Читать книгу Modern Romance December Books 1-4 - Эбби Грин, Линн Грэхем - Страница 15
ОглавлениеISLA 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 breastbone 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.’
‘I won’t apologise for that conviction,’ Alissandru argued in frustration as he squared up to her, wide shoulders thrown back, long, powerful legs braced. ‘The estate depends on the properties we own. We house our employees. Your ownership could lead to all sorts of complications. You could decide to rent it out, bring in strangers, turn it into some kind of business, argue about rights of way.’
Unimpressed by that parade of evidently dire possibilities, Isla folded her arms and stared back at him. ‘I’m not planning to do any of those things... Satisfied?’ she prompted.
‘You know that’s not what I’m trying to say.’
‘I just want you...gone!’ Isla surprised herself by throwing out her arms in angry emphasis of that fervent wish.
‘Couldn’t you have warned me that you were intending to come here?’ Alissandru demanded imperiously. ‘Or would that common courtesy have crossed the line that says I have to be the bad guy in your every scenario?’
Isla gazed back at him, her attention locked to his lean, strong features and the raw tension stamped in the set angle of his jawline, the flare of his nostrils and the anger smouldering like an unquenchable fire in his stunning eyes. ‘Well, you pretty much are the bad guy in every scenario...and let’s not pretend that you make much effort to be anything else!’ Isla slammed back at him furiously.
Alissandru froze as though she had slapped him, colour leaching from below his bronzed skin. ‘You’re talking about the baby, aren’t you?’ he prompted curtly.
Isla barely knew what she was talking about but that very personal question knocked her back on her heels and she rested disconcerted eyes on him. ‘No, I’m not, I’m really not.’
‘What else am I to think when you say I’m the bad guy in every situation?’ Alissandru pressed between clenched teeth.
‘Well, when aren’t you the bad guy?’ Isla demanded. ‘You were certainly the bad guy as far as my sister was concerned.’
‘No. Even when she made a pass at me, I kept it to myself,’ Alissandru bit out with suppressed savagery.
Isla shot him an incredulous look. ‘You’re not serious?’
‘Che diavolo!’ Alissandru exclaimed wrathfully, swinging away from her in an angry movement that revealed that that admission had slipped out of him in temper. ‘It’s true that it happened but it’s not something I intended to tell you about. But if you think about it, it makes perfect sense. I was rich and very much the twin Tania would have preferred to marry and until she got to know me better she saw herself as irresistible.’
Isla swallowed hard, wincing for her sister at his admission, wishing he hadn’t told her that salient fact, but she could remember Tania telling her that if she put her mind to it she could get any man she wanted. And Alissandru would have overshadowed Paulu to such a degree that Tania had eventually succumbed to temptation, Isla gathered unhappily. Alissandru might have been Tania’s brother-in-law but he was also as flawlessly beautiful as a black-haired warrior angel in a stained-glass window. Even more gilded by his great wealth, her sister had unwisely decided to make a play for him.
‘Drop the subject,’ Alissandru urged curtly. ‘It is a distasteful one. I am sorry I spoke so freely.’
Yet in a strange way, Isla was not sorry, for she felt as though she had finally learned exactly what lay behind Alissandru’s loathing for her sister and her sister’s loathing for him. Alissandru would never have forgiven such disloyalty to his twin while Tania would never have forgiven or forgotten such a rejection.
‘You made me into the bad guy when you lost the baby,’ Alissandru breathed in a fierce undertone. ‘You closed me out, ran away—’
‘I did not run away!’ Isla launched back at him in furious rebuttal. ‘I just needed a change of scene. And I didn’t close you out, either...you were already on the outside!’
‘Because I was too honest and I admitted that I wasn’t sure the child you had conceived was mine?’ Alissandru fired back at her. ‘I didn’t realise that you were a virgin. Blame that on the passion or my concussion...whatever you like. I didn’t notice anything different. Blame me for the assumptions I made concerning birth control, too.’
‘Oh, I already have,’ Isla said tartly.
‘But in the absence of proof of whose child it was, I assumed there was room for doubt and that you could even have been pregnant before you slept with me,’ Alissandru intoned grimly. ‘I’m a cynic. I won’t apologise for the way my mind works but I am naturally suspicious when it comes to protecting my family or myself. I tend to assume the worst and act accordingly. But I was upset too when we lost our baby.’
Isla froze. ‘Don’t you dare tell me a lie like that!’ she flared.
Alissandru swallowed hard. ‘Regardless of what you think, for you to continue holding my innate caution against me even after I have done everything possible to be supportive is unjust.’
‘Is it really?’ Isla flung at him thinly as he lounged back against the ugly bar, effortlessly sleek and elegant in his designer suit, utterly untouched by the maelstrom of emotions that had tormented her for weeks. ‘You ran as far and as fast as you could get from me in Scotland! You hated my sister! You accused me of sleeping with your brother! How do you expect me to feel about you?’
Alissandru breathed in deep and slow like a marathon runner readying himself for a race but Isla knew he was struggling to hang on to his temper. ‘I didn’t run,’ he grated.
‘You couldn’t handle the fact that you had spent the night with Tania’s sister! You assumed I was a gold-digging slut even though I was a virgin.’
‘Your behaviour...the way you were dressed...at my brother’s wedding led me to make certain ill-judged assumptions about the level of your innocence,’ Alissandru bit out grudgingly.
An angry flush mantled Isla’s cheeks. ‘I didn’t have much choice about what I wore that day. Tania told me she had a dress for me and I had to wear it because I had nothing else,’ she admitted stiffly. ‘It didn’t fit and it was far too revealing but she said I had to wear it because it matched her silver wedding gown.’
That simple explanation irritated Alissandru more than it soothed because even he could not ignore the unreasonable bias that he had evidently formed against Tania’s sister the very first time he’d laid eyes on her. He waited for her to say something about her behaviour that same day, something that would explain what she had been doing in a bedroom with his cousin Fantino, but when she said nothing more, his lean, strong face hardened. He had misjudged her but she was no angel and why should she be? A woman who could make him want her even when she was clad in furry fabric was obviously more of a temptress than even he had been prepared to acknowledge.
‘Time for you to go,’ Isla told him feelingly, colliding momentarily with smouldering dark golden eyes that left her short of breath and almost dizzy.
He was making her remember that night in Scotland and she couldn’t stand that. The feel of his mouth on hers had created a chemical explosion that raced through her entire body, the magic sensuality of his hands had utterly seduced her. She had realised instantly why she had never been tempted into bed by any other man. Nobody had ever made her feel as he had.
‘I’m not leaving until we have something settled about the house,’ Alissandru intoned stubbornly.
Isla cocked a delicate coppery brow. ‘Seriously?’ she jibed. ‘You storm in here at nine o’clock on a Friday evening, force me out of the bath and demand that we do a deal about a house that I’m not even sure I want to sell yet? Do you think that’s reasonable?’
Alissandru angled his arrogant dark head back, his lean, powerful body acquiring a stunningly insolent air of relaxation. ‘I’m not in a reasonable frame of mind. I’m never in a reasonable frame of mind around you,’ he murmured thickly.
‘And why is that?’ Isla prompted dry-mouthed, her skin prickling with sudden awareness, wicked heat darting up between her thighs.
His eyes, framed by slumberous black lashes, glinted like liquid gold. ‘Because every time I see you I want you and that’s all I can think about.’
‘You did not just say that,’ Isla whispered shakily, her face burning.
‘Tell the truth and shame the devil,’ Alissandru challenged huskily. ‘All I want to do right now is rip that robe off you and sink into you over and over again...’
Isla trembled like a leaf in a high wind, fearful of being torn loose. ‘Stop it!’ she told him fiercely.
‘No,’ Alissandru countered softly. ‘When you came here, you knew this was going to happen. Deal with the consequences.’
Isla dealt him an aghast look. ‘That is absolutely untrue.’
‘You want me,’ Alissandru traded without hesitation. ‘You may not like it but you want me every bit as much as I want you.’
‘You walked away!’ Isla reminded him furiously.
‘I had to force myself to do it and it didn’t work. You’ve spoiled me for other women,’ Alissandru husked, shameless eyes ranging over her with a stormy sexual promise that she felt bite to the very marrow of her bones. That look made her shiver. He emanated a shocking mixture of bold challenge and assurance.
She watched like a hypnotist’s victim as he uncoiled his lean, rangy body from his lounging stance and moved forward. She couldn’t breathe for excitement, couldn’t move for fear of breaking his dangerous spell. He reached for her, all potent male and confidence, and he lifted her right up into his arms.
‘We’ll talk about the house tomorrow,’ he told her. ‘Once this is out of the way, we’ll stop fighting.’
Was that true? she wondered weakly as he carried her up the stairs with the same ease with which he might have carried a doll. One more time, she reasoned wildly, clutching at his conviction that it would free them both from temptation.
‘We mustn’t... We shouldn’t!’ she protested more frantically as he identified the room she was utilising and strode through the door.
‘We’re not hurting anyone,’ Alissandru grated with finality.
And it was true, she realised. As far as she knew nobody could be hurt by them being together. In any case, who would even know? As her brain careened madly from stop to go and then back to almost panic-stricken indecision, Alissandru kissed her with searing heat, forcing her lips apart for the scorching possession of his tongue. Something clenched hard deep down inside her and she started to tremble again, her head falling back, her lips parting, and the impatient drum beat of arousal pounded through her slender body like a storm she knew she had to quench.
