He walked out the door to his rooms and stopped dead.
He heard Sally’s chatter then he heard Jason’s low mumble then he heard Isabella’s laughter, not wild and uninhibited but softer, more controlled and also clearly genuine.
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 br**sts. Her cle**age 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.”