea, his hand rubbing the stubble on his jaw. If he were smooth shaven, he might place a kiss there, as his hands slid down her sides to her slim hips. She would be warm and pliant as he drew her back against his body, crossing his arms over her flat belly so that rounded butt of hers was tucked against his hips.
As she sensed his erection just layers of denim and cotton behind her, she’d push back, giving her hips a little wiggle while making a sound that was supposed to be a moan, but was much closer to a sob…
A sound that was supposed to be a moan but was much closer to a sob?
Where the hell had that come from? But then he knew, because he heard it again—Izzy’s shoulders trembled and she let out another quiet, choked-off sob.
“Izzy?” he said, without thinking. “Is everything okay?”
She whipped around, and that’s when he realized maybe he should have thought first. Maybe he should have thought to take himself back upstairs and leave her to whatever was on her mind. He wasn’t supposed to be concerned with the inside of her package even though it was fairly obvious that from the spiky-lashed and tear-drenched chocolate of her eyes, Izzy wasn’t too happy.
“How did you get down here?” she asked.
“One stair at a time,” he admitted. “On my ass.”
“Owen!” she started to scold, then, apparently realizing there were tears on her cheeks, she dashed them away with the backs of both hands. “Owen, you shouldn’t be doing that on your own.”
“I’ve been on my own a lot the past couple of days,” he heard himself grumble. Oh, hell. Now he sounded like he was complaining about her lack of attention when he’d been wishing for that very thing since he’d let her back into his life.
She made a face. “I’m sorry, I know you must be bored. I’ve just felt a little less…talkative than usual.”
He was such a rat. There she was with tears still drying and she was apologizing to him. “What’s the matter, honey?”
“Nothing.” She shook her head, and scooted around on her bottom to face him. “Not a thing.”
He glanced at the book in her lap, then flicked his gaze toward the boxes behind her. “What do you have there?”
“Oh. Emily brought them over. She’s been storing the boxes for me. One contains some clothes and the other a bunch of books from my childhood.”
“Yeah? What’s the one you have there?” Curiosity about a book wasn’t curiosity about her, he told himself.
She held it up. “Eight Cousins, by Louisa May Alcott. One of my favorite books as a kid, along with the sequel, Rose in Bloom.”
He knew Louisa May Alcott, of course, but he had never heard of these two titles. “Does some annoyingly good little girl die?”
She put a hand on her chest and made a mock gasp. “Are you referring to Beth in Little Women? For shame, to cast aspersions on one of the most beloved fictional characters of all time. I cried for hours when I read that book the first time.”
“Yeah? Well, boys, when they are forced to read that book or watch that movie, we use our imaginations to invent ways to hurry that dreary thing to her ultimate destination.” But Izzy had mentioned crying, so he figured he could bring it up. “Eight Cousins must have a storyline like that one if you’re teary-eyed now.”
An embarrassed flush crawled up her neck, and she made another quick swipe at her cheeks. “No, no. It’s a cheerful story about an orphan girl who is taken in by her large family and becomes a much beloved member—particularly by the seven boy cousins she’s never met before.”
“So why’d it make you cry?”
Her gaze slid away from his. “Call me sentimental. I haven’t seen this copy in a long time and it reminded me of how much pleasure I got out of reading it as a child.”
Remembrance of pleasure would make her sob? It didn’t jive, but hey, he’d promised himself he wouldn’t pry.
So he lifted his head and sniffed the air. “Something smells really good.” He remembered in Vegas that she mentioned coming from a large Italian family, no surprise given her last name and the Mediterranean warmth of her olive skin and big brown eyes. “Is that something from your childhood, too? A woman named Cavaletti surely learned her talent in the kitchen at a young age.”
“Both my nonnas and a zia or two could make a grown man weep with what came out of their stock pots.”
Weep? Hmm, more crying. “Yeah? What about your mom? Or is she a rebel like you and skipped out on the cooking lessons?”
“She skipped out on a lot of things,” Izzy murmured, but then her gaze narrowed. “Did you just call me a rebel?”
“Ms. Just-Say-No-to-Dewey? What do you think?”
“I think you might be right. Though, truly, moving on from Dewey is—” Breaking off, she laughed. “Don’t get me started on the Dewey decimal system. We’ll be here all night and I won’t even notice your eyes glazing over.”
“So what will we talk about then? I am bored.”
“I don’t know.” She tucked her hair behind her ears and he found himself fascinated with the tiny gold ring threaded through the rim of her left one.
Rebel, all right. No run-of-the-mill piercing for Isabella Cavaletti. She had a different kind of adornment, one that made him think of that sweet delicate shell of ear and how if he let himself follow it with his tongue, he could suck on her tender lobe without getting a mouthful of jewelry.
It would just be a mouthful of Izzy.
Clearing his throat, he shifted on the step, then shifted his gaze off her pretty face. “Um…uh…” The boxes. He shook his head, trying to clear it. “Why do you have Emily storing your stuff?”
“Oh.” She looked embarrassed again. “Would you believe I don’t have my own place?”
He blinked at her. “What?”
“I shamelessly take advantage of my friends, and every one of them ends up with a box or two or three of Izzy-belongings. My work means that I travel all over and I don’t have an actual home base, if you know what I mean.”
No. He had no idea what she meant. “You don’t…you don’t have an address?”
“I have a P.O. box, but I take care of my bills online. It seems odd to a lot of people, but it works out fine for me.”
“What about…” He couldn’t wrap his mind around it. “Television. Car. Coffemaker.”
“I rent a car when I need one. Most hotel rooms come complete with TV and coffee service.”
Still…”You are a rebel. Or should I say a rolling stone?”
Izzy shrugged. “Good phrase. I use it myself. I’m definitely footloose, that’s for sure. I travel all over the country and enjoy the different sights I see and the friends I make.”
Yeah, but for how long did she enjoy them? She moved from place to place and, unlike a turtle, didn’t even bother carrying her house on her back. He remembered Bryce had told him that Izzy had arrived at the condo with only a single small suitcase.
“So you really like living like that?”
“It’s good,” she said, sounding defensive. “It’s a good life.”
“I guess.” If you didn’t like roots or stability or your very own Wii game system. Not to mention a place where your relatives could track you down…Okay, maybe he could see an upside.
But he suspected Izzy couldn’t see a thing, because her gaze was back on her copy of Eight Cousins and he could detect the distinct glint of tears in her eyes again. He found himself scooting back a step, and cursing his boredom again, because coming down the stairs and seeking her out had been a mistake. What he’d seen and heard—what he’d found inside Izzy—was hitting him right where he didn’t want her anywhere near.
His heart.
In the master bedroom suite, Izzy took plates off the tray that Bryce had carried up the stairs and passed them to the two brothers who were sitting at places set on a card table she’d found stashed in a closet. Bryce pretended to swoon as he breathed in the smell of the lasagna that she’d made from the sauce she’d simmered two days before.
“I love your pretty fairy wife,” he told Owen. “She’s beautiful, she cooks and she even told me I don’t have to worry about doing the dishes later.”
“Stop flirting,” his brother answered. “And damn right you’re going to do the dishes.”
Bryce groaned. “Me and my big mouth. Would it aid my cause if I complained about the looooong board meeting Granddad presided over today? I doodled through an entire pad of paper.”
Izzy pulled out her chair and sank into her seat as Owen gave Bryce a considering look. “The day you waste time doodling is the day I put on ballet slippers and dance in Swan Lake.”
Bryce clapped his hands over his ears. “Not another word. Don’t burn that image onto my brain!”
Owen glanced at Izzy. “Bryce can take in the details of a meeting, plan another and write up the report on a third all at the same time.”
“Not to mention managing my fantasy baseball team,” Bryce said, around a bite of lasagna. “Oh, God, this is good, Izzy. Really, I’m so marrying you.”
She had to smile at him. “But I’m already married.”
Bryce’s eyes brightened. “About that…”
“Don’t go there,” his brother warned.
Don’t go there. But they had gone there, Izzy thought, for no less than a thousand times, and then had not even gone on to discuss the next step—an annulment—since she’d moved into Owen’s condominium. Of course, they’d been pretty much keeping to their corners these days. Though she knew Owen was going stir-crazy, she hadn’t felt much like being his entertainment or distraction. That box of books that Emily had delivered seemed to sit on Izzy’s shoulders, weighing her down. It was good to have Owen’s brother here to give them both another focus.
“Did you hear that, Isabella?”
She started, directing her attention toward Bryce again. “What?”
“I was saying that you two have a reprieve from the Marston machine even when the ‘rents get back from their cruise. Right after, Mom’s on tap for a benefit she’s organizing and she’s roped Dad into helping her with the last-minute details.”
Izzy thought of the elegant older woman. “Something for the symphony, I suppose?”
“Nah,” Bryce answered. “She abhors the symphony.”
Owen smiled, and Izzy instantly noticed. He hadn’t been doing much of that lately, and it looked good on him. He had strong white teeth and the smile crinkled the corners of his eyes.
“Mom has the pearls and the blue blood, but to give her credit, she’s no snob,” he said. “She really abhors the symphony just as much as she loves the opera, Springsteen and the Stones.” He looked over at Bryce.
“She’s a piece of work,” they said together, then laughed.
“Dad’s favorite phrase,” Owen explained.
The brothers shared a smile that forced Izzy to stare down at her plate and swallow a sigh. There was a wealth of family memories and familial closeness in the way Owen and Bryce spoke to each other and spoke about their parents. It made her want to grab a book and escape like she’d done so many times as a child. Inside the pages of a story, she wasn’t the outsider, the charity case, the person others felt sorry for.
Even if the book was about an orphan like Rose of Eight Cousins and Rose in Bloom, the character wasn’t left to fend for herself. In books, Izzy had always found her happy ending right along with the protagonist.
“By the way, I thought of another one,” Owen said, reaching across the table to touch her arm with his hand.
She looked up. “Another one?” His gaze was trained on her face and she wondered if that was concern she saw in his eyes. It made her skin feel hot and she was suddenly aware of his fingertips on her wrist. Each pad sent an individual streamer of sensation up her arm that then ribboned around her body. Her now-tight lungs struggled to bring in a breath. “Another one what?”
A little smile playing at his mouth, he sang softly, to the tune of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” “You’ll go down and hit a tree.”
“Hey,” Bryce said, frowning. “Are you making fun of me?”
Owen grinned. “Just how you mangled the words to your favorite Christmas carol. And remember this other immortal line of the same song you misheard—not to mention mis-sang? ‘Olive, the other reindeer.’”
“Oh, yeah. For years, I never could figure out why Olive didn’t make it into the movie.”
Owen shook his head. “Olive the reindeer, lost on the cutting room floor. No wonder I’ve always been considered the brainy brother in the family.”
“Hah!” Bryce said, but he looked stymied for a comeback.
Izzy had to laugh, her low mood rising. Was that what Owen had been after? Was he attuned to her that closely? She rallied, trying to fit in with the lighthearted conversation.
It was what she’d done from childhood, after all—making a small place for herself where none was before. “They’re called Mondegreens, you know,” she told the two men.
“What?” Bryce asked.
“Misheard lyrics. In 1954, a woman named Sylvia Wright wrote a magazine article confessing that she’d misheard the lyric of a folk song about an unlucky earl, ‘and laid him on the green,’ as ‘and Lady Mondegreen.’”
“Ah,” Bryce answered. “So there’s a name for the infamous line Owen once sang at summer camp—’He’s got the whole world in his pants.
’”
Izzy decided to be loyal and stifled her laugh. “Hey, I know someone who for years thought the refrain for that old TV show theme song was ‘The Brady Sponge, the Brady Sponge.’”
“No one could be that dim,” Owen scoffed. Then he did a double take, his gaze narrowing on her face. “Wait, the ‘someone’ was you?”
Heat shot up her face. “I was, like, six or something.”
“Yeah, but ‘The Brady Sponge’? And you said you sang it that way for years. At least Caro and I clued in Bryce right away about Rudolph not hitting a tree.”
“Yeah, but you let me wonder about Olive for half my life, “his brother grumbled.
Once again, their exchange tickled Izzy’s funny bone. She let herself laugh now, appreciating the echoes of amusement on the faces of the men sharing her table. She was good at this “fitting in and making others feel comfortable” thing—no matter how temporary the circumstances for it were.
“Really, Izzy,” Owen said, shaking his head. “I’m trying to wrap my mind around this, because it would seem to be a family-wide shame that should have been corrected immediately. What kind of siblings let you sing ‘The Brady Sponge’?”
Oh. “I thought you knew. I’m an only child.” And for all Zia Sophia or Nonna Angela knew, it was “The Brady Sponge.” The only programs the elderly ladies watched on TV were The Price Is Right and their afternoon soaps.
Owen frowned. “I wasn’t aware.”
“Probably because he heard an Italian last name and assumed—well, we all know how wrong assumptions can be,” Bryce said, his expression pious. “I, on the other hand, make it my pleasure to learn a woman—um, a person—on an individual basis.”
“Stop, Bryce,” Owen said. “Before I backhand you with my cast.”
“I’ll tell Mom,” his younger brother taunted.
“And I’ll—”
“Stop, stop,” Izzy cut in, amused by their brotherly byplay. As always, what she’d never had fascinated and bemused her. “Bryce, your brother’s assumptions, if he actually had any, are not that far off the mark. There’s a gazillion Cavalettis. Grandparents, great aunts, uncles, aunts and cousins.”
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