owned the Highland croft in Scotland where Isla was staying, but who were currently visiting her aunt’s family in New Zealand, had read on the Internet about the news of Paulu and Tania’s death in a helicopter crash. They had immediately contacted their neighbour and had then phoned to ask if Isla wanted them to come home so that she could travel out to Italy.
But what would have been the point in that trip when she had already missed the funerals? Isla asked herself heavily. It was the great sadness of her life that she had never got to know her only sibling. Of course, they had grown up apart and Tania had been ten years older, and Isla was the daughter who was an unplanned and not very welcome late arrival following their father’s premature death. Their mother, Morag, already struggling to survive, had headed down to London with Tania to find work while accepting her own mother’s offer to take care of her new baby until such time as the little family of mother and daughters could be reunited.
Only unfortunately that reunion had never happened. Isla had grown up in the same Highland croft as her mother had with grandparents who were effectively her parents. Morag had made occasional visits at Christmas, gifting Isla with vague memories of a soft-faced woman with red curly hair like her own and a much taller, leggy, blonde sister, who even as an adolescent had blossomed into a classic beauty. Tania had left home at a very young age to become a model, and not long afterwards Isla’s mother had passed away from the kidney complaint she had long suffered from. Indeed, the first time Isla had communicated directly with her sister had been when Tania phoned the croft to invite Isla to her wedding in Sicily.
Isla had been embarrassed that her grandparents were not also being invited but the elderly couple had insisted that she go alone because Tania was generously offering to pay for her kid sister’s travel costs. Being fair-minded people, her grandparents had also pointed out that Tania had never had the opportunity to get to know any of them and that they were all next door to being strangers even if they were bound by blood.
Isla still cringed at the memory of how out of her depth she had felt attending that opulent wedding with all its important moneyed guests and of the unpleasant experience she had suffered when cornered by a predatory older man. But, worst of all, the longed-for connection with her only sibling had signally failed to materialise from her visit. Indeed, Tania’s attitude to life in general had shocked Isla.
‘No, you can thank Paulu for your invite,’ Tania had breezed. ‘He said I had to have some family member present and I decided a teenager was a far better bet than the boring old fossils in the croft Ma used to rattle on about. I’m moving up in life with this marriage. I don’t want poverty-stricken relatives with a thick Scottish brogue reducing my status in our guests’ eyes!’
Tania had merely been outspoken, Isla had decided forgivingly, the product of a liberal and far less old-fashioned upbringing.
‘That girl ran wild,’ her grandma had once insisted. ‘Your mother couldn’t control her or give her enough of what she wanted.’
‘But what did Tania want?’ Isla had asked in her disappointment after her sister’s wedding when there had been no mention of the sisters ever meeting again.
‘Och, the only dream that one ever had was to be rich and famous.’ Her grandma had chuckled. ‘And by the sound of the wedding you described, that pretty face of hers got her exactly what she always wanted.’
Only that hadn’t been true either, Isla reasoned wryly, recalling her next meeting with her sister several years later, after she too had moved down to London. Her grandparents had died within weeks of each other and her uncle had taken over the croft. Her uncle had urged her to stay with them but, after months of having helped her grandmother nurse her grandfather while he was dying and still sad over the loss of them both, Isla had believed that she needed to move out of her comfort zone at the croft and seek independence.
‘Paulu misrepresented himself,’ Tania had insisted with scorn after announcing that she had left her husband and the marital home. ‘He can’t give me what he promised. He can’t afford to!’
And shortly after that, Paulu had come to visit Isla in her humble bedsit to seek advice about her volatile sister. A lovely, lovely man, she thought sadly, so much in love with Tania and so desperate to do whatever it might take to win her back. Her eyes stung as she thought that at least Paulu had got the love of his life back before their deaths, had reclaimed that happiness before fate had cut their respective lives brutally short. She had liked Paulu, had actually got to know him much better than she had ever got to know her sister.
Had Paulu followed Isla’s feisty advice on how to recapture Tania’s interest? She supposed she would never know now.
In the snug croft kitchen, she fed the turf fire and shed her outdoor layers with relief. She loved being at the croft, but she missed her city social life with friends. Living where she had grown up meant that even a cinema trip to Oban required extensive planning and a very long drive. In another few weeks, though, she would be heading south again, her promise to her relatives fulfilled. Her aunt and uncle were lovely people; however, they were childless and had nobody but Isla to rely on if they wanted to leave home. It was over twenty years since her aunt had last visited New Zealand and Isla had been happy to help to make that dream come true, especially when that request had come at a time when the café where she had long worked as a waitress was closing and the rent had gone sky-high on her bedsit.
Her uncle’s sheep and hens couldn’t be left to take care of themselves, especially not in winter or when bad weather was expected, she reflected, casting a nervous glance out at the grey laden sky: heavy snow had been forecast.
She still smiled while watching her dog, Puggle, daringly nestle his tiny body in beside her uncle’s elderly and increasingly deaf dog, Shep, the collie who herded the sheep. Puggle adored heat but the little dog was Isla’s most impractical acquisition ever. Abandoned on a road somewhere near the croft, he had turned up shivering and starving the week Isla had arrived and she didn’t know how on earth she was going to keep him when she returned to London, but his perky little wagging tail, enormous eyes and ridiculously huge ears had sneaked into her heart before she’d known what was happening. He was a very mixed breed with perhaps a dash of chihuahua and poodle because, besides the ears, he had a very curly coat but he also had very short legs and odd spotty black-and-white colouring. Regrettably, it seemed nobody was searching for him because she had notified the relevant authorities and had heard nothing back from any source.
The noisy sound of a helicopter overhead made her frown because the sheep hated loud noises, but she already knew, having checked, that the herd was safely nestled in the big shelter in their pasture, their reading of the temperature as good as any forecaster’s. Minutes later, when she was brewing a cup of tea, she was startled when Puggle began barking seconds before two loud knocks thundered on the sturdy wooden front door.
Assuming it was her uncle’s nearest neighbour, who had kindly been keeping an eye on her in the isolated croft, Isla sped to the door and yanked it straight open, only to fall back in shock.
It was him... Alissandru—Paulu’s brother—the insanely hot and gorgeous twin who had knocked Isla for six the first time she’d seen him when she was a naive teenager. There Alissandru was, inconceivably, on the croft’s doorstep, jet-black hair ruffling in the wind, dark eyes set below level ebony brows, flawless classic features bronzed by a warmer climate. A strikingly beautiful male, Isla had thought at that wedding while he stalked about the place like a brooding volcano, emanating the most extraordinary intensity of emotion. But Tania had hated Alissandru, she reminded herself ruefully, blaming Alissandru for everything that went wrong in her marriage to his brother.
Alissandru focussed on his quarry, Isla, dressed unexpectedly in a long tatty
