From untouched virgin...

To the Italian’s mistress!

Yearning for a fresh start, Isla Stewart escapes to her recently inherited Sicilian villa. The last person she expects to meet there is Alissandru Rossetti, the ruthless billionaire who once helicoptered into her life, and changed it irrevocably with his sizzling seduction! Alissandru wants what’s rightfully his—Isla’s inheritance. But with the attraction between them as scorching as ever, what Alissandru wants more is Isla...back in his bed!

Get swept away by this classic tale of innocence and passion!

LYNNE GRAHAM was born in Northern Ireland and has been a keen romance reader since her teens. She is very happily married to an understanding husband, who has learned to cook since she started to write! Her five children keep her on her toes. She has a very large dog who knocks everything over, a very small terrier who barks a lot and two cats. When time allows, Lynne is a keen gardener.

Also by Lynne Graham

His Queen by Desert Decree

The Greek’s Blackmailed Mistress

Brides for the Taking miniseries

The Desert King’s Blackmailed Bride

The Italian’s One-Night Baby

Sold for the Greek’s Heir

Vows for Billionaires miniseries

The Secret Valtinos Baby

Castiglione’s Pregnant Princess

Da Rocha’s Convenient Heir

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

The Italian’s Inherited Mistress

Lynne Graham

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-07279-3

THE ITALIAN’S INHERITED MISTRESS

© 2018 Lynne Graham

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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Version: 2020-03-02

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Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Extract

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

‘THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE... I don’t believe it!’ Alissandru Rossetti erupted from his chair in the midst of the reading of his brother’s will, rigid with outraged disbelief. ‘Why tjhe hell would Paulu leave that little slut anything?’ he demanded of the room at large.

Fortunately, his mother, Constantia, and the family lawyer, Marco Morelli, were the only parties present because all attempts to contact the main beneficiary of the will had proved fruitless. Disconcerted by that revealing word, ‘main’, Alissandru had merely frowned, thinking it would be just like his late brother Paulu to have left his worldly goods to some do-good favourite charity. After all, he and his wife Tania had died together and their marriage had been childless and Alissandru, his twin, had no need of any inheritance, being not only the elder twin and owner of the family estate in Sicily but also a billionaire in his own right.

‘Take a deep breath, Alissandru,’ Constantia urged, well acquainted with her surviving son’s sizzling temper. ‘Paulu had the right to leave his estate where he wished and we do not know that Tania’s sister is deserving of so unpleasant a label.’

Alissandru was pacing the small legal office, a form of behaviour that was distinctly intimidating in a confined space because he was several inches over six feet tall, a lean, powerful figure, dressed in one of the elegant tailored black suits he favoured. That funereal colour had earned him the nickname ‘The Raven’ in the City of London, where his aggressive and hugely successful business instincts were famous, as befitted a renowned entrepreneur in the new technology field. Pacing that office, he reminded the family lawyer of a prowling tiger penned up in a cage.

Not deserving? Alissandru thought in outrage, recalling that little red-headed teenager, Isla Stewart, at his brother’s wedding six long years before. At barely sixteen years old, she had been rocking a sexually provocative outfit, parading her nubile curves and shapely legs in a clear sexual offer to the highest bidder, he reflected in disgust. Later that day too, he had seen her emerging from one of the bedrooms in a dishevelled state, only moments before one of his cousins left the same room, straightening his cuffs and tidying his hair. Obviously Isla was just like her sister, Tania, who had been brazen, wanton and dishonest.

‘I was not aware that Paulu was in any form of contact with Tania’s sister,’ Alissandru admitted curtly. ‘No doubt she pulled the wool over his trusting eyes as easily as her sister did and wheedled her way into his soft heart.’

Very real grief fractured Alissandru’s hard driven drawl as he spoke because he had loved his twin a great deal and could still, even six weeks after the helicopter crash that had claimed the lives of both Paulu and Tania, not quite believe that he would never ever speak to him again. Even worse, Alissandru could not shake the guilt of knowing that he had been powerless to protect his brother from that designing harpy, Tania Stewart. Sadly, Paulu’s last years had been deeply unhappy, but he had refused to divorce the sleazy underwear model he had married in such haste, believing that she was pregnant...only, surprise, surprise, Alissandru recalled cynically, that had proved to be a false alarm.

Tania had gone on to destroy his brother’s life with her wild extravagance, her shrewish tantrums and, finally, her infidelity. Yet throughout those excesses, Paulu had steadily continued to adore Tania as though she were a goddess amongst women. But then, unhappily for him, Paulu had been a gentle soul, very caring, loyal and committed. As unlike Alissandru in every way as day was to night. Yet Alissandru had treasured those stark differences and had trusted Paulu in a way he had trusted no other living person. And although he was enraged at his conviction that yet another Stewart woman had somehow contrived to mislead and manipulate his brother into drawing up such a will, there was yet another part of him which, sadly, felt betrayed by his sibling.

After all, Paulu had known how much the family estate meant to Alissandru and yet he had left his home on the Sicilian estate and all his money to Tania’s sister. A lottery win for the sister, a slap in the face for Alissandru even though he knew his brother would have sooner cut off his hand than hurt him. Paulu, being Paulu, however, could never have dreamt that so tragic an accident might take both his and his wife’s lives together, clearing the way for Paulu’s sister-in-law to inherit what should never ever have become hers.

‘Paulu visited Isla a few times in London during that period that...er...’ Contantia hesitated, choosing her words with particular tact ‘...that he and Tania were separated. He was fond of the girl.’

‘He never mentioned it to me!’ Alissandru bit out explosively, his dark eyes flashing and his lean, darkly handsome features clenching hard at the image of yet another Stewart woman having woven her seductive, cloying charm over his impressionable brother in pursuit of profit. Paulu had always been a soft touch for a sob story, Alissandru conceded grimly.

Speaking for himself, however, Alissandru had never been that foolish. He liked women but women loved him, hunting him like a rare breed because he was rich and single. In his younger days he had heard every sob story going and once or twice, in his inexperience, had even fallen for such ploys, but it had been years since he had been that naive or imprudent. These days he chose his lovers from his own stratum in society. Women with their own wealth or very demanding careers were a safer bet for the kind of casual light affair in which Alissandru specialised. They understood that he wasn’t ready to settle down and practised the same discretion that he did.

‘Knowing how you felt about Tania, Paulu wouldn’t have mentioned it,’ his mother pointed out gently. ‘What will you do?’

‘Buy Paulu’s house back from her...what else?’ Alissandru pronounced with an angry shrug at the infuriating prospect of having to enrich a Stewart woman yet again. How many times had he paid Tania’s debts to protect his brother and shield him from her insatiable demands? But what else could he do in the present? Tania was dead and buried and her sister had not even bothered to attend the funeral, all attempts to contact her directly at her last-known address having failed. That fact alone really said it all about the weak bond between the sisters, didn’t it?

‘We’ll have to track Tania’s little sister down,’ Alissandru breathed in a raw driven undertone of menace.

* * *

Isla blew on her frozen fingers, the gathering wind chilling her face below her woolly bobble hat as she fed the hens in haste and gathered the eggs. She would have to bake to use them up, she thought cheerfully, and then she immediately felt guilty for having a happy thought when her only sister and her brother-in-law were dead.

And even worse, she wouldn’t even have known that it had happened, had not a kind neighbour driven over a week earlier to break that tragic news in person. Her aunt and uncle, who owned the Highland croft in Scotland where Isla was staying, but who were currently visiting her aunt’s family in New Zealand, had read on the Internet about the news of Paulu and Tania’s death in a helicopter crash. They had immediately contacted their neighbour and had then phoned to ask if Isla wanted them to come home so that she could travel out to Italy.

But what would have been the point in that trip when she had already missed the funerals? Isla asked herself heavily. It was the great sadness of her life that she had never got to know her only sibling. Of course, they had grown up apart and Tania had been ten years older, and Isla was the daughter who was an unplanned and not very welcome late arrival following their father’s premature death. Their mother, Morag, already struggling to survive, had headed down to London with Tania to find work while accepting her own mother’s offer to take care of her new baby until such time as the little family of mother and daughters could be reunited.

Only unfortunately that reunion had never happened. Isla had grown up in the same Highland croft as her mother had with grandparents who were effectively her parents. Morag had made occasional visits at Christmas, gifting Isla with vague memories of a soft-faced woman with red curly hair like her own and a much taller, leggy, blonde sister, who even as an adolescent had blossomed into a classic beauty. Tania had left home at a very young age to become a model, and not long afterwards Isla’s mother had passed away from the kidney complaint she had long suffered from. Indeed, the first time Isla had communicated directly with her sister had been when Tania phoned the croft to invite Isla to her wedding in Sicily.

Isla had been embarrassed that her grandparents were not also being invited but the elderly couple had insisted that she go alone because Tania was generously offering to pay for her kid sister’s travel costs. Being fair-minded people, her grandparents had also pointed out that Tania had never had the opportunity to get to know any of them and that they were all next door to being strangers even if they were bound by blood.

Isla still cringed at the memory of how out of her depth she had felt attending that opulent wedding with all its important moneyed guests and of the unpleasant experience she had suffered when cornered by a predatory older man. But, worst of all, the longed-for connection with her only sibling had signally failed to materialise from her visit. Indeed, Tania’s attitude to life in general had shocked Isla.

‘No, you can thank Paulu for your invite,’ Tania had breezed. ‘He said I had to have some family member present and I decided a teenager was a far better bet than the boring old fossils in the croft Ma used to rattle on about. I’m moving up in life with this marriage. I don’t want poverty-stricken relatives with a thick Scottish brogue reducing my status in our guests’ eyes!’

Tania had merely been outspoken, Isla had decided forgivingly, the product of a liberal and far less old-fashioned upbringing.

‘That girl ran wild,’ her grandma had once insisted. ‘Your mother couldn’t control her or give her enough of what she wanted.’

‘But what did Tania want?’ Isla had asked in her disappointment after her sister’s wedding when there had been no mention of the sisters ever meeting again.

‘Och, the only dream that one ever had was to be rich and famous.’ Her grandma had chuckled. ‘And by the sound of the wedding you described, that pretty face of hers got her exactly what she always wanted.’

Only that hadn’t been true either, Isla reasoned wryly, recalling her next meeting with her sister several years later, after she too had moved down to London. Her grandparents had died within weeks of each other and her uncle had taken over the croft. Her uncle had urged her to stay with them but, after months of having helped her grandmother nurse her grandfather while he was dying and still sad over the loss of them both, Isla had believed that she needed to move out of her comfort zone at the croft and seek independence.

‘Paulu misrepresented himself,’ Tania had insisted with scorn after announcing that she had left her husband and the marital home. ‘He can’t give me what he promised. He can’t afford to!’

And shortly after that, Paulu had come to visit Isla in her humble bedsit to seek advice about her volatile sister. A lovely, lovely man, she thought sadly, so much in love with Tania and so desperate to do whatever it might take to win her back. Her eyes stung as she thought that at least Paulu had got the love of his life back before their deaths, had reclaimed that happiness before fate had cut their respective lives brutally short. She had liked Paulu, had actually got to know him much better than she had ever got to know her sister.

Had Paulu followed Isla’s feisty advice on how to recapture Tania’s interest? She supposed she would never know now.

In the snug croft kitchen, she fed the turf fire and shed her outdoor layers with relief. She loved being at the croft, but she missed her city social life with friends. Living where she had grown up meant that even a cinema trip to Oban required extensive planning and a very long drive. In another few weeks, though, she would be heading south again, her promise to her relatives fulfilled. Her aunt and uncle were lovely people; however, they were childless and had nobody but Isla to rely on if they wanted to leave home. It was over twenty years since her aunt had last visited New Zealand and Isla had been happy to help to make that dream come true, especially when that request had come at a time when the café where she had long worked as a waitress was closing and the rent had gone sky-high on her bedsit.

Her uncle’s sheep and hens couldn’t be left to take care of themselves, especially not in winter or when bad weather was expected, she reflected, casting a nervous glance out at the grey laden sky: heavy snow had been forecast.

She still smiled while watching her dog, Puggle, daringly nestle his tiny body in beside her uncle’s elderly and increasingly deaf dog, Shep, the collie who herded the sheep. Puggle adored heat but the little dog was Isla’s most impractical acquisition ever. Abandoned on a road somewhere near the croft, he had turned up shivering and starving the week Isla had arrived and she didn’t know how on earth she was going to keep him when she returned to London, but his perky little wagging tail, enormous eyes and ridiculously huge ears had sneaked into her heart before she’d known what was happening. He was a very mixed breed with perhaps a dash of chihuahua and poodle because, besides the ears, he had a very curly coat but he also had very short legs and odd spotty black-and-white colouring. Regrettably, it seemed nobody was searching for him because she had notified the relevant authorities and had heard nothing back from any source.

The noisy sound of a helicopter overhead made her frown because the sheep hated loud noises, but she already knew, having checked, that the herd was safely nestled in the big shelter in their pasture, their reading of the temperature as good as any forecaster’s. Minutes later, when she was brewing a cup of tea, she was startled when Puggle began barking seconds before two loud knocks thundered on the sturdy wooden front door.

Assuming it was her uncle’s nearest neighbour, who had kindly been keeping an eye on her in the isolated croft, Isla sped to the door and yanked it straight open, only to fall back in shock.

It was him... Alissandru—Paulu’s brother—the insanely hot and gorgeous twin who had knocked Isla for six the first time she’d seen him when she was a naive teenager. There Alissandru was, inconceivably, on the croft’s doorstep, jet-black hair ruffling in the wind, dark eyes set below level ebony brows, flawless classic features bronzed by a warmer climate. A strikingly beautiful male, Isla had thought at that wedding while he stalked about the place like a brooding volcano, emanating the most extraordinary intensity of emotion. But Tania had hated Alissandru, she reminded herself ruefully, blaming Alissandru for everything that went wrong in her marriage to his brother.

Alissandru focussed on his quarry, Isla, dressed unexpectedly in a long tatty sweater and gym pants, not even shoes on her tiny feet. A woman down on her luck, he decided instantly. Why else would she be back in the family home in the back end of nowhere? An explosion of red curls tumbled down to her slight shoulders, eyes the same purplish blue as violets huge against the porcelain perfection of her skin, her full plump pink lips slightly agape. Another beauty like her evil sister, Alissandru reasoned, refusing to react in any way to the sudden surge of desire. He was a man with all a man’s physical weaknesses and responding to a lovely face and beautiful hair was simply proof of a healthy libido, nothing to beat himself up about.

‘Er... Alissandru?’ she questioned incredulously, doubting her recognition because his arrival was so very surprising. They might have been linked by their siblings’ marriage but she had never actually spoken to Alissandru before because he had regally ignored her at that long-ago wedding.

‘May I come in?’ Alissandru demanded imperiously, stifling the urge to shiver even in the black cashmere overcoat he wore over his suit.

Isla remembered her manners and stepped back, muttering, ‘Of course...of course. It’s freezing, isn’t it?’

Alissandru scanned the humble interior, unimpressed at the sight of the one large cluttered room that acted as kitchen, dining and living area. Yes, definitely down on her luck when she was living in such a dump. Some man had probably got wise to her and thrown her out, he thought without hesitation. He was quite sure that the news of her inheritance would make her day and it galled him to be the one forced to make that revelation.

‘Er... I was just making tea. Would you like a cup?’ she asked hesitantly.

Alissandru flung his handsome dark head back, leaving her uneasily aware of how tall he was below the low ceiling above. His seemingly dark eyes flared to a vivid gold that was stunning below the lights she had on to combat the winter darkness that folded in so early in the day this far north. Unable to stifle the need, she stared, transfixed by those amazing eyes, gloriously fringed and accentuated with spiky inky lashes. Hurriedly, she turned her attention to making a pot of tea, every brain cell scrambled by his appearance into sheer stupidity as she grasped what she should have been saying first.

‘I’m so sorry about your loss,’ Isla muttered uncomfortably. ‘Paulu was a very special person and I liked him a great deal.’

‘Did you indeed?’ Alissandru flared back at her, eyes sparking bright as the sun in his darkly handsome features, an oddity in his stance and intonation that struck a wrong note. ‘Tell me, when did you start sleeping with him?’

In total shock at that offensive question, Isla froze. ‘I beg your pardon?’ she mumbled as she made the tea with her back turned to him, thinking she must have misheard him.

‘I asked you when you began sleeping with my brother. I’m genuinely curious because guilt would explain a lot,’ Alissandru admitted grittily, wishing she would turn back round again because he wanted to see her face.

‘Guilt?’ Still very much at sea as to what could possibly have brought Alissandru Rossetti to her door to abuse her with such horrifying enquiries, Isla gave up on the tea-making and flipped round. ‘What on earth are you talking about? That was a disgusting question to ask me about the man who was married to my only sister!’ she snapped back at him, colour flushing her triangular face, the colour of both anger and embarrassment.

Alissandru shrugged a broad shoulder as he took off his heavy coat and draped it over the back of a chair at the kitchen table. ‘It was an honest question. Naturally, I’m curious and I can’t ask Paulu.’

A slight quiver in his accented drawl attracted Isla’s attention to the reality that Alissandru had been hit very hard by the loss of his twin, much harder than she had been hit by the loss of a sister she had only met on a handful of occasions. Alissandru Rossetti was grieving, and her anger dwindled a little in response to that awareness.

‘I don’t know why you would even think to ask me a question like that,’ Isla admitted more levelly while watching him as though he were an unexploded firework still fizzing dangerously.

Paulu had once told her despairingly that Alissandru could not comprehend the love that Paulu had for Tania because he had never been in love and lacked the emotional depth to even fall in love, but Isla, at only her second look at Alissandru, thoroughly disagreed with that belief. In Alissandru, Isla saw a highly volatile male who literally seethed with emotion, every flashing tautening of his features, every spark of brightness in his extraordinary eyes telegraphing that reality.

He stood poised there below the stark light above him, blue-black hair gleaming with the gloss of expensive silk, the smooth hard planes of his flawless face the colour of bronze and doing nothing to hide the strength of his grim jaw line or the angle of his arrogant aristocratic nose, while the faint shadowing of stubble growth darkening the skin round his mouth only highlighted the sensuality of his chiselled lips. Heat mushroomed inside Isla, increasing her discomfiture.

So, she genuinely didn’t know about the will? Did he look that stupid?

Alissandru tensed, hating the role forced on him by circumstance, wide shoulders straightening, long, powerful legs bracing with instinctive distaste. ‘I asked that question because in his will Paulu left everything he possessed in this world to you.’

Isla’s lips fell open in disbelief and she stared back at him in silence for several seconds before stumbling into speech again. ‘No...no, he couldn’t have done that...for goodness’ sake, why would he have done that? That would be crazy!’

Alissandru hitched an unimpressed ebony brow. ‘And you’re still trying to say you didn’t have sex with him? Not even when he was getting friendly with you while he and Tania were separated? I’m sure only a purist would condemn you for loosening the knicker elastic at that point when he was legally almost a free man...’

Isla finally unfroze with those deeply offensive and aggressive words still echoing in her incredulous ears. She marched over to the door and dragged it wide, ushering in a blast of icy air that made Alissandru Rossetti shiver. ‘Get out!’ she told him fiercely. ‘Get out and never come near me again!’

Impervious to the command, Alissandru merely laughed. ‘Yes, let’s take the gloves off, cara. Let me see the real Isla Stewart!’

Puggle was growling soft and low and circling Alissandru’s feet while being ignored.

‘Out!’ Isla said again with biting emphasis, blue eyes purple with fury.

Still as a granite pillar, Alissandru surveyed her with cynical amusement, much as though he were watching an entertaining play. Maddened by that lack of reaction, Isla grabbed up his fancy overcoat and pitched it out of the door onto the frozen ground outside. ‘Leave!’ she repeated doggedly.

Alissandru shrugged again with blatant unconcern. ‘I have nowhere to go until the helicopter comes back to pick me up in an hour’s time,’ he told her.

‘Then you should work at being a politer visitor. I’ve had enough of you for one day!’ Isla replied with spirit. ‘You’re the most hateful man and I’m finally seeing why my sister loathed you.’

‘Do we have to bring that whore into the conversation?’ Alissandru asked so smoothly she almost missed the word.

And Isla just lost it at that point. Her sister was dead and she deeply regretted that fact because it meant that she could no longer hope to attain the relationship she had longed to have with Tania. His lack of respect for the departed was too much to be borne and she rushed at him, attempting to slap him, getting caught up instead by two powerful arms that held her back.

‘You bastard...you absolute bastard!’ she shouted at him in tears. ‘How dare you call Tania that when she’s gone?’

‘I said it to her face as well. The married man she deserted Paulu for was neither the first lover she took nor the last during their marriage,’ Alissandru informed her smoothly, and then he released her again, pressing her firmly back from him as though even being that close to her was distasteful. ‘Tania slept more often with other men than she did with her husband. You can’t expect me to sanctify her memory now that she’s gone.’

Isla lost every scrap of colour at those words and backed away in haste from her visitor. Was it true? How could she know? Tania had always done what she wanted to do, regardless of morality or loyalty. Isla had recognised that disturbing trait in her sibling and had refused to dwell on it, telling herself that it was none of her business because she had been keener to see similarity rather than a vast gulf of understanding stretching between herself and her sister.

‘Paulu would’ve told me,’ Isla muttered in desperation.

‘Paulu didn’t know everything that she got up to but I did. I saw no reason to humiliate him with the truth,’ Alissandru confessed harshly. ‘He suffered enough at her hands without me piling on the agony.’

And the wild defensive rage drained from Isla in that moment. What on earth were they doing? Fighting over a troubled marriage when both parties had since passed away? It was insanity. Alissandru was grieving, she reminded herself reluctantly, bitter as hell about his twin’s need for Tania when clearly he himself—in his brother’s shoes—would have dumped Tania the first chance he got. He was not a forgiving man, not a man capable of overlooking moral frailties in others.

‘Oh, go and fetch your coat back in, for goodness’ sake!’ Isla urged him impatiently. ‘We’ll have tea but if you want to stay under this roof you will not insult my late sister again...is that clear? You have your view of her but I have my own and I will not have you sullying the few memories I have of her.’

Alissandru studied her set face. It was heart-shaped, full of determination and unconcealed exasperation. In all his life no woman had ever looked at Alissandru Rossetti as Isla did at that moment. As if she was thoroughly fed up with him and being the bigger person in her self-control and practicality. Her bright eyes challenged his, her head at a defiant angle as she awaited his response. Alissandru retrieved his coat. Per Dio, even inside the house he was cold!

An odd little creature, he reasoned as he scooped up his coat with a frown. No glamour, no grooming, no flirtation or fawning either. He didn’t drink tea! He was Sicilian. He drank the best coffee and the purest grappa. It was, however, possible that in a temper he had been ruder than was wise in the circumstances, he conceded grudgingly. He had a very bad temper. He knew that; everyone knew that about him and made allowances. She didn’t, though—she had talked down to him as though he were an angry, uncontrollable child. He was enraged by that little speech she had made; Alissandru’s lean dark features froze into icy proud immobility and he stepped back indoors to head straight for the smoking fire. On his passage there, however, something bit at his ankle and he bent down with a Sicilian curse to smack away the little animal with the sharp teeth set into his leg.

‘No!’ Isla thundered at him, charging across the room to scoop up the weird little dog but only after slipping a finger into its mouth to detach its resolute teeth from Alissandru’s silk sock and the bruised flesh beneath. ‘Puggle’s only a puppy. He doesn’t know any better.’

‘He bit me!’ Alissandru snarled.

‘You deserved to be bitten and bitten hard!’ Isla told him roundly, cradling the strange little animal to her chest as if it were a baby. ‘Stay away from him.’

‘I don’t like dogs,’ Alissandru informed her drily.

Isla dealt him an irritated glance. ‘Tell me something that surprises me,’ she suggested just as drily.

Huge ears set wide above his curly head, Puggle rested big round dark eyes on his victim from the safety of Isla’s arms and if a dog could be said to smile, Puggle the puppy was smiling.

CHAPTER TWO

CLAD IN HIS COAT, Alissandru lowered himself reluctantly into a chair by the kitchen table. The silence was uncomfortable, but he refused to break it. It didn’t help that he had never been so cold in his life or that Isla was still running around in bare feet and clearly much hardier in such temperatures than he was. His body wanted to shiver but, macho to his very fingertips, he rigorously suppressed the urge.

Watching Isla’s quick steps round the small kitchen area that encompassed a good half of the claustrophobic low-ceilinged room, he absently and then more deliberately found himself taking note of the surprisingly full curves that rounded out the unflattering clothing she wore. Her sister Tania had been tall and model-thin but, being both small in height and curvy at hip and breast, Isla had a very different shape. The sort of shape Alissandru much preferred in women, he acknowledged grudgingly, momentarily becoming rigid as his body found something other than the intense cold to respond to while he struggled to curb that male weakness.

Even so, his response didn’t surprise him because Isla was beautiful, even if she was rather less flashy and far more of a natural beauty than he was accustomed to meeting. She wasn’t ever going to stop the traffic, he reasoned with determination, but somehow she constantly drew a man’s attention back to the delicate bones of her face, the vivacity in her eyes and the sultry fullness of lips that would inspire any man with erotic images. Any man, Alissandru told himself insistently, noting the fine scattering of freckles across her fine cheekbones, even more naturally wondering if she had any anywhere else.

His mobile phone rang, uncannily loud in the silence.

‘My goodness, you get reception here!’ Isla exclaimed in surprise. ‘You’re lucky. I have to drive a mile down the road to use my mobile.’

The call was a welcome interruption, however, throwing Alissandru out of a rare moment of introspection and thoughts that thoroughly irritated him. He leapt upright and pulled out his phone with the oddest sense of relief at that sense of being connected with his world again. But, unfortunately, the call brought bad news and sent Alissandru straight to the window to stare out broodingly at the big fluffy snowflakes already falling and drifting as the wind caught hold of them.

‘The helicopter can’t pick me up until tomorrow,’ he breathed grittily, annoyance and impatience gripping him. ‘Blizzard conditions will hit this evening.’

‘So, you’re stuck here,’ Isla concluded, wondering where on earth she was supposed to put him because there was only one bedroom and one bed and no sofa or anything else to offer as a handy substitute. Usually when she stayed her uncle and aunt borrowed an ancient sofa bed from their neighbour and set it up downstairs for her use but in their absence she had been sleeping in their bed.

‘Is there a hotel or anything of that nature around here?’ Alissandru enquired thinly.

‘I’m afraid not,’ Isla told him ruefully, setting his tea down by his abandoned chair. ‘We’d have to drive for miles and we could easily get trapped in the car somewhere. We don’t go out unless we have to in weather like this.’

Alissandru expelled his breath in a hiss and raked agitated long brown fingers through his luxuriant black hair. ‘It’s my own fault,’ he ground out grimly as he swung back to her, his lean, strong face grim. ‘The pilot warned me before we took off about the weather and the risk and I didn’t listen.’

With admirable tact, Isla compressed her lips on the temptation to remark that she wasn’t surprised. Alissandru Rossetti had a very powerful personality and she imagined he rarely listened to the advice of others when it ran contrary to his wishes. Evidently, he had wanted to see her today and no other day and waiting for better flying conditions hadn’t been an option he was prepared to contemplate. Now his impatience had rebounded on him.

‘You can stay here,’ Isla announced wryly. ‘And I’m sure we’re both absolutely thrilled by the prospect.’

An unexpected glimmer of amusement flared in his eyes, lighting them up with pure gold enticement. Isla wondered why nature had bothered to bless him with such beautiful eyes when most of the time they were hard and cold with sharpness and suspicion. She shook away that bizarre thought and instead tried to concentrate on what she could defrost from the freezer to feed him.

Alissandru sat back down and manfully lifted the mug of tea, his mother’s training in good manners finally kicking in. But even as he did so he was wondering if he should simply have asked for coffee because he had never before been in a situation, aside of his brother’s marital problems, where he was forced to make the best of things that were bad. He supposed he was very spoilt when it came to the luxury of choice because the Rossetti family had always been rich. It was true that Alissandru’s business acumen had made his nearest and dearest considerably wealthier, but he still had to look back several generations to find an ancestor who had not been able to afford the indulgent extras of life. The tea proved not to be as horrible as he had expected and at least it warmed him up a little.

‘Where will I sleep?’ Alissandru enquired politely.

Isla rose in haste. ‘Come on, I’ll show you,’ she said uncomfortably, leading the way up the small twisting staircase.

Alissandru’s gaze flickered over the three doors opening off a landing the size of a postage stamp. ‘That’s the bathroom,’ she told him, opening up one of the doors. ‘And this is where you’ll have to sleep,’ she added tautly, opening up a room that was rather larger than he had expected and furnished with a double bed, old-fashioned furniture and a fireplace.

‘Where do you sleep?’ he asked.

‘This is the only bedroom,’ Isla admitted, sidestepping the question. ‘There used to be two but my uncle knocked them into one after he found out that they couldn’t have children. He felt the empty bedroom next door was a constant reminder they didn’t need.’

The arctic chill in the air cooled Alissandru’s face. ‘There’s no heating up here,’ he remarked abstractedly, wondering how on earth anyone could live with such a privation in the depth of winter.

‘No,’ she conceded. ‘But I can light the fire for you,’ she offered, biting her lip when she saw him struggle to kill a shiver and recalling the heat of the Sicilian climate, as foreign to her as extreme cold appeared to be to him.

‘I would be very grateful if you did,’ Alissandru said with unusual humility.

Isla thought ruefully of all the to-ing and fro-ing up the stairs carting logs and coal and stiffened her flagging resolve. He was a guest and she had been brought up to believe that, if it was possible, guests should be pampered.

‘I’ll go for a shower...if there’s hot water?’ Alissandru studied her enquiringly, recognising that there was nothing he could take for granted in such a poor household.

‘Lots of hot water,’ Isla assured him more cheerfully. ‘But you have no luggage so let me see if there’s something of my uncle’s that you could borrow,’ she added, heading for the chest of drawers by the window.

‘That won’t be necessary,’ Alissandru asserted, his nostrils flaring with distaste at the thought of wearing another man’s clothing.

‘My uncle wouldn’t mind and he’s tall like you,’ Isla argued, misinterpreting his response and assuming that he had sufficient manners not to want to be a nuisance. She rifled through several drawers and produced a pair of worn jeans and a husky sweater that looked as though it had seen better days before the last world war, settling both items on the bed. ‘You’ll be more comfortable in these than in that suit. I’ll go downstairs and sort out something for dinner.’

‘Thank you...’ Alissandru forced out the words. ‘Considering what I said when I arrived, you’ve been surprisingly kind.’

A delicate coppery brow raised as she spun back to look at him. ‘I don’t think you consider what you say very often,’ she admitted with a sudden spontaneous smile of amusement that lit up her heart-shaped face like a glorious sunrise. ‘And you’re completely out of your depth in this environment, which makes me more forgiving. I was just as ill at ease in your home in Sicily.’

‘Dio mio... I thought we made you welcome.’

A tide of colour rose up beneath her fair skin, making Alissandru study her in fascination and move several steps closer to stare down at her.

‘Oh, my goodness, of course you did. I stayed in a wonderful bedroom and the food and everything was incredible,’ Isla babbled, belatedly conscious that she might have sounded rude and unappreciative of his hospitality and alarmingly aware of his proximity because he was so very tall and powerfully built. ‘But it wasn’t my world and I was a fish out of water there. I’d never even been abroad before, never seen a house like yours except on television...you know, everything in your home was unfamiliar...and rather unnerving, to be honest.’

Alissandru scanned the tiny pulse flickering wildly just above her delicate collarbone and he wanted to put his mouth there. He was convinced that her heart was hammering out the same fast nervous beat because naturally she recognised the heightened sexual awareness that laced the atmosphere between them. Of course, she did, he told himself cynically. She was twenty-two, no longer a teenager, precocious or otherwise, and an adult woman in every sense of the word. With that thought driving him, he lifted a hand to tilt up her chin, gazing down into startled dark blue eyes and the surge of pink suddenly brightening her cheeks. She blushed. When had he last met a woman who blushed? It was simply that fair skin of hers, doubtless telegraphing the existence of the same erotic thoughts that were currently controlling him.

Would she, wouldn’t she? Alissandru asked himself but he rather thought the answer to the suggestion of sex would be yes. He always got the answer yes from women, couldn’t remember when he had last been rejected, and the chemistry between him and Isla Stewart was indisputable. He didn’t like it, indeed he despised it, but the same powerful drive that had hardened him to steel with arousal was what kept the human race alive and it was appallingly hard to resist for a man unaccustomed to having to deny such a normal urge. He pictured her spread across the bed with its ugly patchwork duvet set...pale and lush and pink and freckled? Sex would be one useful way of keeping warm and it would provide entertainment into the bargain, Alissandru rationalised with ease.

Alissandru slowly lowered his handsome dark head, giving her time to retreat. But Isla was frozen into immobility, disturbingly preoccupied by the tightening of her nipples and the low pulse of heat thrumming at the centre of her body. Once or twice before she had experienced such glimmerings of awareness with other men but the attraction had always vanished the moment they actually touched her, convincing her that the fertile scope of a woman’s imagination had to explain a lot of encounters that were later regretted. Yet now, when her every cautious instinct with his sex urged her to back away from Alissandru, sheer curiosity kept her where she stood because she wanted, inexplicably needed, to know if it would be the same with him.

And he kissed her cheek and her temples and brushed his mouth with astonishing gentleness across hers in an exploratory sortie. ‘Tell me now if you want me to stop.’

Isla quivered inside her skin, entrapped by feelings she had never felt before, her body alight from those fleeting caresses, the sudden heat in her pelvis making her squirm. And the scent of him that close... Oh, dear heaven, how did she describe that faint evocative scent of cologne and musky masculinity that made her positively quiver with powerful awareness?

‘Do it,’ she heard herself urge wantonly, and the breathless sound of her own voice shook her.

With a smothered laugh, Alissandru crushed her parted lips beneath his own and sensual shock engulfed her because with one passionate kiss he inflamed her, and her hands lifted to curve round his neck to steady legs that had turned bendy as straws. He scooped her up against him with a strength that initially disconcerted and then, ultimately, thrilled her. His tongue darted into her mouth, flicked, dallied, twinned with hers and extraordinary sensation exploded throughout her body, switching it onto an altogether higher plane of response. A choked little sound escaped low in her throat, and he set her down and stepped back from her, so aroused by that hoarse little noise she had made in the back of her throat that he had to call a halt.

‘I need that shower. I’ve been travelling all day, gioia mia,’ Alissandru intoned thickly, hot golden eyes locked to her flushed and embarrassed face. ‘Now I look forward to the evening ahead with anticipation.’

And with that unanswerable assumption that Isla knew full well that she had encouraged, he vanished into the bathroom. Her bare feet slapped down the stairs in a hasty retreat and she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror at the foot, hair a messy bonfire of curls, her face hot enough to fry eggs on.

Why had she encouraged him? A foolish thing to do when he had to stay the night and was the kind of man accustomed to easy, casual sex. At the wedding, Tania had gossiped about Alissandru’s many affairs and even though Isla knew she shouldn’t have listened, she had because at the age of sixteen she had been mesmerised by his looks and commanding charismatic presence. But she was twenty-two now, she reminded herself ruefully, and supposed to be beyond such silliness. Even so, she couldn’t lie to herself. When the opportunity had presented itself, she had grabbed at it and him, desperate to know what it would feel like when a man of his smooth sophistication and high-voltage sensuality kissed her. And now she knew and she also knew it would’ve been better had she not found out.

He knew how to kiss—he really, really knew how to kiss—but of course they weren’t going to take it any further. She was related to Tania and he had hated her sister, it seemed, as much as her sister had hated him. No, nothing more would happen, she told herself, striving to feel relief at that conviction instead of shamelessly disappointed. As Tania had once said, her kid sister needed to get out there and find a life, but Tania had been so much more confident and experienced, freely admitting that she much preferred the company of men to women.

Isla, however, had been raised with Victorian values that tripped her up when she tried to fit into the real world. Most of the men she had met or dated had expected sex the first night, and those that hadn’t demanded sex as though it was a right hadn’t appealed enough to her for her to experiment. And then there had been her off-putting first experience of male sexual urges, she conceded, recalling in disgust the older man who had followed her up to Tania’s bedroom and cornered her at that Sicilian wedding. Ill equipped to deal with such an incident back then, she had been frightened and revolted when he’d tried to touch her where he shouldn’t have and that episode had, for years, made her very wary of being alone with men.

She had stayed a virgin more from lack of temptation than for any other reason, however, hoping and trusting that eventually the right guy would come along. But her brain knew very well that Alissandru Rossetti would never be that guy. He had hated her sister and was clearly predisposed to be prejudiced against Isla as well. Alissandru would be the last man alive likely to offer Tania’s kid sister a relationship.

Apart from anything else, Alissandru didn’t have relationships with women. He wasn’t looking for one special woman or commitment. He wasn’t interested in settling down. Catching herself up on that revealing thought train with a mortified wince, Isla crept reluctantly out into the teeth of a gale and driving snow with the coal bucket while scoffing at her own foolishness. Alissandru kissed her once and she started fretting about their lack of a future as a couple. How ridiculous! He would run like the wind if he knew! Her grandma had raised a young woman out of step with the modern world, imprinting her with a belief pattern that others had long since abandoned.

And Alissandru would be the worst possible man for her to experiment with, she told herself impatiently. No, she would light a fire in the bedroom for him, cook him a hot meal and keep her distance by dozing in an armchair overnight. If she had roused his expectations of something more than a kiss, and she was convinced that she had, she would make it clear that nothing was going to happen. And with the options a man as gorgeous as Alissandru had in his life, that disappointment was hardly going to break his heart. In fact, it was much more likely that Alissandru had only come on to her in the first place because she was the only woman available. Her nose wrinkled. His apparent attraction to her suddenly no longer seemed flattering.

Isla trundled kindling, coal and logs upstairs and lit the bedroom fire while listening to the water running in the bathroom. There would be no hot water left for her use: he must’ve emptied the tank. The back burner in the fire was efficient at heating the water but Isla was trained to spend no more than ten minutes under the shower.

Warm for the first time since arriving in the frozen north of Scotland, Alissandru dried himself vigorously with a towel and stepped out onto the icy landing in his boxers, passing on through into the bedroom at speed where the flickering hot flames of a very welcome fire greeted him. In his eagerness to reach the warmth of the fire, he forgot to lower his head to avoid the rafters above and reaped a stunning blow to his skull. He groaned, teetered sickly where he stood for a second or two and then dropped like a falling tree to the wooden floor.

Isla heard the crash of something heavy falling overhead and stilled for an instant. Alissandru must’ve dropped something or knocked something flying. She rolled her eyes and got on with chopping the vegetables for the stew she was preparing, thinking that at least Alissandru had finally dragged himself out of the shower. The quicker she got the casserole into the oven, the sooner they could eat.

What had Alissandru knocked over? Her brow indented because there was very little clutter in that room and nothing that would make a noise of that magnitude when it fell, unless it was the wardrobe or the chest of drawers. Suddenly anxious, Isla called his name up the stairs and waited but no answer came. Compressing her lips, she went up and through the ajar door saw Alissandru lying in the middle of the floor on his back. He was naked apart from a pair of black cotton boxers. With a stricken exclamation, she sped over to him, horrified to register that he was unconscious. What on earth had he done to himself?

She touched a bare brown shoulder, noting how cold he was, and she jumped to her feet to drag the duvet off the bed and wrap it round him. That small step accomplished, she carefully smoothed her fingers through his hair and felt the smooth stickiness of blood as well as a rising bump. She released her breath in a short hiss and raced back downstairs to lift the phone and call the local doctor.

Unfortunately, the doctor was out attending a home delivery but the doctor’s wife, a friendly, practical woman whom Isla had known since childhood, was able to tell her exactly how to treat a patient with concussion and warn her what to expect. Out of breath, she hurried back to Alissandru’s side, relieved to see the flicker of his eyelids and the slight movements that signified his return to consciousness.

‘Alissandru...?’ she murmured.

His outrageously long black eyelashes lifted and he stared at her with a dazed frowning look. ‘What happened?’

‘You fell. I think you bashed your head on something.’

‘Hellish headache,’ he conceded, lifting his hand and trying to touch his head. He was noticeably disorientated and clumsy and she grasped his hand before he could touch the swelling.

‘Lie still for a moment until you get your bearings,’ she urged. ‘I’ll bring you painkillers when it’s safe to leave you.’

Alissandru stared up at her, the blur of her face slowly filling in on detail. He blinked because her hair looked as if it were on fire in the light cast by the flickering flames. Her mop of curls glinted in sugar-maple colours that encompassed every shade from red to tawny to gold. Her blue eyes were full of anxiety and he immediately wanted to soothe her. ‘I’m fine,’ he told her, instinctively lying. ‘Why am I on the floor?’

‘You fell,’ she reminded him again, worried by his confused state of mind. ‘Can you move your legs and arms? We want to check that nothing’s broken before we try to get you up.’

‘Who’s we?’

‘You and me as a team,’ Isla rephrased. ‘Don’t nit-pick, Alissandru. What a fright you gave me when I saw you lying here!’

‘Legs and arms fine,’ Alissandru confirmed, shifting his lean, powerful body with a groan. ‘But my head’s killing me.’

‘Do you think you could get up? You would be more comfortable in the bed,’ she pointed out.

‘Of course I can get up,’ Alissandru assured her, but it wasn’t as easy as he assumed and Isla hoped because the instant Alissandru began to get up, he was overtaken by a bout of dizziness, and Isla struggled to steady him when he swayed.

But he was too heavy for her to hold and he slumped back against the bed for support, shaking his head as though trying to clear it and muttering something in Sicilian that she suspected was a curse. ‘I feel like I’m very drunk,’ he acknowledged blearily, bracing himself on the mattress to stay upright.

‘You’ll feel better when you’re lying flat again,’ Isla declared, hoping she was right while her brain spent an inordinate amount of time struggling to process his near nudity at the same time as guilt that she had noticed that reality attacked her conscience.

But there it was, a near-naked Alissandru was a shockingly eye-catching sight, particularly when Isla had never seen a flesh-and-blood man in that state close up. Of course, she had seen men in trunks at the swimming pool but had never found her gaze tempted to wander or linger on those men, but when it came to Alissandru, dragging her attention from the corrugated expanse of his muscular abs and powerful biceps was a disconcerting challenge. Was it because she knew him? Simple feminine curiosity? Her face burning, she moved forward to help him turn around on unsteady feet and climb into the bed.

But what looked easy turned out to be anything but and in her fear of his falling again she got pinned between him and the bed and safely manoeuvring him down onto the mattress involved a considerable amount of physical contact that drenched her in perspiration and embarrassment. Finally, she managed to get Alissandru lying flat but by that stage she was painfully aware of the tented arousal beneath his boxers that all that sliding against his near-naked bronzed body had provoked. She pounced on the duvet still lying on the floor and flung it back over him with relief.

‘No, you lie there and don’t move. Don’t touch your head either,’ she instructed. ‘I’m going downstairs to get painkillers for you and the first-aid box.’

Alissandru gave her a dazed half-smile. ‘Bossy, aren’t you?’

‘I’m good in a crisis and this is a crisis because if it hadn’t been for Dr McKinney’s wife I wouldn’t have known what to do with you,’ Isla admitted guiltily. ‘First chance I get, I’m going to do one of those emergency-first-aid courses that are so popular now.’

‘I’ll be fine,’ Alissandru asserted, unwillingly impressed by her genuine concern for his well-being.

Tania would have kicked him while he was down and taken advantage of his vulnerability any way she could but Isla’s only goal was to take care of him to the best of her ability. He rested his aching head on the pillows with a stifled groan, feeling trapped, knowing in frustration that he didn’t dare even stand up when his balance was so out of sync. His vision was blurred as well, only slowly achieving normal focus. He should have told her that he had done four years at medical school before his father’s death had made his dropping out of university inevitable. Neither his brother nor his mother had been up to the demands of taking control of his father’s business enterprises. Alissandru had had to step in and take charge and if, at the time, he had loathed the necessity of giving up his dream of becoming a doctor, he had since learned to love the cut and thrust of the business world and revel in the siren call of new technology worthy of his investment.

Isla returned with a glass of water and a couple of pills. ‘Don’t know if they’ll help,’ she said ruefully, trying to prop pillows behind him to help him sit up.

‘Might take the edge off it.’ Alissandru drained the glass and slumped back down again. ‘I want to sleep but I know I shouldn’t sleep for long.’

‘I didn’t know that until the doctor’s wife told me that I had to keep checking on you, waking you up if necessary to work out whether you were getting worse. But if the helicopter couldn’t pick you up this evening, I’m not sure how the emergency medics could get through either,’ she told him ruefully. ‘Lift your head.’

Isla knelt beside him, skimming cautious fingers through his luxuriant silky hair and swabbing away the blood, finally spotting the cut and tracing the swelling beneath. ‘It doesn’t look like it needs stitches but it’s still bleeding a little. You could have a fractured skull,’ she warned him. ‘Try to stay still. I’m going to get dinner into the oven and then I’ll come back up.’

‘Could you put the light out?’ Alissandru asked. ‘It’s hurting my eyes.’

Isla switched off the bedside lamp and fed the fire to keep it burning. Before she left the room she glanced back at him where he lay in the bed, his dark eyes reflecting the golden heat of the firelight at her. He didn’t look right to her lying so still and quiet, his innate restless volatility suppressed.

She finished the casserole and put it on to cook before laying a tray. That achieved, she went up to check on Alissandru. He was awake and watching the fire.

‘I’m supposed to ask you stupid questions now like what day it is and who the British Prime Minister is,’ she confided.

Alissandru responded straight away with the answers. ‘There’s nothing wrong with my brain. It’s just working slower than usual,’ he told her lazily and he stretched out an arm and patted the vacant side of the bed. ‘Come and sit down and keep me company. Tell me about you and Paulu.’

Isla went stiff and stayed where she was, belatedly recalling the inheritance he had mentioned and feeling very uncomfortable at the thought of her late brother-in-law having left her anything. ‘We were friends. While he and Tania were separated he came to see me several times to talk about her, not that I could tell him much because I didn’t know her that well,’ she pointed out tautly. ‘I liked your brother a lot...but I assure you that there was nothing sexual between us.’

Lifting his tousled head several inches off the pillows, Alissandru shrugged a bare brown shoulder in fluid dismissal. ‘It would’ve explained a great deal if there had been,’ he commented.

‘There wasn’t,’ Isla emphasised flatly.

‘I’m not going to apologise,’ Alissandru warned her. ‘It was a natural suspicion.’

Isla gritted her teeth, swallowing back a rude remark about his lack of faith in standards of family behaviour and the kind of people he must know to harbour such a sleazy suspicion. He was a hard, distrustful man and she wasn’t going to change that reality by arguing with him. ‘Paulu would never have been unfaithful to my sister.’

Alissandru compressed his wide sensual mouth. ‘More’s the pity.’

‘I’ll bring dinner up when it’s ready,’ she said stiltedly, burrowing into the hot press on the landing to find fresh clothing for herself and heading into the bathroom for a shower.

She found it so hard not to rise to Alissandru’s every pointed comment, but she was determined not to lose her temper with him again. It had scared her when she’d lost her temper to the extent she had earlier because she had flown at him like a shrew and tried to slap him. He had brought out a side of her she didn’t like. Being that out of control was frightening.

She dried herself on a very damp towel and pulled on her fleece lounging set, which also doubled as pyjamas on the coldest nights. Coloured grey, the set was sexless and unrevealing. In any case, she was convinced that Alissandru’s accident had banished any raunchy expectations she might have awakened by succumbing to that kiss. Thankfully they had moved way beyond that level now, she reasoned, scolding herself for the tiny pang of disappointment that made her heart heavy.

She had only once envied her sister, Tania, and that had been when she’d recognised how much Paulu loved Tania, regardless of her capriciousness. Always popular with men, however, Tania had simply accepted her husband’s devotion as her due.

But nobody had ever loved Isla the way Tania had been loved.

Tania had been the apple of their mother’s eye but Isla had barely known the woman and their father had died before she was born. Her grandparents had been both kind and loving but she had always been conscious that she was an extra burden and expense to two pensioners, who had worked hard throughout their lives with very little material reward.

Alissandru’s momentary interest had sent Isla’s imagination rocketing and made her body fizz with new energy because that kiss had been just about the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her. And wasn’t that in itself a pathetic truth? she told herself with self-loathing.

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