When she saw him, she stopped dead but her body swayed.
Then she smiled a huge, radiant smile that started at her hazel eyes and lit her entire face.
At the sight of her smile, Prentice felt the warmth of that satisfying weight hit his gut.
“Hi!” she cried happily as if it was the height of pleasure to see him.
“Isabella.”
She stared at him a moment or, more to the point, she stared at his mouth a moment. Then she looked at the broom in her hand as if she’d never seen one before and had no idea why she was carrying it.
Light dawned, her face fell and she looked back at Prentice, admitting, “I broke your lamp.”
He started to come into the room. “I can see. I could also hear.”
“I’ll buy you another one,” she told him immediately.
He shook his head. “You don’t have to buy another one.”
Her face lit again and she declared gleefully, “I’ll buy you three!”
He barely stopped himself from laughing. “You definitely don’t have to buy me three.”
“Lamps are good to have around,” she informed him authoritatively. “Even if you don’t use them all, you can keep them in storage as backups.”
This time, he couldn’t contain his chuckle.
She was rat-arsed. Completely drunk.
“It isn’t a common occurrence that we break lamps, Elle. We don’t need backups.”
This seemed to confuse her as if she broke lamps with great regularity and had a ready supply to act as replacements.
“Just in case,” she muttered then her eyes narrowed on him and her face became severe. “Don’t take another step.”
He’d neared her and didn’t stop moving while he said, “Sorry?”
He barely got out the word when she suddenly, for some drunken reason, swung the broom at him. He had to jerk his torso back to miss being hit.
This movement sent her off-balance, so much so, she collided with the chair. Twisting to right herself, she dropped the broom and Prentice swiftly moved forward and caught her at her waist, yanking her upright and into his body.
He watched her profile as she glared at the chair.
“Who put that there?” she snapped, continuing to scowl at the chair like she was willing it to disintegrate from the heat of her gaze.
“It’s always been there.”
She twisted her neck to look at him and announced, “It has not.”
He was finding it very difficult not to burst out laughing but somehow he succeeded in this task.
“It has,” he said.
“It hasn’t,” she retorted.
“It has.”
“It. Has. Not.”