Modern Romance December Books 1-4

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.