The Italian's Christmas Proposition (HQR Presents)

by Cathy Williams

  ‘I am here!’ Rosie interjected in a high voice, breaking free from her mother and moving to stand between the two men.

  They couldn’t have been more different physically. Matteo, tall and so dramatically good-looking. Her father, short and rotund, but with the sort of fiercely determined face that advertised why he had managed to get as far as he had.

  ‘My intentions towards your daughter are entirely honourable.’

  ‘Are they?’ Ken growled.

  ‘Honourable enough to ensure an engagement ring will soon be on her finger.’

  The silence that greeted this statement was so complete that they could have heard a pin drop.

  Then screeches of delight came from her sisters, who rushed towards her, warm pleasure from her mother, who was trying to get a word in edgeways, and a grunt of approval from her dad, now shaking Matteo’s hand vigorously, warmly, clapping him on the back and announcing that a weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

  ‘She’s my little baby,’ Rosie was aware of him saying, while sick perspiration began rising from her toes upwards. ‘Needs someone to look after her. Glad she’s found that person.’

  In a daze, Rosie was vaguely aware of her family all leaving the room en masse. Lucien and Robert had apparently chosen to stay outside with the kids, who were in seventh heaven, because Santa was due to make an appearance.

  In her elf outfit, and shorn of all festive spirit, all Rosie could think was, what the heck has just happened...?

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE REMAINDER OF the evening passed in a blur. Rosie mingled with all the guests, entertaining the kids as Santa’s jolly helper while frantically trying to keep her eye on a roaming Matteo. Roaming where and doing what? She wished she had eyes on the back of her head and consoled herself with the thought that he couldn’t do any more damage than he had already done.

  Engaged? Diamonds on fingers? What on earth had he been thinking?

  She fumed internally, because a complicated situation had suddenly got a whole lot more complicated, and yet...

  Something inside her burned with treacherous heat at the thought of being engaged to Matteo, wearing his ring on her finger, looking forward to a lifetime of making love with him and finding out more and more what made him tick.

  From the very moment he’d entered her life, a curiosity had been awakened inside her that she knew, realistically, would never be sated. Whatever mess he had landed them both in, whatever further mess—she had started the ball rolling with her little white lie—this was and never would be a real relationship, one in which sharing and confiding played a part, in which discovery was part of the package.

  She was one of the last to leave, because the staff were asked to volunteer for tidying up duties, and it was after eight by the time everything was more or less in order and normality had been restored.

  She was standing uncertainly by the Christmas tree in the foyer, fiddling with her hat and wondering how her overwhelming family could be swamping her one minute and nowhere to be seen the next, when a dark, amused and familiar voice said from behind, ‘The elf looks somewhat worse for wear.’

  Rosie spun round, heart picking up pace and body racing into fifth gear at the sight of him. He certainly didn’t look the worse for wear. If anything, an evening spent immersed in the Christmas spirit appeared to have relaxed him, although he was so clever at projecting a public face that she wasn’t sure whether this was accurate or not.

  He’d shoved up the sleeves of his shirt and her eyes were helplessly drawn to his powerful forearms, liberally sprinkled with dark hair. Her mouth went dry and for a few seconds she forgot that she was fuming and angry with him, and had been all evening for the extravagant lie he had told.

  ‘Where’s...everyone?’ she asked.

  ‘Gone to a French restaurant for dinner. En masse.’

  ‘They didn’t tell me that that was the plan.’

  ‘That’s because I assured them that we would be far keener to break bread together, just the two of us.’

  ‘You’re right.’ Rosie was proud of her composure as she began walking towards the cloakroom so that she could retrieve her coat, bag and everything else. ‘We need to talk.’ She felt a lot less jumpy saying this with her back to him. The second he was staring at her with those amazing eyes, her thoughts began going haywire and she couldn’t seem to string a coherent sentence together.

  She disappeared into the cloakroom and emerged back in sensible clothing but feeling just as dishevelled.

  ‘Let’s get something to eat,’ Matteo drawled, lounging against the wall with one finger hooked into the waistband of his trousers. ‘Long, meaningful conversations are always more productive over food. Where do you want to go?’

  Rosie couldn’t think of doing anything as relaxing as eating when her mind was buzzing with all sorts of angry, confused thoughts, but she was ravenous. There had been a lot on offer in terms of canapés, but those had been out of bounds to the staff, and she had been too wired to eat any of the leftovers once the tidying had been done. Her stomach growled.

  ‘I’m not actually hungry,’ she returned coolly.

  ‘Let’s go to the restaurant here. The food is decent enough, from what I recall. And, before you start trying to convince me that you couldn’t eat a thing, your stomach has just given you away. You’re right, we have to talk, and I won’t be doing that standing here outside the cloakroom.’

  He pushed himself away from the wall and looked down at her and while she was dithering, loath to give in to his calmly spoken statement of fact, he spun round on his heels and began heading towards the flight of stairs that swept up to the restaurant on the mezzanine floor.

  Gritting her teeth with frustration, Rosie pelted behind him, caught up with him. She had a moment of feeling utterly awkward when they were shown to a corner table in the restaurant because, although the coat, scarf and long, black cardigan were all in place, underneath was the elf outfit which wasn’t exactly appropriate wear for a serious conversation.

  However, there was nothing to be done about that, and she reluctantly surrendered the coat and long, winding scarf to the maître d’, making sure to keep the cardigan tightly pulled around her as she took her seat.

  Her breasts felt huge, pushing against the stretchy outfit. She had removed the jaunty hat but her fair hair was all over the place and she ran her fingers through it now, trying to get it into some kind of order, her blue eyes very firmly fastened to Matteo’s dark, lean face.

  ‘I can see that you can’t wait to tell me what’s on your mind.’ He lounged back in the chair, summoning the waiter over with the smallest of nods and ordering a bottle of Chablis without bothering to look at either the waiter or the wine list, instead keeping his gaze very firmly pinned to her flushed face.

  ‘Can you blame me? How could you?’

  ‘Why don’t you take the cardigan off? You must be hot.’

  ‘Thanks for the concern, Matteo, but I’m just fine. And you haven’t answered my question—how could you tell my parents, my whole family, that we’re going to get engaged? How could you pretend that this is actually a serious relationship!’ Tears of frustration sprang to her eyes and she rapidly blinked them away.

  The waiter came and poured the wine and she muttered what she wanted to eat—the first thing she spotted on the menu that she liked, knowing that she wouldn’t do justice to the food that would be placed in front of her.

  Matteo leaned towards her, his voice low and cool. ‘When I met your sister, I got an idea of how your family operated. She flew down to attack me out of nowhere because she mistakenly thought that I had led you on and broken up with you. She was as ferocious as a tiger looking out for her cub. When you told me that you had lied about being involved with me in order to get out of an uncomfortable Christmas spent with your family trying to match-make you with some guy you weren�
��t interested in, well, needless to say I had never come across a situation like that in my life before.’

  Rosie reddened, knowing just how that made her sound—feeble, childish and not in control of her own life.

  ‘We’ve been over all of this before,’ she muttered with simmering resentment. ‘It still doesn’t explain why you said what you said.’

  ‘Rosie.’ He raked his fingers through his hair and sat back, sipping some of the wine and looking at her carefully, as though doing his best to marshal his thoughts. ‘Your sister was just the tip of the iceberg. You are surrounded by family who clearly feel it’s their duty to protect you.’

  ‘It’s not that unusual.’ She squirmed and when she met his eyes his expression was remote.

  ‘In my world, it’s very unusual.’

  With a tug of compassion, Rosie reached out, but he didn’t take her hand and she withdrew it and returned it to her lap.

  Of course, he wouldn’t understand her family dynamics, she thought, ashamed because she had thoughtlessly put her foot in it. Again.

  ‘I’m sorry, Matteo...’

  Matteo held up his hand impatiently to cut short her stammered, sympathetic interruption. ‘No need to be. I’m getting accustomed to your outbursts of sympathy. It’s irrelevant. The fact is that your father, in particular, is extremely protective of you. I’m guessing that’s because you’re the baby of the family.’

  Rosie shrugged and lowered her eyes. ‘We have a lot of shared interests,’ she admitted. ‘My sisters have never been interested in sport and I was always the one he took to football matches. He used to tell me that it was the best relaxation he could think of after slaving away in an office five days a week.’

  He, more than her mother, had been the one to indulge her nomadic lifestyle, she was now forced to concede. Her mother had made lots of noises over the years about her settling down, but her dad had always been the one to overrule those small protests.

  Now, she wondered whether it hadn’t been partly because her father, born into privilege, had had his life conditioned from an early age. He had been sent to the right schools and gone to the right university and maybe there had been a part of him that had always longed to rebel. Just a little. And that part had led life vicariously through his youngest daughter who had always been a free spirit.

  Perhaps that was why, when Bertie had been presented as a possible suitor—her dad had climbed on board that wagon with the rest of the family—it had panicked her because everything had suddenly seemed very serious. A serious, suitable candidate to rescue her from her enjoyable but essentially irresponsible life.

  If she hadn’t been so panicked, she would never have done what she had done—told that little white lie, never realising what the consequences might be.

  ‘He was never really worried by all those dalliances you had in the past, was he, cara? Your father?’

  ‘What makes you say that?’ She lifted startled eyes to his and frowned.

  ‘It was a conclusion I reached off my own bat,’ Matteo admitted. ‘And he said as much to me when I had a conversation earlier on with him.’

  ‘What?’ She stared at him furiously and he stared right back at her without blinking an eye. ‘What were you doing talking to my dad?’

  ‘Don’t be disingenuous, Rosie.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Exactly that. You deserved to have some fun. You were never academic like your sisters, and if you wanted to stretch your wings a little then he could more than afford to indulge you. But he finally reached the conclusion that it was time for you to discover the joys of leading a more grounded existence, so to speak.’

  ‘You had no right to discuss me behind my back!’ she snapped, her voice steeped with dismay. ‘And I’m not just a carefree twenty-something!’

  ‘Aren’t you?’ Matteo questioned and that hurt. For a short while, she couldn’t speak at all, and it was a relief that their starters were being positioned in front of them, small, tasty dishes, because it relieved her of the need to say anything.

  ‘You think I don’t find that an attractive trait?’ he asked gruffly, and her eyes shot to his face.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You’re like a breath of fresh air and I think I may have mentioned that to you before,’ Matteo admitted with rough sincerity. ‘I’ve never met anyone like you in my life before.’

  ‘What does that have to do with...anything? Matteo, it would have been so much easier if you hadn’t said what you had. Relationships come and go, and if this one crashed and burned, then...’

  ‘Then it would have joined all the rest of your relationships that had crashed and burned in the past?’

  Rosie gazed at him with down-turned mouth.

  ‘Why should you care?’ Her voice was so low that Matteo had to strain forward to hear what she had said.

  Good point, he thought uncomfortably. There was no reason why he should care. He just knew that what he had seen in her during the short time he had known her had fired up in him something strangely protective. Her entire family had descended and when her father had cornered him he had reacted utterly on impulse. For once in his life, Matteo had been galvanised into behaviour that was alien to him.

  The only thought that had run through his head was, they know who I am and they’re already predicting the outcome. Another failed relationship, and this time one deserving of even more tea and sympathy because of who I am.

  Underneath the sunny, plucky exterior was someone both sensitive and oddly brave. She needed to find her place in the family dynamics and suddenly he had been driven by the urge to help her along.

  Matteo wasn’t going to delve further into his motivations. Introspection never got anyone anywhere because, when it came to the crunch, action and not thought was what mattered.

  But tugging away at the back of his mind was the notion that perhaps not everyone fought the same battles he had. It wasn’t always about carving out a place for yourself in the world of money. Sometimes, there were other forces at work. It didn’t mean that the fight was any the less significant.

  He shrugged. ‘Maybe I didn’t care for either the idea that I would be just the sort to take advantage of an innocent like you, because of the person I’m reported as being in the media, or the idea that you would be disingenuous enough to walk straight into a trap from which you could only end up hurt, requiring your over-protective family to go into rallying mode.’

  ‘So you decided to become the knight in shining armour?’

  ‘That wasn’t the intention but I’m happy to go along with the description.’

  ‘Except,’ she said ruefully, ‘That still leaves us the problem of breaking up from a so-called serious relationship where we’re about to get engaged.’

  ‘No,’ Matteo corrected, ‘That leaves you walking away from a serious relationship where we’re about to get engaged. That puts you firmly in the role of heartbreaker.’ He grinned. ‘I have a feeling that if you play your cards right your family will have a lot of respect for your decision.’

  ‘Why would you do that for me?’

  ‘Maybe I think you’re worth it.’

  Rosie nodded with a thoughtful frown but inside her nerves were all over the place.

  What did it mean?

  They had been thrown together because of her rash outburst and she had assumed, from day one, that they were so dissimilar that, even having slept together, there was no way he could ever find her interesting. Not really.

  And vice versa, naturally.

  But a tiny voice now asked...did they actually have what it took to have a relationship? A proper relationship?

  A curious thrill rippled through her, the thrill of the great, big unknown, of an adventure waiting to happen.

  ‘Yes.’ She unconsciously glanced at her finger and wondered what
a diamond ring would look like on it, then she closed her hand into a fist and banished the thought, because this wasn’t real. There would be no genuine ‘for ever after’ relationship. He’d felt sorry for her. Underneath the tough exterior, she couldn’t have found a nicer guy even though she didn’t think he’d thank her if she pointed that out.

  ‘You have no idea what kind of Pandora’s box you’ve opened,’ was what she said instead. ‘My parents aren’t going to be casual about this. My mum will already be planning what outfit she’ll be wearing, and whether it would be too premature to have a chat with the local vicar, and they’ll both be debating whether they should have a marquee on the lawn like they did for both my sisters.’

  She closed her eyes and contemplated the dreadful scenario unfolding in front of her. ‘But you’re right. You’re such a catch, they’ll respect me for turning down your proposal.’ She smiled, a wide, sunny smile. ‘A passing fling, well, they would have been sympathetic, but a full-blown marriage proposal—I’m not sure if they’ll know quite how to react.’

  ‘You’re fortunate,’ he said in a husky undertone and Rosie glanced up at him in bewilderment. ‘You have people who care deeply about you.’

  ‘They care so much that they don’t understand that there were times when I felt stifled,’ Rosie said bluntly. She felt as though something inside her had toughened up. The girl who had rushed into a little white lie to spare herself the annoyance of Bertie, his nerdy persistence and irritating habits was gone for ever. In its place was someone slowly realising that she needed to be in charge of her future, stronger, more assured, more focused.

  ‘There were times when I didn’t realise just how stifled I felt.’

  ‘So you took to the hills and ran as fast as you could?’

  Rosie laughed, marvelling that he could be so perceptive. ‘They were always terribly understanding about my academic failures.’

  ‘Maybe they shouldn’t have been,’ Matteo said mildly. He reached forward absently to graze her knuckles with his thumb.