“Do you mind if I share the video?”
Damn it, her voice wobbled the slightest bit as she asked the question. She cleared her throat, hoping the effect of coughing might confuse him.
“Why would I mind?”
She shrugged her shoulders, still not looking at him. “It’s in your kitchen. Some people are very private; I thought you might prefer —,”
“No one is going to know it’s my kitchen,” he said simply, and now when she risked a glance at him, Gabe was leaning against the counter, looking at her with an expression that gave little away.
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
She needed to get out of there. Uncertainties were washing her as painfully as if they were acid.
“Okay then.” She clicked into her channel, ignoring the hundreds of notifications, posting the video with a quickly-typed caption. Her followers would be surprised by the unscheduled video; they loved that sort of thing. It gave her little pleasure though, unlike her usual sense of accomplishment when she wrapped filming. She slipped from the room without another word.
He ran longer than usual, one foot after the other, staring at the red numbers on the treadmill display as they counted upwards. Several times he dialled the speed higher than the programme, wanting to run until his lungs hurt and his legs were spent, wanting to run until he was too exhausted to dream.
He ran and pushed Isabella out of his mind completely – or tried to. All day she’d been there, haunting him, so he’d eventually given up on avoiding her and gone to the kitchen – the one place he knew she’d be.
Sleeping with her had been a mistake. For the hundredth time since her arrival, he wished she hadn’t come. He wished she hadn’t crashed her car, that she hadn’t found her way to his doorstep, that a raging snow storm hadn’t kept them locked together. He wished she was anywhere but here, even as he knew that was a lie. He was glad she was here, and he was tempted – oh so tempted – to go to her and instigate a repeat of the night before. But that would be another mistake, another thing to regret.
And so he finished his run then took a cold shower, trying – again – to keep Isabella from his mind.
She didn’t see him at all the next day. That was partly by choice – Isabella stayed out of the kitchen as much as possible, keeping to her room or the library upstairs, working on recipes, making lists of ingredients the assistant her publishers had assigned would need to procure before her arrival in New York. But as the day drew to dusk and then to night, her stomach demanded nutrients. Recipe research was hungry work.
Tapping her pen against the side of the table, she looked towards the door, hesitating, and then scraped her chair back. A quick sandwich, something she could bring back to the office with her. Something she could make quickly and escape with, hopefully negating the requirement of seeing him again. Her stomach was full of butterflies as she went and she was filled with hope: hope that she wouldn’t see him? Or hope that she would?
“Yes?” Gabe didn’t mean to sound testy, but he wasn’t in the mood for yet another welfare check from his family.
“Nice to see you too,” Fiero responded with a similar tone, so Gabe grunted a half-apology.
“What’s up?”
It was bitingly to the point, but what else was new?
“Elodie wants to ask you something.”
Gabe frowned. That was new. While the women of the family were always trying to make sense of him, and to understand how they could ‘help him’, they didn’t often confront him directly.
He braced for the well-meaning questions as Fiero shifted the screen to include Elodie. “Hi.” She grinned at him, her features unusually flustered.
“Are you okay?” It was Gabe’s turn to evince concern.
“Fine,” she nodded quickly. “It’s just – how do you know Isabella Moss?”
He was as shocked as if a sixteenth century ghost had emerged from the woodwork and punched him in the gut.
“What?”
“Isabella. She’s there. With you. Now?”
Gabe looked around the salon even though he knew for a fact Isabella wasn’t with him. He hadn’t seen her all day. Not since the night before in the kitchen when she’d got all excited about salmon of all things and he’d reacted by metaphorically pushing her away as hard as he could.
“No.”
“Oh.” Elodie looked crestfallen, but she brightened again quickly enough. “But she was?”
“Why, may I ask, is this a problem?”
Fiero briefly tilted the camera so his face came into shot, his expression holding an unmistakable warning: play nice.
“It’s not a problem,” Elodie assured him. “It’s just I’m a huge fan of hers. I watch all her videos and when I saw that she’d filmed one from Il Nido, and that it was snowing outside the window, I just presumed…”
“I see,” he muttered, closing his eyes on a wave of bleak amusement. She’d asked before posting the video and he’d assured her it would be fine. But of course one of his family members would have to have seen the clip. Why wouldn’t they?
Gabe tightened his grip into a fist, keeping his expression calm and uninterested.
“She’s someone I know,” he said with a casual lift of his shoulders. “She got caught in the blizzard.”
“At Il Nido?” Fiero prompted sceptically.
“As you can see.”
“This is amazing. Do you think – would you be able to ask her to sign a cookbook for me?”
“She doesn’t have any with her,” Gabe interjected quickly.
“How do you know?” Fiero responded. Damn him, he wasn’t going to make this easy.
Gabe expelled a sigh, his nostrils flaring. “Her car crashed. As you know, mine is the only house for miles. What choice did she have but to shelter here?”
And what choice did I
