His gaze caught on the scented candle Bella left behind on the nightstand. Fiona watched him pick it up. He studied it for a moment. Then he pulled off the stoppered top and smelled it before he calmly put the top back on.
He stood silent and still as he continued to examine the candle.
Then, with a twist of his torso and a brutal underarm throw, he hurled the candle across the room.
The glass broke and the sheetrock dented as it hit the wall and then fell with a clunk to the floor.
Fiona floated behind him as he grabbed his clothes and stalked angrily out of the room.
He tossed his shirt and socks into the clean, tidy and dirty-clothes-less laundry room, making to move by it but he thought better of it. He stopped, walked back a step and glared into the room, his face a ferocious scowl.
He continued into the great room, Fiona drifting after him. He dumped his boots on the floor and started up the steps. He got halfway up before he pivoted and walked right back down. Still scowling, furious and looking like he was ready to commit murder, he walked right up to the coffee canister.
Wrenching it open, he moved to the pot.
He saw the note and stilled.
He set the canister aside, seized the note and read it, his jaw tightening so much, a muscle ticked there.
Then his jaw went slack and his lips parted.
Fiona watched his eyes scan the note again.
Then she watched as he threw back his head and burst out laughing.
Still chuckling, he flipped the switch to on and, still holding the note, he moved to the stairs and bounded up them, two at a time.
Chapter Nine
Tiny Dancer
Isabella
“I don’t get to keep the petals?” Sally asked from beside Isabella in the backseat of the Rolls Royce. Sally was carrying her basket of velvety red rose petals, still wrapped in film.
“No, sweetheart, you have to throw them on the ground so Annie can walk on them,” Isabella answered, fidgeting in her seat.
She’d managed to remain calm and act joyful during the entire morning of getting ready at Fergus’s house but now, with the church getting closer and closer (thus, seeing Prentice after last night getting closer and closer), she was losing it.
Mikey, Isabella worried, saw through her artificial calm, considering he spent a lot of time giving her questioning looks which she ignored.
But Isabella remained focused. Annie was beside herself with nerves, terrified some hideous event was going to happen to stop the day’s festivities.
“Tidal wave!” she’d shouted at one point even though the sun was shining and the nip in the air had disappeared and it was an unseasonably warm day.
“Annie, there’s not going to be a tidal wave,” Isabella replied sedately, watching from her place lounging fully dressed and completely done up on her friend’s bed as the stylists fashioned Annie’s hair.
“What’s a tidal wave?” Sally whispered loudly, lounging beside her.
Isabella looked at Prentice’s daughter.
From the minute Debs had deposited Sally at Fergus’s that morning (which caused Isabella more anxiety but Debs had only looked at her inquisitively then she’d shocked Isabella by giving her a tentative smile then she’d transferred Sally’s small hand directly to Isabella’s and left without uttering a single word), Sally had barely been away from Isabella’s side.
“I’ll explain later. Miss Annie is having a crisis of the mad mind,” Isabella whispered back, also loudly.
“I’m not mad,” Annie snapped, sounding mad.
Sally stared in astonishment at the usually good-humored Annie.