by Kim Lawrence
Zoe watched the shutters go back up, hearing the lack of emotion in his hard voice. She could have screamed in sheer frustration, but instead she put her hand back in her lap, her feelings see-sawing violently between empathy and a strong desire to shake him.
Did he imagine allowing her even a glimpse of the man beneath the mask gave her some sort of special power?
‘Don’t worry, Isandro, I’d already guessed you’re actually human.’ Their glances connected and Zoe saw the shock he was not quick enough to hide flicker in the second before his hooded eyelids lowered, leaving her looking at the gleam of his eyes through the mesh of his eyelashes. ‘But I won’t tell anyone. Your secret is safe with me,’ she promised.
His lips tightened, but the faint flush along the angle of his cheekbones suggested she had made her point. ‘I am not in the mood for word games, Zoe.’
‘Fine, is this straightforward enough? Your dad made a mistake once…all right, a big mistake,’ she conceded in response to his snort. ‘That doesn’t mean there isn’t an outside possibility he actually loves this woman.’
His lip curled contemptuously. ‘My father believes in fairy tales.’ While he despised the childlike credulity, there had been moments when Isandro almost envied his father.
‘Isn’t that a good thing? That the awful woman didn’t win?’ she said softly.
The suggestion caused Isandro to turn his head sharply to look at her, the compassion glowing in her eyes as much as the statement causing him to frown. A nerve jumped spasmodically in his lean cheek. A man was allowed some privacy, yet she continually ignored the ‘keep off’ signs and crossed the boundaries.
Didn’t you invite her in when you offloaded your emotional garbage?
His frown deepened as he pushed away the question and barked, ‘How do you figure that one out?’
Watching as she stuck out her chin to a belligerent angle, he felt his anger slipping away to be replaced with an emotion he was less comfortable putting a name to. The woman had more guts than anyone he had ever met.
‘If your father had come out of the experience a cynic she would have won, but he hasn’t. He hasn’t become bitter, cynical and twisted.’
She saw the flicker of an emotion she could not name in his dark eyes before he turned his head away from her. The rain had begun to drum against the window.
‘Are you saying I have?’
Instead of responding to the question, she voiced one that had popped into her head during the conversation. ‘Is that why your marriage failed?’
He turned to face her and instead, as she half expected, of telling her to mind her own business, shook his head and repeated the question.
‘Is what why my marriage failed?’
Did he lay the blame for his failed marriage at his father’s door? It would certainly go a long way to explain why, all these years later, he could not forgive and forget. Common sense told her this was a subject she shouldn’t broach but a need to understand this man who had captured her heart was stronger. ‘You were forced to concentrate your energy on saving your father and the firm and you didn’t have time for your…’ Her voice faltered as she stopped and gave a self-conscious shrug. ‘It’s none of my business. I just…’
‘Want to pry and prod.’
Encouraged that he sounded amused, but not antagonistic, she lifted her gaze, studying his face as he replied.
‘No, my marriage did not fail because I was busy rebuilding the company. Though I imagine it might have speeded up the process. Simply put, my marriage was never my priority. We married too young—we both wanted different things from life. Marriage requires compromise.’ His dark eyes brushed her face. ‘I do not do compromise.’ He gave a sardonic smile, to which she had no response. ‘The end was inevitable.’
Did this clinical analysis hide a broken heart Isandro could not admit to even to himself?
‘I was not surprised when Dana left.’ One side of his mobile mouth lifted in an ironic half-smile. ‘Though I was not expecting her to leave with my best friend,’ he conceded.
Unable to control her reaction, Zoe gasped.
Isandro placed a finger under her chin and lifted it. ‘The open-mouth look is not so bad on you.’ Head tilted a little to one side, he drew back slightly to look at her face, realising as he did so that nothing was a bad look on her.
His eyes darkened as he ran the pad of his thumb down her smooth, downy soft cheek. Inhaling the scent of her warm skin through flared nostrils, he felt the desire that was always close to the surface. Unable to resist the lush softness of her mouth, he bent his head, feeling her sigh as she opened her mouth to deepen the penetration of his tongue, winding her fingers into his hair, pulling him in close.
When he lifted his mouth they stayed that way, her nose pressed to the side of his, her fingers in his hair, their warm breaths mingling.
Reluctant to break physical contact, she slid her hands slowly down over his broad muscular shoulders before crossing them across her stomach in a protective hug. She was still shaking in response to the soul-stripping kiss, the barely leashed violence in his embrace; the simmering hunger still in his eyes made it hard for her to speak, let alone focus.
She felt his hand go to her breasts, cupping them through her clothes, as his other hand skimmed down the side of her face.
She was breathing hard now; her fingers went to his belt.
‘If anyone comes…’ she said thickly.
He pulled down his jeans and reached across to slide her skirt up her thighs, his fingers sliding up her silky warm skin under the hem of her panties.
‘They won’t.’
His hard, predatory expression made her shiver inside. Excited and aroused beyond reason or caution, she climbed onto his lap, facing him. His hands moved in a sweeping motion up and down her back and down her buttocks before coming to rest on her hips.
He wanted her so badly that he couldn’t breathe; all he could think about was sinking into her. It was crazy and intense.
Zoe reached down to caress his shaft, waiting until he was groaning before she raised herself up and impaled herself on the hard, silky, hot length. Perfectly in tune, they moved together fast and hard in perfect harmony until they both came in a hot, violent flood.
Adjusting her clothes, aware that beside her Isandro was doing the same, she could hardly believe what she had just done. Anyone could have driven by and seen them, and she hadn’t cared.
Her body still warm with the flush of desire, she turned to look at him.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know about…It must have been terrible for you.’ Dana was a beautiful name. Had she been beautiful? Of course she’d been beautiful.
And he’d loved her…Zoe was shocked by the animosity she felt towards a woman she had never met. Had he been thinking about her while he made love just now?
It took him a few seconds to realise what she was talking about—his ex-wife! They had just made devastating love and she was talking about his ex. He didn’t want to talk about Dana; he wanted to talk about where this was going. He wanted to talk about having Zoe in his bed nights.
‘I was a hell of a husband. Basically I lived my own life and expected her to take it or leave it. In the end, she left it. I do not blame her. She was lonely and Carl was able to give her the things she wanted.’ He held her blue eyes as he said, ‘Some men are not meant for marriage.’
The warning was implicit. Wondering uneasily what she’d done to make him feel the need to spell out the obvious, she pulled her hands out from the warmth of his and laughed.
‘I suppose there’s still time to cancel the engagement notice I sent to the paper. Relax, Isandro, I’m not about to propose.’
And not even in her wildest dreams had she ever imagined Isandro doing so. She had accepted that what they had would never be deep and meaningful for him. What choice did she have? She was taking it one day at a time, enjoying the moments when they were together. Perhaps the knowledge that they would not last
gave them a sweet bitterness, but she was determined not to waste a second.
Isandro leaned back in his own seat and turned his head to look at her. ‘So you think I should go to my father’s wedding?’
‘Does it matter what I think?’
‘Sometimes an objective view is good.’
Zoe laughed, the sound dredged from somewhere deep inside her bubbling from her lips. She couldn’t help herself—objective where Isandro was concerned was something she could never be.
Biting her lip to stem the flow, she responded to his quizzical look with a shrug. ‘I thought I was emotional and illogical?’
‘You have the occasional lucid moment,’ he threw back with a lazy grin.
‘So will you go?’
‘There is no point in burning my bridges.’
Zoe nodded and lowered her gaze. She had burnt her bridges some time ago. Would she regret it…? She shook her head; she didn’t want to think about that now.
She glanced at her watch and was shocked to see how long they had been here. ‘I need to pick up the twins. I promised Chloe’s mum-in-law I’d pick them up at half past.’ It was almost that time now. While she was being utterly selfish she would never let her own selfish desires come ahead of her duty to her sister’s children.
‘Calm down—it won’t take long.’
It didn’t. He delivered her to the cottage door only five minutes late. Zoe got out of the car. About to join her, Isandro paused and responded to the bleep of his mobile.
He scanned the screen and with a curse slid it back into his pocket. ‘Are you all right getting home alone?’
‘Of course.’
‘I will see you…’ He paused, as if unable to commit himself even to a minor thing like a time, and, nodding curtly, slammed the door and drove off.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
STRUGGLING TO PUSH all thoughts of Isandro from her head, Zoe tapped on the cottage door and walked inside the warm, homely, farmhouse-style kitchen. A second later the impossible was achieved: she wasn’t thinking of Isandro.
‘Oh, my God!’ She dropped to her knees in front of the child seated at the table, her face creased in lines of anxiety as she touched the uninjured side of her nephew’s face. ‘Harry!’
‘It’s fine.’
Maud was on her feet, laying a hand on Zoe’s shoulder.
‘Seriously, it’s a lot worse than it looks, dear.’
‘How on earth…? Who did this? Has a doctor seen…?’
‘The nurse at school cleaned the cut.’ Georgie, who had come to stand beside her brother, provided the information to a stunned Zoe.
‘But who did this to you, Harry? Why didn’t the headmaster inform me?’
‘Sit down, dear, you’ve had a shock.’ Maud pushed Zoe down into a chair beside Harry and produced a cup of tea from somewhere. ‘The head tried to ring you but you’d already left and your mobile was switched off.’
‘He wants to see you tomorrow,’ Harry muttered, licking his bruised and swollen lip.
‘And I want to see him! I want to know the little thug who—your poor face…’
‘It wasn’t Adam, it was Harry. He just went for him.’
Zoe turned her head to look at Georgie. ‘Harry fighting…?’ She shook her head. The image of gentle, sweet Harry brawling was one she simply couldn’t accept. Now, if it had been Georgie…
‘He was. I saw it.’
‘But, Harry, why?’
The little boy shook his head and looked away. It was Georgie who responded.
‘It was the things Adam was saying about you and Isandro. I was telling him he was stupid but Harry came in just when Adam called you a bad name and Harry went for him…He was brilliant,’ she enthused, turning an admiring look at her twin.
Digesting the information in shock, Zoe recovered enough to knock this on the head. ‘It is never brilliant to fight,’ she said numbly.
Oh, God, this was her fault!
Of this Zoe had no doubt. The child in question was the son of the attractive vet who had made a play for Isandro at Chloe’s party. The woman had gone out of her way ever since to be unpleasant to Zoe, and she had no doubt the kid was only repeating what he had heard at home. Probably everyone was saying the same with various degrees of contempt.
How could she not have considered the possible fallout for the twins when she had embarked on this affair? She had thought that by keeping the affair from them she was protecting them…Some protection, she thought, self-disgust bubbling like acid in her stomach.
She patted Harry’s curly head. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll make things right with the headmaster.’
‘I told you not to tell, Georgie. Look, she’s crying now.’
Zoe gave a watery smile and sniffed. ‘No, I’m not crying. And I’m very, very cross with you.’
The kiss she then planted on Harry’s head might have given mixed messages, but what mattered was putting this right. And she would. The sooner, the better. No gingerly easing off the plaster—it was a straight in there, hold your breath, grit your teeth and rip it off. The brutal approach might sting a bit at the time but why prolong the agony?
So the analogy was not perfect. No matter what spin she put on it, Zoe knew that this was going to hurt more than losing a few superficial layers of epidermis, but the important thing was not giving herself time for her resolve to weaken and waver.
That had been the theory anyway. But it was after eleven when the doorbell finally rang and by this time Zoe had gone through nail-biting apprehension and nervous pacing and come out the other side.
She let the doorbell ring a second time before she took a deep breath and headed for the hall. I’m totally calm, she told herself, serene even.
Her serenity lasted all the way up to the door and it swung inwards to reveal a tall, lean figure looking sleek and exclusive in a designer suit and, frankly, well out of her league. It hadn’t been intended to last…They were a total mismatch outside the bedroom. She took a deep breath and pushed away thoughts of the bedroom and reminded herself all she was doing was hastening the inevitable.
So suck it up, Zoe, you’re a grown-up, a parent…running away or, even worse, running into his arms is not an option.
‘Sorry I’m so late…’ Drawn irresistibly to her body heat and softness, he began to lean forward, but was forced to draw back when she whisked away and began to walk towards the sitting room. His expression thoughtful, he watched her retreating back. It grew less thoughtful as his heavy-lidded eyes lingered on her rounded bottom. He shook his head to clear it. ‘I hope the food isn’t spoilt.’
‘I didn’t make any food.’ Her spine stiff with tension, she walked ahead of him into the sitting room, trying desperately to remember her carefully prepared speech. It had vanished into the ether, or at least into some dark dead end of her stressed brain.
He had caught the negative vibes even before she avoided his embrace. Isandro’s expression grew contemptuous as he asked himself what point exactly he had been making when he hadn’t rung to say he’d be late.
It was simply another example of his increasingly pathetic attempts to pretend that this was all casual. Who was he kidding anyway?
Well, there, he’d admitted it, but this wasn’t the time to rush on and make any dramatic declarations. Clearly if he wanted to keep Zoe in his bed and in his life he would have to bend some of his normal rules.
The painful acknowledgement had an aftertaste of relief to it…He felt a little of the tension in his shoulders release. Why on earth had that been so difficult? It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been bending the bloody rules to breaking point from the moment her blue eyes, sinuous curves and smart mouth appeared in his world.
Life was about to change, and he wasn’t infatuated; he was…past infatuation.
Still unwilling to follow this insight through to its conclusion, he closed the door of the sitting room behind him. He should be opening doors. The contemplative furrow in his brow smoothed.
It
was not a weakness to accept he wanted more from this relationship than sex, it was a weakness not to accept it.
He clapped a hand to his head. Will you listen to yourself, Isandro? the analytical portion of his brain mocked. This was exactly the reason he didn’t go in for all that self-analysis crap. It could drive a man crazy and get him nowhere, especially when he’d not had a full night’s sleep for how long…?
Before, he had never spent a full night with a woman out of his own choice. But now the roles were reversed and, back in his own bed, for some reason he just lay awake unable to sleep without her warmth in his arms.
Boyfriend…He tried the description on for size in his head. He’d never actually been anyone’s boyfriend. The whole idea seemed…not him.
Her initial impression of intense weariness was more pronounced when he walked into the small living room. It was palpable. It took every ounce of her self-control to fight the compelling urge to rush to him.
He paused, appearing to sense her mood before he tilted his head towards the ceiling and said in a hushed voice, ‘The children?’
‘Are asleep.’
He expelled a sigh, silenced the narrative in his head and extended his arms. It did not cross his mind for one moment that she would not run into them. Zoe was more responsive to him than any other woman he had ever met. If his passion for her was unquenchable, so was hers for him.
She was infatuated.
She’s in love.
Zoe stood, her feet glued to the spot, and shook her head. The effort caused beads of sweat to form on her upper lip, but she dabbed them with her tongue and shook her head.
He did not approach her, but instead closed the door behind him and leaned his broad shoulders against the wall. He looked very pale. His dark eyes were weirdly blank, they reminded her of someone in shock.
He cleared his throat. ‘Problem?’
She laughed even though she felt like crying. That was so like Isandro, who never used two words when one would suffice. Then, gathering her determination in both hands, she nodded.