AllFreeNovel
Share Us
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 dr
eam 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.
