“When are you going to eat?” he asked.
“Pardon?”
“You said you’d make dinner and come up here. When are you going to eat?”
“I’ll bring something up with me.” Then she wondered if he wouldn’t like that, these were nice rooms, clean and tidy, maybe he didn’t want food up there. “If that’s okay.”
Then he said something completely bizarre.
“So it’s the martyr.”
She was so stunned, she couldn’t control her reaction and she blinked.
“Pardon?” she repeated.
“Your game this time. The martyr.”
It felt like he slapped her and reflexively her hands clenched into fists at her sides.
“I’m not playing the martyr,” Isabella denied softly.
“You had no dinner last night, no breakfast this morning, unless you had something at Fergus’s. You’re behaving like you’re chained to these rooms.”
“You told me you wanted me to spend my time in your house…” she lifted her hand and flicked it out, “in here.”
“I believe I said ‘as often as possible’, not every f**king minute.”
“Isn’t ‘as often as possible’ pretty much the same as ‘every f**king minute’?” Isabella asked, genuinely perplexed.
“Don’t play word games with me, Isabella. I have a university degree. I own a business, a home. I know the f**king English language.”
There it was again, the non-physical slap.
There was one thing Isabella Austin Evangelista knew how to do. She knew how to retreat from anger.
Therefore, she whispered, “All right, Prentice.”
His brows drew together over angry eyes and he stared at her. She calmly held his stare and her breath.
Then Prentice murmured, “Christ, it’s like I’ve never met you.”
She wasn’t surprised at his reaction. Twenty years ago their relationship hadn’t been totally perfect.
What it had been was passionate.
They’d fought and they’d been good at it.
Back then, she would never have backed down. She knew he wouldn’t hurt her with his anger. How she knew this, she didn’t understand, in the beginning.
Later, she would realize it was love.
Therefore, she felt safe fighting with him.
Isabella wanted to tell him that he hadn’t ever met her. She wanted to tell him that the girl he knew never really existed.
He’d created her.
Well, Annie did by asking her to spend that first summer in Scotland.