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‘I won’t apologise for that conviction,’ Alissandru argued in frustration as he squared up to her, wide shoulders thrown back, long, powerful legs braced. ‘The estate depends on the properties we own. We house our employees. Your ownership could lead to all sorts of complications. You could decide to rent it out, bring in strangers, turn it into some kind of business, argue about rights of way.’
Unimpressed by that parade of evidently dire possibilities, Isla folded her arms and stared back at him. ‘I’m not planning to do any of those things... Satisfied?’ she prompted.
‘You know that’s not what I’m trying to say.’
‘I just want you...gone!’ Isla surprised herself by throwing out her arms in angry emphasis of that fervent wish.
‘Couldn’t you have warned me that you were intending to come here?’ Alissandru demanded imperiously. ‘Or would that common courtesy have crossed the line that says I have to be the bad guy in your every scenario?’
Isla gazed back at him, her attention locked to his lean, strong features and the raw tension stamped in the set angle of his jawline, the flare of his nostrils and the anger smouldering like an unquenchable fire in his stunning eyes. ‘Well, you pretty much are the bad guy in every scenario...and let’s not pretend that you make much effort to be anything else!’ Isla slammed back at him furiously.
Alissandru froze as though she had slapped him, colour leaching from below his bronzed skin. ‘You’re talking about the baby, aren’t you?’ he prompted curtly.
Isla barely knew what she was talking about but that very personal question knocked her back on her heels and she rested disconcerted eyes on him. ‘No, I’m not, I’m really not.’
‘What else am I to think when you say I’m the bad guy in every situation?’ Alissandru pressed between clenched teeth.
‘Well, when aren’t you the bad guy?’ Isla demanded. ‘You were certainly the bad guy as far as my sister was concerned.’
‘No. Even when she made a pass at me, I kept it to myself,’ Alissandru bit out with suppressed savagery.
Isla shot him an incredulous look. ‘You’re not serious?’
‘Che diavolo!’ Alissandru exclaimed wrathfully, swinging away from her in an angry movement that revealed that that admission had slipped out of him in temper. ‘It’s true that it happened but it’s not something I intended to tell you about. But if you think about it, it makes perfect sense. I was rich and very much the twin Tania would have preferred to marry and until she got to know me better she saw herself as irresistible.’
Isla swallowed hard, wincing for her sister at his admission, wishing he hadn’t told her that salient fact, but she could remember Tania telling her that if she put her mind to it she could get any man she wanted. And Alissandru would have overshadowed Paulu to such a degree that Tania had eventually succumbed to temptation, Isla gathered unhappily. Alissandru might have been Tania’s brother-in-law but he was also as flawlessly beautiful as a black-haired warrior angel in a stained-glass window. Even more gilded by his great wealth, her sister had unwisely decided to make a play for him.
‘Drop the subject,’ Alissandru urged curtly. ‘It is a distasteful one. I am sorry I spoke so freely.’
Yet in a strange way, Isla was not sorry, for she felt as though she had finally learned exactly what lay behind Alissandru’s loathing for her sister and her sister’s loathing for him. Alissandru would never have forgiven such disloyalty to his twin while Tania would never have forgiven or forgotten such a rejection.
‘You made me into the bad guy when you lost the baby,’ Alissandru breathed in a fierce undertone. ‘You closed me out, ran away—’
‘I did not run away!’ Isla launched back at him in furious rebuttal. ‘I just needed a change of scene. And I didn’t close you out, either...you were already on the outside!’
‘Because I was too honest and I admitted that I wasn’t sure the child you had conceived was mine?’ Alissandru fired back at her. ‘I didn’t realise that you were a virgin. Blame that on the passion or my concussion...whatever you like. I didn’t notice anything different. Blame me for the assumptions I made concerning birth control, too.’
‘Oh, I already have,’ Isla said tartly.
‘But in the absence of proof of whose child it was, I assumed there was room for doubt and that you could even have been pregnant before you slept with me,’ Alissandru intoned grimly. ‘I’m a cynic. I won’t apologise for the way my mind works but I am naturally suspicious when it comes to protecting my family or myself. I tend to assume the worst and act accordingly. But I was upset too when we lost our baby.’
Isla froze. ‘Don’t you dare tell me a lie like that!’ she flared.
Alissandru swallowed hard. ‘Regardless of what you think, for you to continue holding my innate caution against me even after I have done everything possible to be supportive is unjust.’
‘Is it really?’ Isla flung at him thinly as he lounged back against the ugly bar, effortlessly sleek and elegant in his designer suit, utterly untouched by the maelstrom of emotions that had tormented her for weeks. ‘You ran as far and as fast as you could get from me in Scotland! You hated my sister! You accused me of sleeping with your brother! How do you expect me to feel about you?’
Alissandru breathed in deep and slow like a marathon runner readying himself for a race but Isla knew he was struggling to hang on to his temper. ‘I didn’t run,’ he grated.
‘You couldn’t handle the fact that you had spent the night with Tania’s sister! You assumed I was a gold-digging slut even though I was a virgin.’
‘Your behaviour...the way you were dressed...at my brother’s wedding led me to make certain ill-judged assumptions about the level of your innocence,’ Alissandru bit out grudgingly.
An angry flush mantled Isla’s cheeks. ‘I didn’t have much choice about what I wore that day. Tania told me she had a dress for me and I had to wear it because I had nothing else,’ she admitted stiffly. ‘It didn’t fit and it was far too revealing but she said I had to wear it because it matched her silver wedding gown.’
That simple explanation irritated Alissandru more than it soothed because even he could not ignore the unreasonable bias that he had evidently formed against Tania’s sister the very first time he’d laid eyes on her. He waited for her to say something about her behaviour that same day, something that would explain what she had been doing in a bedroom with his cousin Fantino, but when she said nothing more, his lean, strong face hardened. He had misjudged her but she was no angel and why should she be? A woman who could make him want her even when she was clad in furry fabric was obviously more of a temptress than even he had been prepared to acknowledge.
‘Time for you to go,’ Isla told him feelingly, colliding momentarily with smouldering dark golden eyes that left her short of breath and almost dizzy.
He was making her remember that night in Scotland and she couldn’t stand that. The feel of his mouth on hers had created a chemical explosion that raced through her entire body, the magic sensuality of his hands had utterly seduced her. She had realised instantly why she had never been tempted into bed by any other man. Nobody had ever made her feel as he had.
‘I’m not leaving until we have something settled about the house,’ Alissandru intoned stubbornly.
Isla cocked a delicate coppery brow. ‘Seriously?’ she jibed. ‘You storm in here at nine o’clock on a Friday evening, force me out of the bath and demand that we do a deal about a house that I’m not even sure I want to sell yet? Do you think that’s reasonable?’
