The Italian's Christmas Proposition (HQR Presents)

by Cathy Williams

  CHAPTER TWO

  THEIR EYES MET. Matteo was beginning to feel a little unsteady. He had never before heard such a garbled non-explanation from anyone in response to any question he had ever posed in his life. Her mouth was parted and she was leaning forward, her body language speaking of an urgency for him to believe what she was saying.

  The woman was distracting.

  It wasn’t just the breathless, convoluted workings of her brain which he was finding extraordinarily difficult to deal with. It was her, the entire package. The second he had laid eyes on her, something inside him had kick-started and now...staring back into her impossibly turquoise eyes...

  He shifted, frowning. There was enough on his plate without losing focus over this nonsense. His eyes roved over her flushed face, subliminally appreciating the satin smoothness of her skin and the juicy fullness of her lips. As he watched, her tongue flicked out, nervously licking her upper lip, and his whole body jack-knifed in sudden, heated response.

  A libido which had been dormant for the past six months surged into life with shocking force. He gritted his teeth together but he had to shift position because his erection was rock-hard, pulsing against the zipper of his trousers.

  Was she leaning forward like that on purpose? Making sure that those lush, heavy breasts were on tempting show, begging to be fondled?

  Matteo had a very particular type of woman. Very tall, very slim and very brunette. He went for the career woman, the woman who challenged him intellectually. He liked the back and forth of informed conversation about politics and the economy. He liked them cool, confident and as driven as he was. He’d fought hard for his place in the world and he appreciated a woman who had battled against the odds as well. An ambitious woman with a career of her own was also not a needy woman, and he disliked needy women. He didn’t want anyone needing him. He operated solo and that was the way he liked it.

  So why was he staring at this woman in front of him with the rapt attention of a horny teenager? She was breathy and ultra-feminine and didn’t strike him as the sort who would be winning awards for her thoughts on world finance. She was the antithesis of what he sought in any woman.

  Furious with his lack of self-control, he leapt to his feet to prowl through the room, at the same time finishing the glass of whisky he had poured, tempted to help himself to another but resisting the urge.

  He had to remove his eyes from the sexy woman on the chair but, when he finally glanced at her again, it was to find that he was still in the grip of whatever ludicrous spell she had temporarily cast on him.

  He positioned himself in front of her and then leant down, gripping either side of the chair, caging her in so that she instinctively drew back.

  Her breathing was fast and shallow, her breasts heaving.

  ‘Not going to work,’ he growled.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Rosie whispered. ‘I’ve tried to explain what happened.’

  ‘You expect me to believe that I was just some random target? That you really have no idea as to the reach of my power? And, if that’s the case, why are you coming on to me?’

  Rosie’s mouth fell open and she stared.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Don’t think that you’re going to get me into any sort of compromising situation! I wasn’t born yesterday. That garbled nonsense about dragging me into this situation to avoid a guy—unbelievable.’

  ‘Compromising situation?’

  ‘You’re a sexy woman but I’m not a fool.’ Matteo gritted his teeth, controlling his hands with extreme difficulty, because what he desperately wanted to do was take what was obviously on offer, starting with those luscious lips and moving on to the even more luscious breasts.

  ‘You’re telling me that I’m sexy?’

  ‘And advertising it isn’t going to work. Where’s your sister? Lurking behind the door? Ready to take an incriminating photo, perhaps?’ He pushed himself away from the chair but his body was still on fire as he strolled through the room, purposefully maintaining distance between them.

  Eventually, he sat down. He was still hard, still turned on.

  ‘I can’t believe you’d imagine that I was coming onto you,’ Rosie said faintly. The thought alone was enough to suffuse her with colour.

  Her? She was the one who had drawn the short straw when it came to looks. Her sisters had always been the ones to turn heads. She, Rosie, had been the girl the boys enjoyed hanging out with. She self-consciously folded her arms over her breasts and then realised that, in doing so, she had simply drawn attention to them.

  She wondered whether that would lead to another crazy accusation that she was trying to come on to him. Her skin prickled. He had called her sexy and she didn’t think that he’d been kidding.

  ‘And it wasn’t garbled nonsense,’ she belatedly continued. ‘If you’d just listen! My family...’ Her voice was staccato with suppressed nerves. ‘Well, you’ve met Candice, my sister. They’ve been a bit concerned about me...they think I need to settle down, find a job, a life partner...’

  ‘A life partner?’

  ‘Yes.’ She flushed. Why had she launched into this brutally honest explanation? Why hadn’t she skimmed over the details? The way he was looking at her, frowning in silence with his head tilted to one side, was bringing her out in goose bumps. She should have left him puzzled about the nonsensical reason for her behaviour because now she would have to confess that the last thing she was was sexy. Sexy women didn’t have their entire protective family twitching with concern about their life choices.

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Twenty-three.’

  ‘Let’s suspend disbelief for the moment and go along with your story: why are you supposed to have a life partner at the age of twenty-three?’

  Matteo realised, with frustration, that the woman was doing it again. Distracting him. He raked his fingers through his hair and reminded himself that this was the woman who had probably scuppered his deal, the one deal that mattered even though he had nothing to gain financially from it.

  She looked as pure as the driven snow but he knew better than to trust the way people looked. Scratch the surface and there was usual a healthy store of avarice and general unpleasantness to be found.

  She was gazing at him with those incredible aquamarine eyes.

  Matteo was beginning to think that she wasn’t the Machiavellian character he had first assumed, working in cahoots with a partner in crime. For once, his cynicism might be misplaced. He wasn’t going to give up the notion willingly, but...he was getting there.

  Nor was he convinced that she had been trying to come on to him, he grudgingly conceded. She was either an actress of Oscar winning standard or her shock at the accusation had been genuine.

  He was so accustomed to women making a play for him, that the idea of one actively horrified at the thought of it was as novel as discovering a fish riding a bike in the centre of Hyde Park.

  No ulterior motive, which just left her explanation that she had started an ill-thought-out act of impulse to escape some guy’s advances.

  This time, when he looked at her, it was with lazy interest. He was thirty-two years old but his palate was lamentably jaded. This slice of novelty was strangely compelling.

  ‘Aren’t you a little young to be told that you need to start thinking about settling down?’ He shifted, making a concerted effort not to give in to the urge to stare at her fabulous body. ‘And, conversely, a little old for your family to be the ones giving the lectures?’

  Rosie bristled. ‘They care about me. Not that that’s any of your business.’

  ‘Everything is my business when, thanks to you, the deal I’ve been nurturing for the past eight months will probably come to nothing. Whether what you and your sister did was a deliberate ruse or not, the upshot remains the same.’

  ‘Bob and Margare
t seem very reasonable people, not the sort to jeopardise whatever agreement you reached with them because of a scene in a hotel lobby.’ Rosie flushed as her guilty conscience ate away at her. She couldn’t understand why he needed any deal so badly when it was obvious that he was made of money. Her parents were rich but she suspected that this guy was in a different league altogether.

  ‘Bob and Margaret are deeply traditional people,’ Matteo informed her coolly. ‘Church goers with an extremely healthy respect for the family unit, as you may have gathered. My integrity has been paramount to winning their trust.’

  ‘I’m really and truly sorry. I had no idea that my sister would fly down there and let rip. It’s not like her at all. She never makes a fuss. She’s probably at the chalet right now broadcasting our relationship to the entire family.’

  ‘The chalet?’

  ‘My parents own a chalet about fifteen minutes from here.’ She stared off into the distance and wondered what the next step was going to be.

  Her gaze slid over to where Matteo was still staring at her, his loose-limbed body relaxed and her heart picked up speed. He was so perfect...so stupendously good-looking.

  ‘You still haven’t properly explained what went on down there,’ Matteo prompted, his voice clipped. ‘Now Cupid has supposedly targeted us, you might as well fill me in on this guy you don’t want to meet and why you’re having to in the first place. I didn’t ask for this but it’s landed on my lap and I’m going to have to make the best of it. I’ll need some personal details about you.’

  Rosie looked at him and then found that she couldn’t stop looking and, when she looked, her brain went into overdrive and she started thinking about the way his mouth had felt against her cheek.

  ‘I...well...as I mentioned, my family think it’s time for me to start settling down—and please don’t tell me that I’m too old to have my sisters and my parents fussing around me. I know that. Fact is, Candice came over to warn me that they were thinking of inviting some family friends to the chalet over Christmas.’ She grimaced. ‘Bertie is their son.’

  ‘And?’ Matteo tilted his head and looked at her with raised eyebrows. ‘You don’t like him? Ex-lover? Bad break-up? Where are we going with this one?’

  ‘You’re very rude, aren’t you?’ She scowled and then, without warning, he smiled at her and all that sexiness was thrown into such stark focus that she was temporarily shocked into silence.

  The harsh beauty of his face was no longer forbidding. All of a sudden, Rosie glimpsed at what true sexiness in a guy was all about and in an instant every boyfriend she had ever had faded into insignificance. She had gone out with silly little boys. The glorious specimen sprawled in front of her was just the opposite. He was all man, an alpha male in the prime of his life. She felt faint.

  ‘No one has ever said that to me before,’ Matteo drawled. ‘Should I be irritated, bemused or intrigued?’

  Rosie squirmed. She wasn’t sure how to answer that question or whether he even expected an answer. She felt hot and bothered, as if she was coming down with something.

  ‘My parents think that Bertie and I might be a good match and I guess...’ She hesitated. ‘I acted without thinking. Candice was sitting across from me, ruining my entire Christmas. I just looked down and spotted Bob and Margaret and the guy they said they’d been doing business with, and I knew that you were all leaving, so I...told my sister that I couldn’t possibly face Bertie because I’d been having a fling with you, which hadn’t worked out and I was all broken up. It seemed safe. You were going and there was no way I thought she was ever going to...do what she ended up doing.’

  Hearing it spoken out loud, Rosie couldn’t imagine why she had done what she had. Why hadn’t she just stood her ground and refused?

  She knew why. Because it had always been her nature to follow the path of least resistance and that had evolved into her just going with the flow.

  ‘I should have just told Candice that if Bertie was going to be on the scene then I would make sure not to be there. I should have had a bit more will power. Instead, I acted on impulse, and I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’m getting the picture of someone who lets her family run her life for her. Am I right?’

  ‘Is there anything I can do to make it up to you?’

  ‘You shouldn’t make offers like that,’ Matteo murmured. ‘A guy could get all the wrong ideas.’

  Heat coursed through her body, a slow burn from the inside out. Her breasts ached and her nipples, straining against her bra, felt ultra-sensitive, tingling. She imagined the pads of his fingers rubbing them and her breathing became shallow and laboured. She had no experience when it came to this kind of sophisticated, lazy flirting. If that was even what it was. All she could do was stare at him while her mind continued to play with all sorts of graphic, contraband images.

  What on earth was wrong with her?

  This guy reeked of danger and yet the pull she felt was overpowering.

  ‘So, now that we’re an item, what happens next?’

  ‘I...well...’

  ‘In the thick of this relationship, our hot, two-week clandestine fling, where were we supposed to be meeting? My room at the hotel? Your parents’ chalet? Neither of the above? It’s a mystery that Bob and Margaret didn’t jump in with a string of questions about our so-called affair, bearing in mind most of my time over the past few days has been spent with them working on finishing touches to my deal.’

  ‘How am I supposed to know?’ Rosie retorted truthfully. ‘I didn’t stop to think things through.’

  Impulse on that scale was unheard of in Matteo’s world and it was strangely refreshing to glimpse a life where variables were given a chance to survive. Not for him, and yet... ‘Well, we’re going to have to come up with some sort of plausible story or else the whole thing falls apart, and I’m not about to let that happen.’

  ‘Because of this deal you’re working on?’

  ‘I just need to get past the finishing line.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘Why would a deal mean so much to you that you would go along with this charade instead of just calling me out? I mean, you seem to have enough money...’

  ‘You’ve lived a life of comfort,’ Matteo said coolly. ‘From that vantage point, it’s easy to come out with platitudes about not needing money or having enough of it. Tell me, have you ever told anyone that the best things in life are free? Take it from me, they seldom are. Now, back to my question—what happens next? Your sister is staying with you. Having witnessed our show of love, presumably she expects nothing less than a formal meeting with the man who’s head over heels in love with you?’

  Rosie’s brain was only just beginning to move on from what he had said about her attitude towards money. She was mortified to realise that he was right. She’d led a charmed life and it was easy to take all that for granted when you knew that it would always be there. For all her free-spirited travelling, she would never have fallen very far, because there would always have been a cushion waiting for her.

  ‘She’s probably curious,’ Rosie admitted.

  ‘And the over-protective family? Will the grape vine be buzzing with news of our whirlwind romance?’

  Rosie shot him a sheepish smile and pushed some tangled blonde curls off her face.

  ‘“Buzzing” might be an understatement,’ she confessed.

  ‘But at least the ex-lover won’t be on the scene now you’re spoken for.’ He’d felt it again. A charge of electricity, powerful and disorientating. Primal. She represented everything he steered clear of when it came to women, and yet she was uniquely appealing and he had no idea from where the appeal stemmed.

  ‘Bertie was never an ex,’ Rosie was obliged to point out. ‘Never even came close! Our families have known each other for ages and, somewhere along the line, he got it into his he
ad that he wanted to ask me out on a date. I was seventeen at the time. I’ve never fancied him but now he’s a big shot in the City somewhere and everyone thinks he could be a suitable match.’ She rolled her eyes.

  Matteo didn’t say anything. His dark eyes were lazy and thoughtful. ‘So I’ll be meeting the family,’ he murmured.

  ‘You don’t have to. I could tell them that you’ve been called away on business. Candice has met you. She’ll understand.’

  ‘Why will she understand?’

  ‘Because...’ Rosie thought that, for someone as forbidding as he was, it was oddly easy to talk to him. ‘Because she has two children now, but before that she was a successful lawyer, so she understands the demands of work. She’ll get it if you pay a flying visit and then disappear.’

  Rosie frowned and sat forward. ‘That would work,’ she said slowly. ‘If you disappear, then there won’t be the complication of your meeting my parents and the rest of the family. That way, I can gradually warn them that the big romance isn’t actually going as planned. These things happen,’ she thought aloud. ‘People meet and think that they’ve fallen in love but it turns out to be a mistake.’

  ‘And naturally,’ Matteo said soothingly, ‘That’s exactly what will happen but, for the moment, that solution is off the cards.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because my deal hasn’t been finalised. Bob and Margaret are here for another week. Skiing, having fun and making sure the last details of my purchase are drawn up and inspected via email by their lawyers in London. Until signatures are on the dotted line, we’re in love and thinking of building a future together. Once everything’s signed, sealed and delivered, then the hasty unravelling of our relationship can begin.’ He gave an elegant shrug which implied that that was the way forward and there was nothing she could do about it, whether she wanted to or not.

  ‘It’ll be harder on my parents if they actually meet you face to face.’

  ‘Tough.’ Matteo didn’t bother beating about the bush. ‘I didn’t ask for this.’