Maid for Montero

Chapter ELEVEN



STRUGGLING TO PUSH all thoughts of Isandro from her head, Zoe tapped on the cottage door and walked inside the warm, homely, farmhouse-style kitchen. A second later the impossible was achieved: she wasn’t thinking of Isandro.

‘Oh, my God!’ She dropped to her knees in front of the child seated at the table, her face creased in lines of anxiety as she touched the uninjured side of her nephew’s face. ‘Harry!’

‘It’s fine.’

Maud was on her feet, laying a hand on Zoe’s shoulder.

‘Seriously, it’s a lot worse than it looks, dear.’

‘How on earth…? Who did this? Has a doctor seen…?’

‘The nurse at school cleaned the cut.’ Georgie, who had come to stand beside her brother, provided the information to a stunned Zoe.

‘But who did this to you, Harry? Why didn’t the headmaster inform me?’

‘Sit down, dear, you’ve had a shock.’ Maud pushed Zoe down into a chair beside Harry and produced a cup of tea from somewhere. ‘The head tried to ring you but you’d already left and your mobile was switched off.’

‘He wants to see you tomorrow,’ Harry muttered, licking his bruised and swollen lip.

‘And I want to see him! I want to know the little thug who—your poor face…’

‘It wasn’t Adam, it was Harry. He just went for him.’

Zoe turned her head to look at Georgie. ‘Harry fighting…?’ She shook her head. The image of gentle, sweet Harry brawling was one she simply couldn’t accept. Now, if it had been Georgie…

‘He was. I saw it.’

‘But, Harry, why?’

The little boy shook his head and looked away. It was Georgie who responded.

‘It was the things Adam was saying about you and Isandro. I was telling him he was stupid but Harry came in just when Adam called you a bad name and Harry went for him…He was brilliant,’ she enthused, turning an admiring look at her twin.

Digesting the information in shock, Zoe recovered enough to knock this on the head. ‘It is never brilliant to fight,’ she said numbly.

Oh, God, this was her fault!

Of this Zoe had no doubt. The child in question was the son of the attractive vet who had made a play for Isandro at Chloe’s party. The woman had gone out of her way ever since to be unpleasant to Zoe, and she had no doubt the kid was only repeating what he had heard at home. Probably everyone was saying the same with various degrees of contempt.

How could she not have considered the possible fallout for the twins when she had embarked on this affair? She had thought that by keeping the affair from them she was protecting them…Some protection, she thought, self-disgust bubbling like acid in her stomach.

She patted Harry’s curly head. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll make things right with the headmaster.’

‘I told you not to tell, Georgie. Look, she’s crying now.’

Zoe gave a watery smile and sniffed. ‘No, I’m not crying. And I’m very, very cross with you.’

The kiss she then planted on Harry’s head might have given mixed messages, but what mattered was putting this right. And she would. The sooner, the better. No gingerly easing off the plaster—it was a straight in there, hold your breath, grit your teeth and rip it off. The brutal approach might sting a bit at the time but why prolong the agony?

So the analogy was not perfect. No matter what spin she put on it, Zoe knew that this was going to hurt more than losing a few superficial layers of epidermis, but the important thing was not giving herself time for her resolve to weaken and waver.

That had been the theory anyway. But it was after eleven when the doorbell finally rang and by this time Zoe had gone through nail-biting apprehension and nervous pacing and come out the other side.

She let the doorbell ring a second time before she took a deep breath and headed for the hall. I’m totally calm, she told herself, serene even.

Her serenity lasted all the way up to the door and it swung inwards to reveal a tall, lean figure looking sleek and exclusive in a designer suit and, frankly, well out of her league. It hadn’t been intended to last…They were a total mismatch outside the bedroom. She took a deep breath and pushed away thoughts of the bedroom and reminded herself all she was doing was hastening the inevitable.

So suck it up, Zoe, you’re a grown-up, a parent…running away or, even worse, running into his arms is not an option.

‘Sorry I’m so late…’ Drawn irresistibly to her body heat and softness, he began to lean forward, but was forced to draw back when she whisked away and began to walk towards the sitting room. His expression thoughtful, he watched her retreating back. It grew less thoughtful as his heavy-lidded eyes lingered on her rounded bottom. He shook his head to clear it. ‘I hope the food isn’t spoilt.’

‘I didn’t make any food.’ Her spine stiff with tension, she walked ahead of him into the sitting room, trying desperately to remember her carefully prepared speech. It had vanished into the ether, or at least into some dark dead end of her stressed brain.

He had caught the negative vibes even before she avoided his embrace. Isandro’s expression grew contemptuous as he asked himself what point exactly he had been making when he hadn’t rung to say he’d be late.

It was simply another example of his increasingly pathetic attempts to pretend that this was all casual. Who was he kidding anyway?

Well, there, he’d admitted it, but this wasn’t the time to rush on and make any dramatic declarations. Clearly if he wanted to keep Zoe in his bed and in his life he would have to bend some of his normal rules.

The painful acknowledgement had an aftertaste of relief to it…He felt a little of the tension in his shoulders release. Why on earth had that been so difficult? It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been bending the bloody rules to breaking point from the moment her blue eyes, sinuous curves and smart mouth appeared in his world.

Life was about to change, and he wasn’t infatuated; he was…past infatuation.

Still unwilling to follow this insight through to its conclusion, he closed the door of the sitting room behind him. He should be opening doors. The contemplative furrow in his brow smoothed.

It was not a weakness to accept he wanted more from this relationship than sex, it was a weakness not to accept it.

He clapped a hand to his head. Will you listen to yourself, Isandro? the analytical portion of his brain mocked. This was exactly the reason he didn’t go in for all that self-analysis crap. It could drive a man crazy and get him nowhere, especially when he’d not had a full night’s sleep for how long…?

Before, he had never spent a full night with a woman out of his own choice. But now the roles were reversed and, back in his own bed, for some reason he just lay awake unable to sleep without her warmth in his arms.

Boyfriend…He tried the description on for size in his head. He’d never actually been anyone’s boyfriend. The whole idea seemed…not him.

Her initial impression of intense weariness was more pronounced when he walked into the small living room. It was palpable. It took every ounce of her self-control to fight the compelling urge to rush to him.

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.

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.