The Italian's Inherited Mistress

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.

CHAPTER THREE

WHILE ISLA WAS keeping busy in the kitchen and setting a tray, Alissandru lay back bored in bed and wondered why Isla had yet to ask him what she had inherited from his brother. Was that a deliberate avoidance tactic calculated to impress him with her lack of avarice? But why would she want to impress him? After all, regardless of Alissandru’s feelings, she would receive that inheritance. Her attitude, however, was an anomaly and Alissandru didn’t like anomalies. He flatly refused to accept that Tania could have a sister who wasn’t greedy. His sister-in-law had craved money the way a dying man would crave water or air.

And moving on from his inflexible conviction that Isla had to be a gold-digger like so many other women he had met, he thought about that kiss and wondered what insanity had possessed him. Tania’s sister, so inappropriate a choice. But she tasted like strawberries and cream, all the evocative flavours of a summer day and sunlight. Alissandru frowned darkly, forced to recognise afresh that his brain had yet to recover its normal function. That blow to the head had done more damage than he appreciated when his sharp-as-a-tack logic was failing to filter out such a fanciful comparison. Isla was curiously sexy and that was it, no need to be thinking about tastes and flavours, he told himself irritably.

Stupendously sexy, he adjusted, the ready stirring at his groin provoking him to greater honesty. He didn’t understand why, he simply recognised that the minute she touched him, or indeed got anywhere near him, he reacted with an almost juvenile instant surge of excitement. A woman had never heated him up so fast or with such ease and it bothered him, because no way was he in the market for an affair with Tania’s sister.

Isla brought in the tray, watching as Alissandru dragged himself up against the pillows to accept it. His bronzed skin gleamed in the firelight, accentuating a honed and very muscular physique straight out of a woman’s fantasy. Her face burned and she wondered if she should be searching for a pair of her uncle’s pyjamas to offer him. But wouldn’t that make her look like a prude? It was her bet that Alissandru routinely wore little in bed.

‘What on earth are you wearing?’ Alissandru enquired as he accepted the tray, his brows drawing together as he studied the furry fabric top and loose bottoms to match.

‘It’s warm.’

‘Where’s your meal?’ he asked.

‘Downstairs,’ she admitted stiffly.

‘Per carita, Isla!’ Alissandru exclaimed. ‘It’s boring up here alone.’

The tip of her tongue slid out to moisten her dry lower lip, discomfiture gripping her. ‘I’ll bring mine up,’ she finally said, feeling a little foolish over her determination to avoid him simply because he made her feel uncomfortable.

She sank down on the side of the bed beside him, both flustered and harassed by the amused glance he flung her as she slowly lifted her legs up after her to balance the tray on her knees. So, it was a bed, no need to make a silly fuss about that when there was no chair available, she instructed herself in exasperation.