need that shower. I’ve been travelling all day, gioia mia,’ Alissandru intoned thickly, hot golden eyes locked to her flushed and embarrassed face. ‘Now I look forward to the evening ahead with anticipation.’
And with that unanswerable assumption that Isla knew full well that she had encouraged, he vanished into the bathroom. Her bare feet slapped down the stairs in a hasty retreat and she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror at the foot, hair a messy bonfire of curls, her face hot enough to fry eggs on.
Why had she encouraged him? A foolish thing to do when he had to stay the night and was the kind of man accustomed to easy, casual sex. At the wedding, Tania had gossiped about Alissandru’s many affairs and even though Isla knew she shouldn’t have listened, she had because at the age of sixteen she had been mesmerised by his looks and commanding charismatic presence. But she was twenty-two now, she reminded herself ruefully, and supposed to be beyond such silliness. Even so, she couldn’t lie to herself. When the opportunity had presented itself, she had grabbed at it and him, desperate to know what it would feel like when a man of his smooth sophistication and high-voltage sensuality kissed her. And now she knew and she also knew it would’ve been better had she not found out.
He knew how to kiss—he really, really knew how to kiss—but of course they weren’t going to take it any further. She was related to Tania and he had hated her sister, it seemed, as much as her sister had hated him. No, nothing more would happen, she told herself, striving to feel relief at that conviction instead of shamelessly disappointed. As Tania had once said, her kid sister needed to get out there and find a life, but Tania had been so much more confident and experienced, freely admitting that she much preferred the company of men to women.
Isla, however, had been raised with Victorian values that tripped her up when she tried to fit into the real world. Most of the men she had met or dated had expected sex the first night, and those that hadn’t demanded sex as though it was a right hadn’t appealed enough to her for her to experiment. And then there had been her off-putting first experience of male sexual urges, she conceded, recalling in disgust the older man who had followed her up to Tania’s bedroom and cornered her at that Sicilian wedding. Ill equipped to deal with such an incident back then, she had been frightened and revolted when he’d tried to touch her where he shouldn’t have and that episode had, for years, made her very wary of being alone with men.
She had stayed a virgin more from lack of temptation than for any other reason, however, hoping and trusting that eventually the right guy would come along. But her brain knew very well that Alissandru Rossetti would never be that guy. He had hated her sister and was clearly predisposed to be prejudiced against Isla as well. Alissandru would be the last man alive likely to offer Tania’s kid sister a relationship.
Apart from anything else, Alissandru didn’t have relationships with women. He wasn’t looking for one special woman or commitment. He wasn’t interested in settling down. Catching herself up on that revealing thought train with a mortified wince, Isla crept reluctantly out into the teeth of a gale and driving snow with the coal bucket while scoffing at her own foolishness. Alissandru kissed her once and she started fretting about their lack of a future as a couple. How ridiculous! He would run like the wind if he knew! Her grandma had raised a young woman out of step with the modern world, imprinting her with a belief pattern that others had long since abandoned.
And Alissandru would be the worst possible man for her to experiment with, she told herself impatiently. No, she would light a fire in the bedroom for him, cook him a hot meal and keep her distance by dozing in an armchair overnight. If she had roused his expectations of something more than a kiss, and she was convinced that she had, she would make it clear that nothing was going to happen. And with the options a man as gorgeous as Alissandru had in his life, that disappointment was hardly going to break his heart. In fact, it was much more likely that Alissandru had only come on to her in the first place because she was the only woman available. Her nose wrinkled. His apparent attraction to her suddenly no longer seemed flattering.
Isla trundled kindling, coal and logs upstairs and lit the bedroom fire while listening to the water running in the bathroom. There would be no hot water left for her use: he must’ve emptied the tank. The back burner in the fire was efficient at heating the water but Isla was trained to spend no more than ten minutes under the shower.
Warm for the first time since arriving in the frozen north of Scotland, Alissandru dried himself vigorously with a towel and stepped out onto the icy landing in his boxers, passing on through into the bedroom at speed where the flickering hot flames of a very welcome fire greeted him. In his eagerness to reach the warmth of the fire, he forgot to lower his head to avoid the rafters above and reaped a stunning blow to his skull. He groaned, teetered sickly where he stood for a second or two and then dropped like a falling tree to the wooden floor.
Isla heard the crash of something heavy falling overhead and stilled for an instant. Alissandru must’ve dropped something or knocked something flying. She rolled her eyes and got on with chopping the vegetables for the stew she was preparing, thinking that at least Alissandru had finally dragged himself out of the shower. The quicker she got the casserole into the oven, the sooner they could eat.
What had Alissandru knocked over? Her brow indented because there was very little clutter in that room and nothing that would make a noise of that magnitude when it fell, unless it was the wardrobe or the chest of drawers. Suddenly anxious, Isla called his name up the stairs and waited but no answer came. Compressing her lips, she went up and through the ajar door saw Alissandru lying in the middle of the floor on his back. He was naked apart from a pair of black cotton boxers. With a stricken exclamation, she sped over to him, horrified to register that he was unconscious. What on earth had he done to himself?
She touched a bare brown shoulder, noting how cold he was, and she jumped to her feet to drag the duvet off the bed and wrap it round him. That small step accomplished, she carefully smoothed her fingers through his hair and felt the smooth stickiness of blood as well as a rising bump. She released her breath in a short hiss and raced back downstairs to lift the phone and call the local doctor.
Unfortunately, the doctor was out attending a home delivery but the doctor’s wife, a friendly, practical woman whom Isla had known since childhood, was able to tell her exactly how to treat a patient with concussion and warn her what to expect. Out of breath, she hurried back to Alissandru’s side, relieved to see the flicker of his eyelids and the slight movements that signified his return to consciousness.
‘Alissandru...?’ she murmured.
His outrageously long black eyelashes lifted and he stared at her with a dazed frowning look. ‘What happened?’
‘You fell. I think you bashed your head on something.’
‘Hellish headache,’ he conceded, lifting his hand and trying to touch his head. He was noticeably disorientated and clumsy and she grasped his hand before he could touch the swelling.
‘Lie still for a moment until you get your bearings,’ she urged. ‘I’ll bring you painkillers when it’s safe to leave you.’
Alissandru stared up at her, the blur of her face slowly filling in on detail. He blinked because her hair looked as if it were on fire in the light cast by the flickering flames. Her mop of curls glinted in sugar-maple colours that encompassed every shade from red to tawny to gold. Her blue eyes were full of anxiety and he immediately wanted to soothe her. ‘I’m fine,’ he told her, instinctively lying. ‘Why am I on the floor?’
‘You fell,’ she reminded him again, worried by his confused state of mind. ‘Can you move your legs and arms? We want to check that nothing’s broken before we try to get you up.’
‘Who’s
