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“I’m afraid that’s all that’s available, miss. Mr. Marcus took the Bentley and the Mercedes is having an oil change.”
A Mercedes and a Bentley probably wouldn’t provide an easier driving experience, and I was about to change my mind when Ian strode into the room. He looked tired, a little dusty, and not particularly happy to see me. The feeling was mutual.
“Have you seen my brother, Maldonado?”
The old butler shook his head. “He’s taken the cousins out for the day—Mrs. Ingram said she had errands to run. So does Miss Bella.”
Ian finally looked at me. “So what’s keeping you?”
“Nothing. I just wasn’t in the mood for a sports car. Though it’s probably tame enough...”
Ian snorted with laughter. “Not after all the money you put into it, souping it up. Don’t tell me you’ve turned chicken shit in your old age.”
“I’m only twenty-eight!” I shot back.
“Twenty-nine,” he corrected me, and I cursed inwardly. “And I’ve got to go to town myself. I’ll drive you. That is, if you’ll let me.”
The idea was tempting, yet I couldn’t like the idea of racing around the countryside with him at the wheel. “Can you handle an Alfa?”
“Bella-Beast, I can handle anything, including you,” he said. “Give me half an hour and we’ll go.”
“I don’t think...”
“Did you want to go to town or not?” Ian was his usual, impatient self.
I wanted to stick my tongue out at him. “I’ll be ready.”
I cursed myself for the next thirty minutes. I ought to keep as far away from Ian’s sharp gaze as I could. Marcus was a different matter—he’d accepted me as Bella without a second thought, but I wasn’t so sure about Ian. He’d caught me on too many little slips, and every now and then I would catch him looking at me with the intensity that had always made me edgy.
Though there was no real reason he would suspect, no obvious reason for Podge to be there in Bella’s place, particularly since apparently I’d been invited on my own, something Bella had forgotten to tell me. In the end it wasn’t surprising. Bella always said and did exactly as she wanted, and the rest of us, with the exception of Ian, had gone along with it all, dazzled by her.
In fact, Ian’s suspicious attitude probably had nothing to do with his long-lost cousin Kitty and more to do with his life-long irritation with Bella. He just wanted to shake the unshakeable cousin.
Their antipathy had been so strong that I’d always wondered whether he secretly liked her. If he had, those feelings were long gone.
What Would Bella Do? Not let Ian the Wretch demoralize her, that’s for sure. If I could deal with Ian, I could deal with anyone, and a ride down to town would give me the chance to hone my skills, wipe away any possible doubts. I was ready to be Bella in all her glory, at least for the afternoon.
The bright red Alfa was waiting for me at the kitchen door, just where Ian had dropped me off the day before, and I took in its beautiful lines with just a trace of trepidation. Bella liked speed—she’d cursed my aging Subaru as we’d driven down to Boston for my makeover, and I knew this thing could probably make a showing at the Grand Prix.
Ian strolled out of the stables across the way, greeting me with mock amazement. “Bella-Beast on time? Will wonders never cease? I assumed I’d be waiting for you for at least an hour.”
Don’t let him get to you, I reminded myself. “I can always go alone if you’re busy with something.”
“My afternoon is yours, my queen,” he said extravagantly, and memory came flooding back. He used to call her Queen Isabella in that mocking voice, something that had annoyed Bella no end.
“I think I prefer Bella-Beast,” I said as I climbed into the passenger’s seat, wrapping a Hermès scarf around my hair.
“I think I don’t give a rat’s ass what you prefer,” he replied, still standing by the driver’s side door. “You’re really going to let me drive ‘my precious’?”
I managed a luxuriant stretch. “I feel like having a chauffeur.”
A moment later we were off.
He drove very, very fast. The main road down from Mariposa was wide and winding, and he took it at breathtaking speeds, the wind whipping past our heads and thankfully making conversation impossible. I did my best to keep my expression sanguine, all the while I was digging my nails into the leather cushion beneath me and surreptitiously pressing on my nonexistent brake pedals. I had no idea whether he was deliberately trying to terrorize me or loved speed as much as Bella did, but by the time we arrived in the small town, I was ready to throw up in his lap.
“I didn’t make you nervous, did I?” he asked in a dulcet voice.
“Me? Don’t be absurd!” I replied, a little weaker than I could have hoped. “Where shall I meet you?”
