Читать книгу Modern Romance December Books 1-4 - Эбби Грин, Линн Грэхем - Страница 14
ОглавлениеALISSANDRU’S TOWN HOUSE lay off a quiet, elegant Georgian square. It was a family-sized house, not at all the ritzy single-man accommodation Isla would have expected him to inhabit and, when she commented, he confided that he needed a spacious property because his family stayed with him when they were visiting London.
‘My mother likes London for shopping and so do my cousins. She usually brings company with her.’
An inner shudder of recoil assailed Isla as she recalled Alissandru’s cousin Fantino, who had cornered her in that bedroom in Sicily and assaulted her. Not that she had recognised it as an actual assault at the time, being young and ignorant of such labels. Tania, after all, had dismissed the incident as a misunderstanding and had angrily warned a distraught Isla not to kick up a fuss over what had happened and spoil her wedding day. Did Fantino come to London? Was Alissandru close to him? The men were about the same age. Suppressing her wandering thoughts, she pushed the matter and that unfortunate connection back out of her mind again.
Alissandru showed her into a contemporary dining room decorated in fashionable shades of soft grey and tucked her into a comfortable chair. ‘Would you like a drink?’ he enquired.
‘No, thanks. Alcohol is off my menu for the immediate future—better safe than sorry,’ she quipped.
‘I didn’t know. In fact, I don’t know anything about pregnant women apart from the fact that they put on weight and get very tired,’ Alissandru admitted wryly. ‘And I only picked up that from listening to my cousins’ complaints.’
His honesty disconcerted her. She watched as an older woman brought in a tray and set plates out for them. It was a light meal, exactly what she preferred at present because, although she had yet to feel sick, her appetite had dwindled and she had lost a little weight.
‘You said that we had to talk,’ she reminded him as she sipped at her water. ‘What about?’
‘About me getting involved in all this,’ Alissandru specified. ‘You’re behaving as if you want me to step back and stay out of things until after the birth.’
Isla glanced up, her violet eyes troubled. ‘That is what I want.’
‘That won’t work for me,’ Alissandru countered bluntly. ‘I’m opening a bank account for you to take care of your expenses. Who are you living with at present?’
Isla flung back her shoulders. ‘A friend, but it’s only a temporary arrangement. I’ll need to find my own place. Alissandru... I really don’t need your financial help, not when I have what Paulu gave me.’
‘I have to contribute,’ Alissandru spelt out resolutely.
‘Even though you’re not convinced that this is your child?’ Isla snapped in exasperation.
‘Even though,’ Alissandru confirmed without hesitation. ‘I also intend to cover all your medical expenses and, with your agreement, accompany you to any important procedures...such as the scan Mr Welch mentioned was coming up. You can’t ask me to stand back and act like this has nothing to do with me. If this is my child I need to take an interest and take responsibility, as well.’
Isla swallowed hard on the flood of disagreement rising to her lips. Alissandru was very much a man of action and she could hardly fault him for stepping up to demand a share of the responsibility. He didn’t want to be excluded. He didn’t want to stand on the sidelines hearing stuff third-hand from her. But his wish to get involved contravened her earnest need to shut him out. Not very charitable, she scolded herself, not very fair. He had rejected her but he was not rejecting the possibility of their child. He was trying to do the right thing and if she denied him, it would only increase his distrust.
Playing for time, Isla toyed with her food. ‘I understand what you’re saying but I don’t need your money.’
‘Allow me to contribute towards your expenses. I want you to have the very best medical care and decent accommodation. I don’t want you worrying about the future.’ Brilliant dark golden eyes rested on her. ‘I must help. That’s not negotiable. I need to be supportive. I won’t interfere in your life, but I will be there in the background.’
Somewhat soothed by that reference to his staying in the background, Isla sighed. ‘I suppose I can hardly say no. I will keep you informed but I don’t want anything else to do with you. I don’t think that you can expect any warmer welcome from me after the way we parted in Scotland.’
‘I don’t want to upset you in any way,’ Alissandru told her. ‘But I do need to be part of this situation.’
* * *
Travelling back to the office, having dropped Isla home, Alissandru took stock at a more leisurely and reflective pace than was usual for him. He was imbued with the energetic conviction that he had plans to make, a lot of plans. First and foremost, he needed to find somewhere comfortable and with good security for Isla to live because at present she wasn’t staying in one of the safest areas of the city. Where she lived was a priority, he reasoned. And Mr Welch had impressed on him that she also needed a healthy diet so he would organise some sort of food service or delivery, as well.
A baby. If it was a little boy, it might be a little like Paulu, he reasoned, startling himself with that thought. Or why not a little girl with Paulu’s sweet nature? He didn’t care either way and his mother would be ecstatic with either possibility, for Constantia Rossetti was still struggling to cope with the loss of her son. A baby would be something positive to focus on and ultimately a comfort to them all.
As long as it was his child...
But why would Isla lie on that score? He had warned her that he wouldn’t marry her because naturally he couldn’t forget the disaster of his twin’s hasty marriage with Tania. Tania had wanted a rich husband much more than she had ever wanted a child. Isla, on the other hand, needed persuasion before she would even accept Alissandru’s involvement and financial support during her pregnancy. She hadn’t snatched at his offer for Paulu’s house, either.
Maybe she was playing a long game and trying to impress him, although it was hard to see what she could gain from denying her legal right to have his support. Maybe he was too jaded after Paulu’s experience to see the wood for the trees, he conceded uneasily, frowning at the mere suspicion that he could deserve Isla’s accusation of irrational prejudice. Regardless, however, he was already beginning to see a much more positive angle to the baby scenario.
His interest had been caught, and was that thanks to Paulu, as well?
‘What’s it all for?’ his twin had demanded that day in Alissandru’s office when he’d admitted his own desire for a child. ‘Who have you built this empire for? You already have more than you could spend in a lifetime. Wouldn’t you like a son or daughter to leave it all to?’
And Alissandru had laughed, deeming that a question for the future, not the present, only now everything had changed and it was amazing how priorities could rearrange themselves in the aftermath of loss. Paulu was gone and there was nothing he could do about that, but a child would give him a fresh focus. A child would need teaching and guidance and love. Alissandru suddenly smiled at the prospect. A baby just might be exactly what he needed...
* * *
Two days later, Isla lay in bed mulling over her final conversation with the father of her child. It wasn’t so much that Alissandru wanted to be part of the situation, more like he wanted to take over. He had already sent her details of three London properties he owned, inviting her to move into any one of them at his expense but, although it was a very lavish offer, Isla didn’t want to become Alissandru Rossetti’s kept woman. At the same time she only had a week to find somewhere of her own to live because Lindsay’s flatmate would be returning soon. It would be easier to accept Alissandru’s offer but the easy way wasn’t always the wisest way, Isla acknowledged uneasily.
But she knew that the child she was carrying was his child even if he did not and it would not be as though she would be taking advantage of his generosity. He had also organised an early scan for her with Mr Welch and she had wanted to turn down that offer too, but she was too eager to see her baby for the first time, even if it was only the size of a pea. Alissandru also knew how to tempt a woman, she conceded ruefully, but could she face a scan at which he would undoubtedly expect to be present, as well? she asked herself. She would only be baring her stomach...
In the early hours of the following morning, Isla wakened to a cramping pain that made her wince. She sat up in bed, a sensation of dampness between her thighs stirring anxiety. When she realised that she was bleeding she started to panic. Was she losing her baby? What had she done wrong? Hadn’t she looked after herself well enough?
Lindsay calmed her down and rang the emergency helpline, herding Isla into clothes and then into a taxi to take her to hospital. Her friend told her all sorts of soothing stories about false alarms and minor complications and Isla managed to hold herself together while they sat for hours waiting their turn in the hospital waiting room, surrounded by a mass of other anxious people.
In the end it took very little time for her to be dealt with. A doctor told her gently that if she was suffering a miscarriage nothing could be done to stop it happening and that such an experience was much more common than she realised in early pregnancy. Isla sat frozen to her seat as if a sudden movement might provoke a more serious crisis. Ushered into another room, she was prepared for a scan by a radiographer. Suddenly the kind of scan she had earlier been so much looking forward to receiving harboured a more menacing vibe.
The wand moved smoothly over her still-flat tummy, and Isla was barely breathing as she strained without success to see something recognisable as a baby on the screen. When the woman stopped and reached for her hand, Isla knew what was coming because the radiographer looked so sad for her.
‘I’m so sorry. There’s no heartbeat. It’s not a viable pregnancy,’ she said quietly.
A junior doctor saw her next. Isla was in shock: her baby was dead. Her wonderful beautiful baby was gone as if it had never been. Her surroundings suddenly seemed to be stretching away from her and she couldn’t concentrate on what was being said. The doctor pressed medication into Isla’s limp hand while Lindsay sat beside her not even trying to hide her tears, but Isla couldn’t cry. Her eyes stayed dry while a great gulping sob of anguish seemed to be trapped somewhere in her throat, making it a challenge to breathe or speak.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Lindsay whispered in the taxi on the way back to the flat. ‘This has happened to a couple of my friends at work. It’s why some women won’t tell anyone that they’re pregnant until they’re past the first trimester. That’s the danger period...’
Isla nodded vigorously, striving to be strong and stoic, reluctant to subject her friends to the tears penned up inside her. ‘It could have been the flu I had,’ she mumbled.
‘It could have been any of a dozen things.’ Lindsay sighed. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’
But, suddenly, Isla felt that there was nothing left to talk about. Talking wasn’t going to bring her baby back and she had already kept Lindsay out of bed for half the night, she reflected guiltily. Her poor friend still had to go into work in the morning and she was already exhausted. Assuring Lindsay that all she wanted to do was sleep, she went back into the bedroom. Her first real thought was that she would have to tell Alissandru and that he would be pleased. Not that he would dare to say it, she assumed bitterly, but he had seen their baby as an undesirable complication and now that their baby was no longer on the way, he could only be relieved.
Unfortunately, Isla wasn’t relieved because the whole cosy future she had envisaged around that precious baby had suddenly been cruelly taken from her and she didn’t know what to do next. That was scary when she had felt so confident about managing everything after she first realised that she was pregnant. Now the floor of her world had suddenly vanished and she was fighting just to stay afloat.
The next morning, she agonised at length over the need to contact Alissandru. She couldn’t face phoning him, saying those wounding words out loud about her baby and, midmorning, she sent him a text bluntly telling him that she had had a miscarriage.
In receipt of that unexpected message, Alissandru stared at his phone and felt sick. A miscarriage? How had that happened? Suddenly he was full of anxious questions.
‘Something wrong?’ one of his directors asked, and Alissandru glanced up, only then registering that his companions were regarding him expectantly.
‘I’ve had bad news,’ Alissandru admitted soberly. ‘If you will excuse me...’
Isla’s news had blindsided him even more than the announcement that she was pregnant. One minute they were having a baby, the next...? It was dead. He stared out of his office window, fighting the feelings engulfing him just as he had fought them when he’d learned that Paulu had died. He had to be strong, he always had to be strong because other people relied on him to be that way. When it had been Paulu, his mother had needed him, but now Isla needed him more because Isla had wanted that baby. Their baby, he adjusted, reluctant to credit any other option in that moment. He remembered Isla’s glorious smile as she’d admitted how much she was looking forward to becoming a mother and he lost colour, his eyes prickling. She had to be devastated. He rang her immediately.
‘Isla, it’s Alissandru.’
‘I’ve got nothing to say to you,’ she framed woodenly.
‘I got your text and obviously I want to see you and talk to you. I’m very sorry.’
‘Are you?’ she questioned doubtfully.
Anger flared in Alissandru’s dark golden gaze. ‘Of course I am! I’d like to come round and talk to you.’
‘No, thanks,’ she cut in immediately. ‘I don’t want to see you.’
‘Have you had proper medical treatment?’ Alissandru asked worriedly.
‘Yes. I’ll be fine,’ she told him stiffly.
‘Obviously, it wasn’t meant to be,’ Alissandru said heavily, raking long fingers through his tousled black hair in a gesture of frustration because he honestly didn’t know what else to say to her. Words were empty. Words wouldn’t change anything. He didn’t want to mutter meaningless platitudes the way people did when they were faced with a difficult situation, nor did he feel that he could dare admit that he was upset, as well. Because she would never believe him, never believe that he too was full of regret for what was not to be.
He had warmed up to the idea of the baby just a little too late, he acknowledged grimly. The baby had been a surprise and he wasn’t good with surprises. He had never liked the natural order and routine of his life being changed or threatened. Predictably the advent of a baby would have altered many things and he had resisted that prospect to the best of his ability, until he’d defrosted enough to concede that a baby could just be the best thing that had ever happened to him.
It wasn’t meant to be... Isla flinched from that crass and demoralising assurance that cut to the quick. No, in Alissandru’s rarefied world, billionaires did not have babies with former waitresses. Now, mercifully for him, if not for her, the real world had intervened, and no such baby would be born and the status quo would be preserved. Of course, he was relieved and fatalistic about her miscarriage. He hadn’t wanted their baby in the first place, could hardly be expected to cry crocodile tears now that there was no longer a baby to worry about. Unlike her he hadn’t learned to love their child, hadn’t even begun to accept that the baby she carried was his child.
A bitterness as cutting as a knife slashed painfully through Isla and she finished the call. Without even thinking about it, she blocked Alissandru’s number on her phone because she didn’t want to be forced to speak to him again, ever again. That connection was finished for ever, severed by fate. She would never have to see him again, never have to speak to him again, never be hurt by him again. Eyes wet, she discovered that that was no comfort whatsoever.
The following morning, Lindsay got a call from her parents and grimaced through the conversation while offering repeated apologies for being unable to change her own plans.
‘What’s wrong?’ Isla prompted.
Lindsay grimaced. ‘My parents’ friends are going on a round-the-world trip and they had a house-sitter organised to look after their pets. Now the house-sitter has cancelled and Mum and Dad are trying to put together a group of us to look after their house and their animals. I feel awful for saying no but I’m not prepared to use up my leave sitting in the back of beyond looking after dogs and cats,’ she confided guiltily.
Isla, petting Puggle, who was turning into a lapdog, given to sleeping across her feet and nestling in her lap at every given opportunity, looked thoughtful. ‘Could I do it? The house-sitting, I mean?’
‘You?’ Lindsay queried in surprise.
‘Well, if I could bring Puggle with me, I’d be glad to get away for a while. I mean, I have to find somewhere to live anyway and the change, a little breathing space, would do me good while I decide what to do next.’
Lindsay frowned thoughtfully and warned Isla that her parents’ friends lived in a converted farmhouse down a long track in Somerset and that it was a very quiet area. After a few minutes, however, she called her parents back and before Isla could even catch her breath it was all arranged and she was agreeing to travel to Somerset at the end of the week to meet the Wetherby family and receive their instructions before they departed. Isla breathed easier at the prospect of leaving London and Alissandru far behind her. A change of scene and the time and space to make practical plans were exactly what she needed, she told herself urgently.
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.
