Unfortunately, Prentice and Fiona’s romantic fairytale was not to be that long-lasting. After Fiona complained of headaches she’d been diagnosed with a brain tumor and, shockingly to everyone (most especially Prentice, for obvious reasons) she’d been dead within months.
That was a year, one month, three weeks and four days ago.
Fiona didn’t live to see her two friends blissfully wed in a week’s worth of festivities to celebrate the happy ending it took twenty years to come about.
And Prentice was a widower with two motherless children facing a week’s worth of festivities as best man to his best friend whilst the girlfriend who’d heartlessly jilted him was maid of honor.
No, Isabella thought, this was not fun and exciting.
This was agony.
She came out of her upsetting thoughts and realized they were approaching Fergus’s stately manor house.
The last time she’d come from America and approached this house, she’d not been in a limousine. She’d been in the backseat of Fergus’s Jaguar and she’d been jumping around more than Mikey.
Dougal’s beat up old truck was in the drive.
So was Prentice’s beat up old Harley.
Dougal was sitting on a step.
Prentice was standing at the top, arms crossed on his wide chest, his beautiful eyes on the Jag.
Sometimes, when Isabella was feeling maudlin, she’d take out the photo frame she carried everywhere with her, she’d study Prentice’s picture and she’d try to determine the color of his eyes.
When she’d been with him, she’d done it up close.
She could, she thought then (and now) do it for hours.
They were neither green, nor gray, nor brown, nor blue.
They were all of them in an equal mixture.
They were the most beautiful eyes she’d ever seen in her life, before, or since.
Fergus had barely stopped the car when Annie was out the door, flying toward Dougal, who’d stood and was walking with long-legged strides toward her, a huge smile on his handsome face.
Isabella would have done the same but, such was her excitement, her fingers were all thumbs and she was having trouble getting her seatbelt unfastened.
At home in Chicago with her father, she was unfailingly sedate, quiet and unassuming, as her father liked her to be.
With Annie in Scotland and at university (where they’d met), she was anything but sedate, quiet and unassuming.
And, with Prentice, she could be anything she wanted to be.
Which meant, with Prentice, she could be free.
Something she’d never been in her whole life.
Prentice had not walked with long-legged strides to her when she’d finally exited the car. His eyes didn’t leave her but he didn’t smile.
Isabella felt a moment of uncertainty, even though he’d never given her any indication in the months they’d been separated that their summer romance of the year before had cooled.
She felt her step stutter as she walked toward him. He noticed it, his gaze dropping to her feet.
Then he shook his head and grinned.
That was all she needed.