Maid for Montero - By Kim Lawrence Page 0,59

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?’

As if he didn’t already know that! Zoe slung him a cross look and sniffed. He wasn’t making this any easier.

‘A figure of speech,’ she muttered, knowing it had been much more than that and hoping he didn’t. ‘We’re really not discussing how great you are in bed.’

‘Sex with you is worth the odd desert crossing, too.’

Even above the presence of his painful arousal, Isandro was conscious of a strange heaviness in his chest as he made a conscious effort to capture Zoe’s eyes. She seemed determined to look anywhere but at him. The moment of success when he welded his sloe-black eyes on her bright burning blue…The heaviness in his chest bordered unbearable…Yet he felt strangely exhilarated. Was he having a heart attack?

Zoe licked her dry lips and struggled to think past the static buzz of electricity in the room.

‘Thanks…’ she said, not knowing what else to say, and not hearing the huskiness in her voice above the deafening clamour of her pounding pulses. ‘Children can be very cruel.’ She gave a loud sniff. ‘So you see that I can’t continue to live here to be your…mistress.’

‘You are not my mistress.’

His offended hauteur in his attitude struck her as weird. ‘I live here, and you own the place.’

‘You pay rent.’

‘A token amount. And the fact is you wouldn’t have offered me this place if we hadn’t been having sex.’

‘I have never paid for sex.’

‘We can play table tennis semantics all night, but it won’t stop other people seeing me as a kept woman.’

‘I don’t give a damn what people think.’

‘That’s not a luxury I can afford, Isandro,’ she said sadly. ‘It stopped being the day I took on the twins. It’s my job to be a good role model for them. Even if they didn’t have to contend with the sort of teasing that happened today, what sort message am I sending?’

‘Parents do have sex. That is the reality, and you cannot protect them from every hurt along the way. I will have a word with the headmaster.’

She stared at him. ‘I can’t believe you just said that!’ she yelped, dropping into a chair.

‘Neither can I,’ he admitted honestly.

‘You will not have any words with the headmaster. You will not go near the school…I want the children to know about adult relationships, know that sex should happen within the confines of a loving relationship. Not like…I may have…’ Her eyes filled as she trawled her vocabulary for a word that would cover what she had.

‘You’re overreacting,’ he accused.

She thought of Harry’s face and shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m not.’

‘You want the children to go to school here. Where will you live? I know Polly well enough to know