The Italian's Inherited Mistress

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,’ A lissandru 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.’