told Isla, on scholarship. Both had endured the taunts of the elite—the glossy, beautiful rich kids who’d felt that he and his sister hadn’t belonged at their school. Alessi had for the most part ignored the gibes but when it had got too much for Allegra he would step in. They had both worked in the family café and put up with the smirks from their peers when they’d come in for a coffee on their way to school and found the twins serving. Now Allegra was the one who smirked when her old school friends came into Geo’s, an exclusive Greek restaurant in Melbourne, and they realised how well the Manos family had done.
Still, just because they had been on the end of snobby bitchiness it didn’t mean that Isla had been like that, Alessi told himself.
They got on really well.
Isla even texted him an image she had on her phone of a school reunion she had gone to a couple of years ago.
‘I remember him!’ Alessi said, and gave a dry laugh. ‘And he would remember me!’
‘Meaning?’
‘We had a scuffle. He stole my sister’s blazer and she was too worried to tell my parents that she’d lost another one.’
‘Did you get it back?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Alessi grinned and then his smile faded as Isla pointed to a woman in the photo who he hadn’t seen in a very long time.
‘Do you remember Talia?’ Isla asked. ‘She’s a doctor now, though she’s moved to Singapore. She actually came all the way back just for the reunion.’
Alessi didn’t really comment but, yes, he knew Talia. Her name was still brought up by his parents at times—how wrong he had been to shame her by ending things a couple of days before their engagement. How he could be married now and settled down instead of the casual dates that incensed his family so.
Not a soul, apart from Talia, knew the real reason why they had broken up.
It was strange that there on Isla’s phone could be such a big part of his past and Isla now dragged him back to it.
‘She’s got four children,’ Isla said. ‘Four!’
Make that five, Alessi wanted to add, his heart black with recall. He could still vividly remember dropping by to check in on Talia—he’d been concerned that she hadn’t been in lectures and that concern had tipped to panic as he’d seen her pale features and her discomfort. Alessi had thought his soon-to-be fiancé might be losing their baby and had insisted that Talia go to hospital. He had just been about to bring the car around when she had told him there was no longer a baby. Since the morning’s theatre list at a local clinic he had, without input, no longer been a father-to-be.
Of course, he chose not to say anything to Isla and swiftly moved on, asking about Isla’s Debutante Ball, anything other than revisiting the painful past. She showed him another photo and though he still could not place a teenage Isla he asked who an elderly woman in the photo was.
‘Our housekeeper, Evie.’ Isla gave a fond smile. ‘My parents couldn’t make it that night but she came. Evie came to all the things that they couldn’t get to. She was very sick then, and died a couple of months later. Evie was going to go into a hospice but Isabel and I ended up looking after her at home.’
Isla stared at the image on her phone. She hadn’t looked at those photos for a very long time and seeing Evie’s loving smile had her remembering a time that she tried not to.
‘Would you like another drink?’ Alessi offered as Isla put away her phone, both happy to end a difficult trip down memory lane.
‘Not for me.’
‘Something to eat?’
She was both hungry enough and relaxed with him enough to say yes.
Potato wedges and sour cream had never tasted so good!
In fact, they got on so well that close to midnight both realised it was just the two of them left.
‘I’d better go,’ Isla said.
‘Are you on in the morning?’
‘No.’ Isla shook her head. ‘I’m off for the weekend. I’m pretty much nine to five these days, though I do try to mix it up a bit and do some regular stints on nights.’ They walked down the steps and out into the street. ‘So you start on Monday?’ she checked.
‘I do,’ Alessi said. ‘I’m really looking forward to it. At the last hospital I worked at there was always a struggle for NICU cots and equipment. It is going to be really nice working somewhere that’s so cutting-edge.’ He looked at Isla—she was seriously stunning and was looking right into his eyes. The attraction between them had been instant and was completely undeniable. Alessi dated, flirted and enjoyed women with absolute ease. ‘I’m looking forward to the weekend, too, though.’
‘That’s right, you’re going away with your girlfriend …’
‘No,’ Alessi said. ‘We broke up.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Isla said, which was the right response.
‘I’m not,’ Alessi said, which was the wrong response for Isla.
She was terribly aware how unguarded she had been tonight. Perhaps safe in the knowledge that he was seeing someone.
She looked into his black eyes and then her gaze flicked down and she watched as his lips stretched into a slow, lazy smile.
His mouth was seductive and he hadn’t yet kissed her but she knew that soon he would.
As his lips first grazed hers Isla’s nerves actually started to dissolve like a cube of sugar being dipped into warm coffee—it was sweet, it was pleasurable, it was actually sublime. Such a gentle, skilled kiss, so different from the forced ones with Rupert. It felt like soft butterflies were tickling her lips and Isla realised that her mouth was moving naturally with his.
Alessi’s hands were on her hips, she could feel his warm hands through her denim shorts and she wanted more pressure, wanted more of something that she didn’t know how to define, she simply didn’t want it to end. But as the kiss naturally deepened, her eyes snapped open and she pulled back. Her first taste of tongue was shocking enough, but that she was kissing a man in the street was for Isla more terrifying.
He thought her easy, Isla was sure, panic building within her about where this might lead. She almost was easy with him because for the first time in her life she now knew how a kiss could lead straight to bed.
She had many weapons of self-defence in her armoury but she leapt straight for the big one and shot Alessi a look of absolute distaste.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ she snapped, even if she had been a very willing participant. ‘I was just trying to be friendly …’
Alessi quickly realised that he had been right to be cautious about her.
He knew the looks she was giving him well.
Very well!
She didn’t actually say the words—do you know who I am? Though Isla’s expression most certainly did. It was a snobby, derisive look, it was a get-your-hands-off-me-you-poor-Greek-boy look.
‘My mistake,’ Alessi shrugged. ‘Goodnight, Isla.’
He promptly walked off—he wasn’t going to hang around to be trampled on.
Her loss.
Alessi knew she’d enjoyed the kiss as much as he had and that her mouth, her body had invited more. He simply knew.
Isla had enjoyed their kiss.
As she climbed into a taxi she was scalding with embarrassment but there was another feeling, too—despite the appalling ending to tonight her lips were still warm from Alessi’s and her body felt a little bit alive for the very first time, a touch awoken to what had seemed impossible before.