Читать книгу Modern Romance December Books 1-4 - Эбби Грин, Линн Грэхем - Страница 12
ОглавлениеWHILE ISLA WAS keeping busy in the kitchen and setting a tray, Alissandru lay back bored in bed and wondered why Isla had yet to ask him what she had inherited from his brother. Was that a deliberate avoidance tactic calculated to impress him with her lack of avarice? But why would she want to impress him? After all, regardless of Alissandru’s feelings, she would receive that inheritance. Her attitude, however, was an anomaly and Alissandru didn’t like anomalies. He flatly refused to accept that Tania could have a sister who wasn’t greedy. His sister-in-law had craved money the way a dying man would crave water or air.
And moving on from his inflexible conviction that Isla had to be a gold-digger like so many other women he had met, he thought about that kiss and wondered what insanity had possessed him. Tania’s sister, so inappropriate a choice. But she tasted like strawberries and cream, all the evocative flavours of a summer day and sunlight. Alissandru frowned darkly, forced to recognise afresh that his brain had yet to recover its normal function. That blow to the head had done more damage than he appreciated when his sharp-as-a-tack logic was failing to filter out such a fanciful comparison. Isla was curiously sexy and that was it, no need to be thinking about tastes and flavours, he told himself irritably.
Stupendously sexy, he adjusted, the ready stirring at his groin provoking him to greater honesty. He didn’t understand why, he simply recognised that the minute she touched him, or indeed got anywhere near him, he reacted with an almost juvenile instant surge of excitement. A woman had never heated him up so fast or with such ease and it bothered him, because no way was he in the market for an affair with Tania’s sister.
Isla brought in the tray, watching as Alissandru dragged himself up against the pillows to accept it. His bronzed skin gleamed in the firelight, accentuating a honed and very muscular physique straight out of a woman’s fantasy. Her face burned and she wondered if she should be searching for a pair of her uncle’s pyjamas to offer him. But wouldn’t that make her look like a prude? It was her bet that Alissandru routinely wore little in bed.
‘What on earth are you wearing?’ Alissandru enquired as he accepted the tray, his brows drawing together as he studied the furry fabric top and loose bottoms to match.
‘It’s warm.’
‘Where’s your meal?’ he asked.
‘Downstairs,’ she admitted stiffly.
‘Per carita, Isla!’ Alissandru exclaimed. ‘It’s boring up here alone.’
The tip of her tongue slid out to moisten her dry lower lip, discomfiture gripping her. ‘I’ll bring mine up,’ she finally said, feeling a little foolish over her determination to avoid him simply because he made her feel uncomfortable.
She sank down on the side of the bed beside him, both flustered and harassed by the amused glance he flung her as she slowly lifted her legs up after her to balance the tray on her knees. So, it was a bed, no need to make a silly fuss about that when there was no chair available, she instructed herself in exasperation.
‘You still haven’t fully explained your connection with Paulu,’ Alissandru remarked softly.
Isla gritted her teeth on her fork. ‘We became friends...he was upset about his marriage breaking down and I tried to advise him on how to get Tania back.’
‘Good to know who I have to thank for that final mistake,’ Alissandru commented drily.
‘You need a filter button before you speak,’ Isla told him tartly.
‘Share with me the advice you gave him,’ Alissandru urged.
She turned her head to look at him and, unexpectedly, her heart softened. She recognised the glow of curiosity in his eyes for what it was: a kind of hunger to know and understand anything about his twin that he had been excluded from, and naturally Paulu had not shared his eagerness to reclaim his estranged wife with a brother who had probably cheered at her departure.
‘Paulu was behaving like a stalker. He was sending Tania emails, texts and showering her with invitations and it wasn’t getting him anywhere. Tania was annoyed he had followed her back to London,’ Isla admitted ruefully. ‘She told me the marriage was over.’
‘So, what changed?’
‘I don’t know for sure because, apart from a text from Paulu telling me they were giving their marriage another go, I didn’t get to see either of them again,’ Isla confided ruefully. ‘But I had warned Paulu to stop chasing her and to back off and give her some space. She took him for granted...you see.’
‘Sì,’ Alissandru agreed grimly.
‘But at the same time, Paulu was Tania’s security blanket, her safe place, and I suspect that if he did show a little backbone and she started to fear that she truly was losing him for ever, she might think again.’
‘It’s the eighth wonder of the world that Paulu and I shared the same womb,’ Alissandru intoned. ‘We barely had a thought in common.’
‘You were twins.’
‘Fraternal. I inherited more of my father’s traits but Paulu didn’t have an aggressive bone in his body.’
‘He had much more important gifts,’ Isla cut in. ‘He was kind and loving and generous.’
‘Sì, very generous,’ Alissandru sliced in darkly, setting his tray down and welding his broad shoulders to the headboard in physical emphasis of his exasperated sarcasm. ‘If he hadn’t almost bankrupted himself treating Tania to her every wish before he married her, he wouldn’t have got himself into so much financial trouble afterwards.’
Isla set down her tray as well, her heart-shaped face troubled. ‘Is that what you always do? Take the gloomy view?’
‘The truth can hurt and I don’t avoid it,’ Alissandru assured her.
‘But what you’re refusing to see is how happy Tania made your brother. You may not have liked her, but he adored her and I’m so grateful they got back together before they died,’ Isla confessed emotively. ‘How happy was he the last time you saw him?’
Unimpressed by her sentimental outlook, Alissandru thought back to his last meeting with his twin. Ironically, only days before the helicopter crash, Paulu had been full of the joys of spring, striding into Alissandru’s office to cheerfully announce that Tania was willing to try for a baby. Alissandru had been taken aback by the unashamed depth of his brother’s desire to have a child of his own because it was not an aspiration that had ever entered Alissandru’s head. No, for Alissandru, having a family featured only in some far distant future and it was not something he felt any need to consider before he even reached his thirtieth birthday.
‘He was happy,’ Alissandru admitted grudgingly, and even as he uttered those words he felt some of the weight of his grief slip free and lighten his heart. Suddenly he realised what a comfort it was to look back and recognise that his twin’s last months had been joyful because he had reunited with the love of his life and together they had been planning a more settled future.
Isla turned to study him, her wide blue eyes full of understanding and compassion. ‘And doesn’t that make you feel better? I know it makes me feel better.’
That truth was so simple it positively shrieked at Alissandru but he had not seen that truth for himself and in a sudden movement he snaked an arm round her and pulled her close.
‘Grazie...thank you,’ he breathed in a hoarse tone of relief, his eyes hot liquid gold with naked emotion.
He had such beautiful eyes, she found herself thinking again, and the spiky black lashes surrounding them only boosted their appeal. And as she gazed up at him he lowered his dark head and crushed her soft mouth under his, sending a wave of such hopeless longing snaking through Isla that she shivered with the effect of it.
‘You’re cold,’ Alissandru assumed, lifting her onto his lap to throw back the duvet and then shift her beneath it and back into his strong arms.
Spontaneous laughter shook Alissandru’s body as he held her. ‘You feel furry like a teddy bear,’ he confided unevenly. ‘Is there really a woman underneath the fur?’
Taken aback by both his boldness and his amusement, Isla winced. ‘I didn’t want to be wearing anything provocative around you.’
‘It’s definitely not provocative,’ Alissandru assured her, long fingers smoothing her soft curls back from her face. ‘But then I only need to look at you to want you, mia bella.’
Sentenced to stillness by that startling admission, Isla gazed up at him, barely crediting that she was in his arms in a bed. Could it be true that she attracted him to that extent? Even though he had despised her sister and had revealed, with his accusation about Paulu, a worrying bias against her likely character as well?
‘Stop thinking so hard,’ Alissandru urged her, a fingertip smoothing the frown line forming between her delicate brows.
The heat of his big powerful body filtering through her lounging pyjamas made her feel warm and secure. He actually wanted her. Alissandru Rossetti wanted her and somehow that made Isla feel less alone. But then, at the age of twenty-two she had lost every living person who had ever mattered to her and she often felt alone. Her uncle and aunt were one of those couples so content to be a couple that they rarely invited visitors and, although they always assured her that she was welcome, Isla was not comfortable inviting herself.
‘Are you warm enough now?’ Alissandru enquired silkily, a hand sliding beneath her top to splay across her midriff.
Her breath snarled up in her throat at the feel of his big hand against her skin. She couldn’t think straight and an instant of panic claimed her because she had never been in such an intimate situation with a man. Her brain whirred at a frantic pace because she knew that Alissandru would expect sex. And why not? another little voice chimed in the back of her head. Why not? Why shouldn’t she? She was finally with a man who made her heart beat so fast she felt breathless. And shouldn’t that be celebrated rather than denied or suppressed?
‘Yes...you’re as effective as an electric blanket,’ she told him awkwardly.
Alissandru dealt her an incredulous look from glittering dark eyes and then his wide sensual mouth curved and he laughed again. ‘Never heard that one before.’
And Isla knew it was the moment where she should mention her lack of experience because he obviously hadn’t a clue, but pride silenced her. He would think she was a freak still being so innocent at her age and she didn’t want him thinking that of her, much preferring that he should assume that she was as casual about sex as she had been told he was.
‘I feel at peace for the first time in weeks,’ Alissandru admitted reflectively. ‘What you said about Paulu being happy...it helped.’
‘I’m glad,’ she whispered, lifting a hand to trace her fingers down over his stubbled jaw line, appreciating the masculine roughness of his skin and the dark shadowing that accentuated his beautifully shaped mouth.
‘Maledizione...ti voglio... I want you,’ Alissandru breathed in a raw, driven undertone, his body hot and taut from even that glancing caress.
His sensual mouth ravished hers, sending a shower of sparks flaring low in her belly, and he shifted against her, letting her feel the hard thrust of his readiness in the cradle of her thighs. The pressure of him at the junction of her thighs electrified her, making her almost painfully aware that that was where she really needed to be touched. He leant back from her to lift her top up over her head and she gasped in surprise, only just resisting the urge to cover her exposed breasts.
The cold air pinched her nipples, and she flushed all over as he gazed down at her hungrily.
‘It’s a sin to cover those,’ Alissandru growled, curving a reverent hand to a lush breast crowned with a pouting pink nipple and dipping his head to savour that peak with his mouth.
Her brain in a wild whirl, Isla felt her back arch of its own volition and her pelvis tilt up as heat surged between her legs. He toyed with her other breast, tugging at the sensitive crest until her head fell back, her neck extending as the storm of her response grew stronger. She had never felt anything so powerful before, had not known her body had the ability to feel anything that intense. And then before she could even catch her breath, Alissandru was divesting her of her pants and prying her thighs apart to bury his wicked mouth there instead.
Shock consumed Isla and she parted dry lips to protest. Of course, she knew what he was doing but it was not something she had ever thought would appeal to her, at least until Alissandru applied his tongue to the most sensitive spot on her entire body and a spectacular wave of sensation engulfed her. And the tide of sensation built and built as he entered her with his fingers until she was writhing in response, agonised gasps torn from her parted lips, and for a split second as that explosive peak of pleasure gripped her she saw stars, jerking and out of control, blissful cries wrenched from her lips.
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.
