heard.’
‘She isn’t my student,’ Alessi pointed out. ‘You’re talking as if Amber’s eighteen when, in fact, she’s a thirty-two-year-old single mother of two. I’m hardly leading her astray—’
‘I don’t like the way you flirt with my midwives,’ Isla interrupted, and Alessi gave her a slow smile, though his eyes told her he was less than impressed with what she was saying.
‘Have there been any complaints?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Any hint as to inappropriateness on my part?’ Alessi checked, and watched Isla’s cheeks turn to fire as she shook her head. ‘Then I’d tread very carefully here if I were you, Isla,’ he said. ‘The staff don’t have an issue?’ He raised an eyebrow and Isla gave a terse shake of her head. ‘And I don’t have an issue,’ he drawled. ‘So, in fact, the only person who has a problem with my dating Amber is you. I wonder why that is?’
Isla stood, her face flaming. She knew that she shouldn’t have said anything, especially not tonight, but now that she had it was impossible to take it back. ‘I’m just letting you know how I feel about the issue.’
‘What issue?’
Isla licked her tense lips as he backed her to the wall but her lack of response didn’t end the conversation.
‘I flirt, Isla. I date. I enjoy women but only women who get that it’s only ever going to be short-term …’
‘Why?’
The question was out before she considered it but it was pertinent enough to halt Alessi in his tracks.
Why?
It was a question few, outside the family, asked him. A question he had never truthfully answered and he had no intention of doing so now.
‘Because that is how I choose to live my life. I don’t need your approval, or you to rubber-stamp who I date from MMU, but I can tell you now I have never once cheated on anyone. I don’t have to make up lies or excuses about what’s been said or where I’ve been …’
‘I need to get back,’ Isla said, not liking where this conversation was leading, but Alessi wouldn’t let her off the hook.
‘We’ve only just started talking,’ he said. ‘And given you’re so inclined to discuss my sex life, I’m sure you won’t mind if I share my feelings about yours. Have some respect for yourself …’ He met her eyes and Isla took a sharp breath as he now voiced what nobody else had had the guts to. ‘What are you with him for, Isla? It’s all over the internet and plastered across every magazine that he’s screwing around and yet you’re carrying on as if nothing’s happened.’
‘It’s none of your business.’
‘Well, I’m making it mine,’ Alessi said. ‘Why would you let him treat you like that?’ He looked over as Rupert came around the corner and stood for a moment as he witnessed the angry confrontation.
‘There you are,’ Rupert said, and, having been instructed by Isla to stay close, he came and put an arm around her waist, dropping a kiss on her head. ‘Darcie is starting to droop. I think she might need to go home.’
‘Sure,’ Isla said as Alessi just stood there, staring at Rupert with a challenge in his eyes. ‘If you can tell Darcie that I’ll be there in a few minutes, that would be great. I just need to discuss something with Alessi.’
As Rupert walked off Alessi’s angry eyes met Isla’s. ‘He’s got a nerve,’ Alessi said, ‘telling you that you’ve had too much wine and coming to check up on you, yet he gets to carry on exactly as he chooses …’
‘Our relationship is not your concern,’ Isla said, her voice shaking. There was no doubt about the sudden flare of possessiveness in Alessi’s voice. ‘Anyway, you flirt, you …’ She tripped over her words, not quite sure of the point she was trying to make. ‘You’re such a chauvinist.’
‘It’s the Greek in me.’
They stood angry and frustrated. A kiss was there but not happening. They were back to where they had been a year ago, only the stakes were much higher now. Alessi looked at her full mouth and noticed that she ran a very pink tongue over her lips as if to tempt him.
And tempt him it did.
Isla was looking at his mouth. She was back to how she’d felt in the shower, only now Alessi was less than a step away. Her body was on fire, there was sex in the air, and when walking away might be safer, because it was Alessi, he forced the issue, voiced the truth, stated what was. ‘I could kiss you now.’
Isla lifted her eyes to his and saw that the lust and the want in his matched hers. ‘You could,’ she invited.
She wanted his kiss. The world had disappeared and she had no thought about anything other than now and a kiss that was nearing, but she blinked at his caustic response to her provocative words.
‘But I won’t,’ Alessi said, distaste evident in his voice. ‘I happen to have respect for the person I’m with. I have no intention of getting mixed up in whatever twisted game it is that you’re playing.’
Isla stepped back, felt the wall behind her and wished it would swallow her up. Alessi was right. It was twisted. The wall would not give, though, and she had to stand there and take it as Alessi continued venting, eleven months of frustration contorting his lips savagely. ‘And there’s another reason that I shan’t kiss you—I won’t give you the chance to blow me off again, Isla. You’ll be the one to kiss me,’ he warned. ‘After you’ve suitably apologised.’
And with that he walked off, leaving Isla standing there, trying to think of an appropriate response to that most delicious threat.
‘Never,’ she called to his departing back.
‘We’ll see,’ Alessi called, without turning around.
He was furious. He flashed a look at Rupert as he left but what angered Alessi most was that to not kiss Isla had taken all the self-control he could muster. To not press her to the wall and angrily claim her mouth had taken every ounce of his resistance.
He wasn’t like that.
Yes, he might have dated an awful lot of women but he was always faithful.
This was why he ended things with Amber that night.
He wanted Isla.
He wanted her in a way he never had.
He wanted to see that snobby, derisive woman begging.
Yes, for the best part of a year he’d convinced himself otherwise but the truth remained—he wanted her.
DARCIE REALLY WAS DROOPING. Once home she thanked Isla and Rupert for the night out and went straight to bed. Thankfully Isla didn’t have to work
