by Lynne Graham
Alissandru grinned down at her with outrageous satisfaction. ‘I love a passionate woman,’ he told her thickly. ‘You match me every step of the way.’
Isla was in a daze of shattered satiation as he shifted lithely over her and lifted her legs to increase his access to her still-thrumming body. She was reeling with disconcertion at what he had done and what she had felt and even then she was questioning what they were doing when he was supposed to have concussion.
‘Do you feel all right?’ she asked abruptly.
‘In a few minutes I will feel one hell of a lot better,’ Alissandru asserted with unquenchable certainty, and she felt the powerful surge of him against her swollen entrance.
There wasn’t time for her to tense because he sank into her with raw energy and suddenly he was where she had never felt anyone before and he was thrusting deep and hard. She flung her head back and squeezed her eyes tightly shut as discomfort mutated into a sharp stab of pain but not a whisper of sound escaped her. The instant she registered that the worst was over, her body made her more aware of other sensations, stretching to accommodate his invasion and the deeply satisfying burn of him where she ached for more. And once he set up a fluid rhythm, deep down inside her muscles began to clench and tiny ripples of growing need assailed her.
‘You are so tight and hot,’ Alissandru growled thickly, dark eyes sheer gold enticement in the firelight casting flickering shadows across the walls and the bed.
Her hips rose to meet his because finally she was part of something, fully involved and sentient and wanting, wanting so much she could hardly contain it. The driving need to reach the same plateau again consumed her as he speeded up, his every lithe invasion feeding her hunger while her heart raced insanely fast. The tension inside her knotted and knotted ever tighter until he sent her flying again and the wild excitement and hot, sweet pleasure rolled over her again in wave after wave, leaving her limp and weak as he shuddered over her with his own release.
‘That was spectacular,’ Alissandru muttered raggedly in the aftermath, rolling off her but carrying her with him and keeping both arms wrapped around her so that she sprawled on top of him, drenched in the hot, already familiar scent of him.
And she had no regrets, Isla recognised in a stark instant of clarity as she pressed her lips sleepily to a broad brown shoulder. Alissandru had made her feel truly alive for the first time in months and she felt gloriously relaxed and warm and safe. More troubled thoughts tried to nudge at her but she was far too sleepy to let them in. There would be time enough in the morning to consider what she had done but, just at that moment, she didn’t want to torment herself with what she couldn’t change.
He was attracted to her but he would never love her. Well, that was life, she told herself drowsily, giving with one hand, taking with the other. It still struck her as better than what she had had before.
* * *
She woke up very early and slid out of bed, flinching at the tenderness of her body. She tugged out the case below the bed with care, careful not to make too much noise as she extracted warm clothes to take into the bathroom with her. But she didn’t leave the room until she had taken her fill of looking at Alissandru while he slept. His face was roughened with dark stubble, his black hair very dark against the bedding while the long golden sweep of his muscular back was a masculine work of art. Carelessly sprawled across the bed, he looked utterly gorgeous and impossibly sexy. He was out of her league, totally out of her league, she told herself as she washed and dressed in the bathroom, hurrying downstairs to let out the dogs and feed the hens.
She would also have to take some hay out to the sheep in their shelter because the snow was probably too deep for them to forage. Wrapped up against the cold, she took care of the livestock first, trudging through the snow to the barn for the hay and driving the old tractor as close to the pasture as she could get so that she could heft the hay into the sheep shelter with greater ease.
By the time she finished her chores, however, her shoulders and back were aching and she was breathing heavily and hoping the snow wouldn’t last long because snow made everything twice as much work.
When she walked back indoors, it was an intense relief to shed her outdoor clothing and let her face and hands defrost close to the fire she had banked up the night before, and which she now revived. Steps overhead and the creak of the stairs warned her that Alissandru was about to join her, and she turned her head with a shy smile, not quite sure how to greet him in the light of day and reality. Like a lover? Like a friend? Like a relative? There was no etiquette rule that covered what had taken place between them the night before.
‘Isla...’ Alissandru came to a halt at the foot of the stairs and studied her, his lean, strong face clenching hard. ‘We have to talk.’
‘I’ll make breakfast,’ Isla proffered readily, keen to make herself busy and pretty much unnerved by the grim brooding expression tautening his dark devastating features. He had put his suit back on and, even unshaven, he looked like a super-sleek businessman again, expensive and detached.
‘Thank you, but I haven’t got time for breakfast...perhaps a coffee?’ Alissandru suggested smoothly. ‘The helicopter is picking me up in about fifteen minutes. Where were you?’
‘Feeding the sheep and the hens,’ she explained, putting on the kettle, shaken that he was leaving so immediately while anxiously wondering what he planned to talk about. Puggle was showing a worrying tendency to prowl around Alissandru’s feet while growling threateningly and she shooed him away.
Having ignored the dog’s ridiculous moves entirely—for how intimidating did something barely six inches tall think it could be—Alissandru withdrew a folded document from the pocket of his suit jacket, straightened it out and settled it down on the table. ‘The details of your inheritance. All you need to do is contact the solicitor and give him your current address and you will receive your bequest. Paulu, I should warn you, also left you his house in Sicily on the family estate...if you are agreeable, I would like to buy that back from you as it should stay with my family.’
Isla studied him in dismay, disconcerted that he had plunged straight into the impersonal matter of his brother’s will. ‘I’ll think about that,’ she murmured, playing for time, barely able to comprehend the concept of becoming the owner of a property abroad when she had never owned a house before. But she did receive his strong hint that he didn’t want her using that house on the Rossetti estate and that made her feel uncomfortable and distinctly rejected.
With hands that shook a little with nerves, she prepared coffee for them both. She had shared a bed with Alissandru last night and that was no big deal in the modern world, she reminded herself firmly. She needed to wise up and expect less. Alissandru only had a few minutes before he had to leave and naturally he would be keen to get the business aspect of Paulu’s bequest dealt with first.
‘Do you want to discuss the sale of the house now?’ Alissandru asked quietly, watching her like a hawk, hopeful she would grab at that option and agree an immediate deal.
For someone dressed like a homeless waif, she contrived to look astonishingly pretty, he acknowledged reluctantly. The cold had forced colour into her cheeks and blown her vibrant hair into a wild curly mop. She fiddled with a stray curl nervously and her sparkling dark blue eyes clung to him. Alissandru studied his coffee instead, keen to move on fast and without fanfare from his monumental error of judgement the night before. He had made a mistake, well, in truth, several mistakes, but there was no need to dwell on that unwelcome reality.
‘No, let’s leave the house aside for the moment,’ Isla suggested unevenly, sitting down opposite him. ‘I’m sure all that can be dealt with at some more convenient time.’
‘Isla...?’ Alissandru hesitated. ‘Last night was a blunder on my part.’
‘A...blunder?’ she framed and then paled. ‘You mean, a mistake?’
Alissandru lifted his chin in acknowledgement. ‘I wasn’t playing with a full deck. The concussion and the discussion we had about my brother put me in a weird frame of mind.’
Isla stiffened. ‘You kissed me before you bashed your head. Are you saying I took advantage of you when you were vulnerable?’ she asked in angry mortification.
Dark colour edged Alissandru’s high cheekbones and he flung her an incredulous glance. ‘Of course not. I’m saying that I was confused and unable to think clearly. Bearing in mind your sister’s history with my family, it was very unwise for us to blur those lines with sex.’
Isla was frozen to her chair, feeling very much as though he had punched her in the stomach without warning. He was pairing her with Tania, who was, sadly, dead and buried but also Tania, whom Alissandru had loathed. In fact, he was backtracking so fast from their intimacy it was a wonder he wasn’t succumbing to whiplash.
With as much dignity as she could contrive, Isla shifted an offhand shoulder.
‘Whatever,’ she said as if his about-face meant absolutely nothing to her. ‘Do we really need to talk about this?’
Alissandru’s lean dark features shadowed and hardened. ‘I’m afraid that we do because I didn’t take precautions with you. That’s what I meant when I said I was...er...confused. That is an oversight I have never made before and, although I’m quite sure you are on the pill and safe from any risk of pregnancy, I want to assure you that I’m regularly tested and clean,’ he completed with icy precision.
Isla could feel the colour draining from her face because the danger of conception or indeed infection had not crossed her mind even once, which seemed to underline how very stupid she had been to impulsively succumb to temptation. The man she had given her virginity to hadn’t even noticed her lack of experience and now he chose to simply assume that she was taking contraceptive precautions to facilitate her non-existent sex life with other men. She didn’t want to disabuse him on that score because the idea of him worrying that she could conceive struck her as even more humiliating. And just at that moment, she felt almost overwhelmed by the crushing hurt and humiliation Alissandru was already inflicting on her.
Alissandru was conscious as he watched her turn the colour of the ash scattered on the hearth that he had used all the wrong words because he still couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t find the words that usually came so easily and smoothly to his lips with a woman. Something about Isla was different and he was different with her too, and that acknowledgement freaked him out.
‘I shouldn’t think there’s much risk of conception from one sexual encounter,’ Alissandru asserted confidently, while wondering why she wasn’t reassuring him that she was fully protected from such a danger.
‘I shouldn’t think so,’ she mumbled in careful agreement, burning her tongue on the hot gulp of coffee she forced down her clenched throat.
Overhead, the noise of a helicopter intruded, and Alissandru sprang upright with alacrity while Puggle bounced and barked. Alissandru couldn’t wait to get away from her, Isla interpreted, a sinking sensation of shame over her own conduct gripping her tummy.
‘I’ll leave my card in case of any...complications,’ Alissandru said as he shrugged into his cashmere overcoat at speed and slapped a business card down on the table. ‘And the offer for the house will be made in due course. Naturally, it will be a most generous offer.’
Naturally, Isla echoed dizzily inside her head. Only there was nothing natural about anything that had happened between them, she reflected painfully. She didn’t believe that waitresses and billionaires regularly got together in the same bed but then what did she know? What did she know about anything? she asked herself in sudden anguish, realising that ignorance was anything but bliss when naivety could leave her open to such dreadful humiliation.
‘I wish you well in the future,’ Alissandru murmured coolly on the doorstep.
And she wanted to bury him deep in a snowdrift, but not before she punched him hard for rejecting her in every way that a woman could be rejected. He had hammered nails of fire into her self-esteem, puncturing her pride on every possible level. But then he wanted to be sure that there was no misunderstanding, wanted to be sure that she would not use his phone number for anything other than the direst emergency.
Alissandru didn’t want to see her again, didn’t want to talk to her again, really didn’t want anything more to do with her at all. Only he had clumsily contrived to put those facts across as politely as he could.
And Isla had no plans to disappoint him, assuring herself that she would sooner be publicly whipped than even glance in his disdainful direction again.
CHAPTER FOUR
ISLA LIFTED THE wand to check it with an unsteady hand. And there it was, what she had most feared to see: the positive pregnancy result that confirmed that she had conceived a child with Alissandru Rossetti. Perspiration beaded her brow and her tummy muscles winced in dismay.
He wouldn’t like that news, he wouldn’t like that at all, wouldn’t be expecting it either if she went by the tone of their final conversation. Of course, he had assumed that she was taking birth-control pills and that the risk of pregnancy would therefore be minimal. Well, he had been wrong and did it really matter how he felt about this particular development?
A couple of months ago, following that night they had spent together at the croft, such a discovery would have filled her with sheer panic, Isla acknowledged ruefully, but her life had changed out of all recognition since then. How? Well, first and foremost Paulu Rossetti had left her a very generous amount of money. She was already making plans to sign up at a further education college to remedy the lack of qualifications that restricted her in the job market. She had been forced to drop out of school as a teenager to help care for her grandfather because her grandma hadn’t been able to nurse him alone. She had always hoped to go back to school some day to pass the exams she had missed. However, the revelation that she was expecting a child altered everything because even though she could still study while pregnant or as a single mum, her head spun at the amount of organisation it would require and she baulked at the prospect of putting her baby into someone else’s care.
After all, Isla very much wanted her baby. In fact, a warm glow spread inside her at the mere thought of the precious burden she carried. Her baby would give her a family again, and wouldn’t that be wonderful? Not to be alone any more? To have her child to focus on and look after, to have a seriously good reason for everything she did in the future? And that she could warmly accept its accidental conception was solely down to Paulu Rossetti’s generosity and thoughtfulness. Had her sister even known what was in her husband’s will? She didn’t think it would ever have occurred to Tania to leave her kid sister anything if she passed away first. Of course, Tania had never had much of her own and what she had had she’d spent on designer clothes and the like.
A week after that snowbound night, when Isla had still been feeling very depressed about having slept with Alissandru, her uncle and aunt had returned from New Zealand. After spending a fortnight on the rickety old sofa bed her relatives had borrowed for her use, and catching a bad bout of flu, Isla had been ready to leave. Although she had missed a period by that stage, she had not been unduly concerned because the flu had left her run-down. Only when her menstrual cycle had failed a second time had Isla realised that she needed to buy a pregnancy test, and by then she had flown back to London, encouraged by the fact that her inheritance had given her options. Instead of worrying about where she would stay or how she would afford to stay anywhere without an income, thanks to Paulu she had the luxury of choice. Her friend Lindsay had announced that Isla and Puggle could stay in her flat with her for a while because her flatmate was away on a training course.
Paulu’s bequest had included far more money than Isla had ever dreamt of receiving, and no sooner had Isla asked her Scottish solicitor to contact the Rossetti family
’s solicitor than a ridiculously generous offer had come through to buy Paulu’s house back from her. But Isla was, as yet, in no hurry to sell the house and the discovery that Alissandru had got her pregnant had only complicated the situation.
Isla wanted to see the house where Paulu and her sister had been living. She wanted to go through Tania’s possessions and keep a few sentimental objects to remember her sibling by. And the knowledge that her baby would be a Rossetti had also made her reluctant to immediately sell the house on the family estate. Not that Alissandru would want her there or even visiting, she conceded uncomfortably, but her baby would have rights too, she reasoned, and might well appreciate that connection to his or her Sicilian heritage. No, selling the house, totally breaking that connection, wasn’t a decision to be made in haste, she reasoned ruefully...regardless of how Alissandru felt about her owning part of his precious family estate.
So, now what did she do about Alissandru? She would have to tell him that she was pregnant because he had the right to know, but she wasn’t looking forward to breaking that news because she was convinced that it would be a deeply unwelcome announcement. Alissandru didn’t want anything more to do with her, so the news that they would be linked for ever by a child could only infuriate him. But there was nothing she could do about that, so Alissandru would just have to deal with it.
Before she could lose her nerve, Isla pulled out her phone and called the number he had given her.
‘Alissandru?’ she queried the instant she heard his dark deep drawl answer with an impatient edge. ‘It’s Isla Stewart. I’m sorry to have to bother you but I have something to tell you.’