Tempting Isabel (Paradise South #1) by Rissa Brahm

cheeks. She swatted at her boss, knocking over Lucinda’s empty glass on the coffee table in the process. Isabel was anything but a prude, but to hear her sixty-something - year-old boss reference her cunt was just way beyond not-okay .
    Besides, her pussy got use—a nice, occasional variety of use. And she didn’t need three—almost four—divorces behind her to boast that.
    She had to think of a proper response, though, one that would hopefully end that day’s session of Poor Isabel’s Pussy . But in the nick of time, her cell phone buzzed.
    She read the new text and shot to her feet. “It’s Madeline’s. They have a question about the cake flavor for the Nilson/Edmond gig tomorrow. The clinical sanity of the bride is also up for debate, which makes sense having met her. They want me down there…like, yesterday.”
    So much for not driving into town. Isabel got her keys from the coffee table where she had knocked over Lucinda’s glass. She gave the keys a quick shake to dry them and moved toward the front door, very glad to be going. This was becoming a common theme, Isabel wanting to escape her own home along with the visitor inside it.
    “I’ll drive you, love. We can discuss more in the car, and I’ll bring you home after. We’ll have girl time!” Lucinda exclaimed. Isabel recognized the loneliness in her boss’s voice and eyes. “And your place is so peaceful, I wouldn’t mind having a drink out on the back deck at sunset.”
    Although she’d always folded to her mentor’s whims in past, a flash of random fear halted her default response. It was the drive into town and back—with Lucinda at the wheel. The thought shot an icy chill up her spine. The winding cliffside road into Vallarta—more than a hundred feet above the bay—took hold of her mind. But why the hell was she so scared? She hadn’t thought of her own safety in forever. In fact, death had been a very welcome thought after Sebastian, her mother, and the others. But this new worry for her own life? The end isn’t so scary when a person has nothing and no one to live for. So why now was she so terrified? What had changed? What had entered her life that made her so fearful of leaving it?
    “You know what, Lucinda? You stay, I’ll go. Relax on the back deck with another drink and I’ll come back to join you within the hour.”
    “Okay, love…okay. You know, you are the absolute best, Isabel, dear. A true treasure.”
    *
    “I really would love to, man, but a lot has come up, issues with this…priceless… deal I’ve been working on.” Dwelling in self-pity and wallowing in a depressive tailspin over Isabel had been truly time-consuming . “I mean, don’t get me wrong! Hand interviewing strippers is a welcome task by me, any day, but I really don’t have the extra time right now,” Zack said trying to act normal, well, according to his brother, and whatever that meant anymore.
    “Yeah, I get it—but, dude! The bachelor party is the best man’s job. Since the dawn of time, bro!”
    Zack had always given in to Darren’s whim, probably because Zack felt he had to compensate his kid brother for their bastard father’s early exit. “Little brother, listen…I’m absolutely pumped for your wedding…and my role in it!—not that I needed the title since I know that you know I’m the absolute fucking best,” he cracked. “But I bet Wret or John would do such a better job with the bachelor party than I would right now. I’m just going through some shit with this one damn…deal,” he said, catching himself again. Zack wouldn’t burden Darren with Zack’s reality, what with the wedding being so close. He wouldn’t show this unprecedented vulnerability to his kid brother, either.
    No, he would hold back on what was actually eating him alive—that a woman, the all-consuming Isabel, had just evaporated from his world. What did it matter? Wherever she now existed, she despised him. Then to add insult to injury, he had set