The Italian's Christmas Proposition (HQR Presents)

by Cathy Williams

  ‘And you were always the impulsive one, Rosie,’ Candice teased. ‘Is love changing you already?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ Rosie spluttered. How much deeper could the hole she had dug for herself go?

  ‘I know it’s not wedding bells yet!’ Candice laughed and stood up, her movements graceful as she strode towards the door. ‘But please don’t forget to give me ample warning so that I can start planning my outfit!’

  Rosie managed to stammer out something, grateful that Matteo seemed to be taking it all in his stride, and it was only when the kitchen door was shut and her sister well and truly gone that Rosie looked at him with alarm.

  ‘You should never have encouraged my sister to think that there was more to this than there is!’ was the first thing she said, leaping to her feet, irritated at Matteo’s composure as he helped himself to a bottle of water from the fridge.

  ‘We should head up,’ was all he said.

  ‘Why on earth did you come down here, anyway? I thought you said that you had a mountain of emails to get through!’

  ‘The prospect of working suddenly didn’t seem quite so enticing.’ He circled her and stared down at her for a few seconds until she reluctantly lifted her eyes to his.

  ‘I was trying to ease the way to us breaking up,’ she confessed. ‘Until you came along and demolished all my efforts. Why couldn’t you have just taken the lead from me and backed me up when I started insinuating that this was probably just a fling?’

  Matteo shrugged. ‘Maybe I’m so arrogant that the thought of being written off as a fling dented my ego.’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ Rosie muttered.

  ‘Maybe...’ he murmured.

  Rosie didn’t know what was going through his head, but his expression wasn’t the expression of an arrogant alpha male with a sore ego.

  ‘Just maybe it got on my nerves hearing your sister assume that a man like me could never look twice at someone like you.’

  ‘I’m not asking for your pity.’

  ‘If you don’t assert yourself, you’ll be walked over.’

  ‘Thank you very much for the words of advice.’

  ‘You’ve stood up to your sister once. You can do it again. Try it a few times and you might find that it becomes a way of life.’

  ‘You don’t like me prying into your private life, Matteo, and I don’t like you thinking that you can analyse me.’

  ‘But you’ve set a precedent. Don’t get me wrong,’ he grated. ‘Your life is none of my business but it affronts something in me when I hear you being treated like a kid who needs other people to look after her. You’re not a kid.’

  ‘I know that,’ Rosie muttered grudgingly. She sneaked a glance at him from under her lashes. ‘I did actually stick up for you when she told me that it was strange for you to be working when you should be desperate to spend time in my company.’

  ‘Did you, now?’

  Rosie could see the speculation in his eyes at that admission. ‘I thought it might be a good idea to let her know that work came first with you.’

  Matteo burst out laughing, his grey eyes darkening with appreciation. ‘More of those foundations being laid down.’

  ‘It might have been if you had got on board with me instead of branching out and doing your own thing.’

  Matteo shrugged, the smile lingering on his lips, and began heading towards the door. ‘I’m hitting the sack. Coming?’

  ‘I’ll... I think I’ll stay down here and finish tidying the kitchen,’ Rosie told him. For a while she’d forgotten the prospect ahead of sharing her bedroom with him but it was all coming back to her now at great speed. On the spot she decided that she would stay out of harm’s way in the kitchen, at least long enough for him to fall asleep so that when she finally joined him he would be dead to the world.

  She couldn’t picture him being dead to the world, though. In fact, she couldn’t imagine him sleeping. More lying still with his eyes closed but primed to leap into action at the sound of a pin dropping.

  ‘Don’t wait up. There’s linen in the cupboard on the landing for the chaise longue.’

  ‘Sure.’ He didn’t bother turning around to look at her but left the kitchen, shutting the door behind him, leaving her to take as long as she possibly could filling the dishwasher, wiping the counters and in the end going through the contents of the fridge and binning everything that no longer had any lifespan left whatsoever.

  It was after midnight by the time she finally headed up to the bedroom and she was dead on her feet.

  So he was going to be in her bedroom. That meant nothing. She was going to be cool and composed because he was right—she wasn’t a kid and she was going to stop behaving like one. She was the only one who could determine the direction of her life and her choices and she was going to remember that.

  This felt like a crucial moment for her. She was at a crossroads. She either carried on in no particular direction, escaping her family’s well-intentioned guidance by drifting from one job to another, or else she buckled down and asserted herself. It was odd that a perfect stranger had been the one to bring her to this point.

  He told her things that she didn’t want to hear but it was thanks to him that she had actually stood up to Candice instead of backing away. She had always been treated like the baby of the family and she had followed through, fulfilling their expectations, becoming the family member happy to drift through life while other people got on with responsible living and grown-up decision making.

  When she stood back and looked at it through objective eyes, she was mortified.

  From now on, things were going to change. They already had.

  Filled with the rosy glow of assertiveness, Rosie pushed open the bedroom door and there he was on the chaise longue, semi-reclining, and it looked painful. His laptop was open and his legs looked as though they weren’t quite sure where they should go. Over the end of the sofa? Uncomfortable. On the ground? Likewise. He was way too tall and too big for the piece of furniture to which he had been consigned but the fact that he had obeyed orders touched her.

  He shifted his big, muscular bulk as she walked in, drawing attention... Forget about the inadequacies of his makeshift bed, the guy was semi-naked.

  Low-slung, loose-fitting jogging bottoms. That was it. He was half-naked and she stood by the door, shamelessly gaping for a few seconds, before walking in and shutting the door behind her.

  Thank God he hadn’t switched on the overhead light. Instead, he had swivelled the angle-poise lamp by the bed in the direction of the chaise longue. Rosie hoped that in a half-dark room the beetroot red of her cheeks wouldn’t immediately be visible.

  ‘You took your time,’ Matteo said, now standing up and stretching before dumping the laptop on her dressing table.

  Rosie’s vocal cords had dried up. She cleared her throat and stared straight past his spectacular, burnished bronze body to the window just behind him. Seemed a safer option. That said, he still managed to intrude into the entire periphery of her vision. He was so tall, muscles densely packed, the flat lines of his stomach tapering to a narrow waist and spirals of dark hair arrowing down...

  ‘There was a lot of tidying to do in the kitchen,’ she croaked. ‘You... I see you’ve made yourself comfortable on the chaise longue.’

  Matteo glanced over his shoulder and grimaced. ‘I’m not sure that comfortable would be the appropriate word.’

  Rosie had expected complaints. Maybe a show of resentful acceptance of the boundaries she had laid down, possibly even fully fledged refusal to accommodate her wishes. But his voice was remarkably even and she felt something...quite different from those waves of taboo attraction. She felt the stirrings of affection.

  She glanced at her lovely king-sized bed and Matteo followed the direction of her gaze.

  ‘I’m in your house,’ he sai
d, walking to the window and back to the sofa, exercising his long limbs. ‘The bed is yours.’

  ‘I’m half your size.’

  ‘Rules of the house apply here,’ Matteo drawled drily, flexing his muscles again and then sinking back down onto the chaise longue, his dark eyes pinned to her face as she remained hovering like a visitor in her own bedroom. He grinned. ‘Relax. There’s no need to start thinking about playing the self-sacrificing martyr by giving up your bed for me, Rosie. If the shoe was on the other foot and you were in my house, I’d be sprawled out on the bed and you’d be trying to squeeze into the clothes hamper in the bathroom. It’s late. Forget I’m here and go to sleep.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE BEDROOM WAS empty the following morning when Rosie woke up. In that moment between sleeping and waking, she had a brief respite when she actually forgot about Matteo being in her room at all, then she shot up into a sitting position and squinted at the chaise longue which was as tidy as though it had never been slept on. No rumpled linen. No pillow tossed onto the floor and no six-foot-two, drop-dead gorgeous Italian scrunched up asleep.

  No Candice either.

  There were messages waiting for her the second she checked her phone, including a lengthy voicemail informing her that one of the kids had come down with hand, foot and mouth disease.

  ‘Absolute nightmare!’ Candice had sounded rushed and a little frantic on the voicemail. ‘It’s only a passing virus, and Toby will be over it in a couple of days, but of course Lucien is freaking out, so I’ve caught the first flight out, darling. Don’t despair, though! I’ll be back at the end of the week with the gang—and don’t let that hunk of yours go anywhere! Lock him away if you have to! Everyone’s dying to meet him!’

  A long text message from her mother warned her that they, too, would be delaying their arrival so that they could lend a hand with two-year-old Jess while Candice was playing Florence Nightingale to her elder brother.

  Probably a good idea to give you a little more private time with your young man! her mother had messaged, with a winking face next to it. So you can breathe a sigh of relief, darling.

  With several skiing lessons booked for the day and behind time, Rosie raced through the room, flinging on the appropriate gear, and headed down, taking the short flight of stairs two at a time and screeching to a halt by the kitchen door. Matteo was in the kitchen. It was a little after eight, but he looked bright-eyed and bushy tailed, as though he had had a splendid night’s sleep.

  ‘Coffee?’ He greeted her equably, shutting the laptop which was in front of him on the kitchen table.

  He was in a black polo-neck jumper and faded black jeans and he took her breath away.

  Rosie blinked.

  ‘How long have you been up?’

  ‘A couple of hours. Hard to say.’ He stood up and strolled towards the kettle to switch it on.

  ‘Because you didn’t manage to sleep well on the sofa?’ Rosie inched into the kitchen, then told herself that it was ridiculous to feel uncomfortable in her own space. She needed to eat something before she shot out or she’d faint on the slopes. Her tummy was rumbling.

  ‘It was a challenge,’ he threw over his shoulder, ‘But I’ve never been one to shy away from a challenge.’

  Rosie had a vision of him on the chaise longue, half-naked, dwarfing it and yet accepting without complaint that that was his designated sleeping spot, and she felt it again—a stirring of tenderness that was disconcerting.

  ‘Well, you’re in luck,’ she offered brightly. She headed for the bread bin and extracted a sandwich loaf that was, thankfully, fresh enough to pop into the toaster. ‘Candice has had to rush off back to England because Toby has a virus.’

  ‘Hand, foot and mouth,’ Matteo murmured and Rosie looked at him with surprise.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I was in the kitchen when she was heading out of here.’

  ‘You were?’

  ‘Like I said, sleeping was a challenge. I threw in the towel just in time to catch her before she left. She explained the situation.’

  ‘Right.’ Rosie hesitated as it dawned on her that there was no need for Matteo to stay at the chalet at all because there would be no one around to observe the lovers in action. He could return to the hotel and check himself in for however many nights before the family descended.

  The chalet would feel very empty without him there, she thought, and just as quickly she banished that thought from her head. She had been in it on her own for weeks and it had been absolutely fine.

  She had been ensnared by his personality and by the way he looked, and she had probably been a bit lonely without realising it. The instructors and all the young people working in the hotel were very friendly, and there was a brilliant social life on tap for anyone who wanted to dip in and out of it. There were always things happening in various groups in the evenings, depending on who happened to be working what shift. But many of her friends had paired up and she could only think that Matteo had lulled her into enjoying time with a guy on her own.

  She had to remember that this was an artificial situation, though, and it annoyed her to feel that nudge of disappointment at the thought of him not being around.

  ‘So I guess you’ve worked out what this means,’ she said casually, offering him some toast, which he politely refused, even though he didn’t appear to have eaten anything. There were no dirty plates to be seen and she had a feeling that he wouldn’t have been meticulous about washing, drying and putting away anything he’d used.

  ‘What?’ Matteo strolled back to the chair and swivelled it so that he could watch her as she buttered her toast and then stood pressed against the counter, looking at him.

  ‘You can return to the hotel and stay there until the family show up. I mean, Candice won’t be here, and Mum and Dad are hanging back with her so that they can help with the kids while Toby is poorly. Emily and Rob will come later as well. It’ll be a sudden onslaught but in the meantime there’s no need for us to pretend because there will be no one around to see us.’

  ‘No can do.’

  ‘Sorry?’ Rosie had bitten into her toast and she chewed it slowly. One slice. She’d be starving in an hour but thinking about all those career women Matteo was attracted to had got her thinking that she could do with shedding a few pounds and redirecting her love of chocolate into something else. Celery, perhaps.

  ‘Bob and Margaret are still around,’ Matteo elaborated. ‘They’re not staying at that hotel but they’re there on a regular basis, enjoying one of the restaurants, drinking in one of the bars. There are only so many watering holes in this resort. Since the whole purpose of this arrangement was to convince them that we’re the happy couple, it’s hardly going to do if they spot me back at the hotel without you.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ Rosie admitted.

  Which brought her to another realisation and that was that they would now be here, in this lodge together, without Candice and her entire family around to dilute the situation.

  She dropped the toast into the bin and looked at him in consternation.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Matteo drawled, ‘I’ll make myself scarce.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant.’

  ‘You have a face that’s as transparent as a pane of glass. I have a mountain of work to get through, as it happens. This deal isn’t the only thing on my plate at the moment. I’d planned on having time out at my villa in Venice to work solidly over the Christmas period, but now that that’s been shot out of the water I’ll have to get as much done as possible before your family get here.’

  ‘At least you won’t have to sleep on the sofa now.’

  Matteo didn’t say anything. The night had been a hideous lesson in physical discomfort and not because he was averse to sleeping on anything that wasn’t a feather mattress. Growing up in a foster home, there had b
een no luxuries. He had become accustomed to a single bed with a mattress that seemed about as thick as a pound coin.

  No, his discomfort had stemmed from the fact that he was way too big for such a delicate item of furniture.

  And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, he had been aware of her tossing and turning and then, at some point in the early hours of the morning, she had stumbled past him to go to the bathroom, mostly asleep, and after that getting back to sleep had been impossible.

  Her body...

  Even under the baggy tee shirt and the shapeless shorts he had glimpsed luscious curves that had sent an ache of desire straight to his groin. There was something about the light in this part of the world... The luminosity had penetrated through a crack in the curtain and as she had yawned her way past him, oblivious to his presence because she’d been dead to the world, the shadowy outline of her heavy breasts had been clearly visible.

  His erection had been hard and immediate and he had had to suffer in silence, gritting his teeth while his imagination had taken flight.

  Never had he felt such an intense craving to have any woman. It had shocked him and had been intensely unsettling because he hadn’t been able to control his response.

  If he’d managed half an hour’s sleep for the entire night, he would have been surprised.

  ‘You can have one of the guest bedrooms,’ Rosie elaborated, breaking eye contact and then hovering. ‘They’re all made up and I can just replace the linen before the family arrive later in the week.’

  She couldn’t read his expression. If he always seemed to know what she was thinking because her face was ‘as transparent as a pane of glass’, then reading his thoughts was about as easy as groping a way forward in dense fog wearing a blindfold.

  Right now, he was staring at her with hooded eyes, pinning her to the spot, even though she knew she had to run because her first client was in forty-five minutes.

  ‘Good idea.’ Matteo dropped his eyes and glanced at the laptop.

  Her cue to go, Rosie thought. Enough small talk.