The Italian's Christmas Proposition (HQR Presents)

by Cathy Williams

  ‘It’s also the problem with acting on impulse but, if you think you’ve been inconvenienced, then I should tell you that the last thing I’d banked on doing was remaining here for longer than strictly necessary.’

  ‘I’m sure you have commitments. It’s Christmas.’

  ‘I don’t do Christmas. The only reason I’m here at this time of year was because of the timing on this deal. My only commitment was to retreat to my villa outside Venice and escape the madness.’

  ‘Escape? Escape?’ Distracted, she angled her bright, blue-eyed gaze in his direction.

  ‘Don’t look so bewildered.’ Matteo’s eyebrows winged up. ‘Not everyone is in love with the festive season.’

  ‘You have no family...’ Rosie said slowly.

  ‘Don’t go there,’ Matteo told her, voice dropping by several degrees.

  Rosie frowned. ‘It must be a lonely time of year for you,’ she said simply and Matteo vaulted to his feet and frustratedly raked hands through his hair.

  ‘What is it about stay out of my private life that you don’t get?’

  Rosie didn’t apologise. Her mind was busy with images of him in foster care. He had given her a sketchy description of what it had been like but she knew that it probably would have been far more soul-destroying. He had expressly set up No Trespass signs and he had made it clear that the only reason he had said anything at all was because he’d felt it necessary.

  Except...her heart went out to him. She knew that she was going where no doubt angels feared to tread, but there was a generosity of spirit inside her that found it difficult to leave the subject alone.

  ‘Everyone needs to talk to somebody about the distressing things that happen in their lives.’

  ‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this! I don’t think you quite understood...’

  ‘You don’t want to talk about it.’ She shrugged but her clear blue eyes were stubbornly fixed on his face as he towered over her, looking down, expression forbidding.

  ‘No,’ Matteo said with angry force. ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Which says a lot.’

  Matteo leant over her, hands on either side of her, depressing the soft sofa cushions and caging her in. His face was dark with enraged incredulity that someone had dared cross the boundary lines he had laid down. Did the woman have no limits when it came to saying what was on her mind? Matteo was accustomed to people editing their behaviour around him. Her lack of interest in following those rules left him practically speechless. From the second she had appeared in his life, normal rules of behaviour had been suspended.

  ‘Don’t make me regret having told you what I did.’

  ‘Why would you regret it?’

  ‘Are you hearing a word I’m saying?’

  She held his outraged stare. ‘You’re accustomed to everyone doing what you tell them to do, aren’t you?’

  Matteo stood up but remained standing in front of her.

  ‘Yes, I am!’

  ‘Okay. You win! I won’t ask and you don’t have to tell me anything. Would you like something to eat? Drink?’ She stood up and swerved around him, heading to the kitchen and straight to the fridge to peer inside.

  As always it was crammed with food. A lot of optimistically healthy options that were probably past their sell-by date. She had been staying at the chalet since the season had begun and she was an impulse shopper. Things in attractive jars always held so much promise but often it was the easiest way she ended up taking.

  He was still scowling when she looked at him quizzically. ‘Well?’ she snapped. ‘You don’t want to talk to me about anything of any importance, so we can talk about food options instead. I know you’ll think it’s safer. What do you want? I can make you something.’

  Matteo wasn’t into women cooking for him. In fact, he actively discouraged it, just as he always made sure that a night of pleasure never turned into breakfast together the following morning.

  ‘I usually just eat stuff that comes out of boxes or cans but I don’t suppose you do.’

  ‘I don’t,’ Matteo said flatly. He paused. ‘You ask a lot of questions.’

  ‘So do you.’ Her azure eyes were innocent and her voice was sincere because she meant it.

  ‘Show me the rest of your house.’

  Rosie shook herself back to earth, hesitating and on the cusp of barrelling past his Keep Out sign but reluctantly accepting that, if he wasn’t into sharing, then he wasn’t into sharing. They meant nothing to one another and she would have to put her curiosity to bed because it wasn’t going to get her anywhere.

  She gave a perfunctory tour: open-plan living area with a huge, modern fireplace and lots of comfy chairs, perfect for settling in for the long haul—just her, a book and the fall of silent snow outside. The kitchen, which was the hub of the house, and a study in which her father occasionally worked, although now that he had retired those instances were few and far between. He had forgone offers of consultancy jobs and opted for quality time with his family instead.

  Wooden stairs led to the floor above: six bedrooms all leading onto a broad landing that overlooked the space below. Next to her, Matteo’s silence was oppressive, and she wondered what was going through his head.

  She found out soon enough.

  ‘So where is our bedroom?’

  About to head back downstairs, head still buzzing with unanswered questions, Rosie spun around on her heels and stared at him with consternation.

  ‘You can choose which bedroom you’d like,’ she told him politely. ‘Mine...’ she nodded in the direction of the bedroom at the end of the long, broad landing ‘...is down there.’

  ‘Well, I suppose that’s where I’ll be dumping my bags.’

  He headed down at pace towards her bedroom and, as he flung open the door, she was right behind him.

  She’d waved an arm to indicate the bedroom floor, only opening the first door and standing back while he’d looked inside like a prospective buyer doing a tour of a house. Now, with him standing in her bedroom, her personal space, she felt invaded. She was on show here, with all the little pieces of her childhood for him to see. A framed photo of her on her first horse, with her dad proudly standing next to her. The ridiculous chair in the shape of a big, pink heart which had been her favourite when she’d been about eight, and which her parents had stashed away in their attic, shipping it over when they’d bought the chalet years before. Pictures of her family over the years.

  ‘You’re not staying in my bedroom,’ She folded her arms and watched, tight-lipped, as he strolled through the bedroom, peering at this and that and ignoring her. He had dumped his bag on the ground like a declaration of intent that sent a chill of forbidden excitement racing up and down her spine.

  He commanded the space around him. He was so tall...so muscular...so there.

  ‘Oh.’ He spun round and stared right back at her. ‘This is exactly where I’ll be staying.’ As if to confirm what he’d said, he picked up the designer bag and flung it on the mattress of her four-poster bed.

  It landed with a soft thud and then sat there, challenging her to remove it.

  ‘But...’

  ‘No buts. You got me into this mess and, now I’m in it, for better or for worse you’re just going to have to suffer the consequences. We’re supposed to be an item. Hot off the press, so to speak. Your sister is going to be extremely suspicious if she thinks that we’re not sharing a bedroom. Particularly given the fact that she probably assumes that you’ve been sharing my suite at the hotel while we’ve been conducting our torrid affair.’ He glanced at his watch then back to her, where she had remained hovering at the doorway to her own bedroom, almost as though, having asserted his authority, she was now the guest in her own space.

  ‘I can tell her that we’re in separate rooms here out of respect for Mum and Dad.’

  ‘That’s rid
iculous.’

  ‘You don’t know my parents!’

  ‘Are you telling me that you would be exiled to the Arctic wastes if they discovered that we were sleeping together?’ He pinned his eyes to her reddening face. ‘Right. Enough said on the subject.’

  Rosie’s face was a picture of dawning dismay. Their love-at-first-sight scenario invited enough questions without those questions reaching fever pitch because they were in separate bedrooms, like a Victorian couple.

  ‘Now,’ Matteo declared, jettisoning the subject as if suddenly bored with the whole thing, ‘I would come down and have something out of a box or a can with you, but right now I want a shower, and I have a stack of emails to get through, so I’ll have to forfeit the feast.’

  He reached for the button on his trousers and Rosie stared open-mouthed for a few seconds before gathering her wits.

  ‘I hadn’t banked on this,’ she said tightly and he stared at her with disbelieving eyes.

  ‘And I hadn’t banked on it either,’ he informed her coolly. ‘Right about now, I should have been getting in touch with my housekeeper and readying her for my arrival. Instead...’

  Instead, she mentally filled in, here you are, sharing a room with a woman you don’t know, who keeps getting on your nerves with her constant questions, caught up in a crazy game of make-believe.

  ‘If you’re sure you’re not hungry...’ she muttered, inching a couple of steps back, eyes still fixed on him. She didn’t want to, but she couldn’t help feverishly wondering what he looked like underneath the expensive clothes. Bronzed and sinewy, she imagined, every cord and muscle defined. She felt faint thinking about it and, when she contemplated the prospect of sharing her bedroom with him, she went into a positive mental tailspin. She eyed the chaise longue by the window.

  ‘You can make that up.’ She nodded in the direction of the chaise longue. ‘It’s very comfortable.’

  Matteo didn’t say anything. He glanced at it, his hooded silver eyes revealing nothing. ‘Like I said,’ he drawled, ‘I’ll do without the food. Now, unless you have no objection to seeing me strip off in front of you...?’

  Colour high in her cheeks, Rosie fled, shutting the door behind her.

  In the quiet of the kitchen, she hastily prepared some pasta for herself, making good use of a number of tins. Comfort eating. Her head was full of the ramifications of her very small, practically invisible little white lie. Everything had snowballed and now here she was, with the sexiest man on the planet upstairs in her bedroom. Her nerves were shredded. When she thought of Matteo, everything inside her went into meltdown. Physically, she felt faint when she closed her eyes and pictured him in all his over-the-top sexiness. He was just so breathtakingly beautiful.

  But it wasn’t just confined to the way he looked. If that had been the sum total of it, then she could have steeled herself against the impact, because a good-looking guy without personality was just a cardboard cut-out to be admired without any threat of him getting under your skin.

  No. Matteo’s extraordinary effect on her was all wrapped up in the power of his personality, his air of command, and now that she had eked out a couple of personal details the fallibility she could sense underneath the cloak of arrogant self-assurance.

  He posed questions, he ignited her imagination, he stirred depths of curiosity she’d never known she possessed.

  Absorbed in hectic speculation, she ate without thinking—the pasta, some salad that looked dangerously close to needing last rites performed then a slab of chocolate dessert that was just the thing to settle her mind.

  She was startled when she heard the sound of the door opening and then there was Candice, shedding outer layers of snow-covered gear as she breezed into the kitchen, pink-faced and smiling.

  ‘I really miss the little monsters.’ She headed straight to the fridge to pull out a bottle of mineral water. ‘But—’ she looked at Rosie with a grin ‘—some time out is a wonderful thing. Had a ball. So nice to catch up with that crew. Where’s Matteo?’

  ‘He’s...um...working.’

  ‘Working?’ She kept her eyes fixed on Rosie’s flushed face as she drank from the bottle before lowering it. ‘Where? In Dad’s office? Surely he can pack in the work for a few days...if he’s head over heels in love with you?’

  ‘Well, you know how it goes when it comes to men and...er...work.’ Rosie offered vaguely. Her sisters had always had the ability to pin her to the spot with their penetrating blue eyes and she was pinned to the spot now, unable to move forward and incapable of shuffling back.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Lucien works all the hours under the sun, or have you forgotten?’

  ‘He’s a surgeon,’ Candice responded drily. ‘Lives depend on him. It’s early days for you both, Rosie. I would have expected him to have made a little time for you, especially considering the time of year, when most businesses are operating at a much slower pace.’

  Rosie remained steadfastly silent. A fierce defensiveness for her so-called boyfriend suddenly kicked into gear allied to the stubborn need to stand her ground. Where had that come from?

  ‘He isn’t where he is because he’s a slacker, Candice,’ she said without the usual note of apology in her voice. ‘Sometimes work can take over, and not necessarily because lives are at stake. Lucien might save lives on an operating table, but Matteo and how he runs his businesses can affect the livelihoods of lots of people who work for him.’

  Candice stared.

  ‘I consider myself duly told off. Second time for the evening. The only reason I sound nosy...’ She sighed. ‘Okay, I’ve researched the guy,’ she confessed, ‘And he’s big stuff, Rosie. Somewhere at the back of my mind, I recognised the name, but I honestly thought I was mistaken because I couldn’t believe that someone who doesn’t even breathe the same air as we do could...well...’

  ‘Find me attractive? Thanks very much.’

  ‘It’s not that at all!’ Candice said quickly. ‘I can’t help being protective of you—he’s out of your league, Rosebud. For a start, the sort of women he dates...’

  ‘I know. He likes high-powered career women.’

  ‘So he told you? I’m impressed with his honesty on that front, at least. Of course, Emily’s heard of him, and so has Robert. But, from everything I’ve read and heard, he’s so far up the pecking order that you literally have to be a billionaire to have much personal contact with him at all on the business level.’

  Frankly, Rosie couldn’t help thinking, the more Candice elaborated, the less likely it seemed that someone like Matteo would even glance in the direction of someone like her. Not unless they had temporarily taken leave of their senses. Christmas madness. Except, he didn’t do Christmas.

  ‘But of course,’ Candice continued, flipping open the bin and dumping the plastic bottle into the recycling section, ‘Opposites do attract, I’ll give you that.’

  ‘They do...’ Rosie smiled to herself, remembering what Matteo had said earlier.

  ‘There’s no accounting for people when they fall in love.’

  Fall in love? Was that the story doing the rounds? And was it spreading like a forest fire beyond the family unit?

  ‘Well...’ She laughed lightly and managed to galvanise her body into action, walking across to sit opposite her sister, wishing she had opted for a restorative glass of wine, for some Dutch courage would have done wonders right now. ‘I don’t know about falling in love...’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Relationships aren’t all about falling in love,’ she asserted, glancing away.

  ‘That’s not what you’ve always maintained,’ Candice told her drily. She paused and delivered a searching look to her sister. ‘I don’t want you to get hurt,’ she said quietly. ‘And I’m very much afraid that you will. I just don’t think you’re tough enough to handle a guy like Matteo.’

&n
bsp; Into the brief silence came the last voice either of them expected to hear.

  ‘Maybe that’s what I find so charming about your sister.’

  They both looked up to see that Matteo had silently pushed open the kitchen door and was now lounging in the doorframe.

  How long had he been there?

  Rosie tried to remember if she had said anything incriminating and was certain that she hadn’t.

  He’d showered and changed into a pair of faded jeans and an old tee shirt and he looked drop-dead gorgeous—easy, relaxed, wildly sophisticated and with that edge of danger about him that made her whole body go on full alert.

  ‘Maybe,’ Matteo continued, ‘It’s a breath of fresh air to be with a woman who isn’t as tough as nails and doesn’t want to spend every minute of her time discussing the state of the world and how it should be fixed.’ He strolled towards Rosie and then remained standing behind her, his hands on her shoulders, lightly caressing her neck and feathering shivers of pleasure through her body.

  He leant to brush his lips on the nape of her neck and she nearly passed out.

  She had never seen Candice out of her depth but Matteo unsettled her, Rosie thought. It was his self-assurance, his bone-deep confidence that his opinions carried weight. He didn’t allow anyone to take advantage of him and, before they thought that they could try, he made sure to establish the lines of command.

  ‘And what makes you think that your sister will be the one to be hurt?’ he enquired coolly.

  ‘Exactly.’ Rosie finally entered the conversation but her usual spirited response was seriously compromised by the continuing, caressing motion of his fingers on her neck. ‘Candice, please don’t worry about me.’

  ‘I intend to take very good care of your sister.’ Matteo’s voice was still cool.

  ‘Really?’ Candice’s eyebrows shot up. ‘I mean, I hope so. We all do.’

  ‘Why would I say it if I didn’t mean it?’

  ‘But,’ Rosie interjected, ‘It’s only been a couple of weeks so...we’re taking each day as it comes.’