The Italian's Inherited Mistress. LYNNE GRAHAM
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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,’ 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