The Italian's Inherited Mistress

‘Of course I can get up,’ Alissandru assured her, but it wasn’t as easy as he assumed and Isla hoped because the instant Alissandru began to get up, he was overtaken by a bout of dizziness, and Isla struggled to steady him when he swayed.

But he was too heavy for her to hold and he slumped back against the bed for support, shaking his head as though trying to clear it and muttering something in Sicilian that she suspected was a curse. ‘I feel like I’m very drunk,’ he acknowledged blearily, bracing himself on the mattress to stay upright.

‘You’ll feel better when you’re lying flat again,’ Isla declared, hoping she was right while her brain spent an inordinate amount of time struggling to process his near nudity at the same time as guilt that she had noticed that reality attacked her conscience.

But there it was, a near-naked Alissandru was a shockingly eye-catching sight, particularly when Isla had never seen a flesh-and-blood man in that state close up. Of course, she had seen men in trunks at the swimming pool but had never found her gaze tempted to wander or linger on those men, but when it came to Alissandru, dragging her attention from the corrugated expanse of his muscular abs and powerful biceps was a disconcerting challenge. Was it because she knew him? Simple feminine curiosity? Her face burning, she moved forward to help him turn around on unsteady feet and climb into the bed.

But what looked easy turned out to be anything but and in her fear of his falling again she got pinned between him and the bed and safely manoeuvring him down onto the mattress involved a considerable amount of physical contact that drenched her in perspiration and embarrassment. Finally, she managed to get Alissandru lying flat but by that stage she was painfully aware of the tented arousal beneath his boxers that all that sliding against his near-naked bronzed body had provoked. She pounced on the duvet still lying on the floor and flung it back over him with relief.

‘No, you lie there and don’t move. Don’t touch your head either,’ she instructed. ‘I’m going downstairs to get painkillers for you and the first-aid box.’

Alissandru gave her a dazed half-smile. ‘Bossy, aren’t you?’

‘I’m good in a crisis and this is a crisis because if it hadn’t been for Dr McKinney’s wife I wouldn’t have known what to do with you,’ Isla admitted guiltily. ‘First chance I get, I’m going to do one of those emergency-first-aid courses that are so popular now.’

‘I’ll be fine,’ Alissandru asserted, unwillingly impressed by her genuine concern for his well-being.

Tania would have kicked him while he was down and taken advantage of his vulnerability any way she could but Isla’s only goal was to take care of him to the best of her ability. He rested his aching head on the pillows with a stifled groan, feeling trapped, knowing in frustration that he didn’t dare even stand up when his balance was so out of sync. His vision was blurred as well, only slowly achieving normal focus. He should have told her that he had done four years at medical school before his father’s death had made his dropping out of university inevitable. Neither his brother nor his mother had been up to the demands of taking control of his father’s business enterprises. Alissandru had had to step in and take charge and if, at the time, he had loathed the necessity of giving up his dream of becoming a doctor, he had since learned to love the cut and thrust of the business world and revel in the siren call of new technology worthy of his investment.

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 (#uc92cf4a0-ad39-5f08-9fc1-a191f7a3f3b7)

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.