by Lynne Graham
It wasn’t meant to be... His words haunted her but where Alissandru was concerned there were no sad thoughts of what might’ve been in Isla’s troubled mind. His rejection had been brutal and blunt. She had been a mistake, a mistake he regretted, and the miscarriage and his reaction to it had drawn a final line under that reality.
And yet she had been drawn to Alissandru Rossetti in a way she had been drawn to no other man. That bothered her, seriously bothered her. Admittedly he was gorgeous but she had been aware of his prejudice from the outset and should’ve protected herself better, holding back instead of surrendering to the fierce attraction between them. She had believed that she could be totally adult and blasé about sleeping with him and she had been devastatingly wrong in that assumption because Alissandru had ultimately hurt her more deeply than anyone had ever hurt her. She was not as tough as she had believed and was now even more painfully aware that she had to get tougher.
When Alissandru turned up that evening, Lindsay tried to head him off, but when he became icily imperious with her unfortunate friend, Isla gave up listening behind her bedroom door and emerged, bitterly conscious that she looked a mess.
‘Alissandru...’ she said flatly.
He had never seen her so pale, her freckles stark across her porcelain skin, her violet eyes dull and haunted. He had to tighten his hands into fists not to reach for her, not to try to offer the physical comfort that he knew would be offensive to her. ‘I don’t want to crowd you, but I thought you might want to talk,’ he reasoned quietly.
Bitterness flashed through Isla, sharp and painful and unfamiliar, for such bitterness did not come naturally to her. ‘We have nothing left to talk about,’ she told him curtly.
Alissandru looked amazing...of course he did, breathtakingly elegant in a dark designer suit that was exquisitely tailored to his lean, muscular physique. He emanated energy and authority in vibrant waves, the smooth planes of his high cheekbones taut below his incredibly expressive dark golden eyes. Such stunning eyes, now telegraphing the kind of guilt that was unwanted because she knew as well as he knew that he hadn’t wanted their baby and that any offer of sympathy was sheer hypocrisy on his part. Yet the sheer pulsing zing of his dark, sizzling, sensual allure still filtered through that awareness, mocking her failing self-discipline as every skin cell in her body fired with wanton renewed energy.
‘Why don’t we have dinner and discuss that?’ Alissandru murmured hoarsely, his tension increasing as she stood there, her delicate face colouring with much-needed warmth, lighting up her sad eyes and accentuating her fragility.
‘I’m leaving London in a couple of days, so there’d be no point,’ she declared. ‘I’ll let you know what I decide to do about Paulu’s house once I’ve thought stuff over.’
Alissandru was startled by the truth that he had genuinely forgotten about the house. ‘I’m not such a bastard that I’d trouble you with that matter now,’ he argued in a vehement undertone. ‘Where are you going to stay?’ he pressed curtly.
‘That’s my business,’ Isla assured him, half closing the door. ‘Goodnight, Alissandru.’
Where the hell was she going? Would she be safe there? Would someone be looking out for her? Looking after her? She looked like hell! With difficulty, Alissandru suppressed his concern, acknowledging that it was time for him to move on. He could hardly force Isla to talk to him or to listen to him. He had walked away from her in Scotland and now he had to do it again. He could not understand the wrenching sense of loss attacking him or the sensation that something in his world was very wrong. ‘I’ll stay in touch,’ he breathed in a driven conclusion.
Good luck with that, Isla thought wryly, knowing she was not about to unblock his number on her phone. Alissandru Rossetti was in the past now and only wounding memories would result from any further contact from him. She had to find a new focus in life, she told herself urgently, and embrace her future alone.
CHAPTER SIX
ISLA EXPERIENCED JOY for the first time in many weeks when she first saw the glorious cherry trees that lined the imposing private road that led up to the Palazzo Leonardo. Great foaming swathes of white blossom hung low above her hire car, making her feel as though she were driving through a tunnel of bridal lace.
It was a hot day, hotter than she had naively expected in spring, and she recognised familiar sights in every direction she looked on Rossetti land. Her visit at the age of sixteen had filled her with more memories than she had ever cared to recall. Although it had been her only trip abroad, Fantino’s assault had distressed her and made her reluctant to dwell on her recollections of her visit to Sicily.
The Rossetti family lived in a very grand home but the place where their ancestors had chosen to build was quite simply magnificent. A lush green grove of natural woodland covered the hills behind the ancient palazzo, which presided over a wonderful patchwork carpet of lemon and orange groves, olive trees and vines. It was still very much a working agricultural estate, and Paulu had run the estate for his brother.
Stiff with considerable nervous tension, Isla parked on the gravel fronting the sprawling property. She had to call at the palazzo to pick up keys and directions for Paulu and Tania’s house but it would only be polite to greet Paulu’s mother first and offer her her condolences and some explanation for her arrival. Constantia Rossetti had been very kind to Isla when she had attended her son’s wedding and, since Isla was planning to live in Paulu and Tania’s home for at least a few weeks, she wanted to be on good terms with the older woman.
As far as Isla had been able to establish, Alissandru was still in London. The fact that she had lost Alissandru’s child or that they had ever got close enough to even conceive a child was a secret, she thought gratefully, a secret known only to the two of them. Not that Alissandru had been grieving, she conceded ruefully. An Internet search of his recent activities had shown him attending a charity function with a beautiful but severely underdressed blonde on his arm. Was that sort of woman the type he went for? Skinny as a twig and showing off all of her flat chest?
Clutching a wriggling Puggle tightly beneath one arm, for Isla did not dare to leave him unattended in the hire car when he was still so disposed towards chewing anything within reach, Isla hit the modern doorbell. The bell was somewhat comically overshadowed by the giant wooded metal-studded double front doors that provided the main access to the palazzo.
A manservant greeted her and without hesitation showed her through the echoing main hall out into the delightfully feminine orangery, which was decorated in classic pale colours. The entire wall of glass, which overlooked a courtyard garden, had been pushed back to allow the fresh air and sunshine from outside to percolate indoors. The single occupant, a tall dignified woman with greying hair swept up in a chignon, stood up with a quiet smile.
‘Isla... I can hardly believe that you’re here with us again,’ she remarked warmly.
‘I’m so sorry that it’s taken me this long to visit,’ Isla murmured, offering her condolences and a brief explanation for her failure to attend the funerals. ‘But I wanted to see the house.’
‘Of course, you did,’ Constantia commented sympathetically. ‘I haven’t been back since...er, the crash, although I have ensured that the house was kept clean. Nothing has been touched or changed. I want you to know that. Everything is exactly as it was when they left that morning.’
‘I’ll go through my sister’s stuff,’ Isla proffered hurriedly. ‘And perhaps Alissandru would like to take care of his brother’s things when I’ve left again?’
‘Is this only a flying visit?’ the older woman asked as a tray of tea was brought into the orangery, and in response to her inviting gesture Isla took the seat beside hers, feeling ridiculously like a schoolgirl in the older woman’s dignified presence.
‘I’m afraid I don’t know. I haven’t made up my mind about what I’m going to do next,’ Isla told her, her
cheeks warming a little with self-consciousness as she thought of the short-lived secret interlude she had had with Alissandru.
‘Oh, what a dear little dog!’ Constantia carolled, stroking Puggle beneath his chin and urging Isla to let him down to explore while she explained that her pug had died the previous winter and she had not yet had the heart to replace him.
The older woman was friendly and welcoming, although tears were visible in her eyes more than once as she reminisced about her son, finally squeezing Isla’s hand and apologising for her emotionalism by saying, ‘It’s such a treat to talk about him to someone.’
‘But don’t you and Alissandru talk?’ Isla had asked before she could think better of that personal question.
‘Alissandru doesn’t like to discuss such things,’ his mother admitted wryly.
Puggle scrambled up onto Constantia’s lap with the insouciance of a dog who knew how important humans were to his comfort. Fed crumbs of chocolate cake, he quite naturally refused to get down again, and when the older woman offered to look after him for Isla, to let her get established at the house and do some shopping, Isla didn’t have the heart to take him away again when she could see that Puggle’s easy affection was a comfort to her hostess.
An estate worker called Giovanni was summoned to guide her to the house, which Paulu had extended and modernised to please her sister, who had initially described the property as a ‘horrible, dark, dank, cobwebby hole of a place’. There wasn’t even a hint of darkness about the building slumbering in the warmth of midmorning, brilliant sunlight reflecting off the sparkling windows and accentuating the cheerful yellow shutters and the plant pots that sat around the front door. It looked so peaceful that it made Isla’s heart ache when she reflected that the house’s previous owners would never live there again.
Scolding herself for that sad thought, she let herself into the hall and then froze in the porch doorway at the sight of a little stool covered with leopard-print fur fabric and dripping with cerise crystal beads. It was outré, ridiculous, very, very much to her flamboyant sister’s taste, and she knew she would never part with it yet it was so out of keeping with Paulu’s murderously tidy and conservatively furnished and decorated study. Two very different people, Isla acknowledged, and yet in the end they had made their relationship work with both of them making compromises to achieve a better fit.
Tania must’ve loved him, Isla decided, seeing no other reason for her sister to agree to live in a quiet country house far from the more sophisticated amusements she enjoyed. Her eyes wet with tears, she walked through the house, peering into cupboards and standing feeling like an intruder in doorways. Everywhere she spotted flashes of her extrovert sister’s personality. It was there in the bright colours, the marital bedroom awash in cerise pink and white lace like the ultra-feminine lair of some cartoon princess. She closed the door on that room, telling herself that she would start going through stuff in the morning while choosing a guest room for her own occupation. The room was still furnished with antiques and it had plain whitewashed walls. It had always been the estate manager’s house, Paulu had once told her, and presumably that was one good reason why Alissandru wanted it back again. Obviously he had to have a property to offer to his twin’s replacement.
She supposed her only real option was to sell the house back to Alissandru. If she hoped to buy a house in England she would have to sell, and maintaining a second home abroad would be far too expensive. Even so, that didn’t mean she couldn’t first enjoy a few weeks vacationing in Sicily on a beautiful private estate. Alissandru wouldn’t like her being here in his brother’s house on Rossetti land, though...well, what was that to her now and why should she care that she was an unwelcome visitor?
Her thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of one of the palazzo staff laden with food to fill her empty fridge, and they even prepared a meal for the evening, sparing her the pressure of having to go on an immediate shopping trip. Isla smiled, charmed by Constantia’s welcoming kindness. At least she didn’t have to worry about how Alissandru’s mother felt about her arrival.
Almost two months spent mostly alone in a comfortable old farmhouse had gone a long way towards restoring Isla’s peace of mind. Walking dogs and feeding kittens had kept her fully occupied. She would never forget the baby she had lost, but that first punishing weight of grief had eased. Worrying about what to cook for her next meal had been the summit of her problems in Somerset, but even there she had become disturbingly aware that she still harboured a great deal of anger and bitterness towards Alissandru. That was why she couldn’t forget him, that was why she had regularly scoured the Internet for references to him, gleaning facts and figures and a list of glittering business triumphs, all of which had utterly failed to shade in the nuances of his complex and volatile character.
After an early evening meal, she ran a bath for herself and borrowed a silk robe from Tania’s wardrobe because she had neglected to pack one. After she had bathed she would drive back up to the palazzo to collect Puggle, who would surely have worn out his welcome by then or eaten his way out of house and home. Always hungry, he was a greedy little monster of a dog for all his small size, she acknowledged ruefully as she settled into the deliciously warm water.
She was drifting close to falling asleep in the cooling water when she heard the loud knocking on the front door, and with a groan she sat up, water sloshing noisily around her. Who on earth could it be? Had Constantia sent someone down with Puggle? Roughly towelling her dripping body only semi-dry, she grabbed up the robe and threw it on, grimacing as it clung to the damp parts she had missed with the towel. Barefoot, she sped down the wooden stairs.
Alissandru was in an ungovernable rage. He had flown home unexpectedly, walked into his own home and had been unceremoniously bitten by a nasty little animal he had believed to be hundreds of miles away in another country. As his mother had cooingly picked up the vicious little brute to check that he had not hurt his teeth, Alissandru had been fit to be tied but his brain had been firing on all cylinders in shock that Isla could actually be in Sicily, in his brother’s house, on his estate.
And that startling, baffling revelation had enraged Alissandru, who liked everything spelled out in clear black-and-white predictable terms. Isla had refused to see him, refused to speak to him, refused even to take his phone calls, and yet without even giving him a warning she could take up residence in Paulu and Tania’s house barely a quarter of a kilometre from him. How was he supposed to feel about that? Obviously they were going to see each other on the estate and was she planning to flaunt her hostile attitude to him here at his home? Was this why she hadn’t agreed to sell the house? Had she always planned to show up in Sicily and make his life uncomfortable?
Her hand closing the lapels of the iridescent robe as it tried to slide open at her throat, Isla opened the door. ‘Sorry, I was in the bath,’ she began breathlessly before she saw who it was. Typically, Alissandru was sheathed in a tailored black suit that only emphasised his towering height and broad, muscular build.
In a maddening instant, Alissandru was confronted head-on by everything he had tried to forget about Isla: the triangular face dominated by huge dark blue eyes, her vivid mop of tousled curls springing back from her pale brow in a contrast that intensified the porcelain clarity of her skin. For Alissandru it was as though everyone else he met was depicted in monotone grey and only Isla was shown in full colour. Even worse, for the first time ever he was seeing her scantily clad and the idea that anyone else might have witnessed how the thin fabric of her robe clung wantonly to her voluptuous curves incensed him. He could see her nipples, the slenderness of her waist, the pronounced curve of her hips, and the hardening swell of arousal at his groin was painfully familiar.
‘Alissandru...’ Isla framed stiltedly, staring out at him wide-eyed as though he had risen cloven-hooved and fork-tailed out of the cobblestones behind him, her heart jumping behind her brea
stbone in shock.
And yet she had known she would see Alissandru, had known they could hardly avoid each other on his family estate and that her arrival would infuriate him. The golden blaze of his eyes, so bright in his lean, darkly devastating face alerted her to his mood and she took a cautious step back. ‘I thought you’d still be in London.’
‘I always come home now at weekends if I can,’ Alissandru admitted. ‘Per l’amor di Dio...what are you doing here?’
In receipt of that question, a little inner devil overpowered Isla’s caution. ‘I have every right to be here. This is my house,’ she pointed out, lifting her chin.
Alissandru compressed his beautifully shaped mouth. ‘It is, but you know that I wish to buy it from you.’
Daringly, Isla turned on her heel, turning her back on him while leaving the door open because she was determined not to politely invite him in. ‘I don’t owe you any explanations about why I’m here.’
Behind her she heard the front door snapping shut. ‘Did I say that you did?’ Alissandru growled like a grizzly bear.
‘If I give you enough rope, you’ll soon hang yourself,’ Isla forecast witheringly. ‘I know you don’t want me here.’
‘When did I ever say that?’ Alissandru demanded, following her into the open-plan lounge with its sunken seated area and flashy built-in bar topped by a glittering disco ball, which was so out of place with the rest of the house.
Isla flipped round, her robe flying momentarily open to reveal a sleek stretch of pale pink inner thigh and a slender shapely knee. His mouth ran dry at the sight while he recalled the satin-soft smoothness of her skin.
Isla frowned, hating the way he was staring at her. ‘You didn’t need to say it after you made it clear that you didn’t want anyone outside your family owning any part of this estate.’