Cinderella's Scandalous Secret. Melanie Milburne

      Once the door closed behind Isla, Rafe let out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. Five months had passed and he still couldn’t be in the same room as her without wanting her. The lust hit him like a sucker punch. Seeing her standing beside his bed had brought back so many memories. Memories he had never been able to erase from his mind, much less his body. It was as if Isla McBain had imprinted herself on his flesh. No one else could satisfy the burning, aching need she aroused. He had dated other women since but each time he had thought about sleeping with them something had made him pull back. He was turning into a damn monk and he had to sort it out so he could move on with his life.

      Move on from her.

      Rafe was annoyed at himself for still being bitter about their breakup. But usually it was him who called time on his relationships. He was the one who set the agenda and changed it when it suited him. It had been a new experience—an uncomfortable experience—to have Isla leave him, especially when he was out of town working on the biggest and most important deal of his career. And especially when he had taken her home to Sicily—the first lover he had ever taken to his private sanctuary.

      His villa in Sicily was normally out of bounds for casual lovers. It blurred the boundaries to have lovers sleep over too many times, but for once he had relaxed his guard. He had taken Isla there for weeks on end, cancelled important work meetings just so he could spend time with her without the press documenting every moment. Something about their relationship had made him want to keep it out of the public eye. Not because he didn’t like being with her but because he did. A lot. A lot more than he had enjoyed being with other lovers.

      But somehow he had read her wrong and that bothered him. Big time. What niggled him the most was that he suspected she had waited until he was preoccupied with that deal so she could maximise the impact.

      Coming home to an empty villa and a note from Isla propped up on the mantelpiece had blindsided him. And if there was one thing he detested more than anything else it was being blindsided. Hadn’t his duplicitous father set the bar for blindsiding? With his father’s two families operating simultaneously—two wives, two families, who each thought they were Tino Angeliri’s entire world until Rafe had discovered the truth when he was thirteen. A phone call from one of his father’s staff had changed everything. Revealed everything. When his father had been critically injured in a car crash while away on business, the staff member had felt compelled to inform Rafe and his mother of Tino’s life-threatening injuries. But when he and his mother flew to Florence to be by Tino’s bedside they discovered Tino already had visitors. Four of them. His other family. His wife and two sons. His father’s first family. His father’s official family. His father’s other life. Rafe had stood by the hospital bed and recounted every one of his father’s blatant lies. Years and years of bold-faced blatant lies.

      Rafe was his father’s dirty little secret. His illegitimate son.

      Coming home to that damn Dear John letter from Isla had enraged Rafe so much he had torn it into confetti-like shreds. It had reminded him of walking into that Florence hospital when everything he believed about himself and his family was found to be false. A pack of lies. Secrets and lies. He hadn’t realised he was capable of such anger until it hit him in sickening, gut-shredding waves. Why hadn’t he seen it coming? Surely there must have been a sign. Or had Isla deliberately misled him, lulling him into a false sense of security just as his father had done for all those years? Pretending, lying, misleading—the three deadly sins of any relationship.

      He had called Isla as soon as he’d read the note and left a message. It wasn’t a message he was particularly proud of, but he was not one to hand out second chances. She hadn’t called him back and, in a way, he had been glad. Clean breaks were always to be advised. But nothing about their breakup felt clean to him. It felt rough around the edges, torn instead of neatly cut, ripped and raw instead of resolved.

      Rafe paced the floor of the penthouse until he was sure he would wear his way through the carpet to the suite below. Something was off about her now. Her body language, her averted gaze, her caginess. Why had Isla had given up her Fine Arts degree and moved back to Scotland? She had been so passionate about her art and had said how much she enjoyed living in London. He had seen some of her drawings and he’d been amazed at her talent. What had made her turn her back on her dreams and work for a friend in a job that didn’t maximise her creativity? Had something happened in the time since their breakup? Something that had poisoned her artistic aspirations. But what?

      He turned and looked at the neatly made bed, picturing her in it with her slim limbs wrapped around his. He let out a filthy curse and swung away, his guts twisting and tangling in disgust. Disgust at himself for allowing her to still get under his skin.

      Isla was by far the feistiest and most fascinating woman he had ever been involved with and he couldn’t help wondering if that was why no one else since had measured up. He had found Isla’s quick wit and hair-trigger temper entertaining as well as frustrating. So few people stood up to him. So few women treated him as an equal instead of a meal ticket.

      Isla had been different. She had made it virtually impossible for him to be satisfied by anyone else. He had enjoyed their heated debates, enjoyed how all their fights were settled between the sheets. He’d enjoyed goading her to get a rise out of her just so he could have her quaking and shuddering in his arms.

      She looked the same but different somehow. Her figure was still slim but some of her curves had ripened, making him ache to touch her, to feel her, to smell and taste her. Her breasts were a little fuller. Dio. He had to stop thinking about her gorgeous breasts. How soft they felt in his hands, under his lips and tongue. How it felt to have her moving, thrashing beneath him as he took her screaming all the way to paradise.

      The new energy that surrounded her now intrigued him. Her gaze blazing with defiance one minute and skittering away from his the next. Her skin paling and then flushing, her body turned away when before it had always turned towards him like a compass point finding true north.

      Isla’s rejection was like a scabbed-over sore. Seeing her again had ripped off the scab and left the wound smarting, stinging, festering. He had to expunge her from his system so he could finally move forward. One drink with her and he would walk away without a backward glance. He owed it to himself to leave what they’d shared in the past where it belonged.

      It was over and the sooner he accepted it the better.