Sometimes he wondered when she slept, or if. His critical glance moved to the violet smudges beneath her spectacular eyes. She was struggling to fit into a job she was unsuited for, and struggling to be the perfect parent. It was admirable but impossible. Why couldn’t the woman embrace her imperfections? He had!
The insight sent a stab of shock through Isandro. She roused feelings that he flatly refused to recognise as protective tenderness. He refused because he associated the emotions with weakness. It made him angry. She made him angry!
‘What are you trying to prove, Zoe?’ he asked, his voice hard.
‘I’m not trying to prove anything!’
Glaring, her eyes slid down his body as he sat down and leaned back on the leather sofa. Stretching his long legs out, he folded one ankle across the other. The hair-roughened skin of his muscular calves looked very dark against the white of the hotel robes. She was wearing nothing underneath. Was he…?
Shivering, she stopped the speculation from progressing into dangerous territory and dragged her gaze back to his face.
‘In that case take five minutes off from being a martyr and give us all a break.’
She sucked in a gulping breath, embracing the rush of anger as she clenched her fists. ‘There’s nobody here but you and me.’
‘Exactly, and I won’t tell if you fall off your perfect parent pedestal. Just you and me…what could be cosier?’
The question drew a gurgle from her throat. ‘Oh, I don’t know—how about hang gliding over an active volcano?’
And there was something combustible about him, even when he was still and silent like now, his long, lean body relaxed. She had the impression that he could explode into action at any moment.
He let out a low chuckle, his expression sobering as he added, ‘Are you planning to put your life on hold for the next ten or fifteen years?’
‘Fifteen years!’ She snorted. ‘I’m not thinking any farther ahead than next month’s bills.’ She found his anger inexplicable. ‘I’m a single parent. My priority has to be the twins.’
‘Single parents have been known to have sex.’
ZOE BLINKED, THE COLOUR flying to her cheeks as she lost any fragile illusion of composure. ‘Since when were we talking about sex?’
‘It’s part of a healthy, well-balanced life. We’re always talking about sex, even when we’re talking about the weather. It’s the subtext.’
She flushed and snapped in protest, ‘I was drunk when that happened before.’
‘You’re not drunk now.’ So there was zero reason for gentlemanly behaviour. ‘And I’m not a teenager. I’m tired of the game.’ And the frustration was killing him.
He had come up with a workable solution. Now all he had to do was sell it. Isandro did not doubt his ability to do so. That was what he was good at: selling ideas; producing packages that made everyone think they had a good deal.
Zoe had anticipated his anger. After all, from his point of view she was a grade A nuisance. But she had not imagined this level of simmering fury. Even while he had been yelling at her over capsizing the boat, there had been an underlying gentleness, almost a tenderness, in his manner.
Searching his lean, handsome face now Zoe could see no trace of the tenderness. The gleam in his deep-set dark eyes was hard and calculating…She shivered.
‘I don’t play games,’ she protested. ‘And I happen to think that someone who changes his girlfriends like socks and never sees them during daylight hours is not qualified to preach to me on what constitutes a healthy, well-balanced life!’
Having said her piece, she sat down with a bump on the sofa opposite him, her cheeks burning. She drew the folds of the robe around her like a tent and pulled her knees up to her chest.
‘Obviously, how you live your life is none of my business, but that goes both ways. I work for you, but that doesn’t give you a right to criticise my lifestyle unless it impinges on my ability to do my work.’
‘Pardon me for stepping over the line,’ he drawled, tipping his head in mock apology. ‘But I think that line has been blurred from day one with us.’
Eyes trained on the gaping neckline of her robe and the exposed curve of one smooth shoulder, he exhaled through flared nostrils, combating the stab of lust by focusing on the disruption this woman had caused in his life, and not the fact he wanted to touch her skin.
This situation was of his own making. He had broken a fundamental rule. He had allowed the lines to become blurred, and he needed a strict demarcation between his personal and professional lives.
Her eyes lowered. ‘I know I made a bad first impression, but I hoped that by now you’d see that I really am capable of—’
‘Drowning yourself?’ An image of her vanishing under the water began to play on a loop in his head, the images accompanied by the dull bass soundtrack of his blood pumping in his ears.
She flashed him a reproachful look. ‘No. Being a good housekeeper.’
He laughed, and it sounded cruel to Zoe, who sat hunched watching him. ‘You’re a terrible housekeeper.’
A part of her despised wanting to cry. She held the tears back by sniffing and concentrating on the part of her that wanted to throw something at him.
‘I’ve made a few mistakes,’ she conceded.
His brows hit his hairline. ‘A few! You can’t give the most basic instruction, you fall for any sob story and you invite people to take advantage of you.’
‘I think more of people than you do. I trust them.’
‘I know—that’s why you’re sacked.’
He hadn’t intended to deliver the news quite so brutally, but a combination of need and frustration bypassed his subtlety circuits. And diplomacy did not come easy when you had a slow-motion nightmare playing on a loop in your head. He prided himself on his ability to apply cool logic to all situations, but for a moment back there on the water, even though he’d known the boat would get him to her quicker, he had been within a whisper of following his instincts and diving in.
If he had, who knew what the outcome might have been? She called herself a strong swimmer but he knew what he had seen. Though he actually was a strong swimmer, there remained a question mark—could he have reached her in time?
It was possible they might both have perished.
She stiffened as she shot to her feet, every muscle in her body clenched and defensive, refusing to acknowledge the cold fear in her belly. Clasping her hands together, she blew out her breath slowly and flicked back her wet hair.
‘What did you say?’ Her tone was conversational. She had obviously misheard him—nobody would be that
