RUNAWAY (8 page)

“She skipped out on a lot of things,” Izzy murmured, but then her gaze narrowed. “Did you just call me a rebel?”

“Ms. Just-Say-No-to-Dewey? What do you think?”

“I think you might be right. Though, truly, moving on from Dewey is—” Breaking off, she laughed. “Don’t get me started on the Dewey decimal system. We’ll be here all night and I won’t even notice your eyes glazing over.”

“So what will we talk about then? I
am
bored.”

“I don’t know.” She tucked her hair behind her ears and he found himself fascinated with the tiny gold ring threaded through the rim of her left one.

Rebel, all right. No run-of-the-mill piercing for Isabella Cavaletti. She had a different kind of adornment, one that made him think of that sweet delicate shell of ear and how if he let himself follow it with his tongue, he could suck on her tender lobe without getting a mouthful of jewelry.

It would just be a mouthful of Izzy.

Clearing his throat, he shifted on the step, then shifted his gaze off her pretty face. “Um…uh…” The boxes. He shook his head, trying to clear it. “Why do you have Emily storing your stuff?”

“Oh.” She looked embarrassed again. “Would you believe I don’t have my own place?”

He blinked at her. “What?”

“I shamelessly take advantage of my friends, and every one of them ends up with a box or two or three of Izzy-belongings. My work means that I travel all over and I don’t have an actual home base, if you know what I mean.”

No. He had no idea what she meant. “You don’t…you don’t have an address?”

“I have a P.O. box, but I take care of my bills online. It seems odd to a lot of people, but it works out fine for me.”

“What about…” He couldn’t wrap his mind around it. “Television. Car. Coffemaker.”

“I rent a car when I need one. Most hotel rooms come complete with TV and coffee service.”

Still…”You
are
a rebel. Or should I say a rolling stone?”

Izzy shrugged. “Good phrase. I use it myself. I’m definitely footloose, that’s for sure. I travel all over the country and enjoy the different sights I see and the friends I make.”

Yeah, but for how long did she enjoy them? She
moved from place to place and, unlike a turtle, didn’t even bother carrying her house on her back. He remembered Bryce had told him that Izzy had arrived at the condo with only a single small suitcase.

“So you really like living like that?”

“It’s good,” she said, sounding defensive. “It’s a good life.”

“I guess.” If you didn’t like roots or stability or your very own Wii game system. Not to mention a place where your relatives could track you down…Okay, maybe he could see an upside.

But he suspected Izzy couldn’t see a thing, because her gaze was back on her copy of
Eight Cousins
and he could detect the distinct glint of tears in her eyes again. He found himself scooting back a step, and cursing his boredom again, because coming down the stairs and seeking her out had been a mistake. What he’d seen and heard—what he’d found inside Izzy—was hitting him right where he didn’t want her anywhere near.

His heart.

In the master bedroom suite, Izzy took plates off the tray that Bryce had carried up the stairs and passed them to the two brothers who were sitting at places set on a card table she’d found stashed in a closet. Bryce pretended to swoon as he breathed in the smell of the lasagna that she’d made from the sauce she’d simmered two days before.

“I love your pretty fairy wife,” he told Owen. “She’s beautiful, she cooks and she even told me I don’t have to worry about doing the dishes later.”

“Stop flirting,” his brother answered. “And damn right you’re going to do the dishes.”

Bryce groaned. “Me and my big mouth. Would it aid my cause if I complained about the looooong board meeting Granddad presided over today? I doodled through an entire pad of paper.”

Izzy pulled out her chair and sank into her seat as Owen gave Bryce a considering look. “The day you waste time doodling is the day I put on ballet slippers and dance in
Swan Lake.
”

Bryce clapped his hands over his ears. “Not another word. Don’t burn that image onto my brain!”

Owen glanced at Izzy. “Bryce can take in the details of a meeting, plan another and write up the report on a third all at the same time.”

“Not to mention managing my fantasy baseball team,” Bryce said, around a bite of lasagna. “Oh, God, this is good, Izzy. Really, I’m
so
marrying you.”

She had to smile at him. “But I’m already married.”

Bryce’s eyes brightened. “About that…”

“Don’t go there,” his brother warned.

Don’t go there. But they had gone there, Izzy thought, for no less than a thousand times, and then had not even gone on to discuss the next step—an annulment—since she’d moved into Owen’s condominium. Of course, they’d been pretty much keeping
to their corners these days. Though she knew Owen was going stir-crazy, she hadn’t felt much like being his entertainment or distraction. That box of books that Emily had delivered seemed to sit on Izzy’s shoulders, weighing her down. It was good to have Owen’s brother here to give them both another focus.

“Did you hear that, Isabella?”

She started, directing her attention toward Bryce again. “What?”

“I was saying that you two have a reprieve from the Marston machine even when the ‘rents get back from their cruise. Right after, Mom’s on tap for a benefit she’s organizing and she’s roped Dad into helping her with the last-minute details.”

Izzy thought of the elegant older woman. “Something for the symphony, I suppose?”

“Nah,” Bryce answered. “She abhors the symphony.”

Owen smiled, and Izzy instantly noticed. He hadn’t been doing much of that lately, and it looked good on him. He had strong white teeth and the smile crinkled the corners of his eyes.

“Mom has the pearls and the blue blood, but to give her credit, she’s no snob,” he said. “She really abhors the symphony just as much as she loves the opera, Springsteen and the Stones.” He looked over at Bryce.

“She’s a piece of work,” they said together, then laughed.

“Dad’s favorite phrase,” Owen explained.

The brothers shared a smile that forced Izzy to stare down at her plate and swallow a sigh. There was a wealth of family memories and familial closeness in the way Owen and Bryce spoke to each other and spoke about their parents. It made her want to grab a book and escape like she’d done so many times as a child. Inside the pages of a story, she wasn’t the outsider, the charity case, the person others felt sorry for.

Even if the book was about an orphan like Rose of
Eight Cousins
and
Rose in Bloom,
the character wasn’t left to fend for herself. In books, Izzy had always found her happy ending right along with the protagonist.

“By the way, I thought of another one,” Owen said, reaching across the table to touch her arm with his hand.

She looked up. “Another one?” His gaze was trained on her face and she wondered if that was concern she saw in his eyes. It made her skin feel hot and she was suddenly aware of his fingertips on her wrist. Each pad sent an individual streamer of sensation up her arm that then ribboned around her body. Her now-tight lungs struggled to bring in a breath. “Another one what?”

A little smile playing at his mouth, he sang softly, to the tune of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” “You’ll go down and hit a tree.”

“Hey,” Bryce said, frowning. “Are you making fun of me?”

Owen grinned. “Just how you mangled the words to your favorite Christmas carol. And remember this other immortal line of the same song you misheard—not to mention mis-sang? ‘Olive, the other reindeer.’”

“Oh, yeah. For years, I never could figure out why Olive didn’t make it into the movie.”

Owen shook his head. “Olive the reindeer, lost on the cutting room floor. No wonder I’ve always been considered the brainy brother in the family.”

“Hah!” Bryce said, but he looked stymied for a comeback.

Izzy had to laugh, her low mood rising. Was that what Owen had been after? Was he attuned to her that closely? She rallied, trying to fit in with the lighthearted conversation.

It was what she’d done from childhood, after all—making a small place for herself where none was before. “They’re called Mondegreens, you know,” she told the two men.

“What?” Bryce asked.

“Misheard lyrics. In 1954, a woman named Sylvia Wright wrote a magazine article confessing that she’d misheard the lyric of a folk song about an unlucky earl, ‘and laid him on the green,’ as ‘and Lady Mondegreen.’”

“Ah,” Bryce answered. “So there’s a name for the
infamous line Owen once sang at summer camp—’He’s got the whole world in his pants.’”

Izzy decided to be loyal and stifled her laugh. “Hey, I know someone who for years thought the refrain for that old TV show theme song was ‘The Brady Sponge, the Brady Sponge.’”

“No one could be that dim,” Owen scoffed. Then he did a double take, his gaze narrowing on her face. “Wait, the ‘someone’ was you?”

Heat shot up her face. “I was, like, six or something.”

“Yeah, but ‘The Brady Sponge’? And you said you sang it that way for years. At least Caro and I clued in Bryce right away about Rudolph not hitting a tree.”

“Yeah, but you let me wonder about Olive for half my life, “his brother grumbled.

Once again, their exchange tickled Izzy’s funny bone. She let herself laugh now, appreciating the echoes of amusement on the faces of the men sharing her table. She was good at this “fitting in and making others feel comfortable” thing—no matter how temporary the circumstances for it were.

“Really, Izzy,” Owen said, shaking his head. “I’m trying to wrap my mind around this, because it would seem to be a family-wide shame that should have been corrected immediately. What kind of siblings let you sing ‘The Brady Sponge’?”

Oh. “I thought you knew. I’m an only child.” And for all
Zia
Sophia or
Nonna
Angela knew, it
was
“The Brady Sponge.” The only programs the elderly ladies watched on TV were
The Price Is Right
and their afternoon soaps.

Owen frowned. “I wasn’t aware.”

“Probably because he heard an Italian last name and assumed—well, we all know how wrong assumptions can be,” Bryce said, his expression pious. “I, on the other hand, make it my pleasure to learn a woman—um, a person—on an individual basis.”

“Stop, Bryce,” Owen said. “Before I backhand you with my cast.”

“I’ll tell Mom,” his younger brother taunted.

“And I’ll—”

“Stop, stop,” Izzy cut in, amused by their brotherly byplay. As always, what she’d never had fascinated and bemused her. “Bryce, your brother’s assumptions, if he actually had any, are not that far off the mark. There’s a gazillion Cavalettis. Grandparents, great aunts, uncles, aunts and cousins.”

“Eight?” Owen asked softly.

Her gaze dropped and she toyed with her fork, unwilling to let him see how his ability to connect the dots of her life made her just a little…nervous. “Close,” she said. “They’re all quite a bit older, though.” And then there were
Zia
Sophia and
Nonna
Angela, who were so old they thought girls still wore girdles and garter belts.

Owen’s fingers tangled with hers on the tabletop.
“So you were the runt of the litter?” His smile was kind. “Though I can’t imagine you being down for long.”

That was her secret weapon. Never letting anyone see that she was down. Pretending, whether it was from within the pages of a book or within the home of some semireluctant relative, had been Izzy’s strength against insecurity. “Nobody can resist me for long,” she asserted.

Owen’s fingers tightened on hers. “I’m a living example,” he said mildly.

Bryce shot up from his seat. “Maybe I should get going on those dishes and then let myself out,” he said.

“No.” Panic fluttered in Izzy’s chest. “No, Bryce. I made apple cobbler for dessert. You have to stay for that.”
You have to stay and be the buffer between me and Owen.
Though she knew he was desperate for entertainment, it was dangerous to allow it to be
that
kind of entertainment.

“Stay, Bryce,” Owen ordered, his voice soft, his gaze fixed on Izzy’s face.

Bryce stacked the plates. “Fine. I’ll take these downstairs and bring up—”

“You’ll take those downstairs, load the dishwasher, do whatever scrub is necessary on the pots and pans and
then
bring up dessert,” Owen said.

Without further comment, Bryce took the dirty dishes down the stairs. Owen looked after his brother’s retreating figure. “How much I enjoy playing the older brother card.”

Izzy smiled. “You didn’t have to. I don’t mind dishes.”

“But I find that at this moment I mind being deprived of your company.” He toyed with her fingers, braiding his with hers, unbraiding them, braiding them again. She felt every stroke and tickle, the nerve endings between her fingers seeming to stand on alert to absorb every cell-to-cell contact.

Her breath shortened and she felt her breasts swell and the tips tingle. Did he notice?

“I see what’s going on with you,” he said.

She twitched. “What?”

“You work too hard, Isabella,” he said. “Food, chat, flirtation with my brother.” The smile in his blue eyes said he was joking about that last bit. “You’re here with me, your husband. You don’t have to pretend anything.”

But she’d pretended most of her life! Pretended feeling secure, pretended not minding being left behind by her parents, pretended a cheerful, friendly, you-can-be-comfortable-with-me attitude. She was supposed to be all that for Owen while he recuperated from his injuries. The runaway bride owed him that, after all.

“You don’t owe me anything,” he said.

Did he read minds, too?

His fingers curled around hers, held tight. “Are you okay?”

“I…I don’t know,” she heard herself whisper. But
that wasn’t right, because until she met Owen, Isabella Cavaletti always knew that the way to keep others happy was to appear to be happy herself. The girl someone took in—and this wasn’t all that different, was it?—couldn’t afford to become demanding or temperamental.