“She’s too thin,” Prentice had said.
Fiona shook her head and repeated, “Right.”
“She wears way too much makeup.”
Fiona grinned and repeated again, “Right.”
Prentice’s face hardened but his eyes got warm as they looked into hers. “She’s deceitful, untrustworthy, snobbish, thoughtless and a complete bitch.”
That Fiona couldn’t contradict.
She knew exactly what Isabella had done to Prentice, exactly. He’d told her everything.
And Fiona also knew that Isabella had not deigned to come back when her friend had been fighting for her life in hospital.
Therefore Fiona knew that Isabella Austin Evangelista was all those things.
And more.
And none of them were good.
Before she could say another word, Prentice had kissed her. Then he’d taken her to bed.
She’d never ogled a picture of his ex again.
Ah, she thought, good times.
“Prentice?” Dougal called from the doorway and Prentice turned from the window.
Fiona stayed staring out of it.
The man with Isabella rounded the car, staring up at the house with his mouth open and his eyes wide. Isabella gave him a smile that looked like butter-wouldn’t-melt and linked her arm in his.
She was wearing classy, high-heeled black boots, a cranberry-colored wool skirt that hit her at her knees and fit her like a second skin and a matching jacket that had stylish detailing at the pockets and the lapels. She had on a satin blouse in a color one shade darker than the cranberry suit and it came all the way up to her neck, circling her throat in elegant gathers. Her hair was bunched back in soft but stylish twists that led to a complicated chignon at her nape, the hairstyle so sophisticated there was no way she did it herself. The back of the suit was even nicer than the front, the skirt falling in row of knife-sharp kick pleats at the back of her knees, the same from the waist of the jacket down to the top of her arse.
Fiona let her ghostly lip curl at the idea that Isabella Evangelista had a stylist do her hair, she wore a fancy, posh suit (of all things) and rode in a limousine to a tiny, Scottish fishing village.
What a daft cow.
“You okay?” Dougal asked, entering the room and closing the door behind him.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” Prentice asked.
Dougal’s eyes went to the window and Prentice burst out laughing.
“I’m hardly pining for Isabella Austin,” Prentice said, laughter still in his voice and if Fiona had breath, she would have let it out.
“This can’t be easy for you, mate,” Dougal said softly and Fiona remembered (as she often did) why she liked Dougal so damned much.
“For God’s sake, Dougal, it’s been twenty years,” Prentice’s deep voice still held amusement. “I don’t even think of her anymore.”
“Maybe no’ but you’ll have to now,” Dougal returned.
“Aye,” Prentice agreed readily. “For a week, then she’ll be gone back to her life filled with limousines, paparazzi and posh parties and it’ll be like she wasn’t even here.”
Dougal watched his friend.
“It’ll be like she wasn’t even here,” Prentice repeated, his words low and slow and filled with meaning.