had discovered that freedom was the best thing about getting older.
She’d felt a touch of it when she’d turned thirty. She’d suddenly felt less like a big kid blindly feeling her way through the world and more like an adult. Then at thirty-five she’d realized she was at that age when so many women really started to worry. That they were too old now. That they hadn’t married or had children. That this was their last chance to really live.
Isabelle didn’t feel as though this was her last chance. She felt as though she was finally free. Capable. Happy with herself. Comfortable with her body. And allowed to say anything she wanted to out loud, even if it made a grown man blush. Maybe especially if it did.
She loved it. She couldn’t wait to be forty. She was going to own that shit. And then at fifty, when strangers would stop hinting that it was time to settle down and have some babies, and just start looking at her with pity? That would be glorious.
So she grinned at Tom Duncan and took an extra-large piece of pie and didn’t bother stifling her moan of pleasure at the taste. Tonight she was almost sure she was safe, her mouth was sweet and tart with juicy red cherries, and tomorrow she would paint. She had every reason to moan.
* * *
ISABELLE WEST WASN’T only a mystery. She was also a distraction. First, there was that threadbare shirt, pale blue but marred with paint, and stretched too tight across her breasts whenever she reached for her glass. The shirt looked old enough to be turned into rags, and he’d been very afraid that one of those buttons was going to give way at any moment. So afraid that he’d constantly found himself checking to be sure it was still closed.
Then there was her glare, suspicious and narrow and almost as distracting as the smile she’d finally settled into toward the end of the meal. The cool smile was as interesting as the glare, as if she had a secret to go with every emotion.
Curiosity paced inside his brain like a caged lion. Who was she? Instincts weren’t everything, but Tom had learned to trust his own, and he would’ve bet quite a bit of money that she wasn’t a criminal. But she wasn’t innocent, either. Innocent women didn’t press themselves into a corner to hide and listen the way she’d done at Jill’s house.
“I’d better get going,” she said drowsily from the couch. She was curled up with the last of the wine and didn’t look as if she wanted to leave. “I’ll be painting for hours tomorrow.”
“At least it’s not summer,” Jill said. “You can sleep until eight and still get the morning light.”
“So true. And I’m going to sleep like a baby tonight. A drunk baby.”
Tom stood. “All right, drunk baby, come on. I’ll walk you home.”
Her languidness vanished in an instant. “I don’t need you to walk me home,” she snapped. “I’ve walked home a hundred times in the dark.”
“I’m sure you have. But this time, there might be an armed fugitive hiding in the woods. And I’m leaving anyway. I can either walk you or I can follow behind you. Your choice.”
“Walk her home,” Jill cut in. “Isabelle, put your prickliness away and be nice. Maybe you’ll like the feeling.”
“I doubt it,” Isabelle answered, but she shrugged. “And he already asked to walk me home. Apparently, he likes his girls mean and feral.”
“All the more reason to walk home with him, then.”
Isabelle huffed out a laugh at that then winked in his direction, completely confusing him. His mental state wasn’t helped when she reached to shrug on her coat and her blouse threatened to split in two and reveal the pink bra peeking out underneath.
He spun and walked toward the entryway where he’d left his own coat, but there was no relief there. Isabelle followed close behind to tug on her tall snow boots, leaning over so that her shirt gaped to show the generous rise of her breasts. Tom just shook his head and made himself look elsewhere until she’d finished her task. He, in fact, didn’t like his girls mean and feral. She was not the girl for him.
Then again, he still wasn’t sure he had a read on Isabelle West yet. He wouldn’t say she was mean, exactly. But as for feral...well, there was something a little wild about her. Something unfiltered. She said what she meant and wasn’t coy about her moods.
Jill, waving away Tom’s praise for her food, sent them out the door with warnings about ice on the steps. The woman was truly an amazing cook, not to mention a damn good pastry chef. He’d have to find one of her cookbooks and have Jill sign it for his sister. Wendy adored cooking. And she was terrible at it. But Tom liked to make her happy, so he went to her place once a month for a pleasant, polite evening with Mom and Dad and Wendy’s husband and kids, and he ate her awful dinners without complaint. Cookbooks hadn’t helped in the past, but maybe Jill’s would be the right fit.
“You’ve got Jill wrapped around your finger,” Isabelle said, the words warm instead of accusing.
“You have that turned around. I’d die for that woman.”
Isabelle’s laugh rang loud and pure into the night as they walked down the driveway to the road. “She’s easy to love.”
“But she likes living alone?”
Isabelle shrugged. “Maybe nobody is worthy of her. Or maybe love isn’t all that great.”
He shot her a look, but she was staring straight ahead, her small smile lit by the snow. “And which one is it for you?” he asked.
“Oh, me? I love living alone. And love definitely isn’t all that great.”
He’d heard that kind of sentiment before, but never with such good cheer. “I’d say that’s cynical, but you sound happy about it.”
She finally looked at him. “You’re not wearing a wedding ring. Do you live alone?”
“Yes.”
“No wife or kids? Are you depressed about it? Are you pining away?”
His lips twitched at the idea of sitting in the window of his apartment, staring yearningly into the night, like a sappy scene from a bad movie. “No. But I travel quite a bit.”
“A woman in every port?”
“Not quite,” he said with a grin. “But you make Mammoth and Casper and Cheyenne sound more promising than they are.”
“Exotic locales. Exciting adventures. Femme fatales.”
“I see you’ve been spying on me.”
She nodded, still more reserved with him than she was with Jill. “Well, I don’t travel, but I’m not lonely. I have my work, my friends and my home. And internet porn. Life is good.”
Tom tripped over a snowdrift and nearly fell flat on his face. Isabelle laughed as he dusted snow off his knee.
So much for her reserve. “If you said that to shock me, it worked,” he said.
“I said it because it’s true.” She grinned over her shoulder as she kept moving. “Try to keep up.”
He had a feeling she didn’t mean walking, but he hurried to catch up all the same. Silence fell over them as Tom tried to come up with a question that wasn’t “So what kind of porn do you like?” but his brain was stuck on the topic, so he kept his mouth shut.
Still, the silence was nice on a night like this. Their boots crunched in the dry snow, and there was the occasional thump of snow falling off tree branches, but other than that, it was only the black sky and white stars and their breath turning the air pale around them. And this very odd woman smiling at her own thoughts.
When they reached her driveway, her smile disappeared, and she shot him an arch look.
“I’ll walk you up,” he said in answer to her irritation.
She