Maid for Montero(55)
She, on the other hand, might never fall in love again. This man was her soulmate, and all he could do was sulk while her heart was damned well breaking.
Well, at least he should remember her, though for all the wrong reasons—as the woman who dared to dump him!
‘I know you said we could stay on here,’ she said formally, ‘but that wouldn’t be right. I have made alternative arrangements.’
‘You have what?’ he roared as his smouldering temper sparked into full-blown conflagration. ‘Since when is this not working?’
She kept her chin up, not easy when a man who appeared to be ten feet tall was towering over her like some sort of damned volcano. ‘Since Harry came home with a black eye and a split lip after brawling with a boy who called me a cheap tart, among other things.’
Isandro took a step back, the air leaving his lungs in one audible, sizzling hiss.
CHAPTER TWELVE
‘IS HE ALL RIGHT?’
Mingled with the protective outrage Isandro felt was a surge of pride that the boy had stood up for his aunt; he had protected her honour.
Which was more than he had done. The guilty knowledge that this situation was one of his making scratched away at Isandro’s conscience like a nail on a blackboard.
No complications? He had known that was a total impossibility from day one. He had tried extremely hard to tell himself otherwise but he had known that this thing could get very complicated. He had taken refuge in technicalities—Zoe no longer worked for him; he never spent the entire night. He should have seen this coming. But he had wanted her…needed her with a hunger that was totally outside his experience. And in order to satisfy that hunger he had been prepared to break any and all rules.
She nodded, the concern now in his dark eyes making her tear up. ‘He will be.’
She rubbed a stray tear with the back of her hand, and the gesture made Isandro’s throat tighten.
‘This is a small village and people gossip. It was unrealistic of me not to expect this, and selfish of me not to consider the effect this sort of affair would have on the twins.’
‘So you think that nobody in this village has sex outside marriage?’
The sarcasm in his voice brought a flush to her pale cheeks. ‘That’s not the point.’
‘What are you going to do—take a vow of chastity until the twins leave home? No boyfriends? That is your idea of preparing them for the real world?’
‘You’re not my boyfriend. We don’t have a relationship—we have sex.’
‘Or do you need a ring on your finger? Is that what this is about?’
‘Of course not. It’s not sex outside marriage, it’s sex with you!’ she yelled before she remembered the sleeping children.
He did not respond to her announcement at all, though his feet-apart stance and stony, tight-lipped silence did not exactly convey happiness.
‘I don’t want to argue.’ She gave a weary sigh and looked at him through her lashes, head tilted a little to one side. Seeing the familiar attitude, he felt his anger levels decrease.
‘But it’s true—you’re not my boyfriend. And I didn’t mean it to sound the way it did about sex with you, but it is true as well…How can I tell the children that sex within a loving, caring relationship can be a beautiful thing, when I’m having sex with you?’ While it might be beautiful for her, she knew that for Isandro it was simply an act of physical release.
If ever she had come close to reading more into his exquisite tenderness and mind-blowing passion, she reminded herself of this: it was just sex for Isandro, for all that he did ‘just sex’ very well indeed.
He arched a sardonic brow. ‘So you are only sleeping with me to pay for the rent.’
The suggestion brought a rosy tinge of anger to her pale cheeks. How dared he act like the injured party?
‘Of course I’m not! I’d sleep with you if I had to crawl across a desert to get into your bed.’ Her blue eyes held his, shining with passionate fervour, before she dropped her gaze, remembering a few crucial seconds late that she was ending a relationship, not declaring he was her drug of choice…legal but, oh, so addictive.
‘But this isn’t about what I want.’ She inhaled and struggled to clear the haze of desire in her brain. The memory of Harry’s bruised little face did the trick better than a bucket of cold water. She squared her slender shoulders and lifted her chin. ‘It’s what I need to do for the twins. I have to send out the right message and I know full well that even—’
His eyes held a complacent gleam as he added helpfully, ‘You would crawl across a desert to sleep with me?’