by Lynne Graham
Isla’s observations mushroomed the more she watched them. The minute anyone tried to get into conversation with Alissandru, Grazia intervened, occasionally stepping between him and someone else or hailing someone else across the room and tugging him in that direction. The blonde was very pointedly possessive. She talked constantly, demanding his attention, stroking his sleeve, at one point stopping dead to straighten his bow tie in a statement of familiarity that made Isla’s teeth grit.
It was an uncomfortable show for Isla to be forced to watch when Alissandru had been in her bed with her the night before. Was she jealous? Overly possessive? she asked herself worriedly, disliking the shrewish tone of her thoughts. As for Alissandru, she could read him even better in the slight widening of his eyes when he saw her; he hadn’t expected her to be present and he moved with his companion in every direction but Isla’s, and by the time they all moved into dinner, Isla was angry at being ignored.
As they were passing through the big hall towards the dining room, Alissandru addressed her. ‘Isla...my mother didn’t tell me that you would be here.’
‘It was kind of her to ask me,’ Isla parried lightly, meeting Grazia’s assessing dark eyes as Alissandru performed an introduction.
‘So, you’re Tania’s little sister,’ Grazia remarked. ‘You don’t look much like her.’
‘No.’ Accustomed to such comments when anyone had met Tania first, Isla merely smiled and added, ‘Your dress is a wonderful colour...’
And that was all that was required to encourage Grazia to tell the tale of how she had found the material in a Moroccan silk market and imported it to make signature pieces for her most recent fashion show. They separated to find their seats and Isla was reasonably happy with the way the meeting had passed off. She hadn’t scratched Grazia’s eyes out. She hadn’t slapped Alissandru across the face even though she was naturally wondering if he was sleeping with the beautiful blonde, as well.
Of course, she was going to wonder that when the woman was all over him like a rash, touching him with a level of familiarity that went beyond the usual definition of friendship. So, decidedly not just a platonic bond on Grazia’s side, Isla decided, recognising that she was learning stuff about herself through Alissandru that she had never dreamt she would learn. She was the jealous, possessive type, she acknowledged with guilty unease. In fact, she found it very hard to look anywhere else in the room.
* * *
His mother should’ve warned him that Isla would be attending, Alissandru reflected impatiently, reading in Isla’s stiff smiles and set little face all that he didn’t want to see. Now she was furious with him, now she would be trying to throw him out of bed, her every suspicion aroused. The child they had lost had created a deeper bond between them but that extra layer both united and divided them, he conceded grimly. He cursed Isla’s desire for secrecy and questioned how the hell he had strayed into so potentially chaotic an affair. In truth, he didn’t know how he had ended up back in bed with Isla or why he had spent most of the day thinking about doing it again and revelling afresh in the hot, sweet welcome of her curvy body. Suddenly he was off-the-charts obsessed with sex for the first time since his adolescence and it had blinded him to every other consideration.
Isla was ridiculously unlike his previous lovers. She didn’t look like them, didn’t act like them, didn’t think like them and was highly unlikely to respect his boundaries. Even more pertinently, those boundaries were set in stone: he didn’t get attached, he didn’t like strings or drama or plans for a future that stretched more than a week ahead.
‘She’s very jealous, isn’t she?’ Grazia whispered in his ear. ‘She doesn’t look the type to make a public scene, though.’
‘What the hell have you been playing at?’ Alissandru demanded grimly.
‘I couldn’t resist testing her out once you said she was here,’ Grazia admitted. ‘A woman who tosses back diamonds could be worth her weight in gold to a man like you.’
‘What do you mean by a man like me?’ Alissandru practically snarled back, so irate was he that Grazia was pot-stirring merely to amuse herself.
Grazia gave him a huge affectionate smile. ‘Well, to be honest you’ve had it very easy with women. You click your fingers and they swamp you in attention, you ditch them and they still act like you’re their best friend in the hope that you’ll come back. And here you are having to try to impress a woman for the first time ever and she still won’t even walk down the street in daylight with you,’ she proffered. ‘I think it’s precious.’
‘I shouldn’t have told you about her.’
‘Yes, but you didn’t tell me everything, did you?’ Grazia said with a shrewd knowing look. ‘I sense more of a back story than you’re willing to share.’
‘Mind your own business,’ Alissandru advised her bluntly, thinking that that was one back story he would never share with anyone.
* * *
Isla stayed as long as was polite, cutting out after coffee and walking back out to her car with a sense of crashing relief that she had escaped the source of her discomfiture. Well, one lived and one learned, she reasoned with herself, and over the course of the evening Isla had learned that sex on its own wasn’t enough for her. Alissandru was a womaniser and she couldn’t say that she hadn’t been warned, not only by Tania’s gossip but also by his no-holds-barred rejection at the croft. Two people as different as she and Alissandru could only be a bad fit.
And that was that, she told herself as she removed her make-up and got ready for bed. She wasn’t about to punish herself with regrets because it had undoubtedly been time she acquired some experience with men. And she had run through the entire range of emotions with Alissandru, from the heartbreaking loss of their child to the sheer joy she had discovered in his arms. He had been useful for that, at least, she thought ruefully. Useful for that but not for much else, she extended censoriously. A very off-putting example too, she ruminated, terrific for sex, useless in every other sphere.
The doorbell went. Isla stiffened and ignored it. It went again, shrill and sharp as if it was being jabbed by an angry hand, the noise provoking Puggle into staccato barks. Isla climbed into bed and reached for her book while wondering if she should’ve gone downstairs to speak to Alissandru. She just knew it was him ringing the bell. What on earth would she have said, though? Another argument would not improve matters, particularly when she would have to deal with him to sell the house. No, it was more sensible to move on and ignore him and that meant no more thinking about him, no more wondering, no more dreaming. It occurred to her that life was suddenly looking very dull indeed.
Alissandru, unhappily, had no experience of being ignored and it inflamed him. Isla blew hot and cold. He never knew what she would do next. If she wasn’t shouting at him or blocking him on her phone, she was shutting him out, hugging the charmed circle of her privacy and all that made him want to do was invade it. A sensible man, however, would just go home again and leave her to stew, Alissandru reflected grimly. But Alissandru never turned his back on a challenge. He walked round to the side of the house and calculated his chances of climbing up onto the roof of the kitchen to make it into the bedroom where she had left the window open. Go home, logic advised, confront Isla, his volatile, stubborn nature urged. Yanking loose his bow tie to unbutton his collar, he cast his jacket over a shrub and tested a drainpipe for stability.
Isla heard a noise and looked up from her book. As she saw a hand come through the window to grasp at the sill she screamed so loud that she hurt her throat.
‘Per l’amor di Dio...it is only I,’ Alissandru drawled as he pushed the window wider and swung lithely through the gap, black hair tousled as he leant back on the ledge and stretched, long, lean black-trouser-clad legs extended.
In the blink of an eye, Isla transformed from terrified paralysis into raging-shrew mode. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing? You frighten
ed the life out of me!’
‘You should’ve answered the doorbell,’ Alissandru pointed out drily, studying her slumberously from beneath luxuriant black lashes.
‘How the hell did you get up here?’ Isla demanded, leaping out of the bed to peer out of the window into the darkness below. ‘You climbed up? You stupid idiot! You could’ve been hurt!’
‘But I wasn’t,’ Alissandru pointed out silkily, trapping her between his spread knees, big hands curving to her shapely hips. ‘I don’t like to boast but in my misspent youth I climbed Everest. And I’m very grateful to arrive and discover that you are not wearing anything furry...’
Isla froze, embarrassingly aware that, having taken her by surprise, Alissandru had caught her bare of make-up and wearing the shortie pyjamas she had packed for warmer nights in Sicily. Suddenly the fabric felt as though it were shrink-wrapped to her dampening skin, and she went red.
‘Although you do have rather eccentric taste in lingerie,’ Alissandru purred, his attention locked to the frog print on the pyjamas. ‘I will buy you something much more to my taste.’
Isla brought her hands down abruptly to break the spell, not to mention his hold on her hips, and she scrambled back into bed to say with as much cool as she could project, ‘No, you won’t be buying me anything or lingering to outline your fantasies. You’re going to leave now...and sensibly, by the front door.’
Alissandru shook his dark head as if she had posed a question and sighed, stretching to loosen his shoulders, the front of his shirt rippling with the flexing fluidity of his muscles. Isla removed her attention from him quickly.
‘What do you want?’ she demanded tartly.
Alissandru dealt her a wolfish smile. ‘I think you pretty much know what I want by now.’
Isla bridled. ‘No. We’re done.’
‘Not as far as I’m concerned.’
‘I didn’t ask you how you felt about it!’ Isla flung back at him in frustration.
‘Why are you always angry with me?’ Alissandru asked, frowning at her. ‘I was your first, so I can’t imagine there’s a long line of bad guys who let you down in the past.’
‘One of you is quite enough. Where did you stash your dinner date while you came here?’
‘Grazia has gone home, probably laughing all the way,’ Alissandru confided with sardonic bite. ‘We’ve known each other from childhood as neighbours and friends. She’s the sister I never had but I made the mistake of telling her about you before she arrived tonight, so she decided to play a game.’
‘You told her about me?’ Isla interrupted sharply. ‘What did you tell her about me? And since we’re on a subject that I had no intention of raising, why does a woman you say you regard as a sister paw you like you’re a cuddly toy?’
‘To see if she could get a rise out of you...and drop me in it,’ Alissandru told her with derision. ‘She has an odd sense of humour, always did have.’
‘What did you tell her about me?’ Isla demanded accusingly.
‘Dio mio... I didn’t tell her anything too private...believe me,’ Alissandru countered grimly. ‘There are some stories you don’t share and that tragedy is one of them.’
The worst of Isla’s tension drained away and her eyes softened, acknowledging that that wounding memory was theirs alone.
‘She was overdoing the flirtation so much that you should’ve realised that it was fake. Do you really think I would be with a woman who behaves like that with me in public?’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen you in public with a woman before,’ Isla pointed out woodenly, feeling foolish, feeling mortified by the explanation he was giving her and not really knowing whether to believe him or not. ‘Oh, go home, Alissandru. I’ve had enough of you for one night.’
‘But I haven’t had enough of you,’ Alissandru murmured huskily, beautiful eyes of pure mesmeric gold holding hers.
Perspiration broke out all over her and she swallowed hard, fighting the flush of heat uncoiling at her core with all her might.
‘And tonight was a game changer,’ Alissandru intoned rawly. ‘If you and I were out in the open, I would’ve been with you tonight, not Grazia, so from now on—’
‘No!’ Isla cut in forcefully, second-guessing what he was about to say, her entire body freezing at the concept of their intimacy becoming public knowledge.
Everyone would know, she thought in horror. Everyone would think she was a slut to be sleeping with Alissandru five minutes after she arrived in Sicily and everyone would be a witness to her humiliation when it fell apart again. And what if somehow the story of the child they had lost came out? She turned cold to the bone at that fear because that memory was so very private. Her face suffused with angry colour because she knew what Alissandru was like, knew he didn’t last longer than a couple of weeks with any woman, knew it would be foolish to imagine he would even last that long with her, a former waitress with no claim to fame or extraordinary beauty.
‘Why not?’ Alissandru asked silkily.
‘I don’t want people knowing,’ Isla admitted without apology.
‘Are you ashamed of me?’ Alissandru studied her in angry fascination because he was used to women who wanted to show him off like a trophy.
Isla reddened. ‘Of course not,’ she muttered unconvincingly, still at war with her upbringing and the tenets that insisted sex was only really acceptable in a loving relationship. So, what did that make her? If she gave herself recklessly purely for pleasure? If she set her value so low she asked for nothing more? If other people saw those truths she would be humiliated, whereas what went on in private was strictly and literally her own affair.
‘Either it’s in the open or we’re done here,’ Alissandru delivered, rising fluidly upright, dark eyes glittering like golden blades.
Isla swallowed hard, unprepared for that direct challenge. It was an ultimatum as only Alissandru could make it. ‘If we’re out in the open where does that take us?’ she prompted, playing for time.
‘It may not take us anywhere,’ Alissandru said bluntly. ‘But at least it would be normal and I could share Sicily with you while you’re here.’
‘I’ll think about it,’ Isla muttered, plucking at the duvet with restive fingertips.
‘Think harder, think now,’ Alissandru instructed impatiently.
While you’re here. A telling little comment. He didn’t foresee them lasting for any appreciable length of time. But then, neither did she, so that was hardly a revelation. What did she have to lose? What did she most fear? Losing him. That revelation shocked her but it didn’t change anything because either she chose to lose him now by choice or she faced losing him when she didn’t want to in the near future. Did the baby she had lost make the idea of losing Alissandru more threatening? Was that why she felt so bonded to him? She liked that explanation. But wasn’t it time she took a risk in life? Let up on the need to protect herself and broke the rules of her grandparents, who had grown up in a very different era?
‘All right,’ she pronounced tautly.
Alissandru shot her a wicked smile and dug out his phone, pressing a number and shooting a stream of liquid Italian into it. He tossed it aside and began to unbutton his shirt, a long riveting slice of bronzed muscular chest appearing. ‘From now on, you’ll let me buy you things.’
Isla cocked her bright head to one side, dark blue eyes gleaming in her flushed face. ‘Alissandru? Quit while you’re ahead,’ she advised. ‘You’re supposed to be generous in victory.’
Alissandru leant down and hungrily ravished her soft pink mouth with his own, his tongue delving deep. ‘No, that’s when I move in for the kill, bella mia.’
He shed his clothes without taking his stunning eyes from her once and it made her feel as if she was the only woman on earth for him at that moment. One moment in time, she told herself, one moment to feel that special, was worth wha
tever the aftermath would cost her. This time she watched him strip without turning her gaze away in uneasy denial of her curiosity. And there he was, glorious as a Greek god, completely male, all hard contours of bone and sinew, sleek bronze skin beautifully encasing lean, powerful muscles. The prominence of his arousal made her mouth go dry and she no longer marvelled at the soreness that had taken days to ebb after their first night together.
He ripped off the frog-print pyjamas without ceremony and flung them across the room, studying her pale curves with immense appreciation, lowering his head to stroke a swollen pink nipple with his tongue. Her breath caught in her throat and she recognised the surge of slick heat at her core, her hips shifting, her body primed and ready.
‘Who were you phoning?’ she asked shakily.
‘I was ordering breakfast for us here,’ Alissandru told her, long fingers tracing the scattering of freckles across the slope of her breasts. ‘I’m not sneaking out like a cat burglar before dawn in the morning.’
‘And you’ll be using the front door from now on,’ she muttered breathlessly.
‘As long as you answer the bell,’ Alissandru qualified.
Isla sent him a glimmering smile of one-upmanship. ‘Then you make sure you treat me well,’ she murmured, running a possessive hand down over his flat stomach, finding him, watching him react, his lush black lashes sinking low over his vibrant eyes.