Maid for Montero(54)

He paused, appearing to sense her mood before he tilted his head towards the ceiling and said in a hushed voice, ‘The children?’

‘Are asleep.’

He expelled a sigh, silenced the narrative in his head and extended his arms. It did not cross his mind for one moment that she would not run into them. Zoe was more responsive to him than any other woman he had ever met. If his passion for her was unquenchable, so was hers for him.

She was infatuated.

She’s in love.

Zoe stood, her feet glued to the spot, and shook her head. The effort caused beads of sweat to form on her upper lip, but she dabbed them with her tongue and shook her head.

He did not approach her, but instead closed the door behind him and leaned his broad shoulders against the wall. He looked very pale. His dark eyes were weirdly blank, they reminded her of someone in shock.

He cleared his throat. ‘Problem?’

She laughed even though she felt like crying. That was so like Isandro, who never used two words when one would suffice. Then, gathering her determination in both hands, she nodded.

‘This isn’t working.’

He would appreciate brevity, she decided, stifling an irrational stab of guilt. It wasn’t as if Isandro had invested any emotions in this relationship. It would be a mistake to imagine that he would feel as though he’d lost a limb if she vanished from his life.

The highly charged silence stretched and pulsed, then he laughed and broke the spell.

She cleared her throat. Either he was more all right with this than she had imagined or he was not taking her seriously. ‘I’m not joking. I think we should agree to call it a day.’

He stopped laughing. ‘You do?’

She nodded, then cleared her throat. She had seen granite walls more revealing than his expression. The only things moving were the muscles in his brown throat as they rippled under the surface of his bronzed skin. ‘Yes.’

Isandro closed his eyes, fighting the urge to yell. The children were upstairs sleeping and he could not yell; he had to appear invisible.

Her insistence on maintaining the unrealistic illusion they were nothing but passing acquaintances had not seemed a big ask at the time. It had even seemed like a good idea. However, it had ceased to feel like a good idea some time ago.

There was a certain dark irony to the situation. He had always avoided having his name linked with a woman, and now he was with a woman who seemed ashamed to acknowledge they were sleeping together.

It should have been the ideal situation, but it wasn’t.

The previous week he had driven past the school when she was picking up the twins. They had waved and Zoe had pretended not to see him. He had been contemplating leaping out of the car and hauling her into his arms and kissing her in front of the entire damned gossipy village whose opinion seemed to matter so much to her. It wasn’t as if they didn’t all know they were sleeping together anyway.

But he hadn’t, because he wasn’t a Neanderthal. Though lately he had seen there were certain advantages in following your baser instincts.

Obviously he did not want to set up house, but neither did he want to be treated like a dirty secret…It was demeaning for any man.

‘You need a drink.’

Zoe felt panic as she watched him shrug off his jacket before walking across to the cupboard where she had put the half-drunk bottle of wine he had opened the previous evening.

‘I don’t drink, remember?’ She took a deep breath, lowered her voice from the shrill, unattractive level it had risen to and reminded him, ‘We agreed that when this didn’t work we would simply call it a day. Look, I know it must be strange because you assumed—actually so did I—that it would be you who ended things.’ She gave a sad smile. ‘It’s nothing personal,’ she added earnestly.

He studied her face for any sign of irony but there was none. ‘Well, I do want a drink,’ he said, pouring the remnants of the bottle into a glass and swallowing the contents without tasting.

‘So nothing personal, which of course makes all the difference,’ he drawled, setting aside the glass with elaborate care while in his head he saw it smashing to a million pieces as he threw it into the fireplace.

‘Please don’t be like that,’ she begged. ‘This is hard.’ She bit her trembling lip. She could not afford to lose her focus now, she could not afford to allow him to touch her…

‘This is bloody ridiculous,’ he contended, thrusting his balled fists into the pockets of his well-cut trousers and glaring at her.

Zoe recognised the cause of his belligerence but she was not in the mood to show much understanding for injured male pride. So maybe he had just been dumped for the first time in his life. There were any number of nubile women who would be gagging to massage his ego.