The Italian's Christmas Proposition (HQR Presents)

by Cathy Williams

  ‘Maybe facility is the wrong word,’ Matteo said brusquely, heading for the kitchen. She followed him, marvelling at how he somehow managed to convey the impression that he was master of all he surveyed, even though he was a visitor in her parents’ chalet.

  He was firing up the coffee machine, his back to her, and there was tension in his posture. When he finally looked at her, his lean, beautiful face was closed.

  ‘Bob and Margaret,’ he said quietly, ‘have a place on the grounds that provides a working holiday for...the kind of kid I used to be.’

  Rosie’s heart skipped a beat and she stared at him.

  ‘It’s partly educational, with facilities for learning various crafts, but there’s also a football field, tennis courts and horse riding on tap. The quality of the buyer is very important to them because they don’t want those facilities to be scrapped. There is an enormous amount of acreage and, whilst they concede that some might be developed, they insist as part of the deal that the main place for foster kids remain intact. Naturally, it wouldn’t be a legally binding situation. More of a gentleman’s agreement.’

  ‘And gentlemen don’t lead young girls up the garden path, play with their feelings and then dump them without further ado. You could have told them the truth, which was that you had no idea who I was.’

  Matteo shrugged. ‘Why waste time on laborious explanations that would still have probably left a sour aftertaste in their mouths when another, far less onerous solution presented itself?’

  ‘You intend to...develop some of the land?’ She was enthralled by what he was saying, sliding deeper into love with him, as helpless against her own emotions as a piece of driftwood blown across stormy seas.

  ‘I intend to develop quite a bit of the land,’ Matteo told her. ‘I intend to expand on the facilities there so that more underprivileged kids can come and stay there and see that there’s life beyond the bleak walls of whatever foster care situation they’re struggling with. I will ensure that the best of professionals are at hand for educational purposes. I will make it the sort of place... I would have benefited even more from as a youngster. So there you have it, Rosie. Has it lived up to the hype?’

  ‘Why did you tell me?’ she asked quietly.

  Because I love you, was what she hoped he would say.

  ‘Because you deserve to know,’ Matteo told her roughly. And that was as far as he was prepared to go.

  His wintry-grey eyes collided with hers and just for a moment...just for a second...something stirred inside him, one of those confusing, inexplicable, seismic shifts that only seemed to happen in her company, a strange feeling of disorientation that defied common sense.

  He gritted his teeth together, despising himself for that fleeting loss of self-control.

  The truth was that this crazy charade had not panned out the way he had foreseen.

  It should have been easy, controllable. He never allowed himself to enter into situations he couldn’t control. It was too much like opening the door to a room without knowing what was happening behind it, and there had been way too many of those doors in his childhood.

  A sheen of prickly perspiration broke out over his body and he scowled.

  Memories. Who needed them? He’d done a great job of banking down on them over the years, locking them away, always moving onwards and upwards, refusing to be dragged back to a past that was no longer relevant.

  Had they begun to wriggle free when he had started dealings with Bob and Margaret?

  The land with the care facilities on it—had that kick-started a trip back in time which seemed to have picked up pace just recently?

  Or had the woman in front of him somehow opened that door, letting them flood out?

  And, if that was the case, how the heck had it happened? Matteo wasn’t going to stick around analysing the situation.

  ‘I deserved to know?’ Rosie questioned.

  ‘We were where we were because I wanted that land. It’s only fair, in the end, that you know the reason why it meant so much to me.’

  And no one could accuse Matteo of not being fair, she thought bitterly. He’d been the perfect gentleman who’d kept his distance, and slept on a bed of nails in her bedroom because she’d asked him to, and thereby had opened the first crack in her heart. And he’d been as fair as anyone could be when he’d warned her that he ‘didn’t do love’. Or sharing. Or jealousy. Or confiding. Or Christmas. He certainly hadn’t led her up the garden path with phoney promises about a future that was never going to happen!

  And he was being fair now. Giving her the explanation she’d asked for, digging a deeper hole into her heart and showing her just how complex a man he was.

  He’d been a gentleman, and he’d been fair and honest, and now it was over because she wanted much more than a fair and honest gentleman. She wanted the whole package, but she was never going to get it, and she couldn’t pretend that sleeping with him for a bit longer, until he got bored of her, was better than nothing, because it wasn’t.

  ‘Thank you for that,’ she said with a stiff smile and keeping her distance. ‘I’m glad you told me. I would always have been curious. I’ve enjoyed being with you Matteo. It was all so unexpected...the turn of events...but I’ve grown up. I partly have you to thank for that but I can’t carry on making love to you until we both get bored. I feel like I’m facing a new chapter in my life and I want to get on with it.’

  This was exactly as it should be, Matteo thought. So why wasn’t he feeling good about it?

  It had to end and, the longer it carried on, the higher the chances of her getting hurt. She wanted more than he was ever going to be able to give her.

  He wanted a stiff drink. He wanted to punch something. That lack of control was as powerful as a depth charge and he detested the weakness it represented.

  ‘You need to. We had fun but it’s time for us to go our separate ways. What will you tell your family? What are your plans moving forward?’

  Rosie shrugged and met his dark, shuttered eyes without flinching. Fear of the future gripped her like a vice.

  ‘I’ll think of something. It’s not your concern and, don’t worry, I wouldn’t dump you in it. Now, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll head up.’

  ‘Take care, Rosie. I’ll be gone by the time you wake up tomorrow morning.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  FOR THE FIRST time in her life, the frenzied excitement of a fast-approaching Christmas day left Rosie feeling flat and miserable.

  True to his word, Matteo was gone by the time she awoke the following morning. She’d barely slept but she must have dozed off at some point because surely she would have heard him leaving the house? Naturally, he hadn’t slept with her, and the bed had felt as vast as an icy ocean. How had she managed to become so accustomed to the warmth of his body next to her in such a short space of time? Didn’t she have any inbuilt defence mechanisms that could have come to the rescue? How had she been so ill-equipped to deal with this situation?

  She stayed at the ski lodge just long enough to pack her things. Her parents had a housekeeper who came to clean when the place was not in use, and usually Rosie would have made sure to do some rudimentary tidying before she arrived, but this time she hadn’t the heart to do anything but plaster a phoney smile on her face and do the rounds with all her friends at the hotel and on the ski slopes.

  Then she headed back to London, to her parents’ apartment, which she had always used as a base whenever she was in the country.

  She looked around her through new, wide open eyes. She was a woman in her twenties who had always thought that travelling the world was a courageous and daring way of life. Her sisters, in her view, had been solid, grounded, unadventurous souls who had buried themselves in having careers when there was so much world out there waiting to be explored.

  Thanks to Matteo, all those notions had been turned on thei
r head.

  Since when had it ever been courageous to live at home with Mum and Dad when you didn’t have to? Since when was it a daring decision to live off a trust fund and sneer at the tedium of responsibility?

  It was an ordeal to face her entire family when she returned.

  She spent two days in London, catching up with friends, seeing everything in a whole new light. Then she headed up to the Cotswolds, where her mother was in the thick of Christmas preparations, bulk-making mince pies and Christmas treats for the entire family while her dad sheepishly read the newspapers and watched from the side-lines.

  Emily, Candice and entourage were all going to be spending Christmas Eve at the Cotswold mansion where her parents lived.

  ‘Darling, it’s such a shame that that gorgeous young man of yours can’t join us for at least some of the Christmas celebrations,’ her mother sighed when on the first night they all sat down for a family dinner at the kitchen table. ‘Surely he could have spared a day or so even if he had to disappear for Christmas day?’

  ‘Work commitments,’ Rosie had muttered vaguely. ‘You know how it goes...’

  She needed some breathing space before she told her parents that the whirlwind romance had crashed and burned. She planned to tell them the truth. She would reassure them that she didn’t need protecting, that she wasn’t a kid any more. She had decided that she would return to university to study sports science. The ski season and teaching at the resort had pointed her in the direction which she now intended to go. Lots of mature decisions had been made and that chapter she had talked about had been opened. She just wished she felt better about it because right now, right here, staring at her reflection in the mirror a mere couple of hours before her sisters descended in a flurry of excitement, presents and stockings that would sneakily be hung for the kids once they were asleep, the world felt like a very lonely place.

  Downstairs, her mother would be getting everything ready for the meal of the year, the crowning glory that was the turkey for Christmas Day. It would be put in brine and, at the crack of dawn in the morning, it would be all systems go and Rosie would be expected to be her usual self—excitable, up early before everyone else, fussing over the Christmas tree, the food and everything that would need doing before her sisters, the kids and the other halves woke up and trooped downstairs.

  Bubbly, sparkling Aunty Rosie was her designated role and she would have to live up to it or else invite curiosity and anxious questioning. All that was going to happen soon enough, post-Christmas Day and Boxing Day, once she had had time to get over some of the raw pain. Once she had got her thoughts in order. Once she could manage to go for five minutes without thinking about him, which she did constantly.

  As soon as she started thinking about him, her body did what it was accustomed to doing—it tensed up, all her muscles contracting and her nerves going into overdrive. And her brain did what it had also grown accustomed to doing—it began wandering down all sorts of pointless dead ends marked what if? and if only.

  She was bracing herself for an evening of pretending to be jolly when there was a bang on her bedroom door and her mother pushed it open, giving Rosie just enough time to get her face in happy mode.

  ‘Darling, there’s a surprise downstairs for you.’ Her mother smiled. She was wearing a red-and-white apron which was dusted with flour. Underneath it, in a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved tee shirt, she looked twenty years younger than she was.

  ‘Father Christmas come early? Drawn by the smell of your mince pies?’ Rosie forced a smile and stood up. She was dressed and ready to start the evening in a pair of culottes and a fitted stretchy top with lots of sparkle and glitter, as befitting a Christmas Eve gathering. She was counting on the clothes to give the right impression just in case her expression ended up letting the side down. ‘Have the girls and kids arrived already?’ She glanced at her watch with a frown. ‘It’s not yet six. I thought they were going to pile up around seven. Sorry, Mum, I should be downstairs helping you!’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Rosie. Too many cooks spoil the broth. And no, your sisters aren’t here just yet. No, guess again.’

  ‘I can’t guess.’

  ‘Your young man has shown up out of the blue. Isn’t that wonderful? He’s come bearing gifts, which is sure to go down well with the little ones.’

  ‘What young man?’ It took some seconds to register who her mother was talking about but, even when she had, she still couldn’t quite believe her ears.

  ‘How many have you got, Rosie?’ Her mother chuckled. ‘I can’t possibly be seen like this. I’m going to have a quick shower—give you two love birds time to catch up. Your father has disappeared down to the pub for a drink so you won’t be disturbed!’

  Debbie Carter looked at her daughter seriously. ‘I’m so thrilled for you, Rosie. You deserve a decent, lovely chap and I think you’ve struck jackpot with this one. I told him that I thought he was too busy with work to pop up here but he said that work would just have to take a back seat. Not many business moguls adopt that sort of attitude! I despaired of your father back in the day, when he was sometimes far too busy to remember that there was such a thing as family waiting for him to appear! Which makes Matteo such a rare find.’

  Rosie contorted her face into something she hoped might pass for a smile and not a grimace of despair. Truth to tell, her heart was beating so wildly in her chest that she didn’t have time to think about anything much at all.

  ‘Maybe,’ she muttered inaudibly. It was too late to climb out of her glittery, sparkly outfit but she felt like a fool as she went downstairs to the sitting room, to where, she had been told, he had been directed with a glass of wine.

  And there he was. Behind him, the Christmas tree which she had helped decorate was awash with tiny white lights and heavy with ornaments that went way back to when she and her sisters had all been kids. Rosie could recognise each and every one of them. The curtains of the big bay windows were pulled back and the outside lights illuminated a panorama of stretching gardens and the light fall of snow, nothing like the sweeping fall that had covered the ski slopes, but still somehow graceful and strangely romantic.

  Rosie walked over to the window on trembling legs and briskly yanked the curtains shut.

  She had to sidestep a ridiculous mound of presents, all professionally wrapped and covering most of the ground by the tree and spreading in front of the sofas.

  She had closed the door behind her, because there was never any telling in her parents’ house just who could come bombing into any room without warning, and now she turned to him and folded her arms.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  God, he looked so spectacular, so gorgeous, that she could feel her heart going into freefall.

  He hadn’t shaved and the roughness of dark stubble covered his chin. Looking closer, his eyes were ringed with slight tiredness. She wondered whether all those important deals had been keeping him up at night.

  Conscious that she was hardly looking her most sophisticated in her sparkling attire, Rosie remained standing by the window, as tense as a piece of elastic stretched to breaking point. She’d barely had time to get her hair in order when her mother had barged into the bedroom and it fell in feathery, unruly waves around her heart-shaped face.

  ‘I’ve come...to talk.’

  ‘Talk about what?’ She glanced at all the presents strewn on the ground. ‘And why have you brought all this stuff?’

  ‘Because it’s Christmas.’ He smiled crookedly and took a step towards her, but then stopped, as though uncertain.

  ‘You don’t do Christmas,’ Rosie said scornfully.

  ‘There were a lot of things I never did until I met you,’ he said in a low undertone that she had to strain to hear.

  ‘I can’t deal with this, Matteo,’ Rosie whispered. ‘I don’t want you here...spoiling Christmas for me. I just can’t ha
ndle pretending that everything’s fine between us in front of my family. We broke up, for good reasons, and I’ve begun coming to terms with what I’m going to tell everyone—because, as you’ve seen, they’re still in the dark.’

  ‘I...understand.’

  ‘You’ve ruined everything coming here with all these presents. My family are going to be doubly upset when I break it to them that it’s over between us. They’re going to be horribly confused because one minute you...you’re showing up pretending to be Father Christmas and, the next minute, you’re just a part of my history and you’ve moved on with your life.’

  ‘Not if I can help it.’

  ‘Don’t!’

  ‘Come and sit on the sofa with me. I can’t have this conversation standing a hundred miles away from you. I need you...to be closer to me.’

  ‘It’s not going to work.’

  ‘I’m not here to try and revive what we had. I haven’t come to try and persuade you into carrying on with any charade because I still...want to sleep with you. Because you still haunt my dreams.’

  He sat on the sofa and waited, his fabulous eyes focused on her with such unwavering intensity that she could feel her body burning up as she stumbled towards the sofa and sat down, pressed up at one end, because any closer would have made her already fast-dissolving nerves dissolve even faster.

  ‘Rosie.’ There was urgent sincerity in his voice and, more than anything else, more even than the brutal impact of his physical presence, that made her still, made her focus her wide blue eyes on his. ‘I let you go and I should never have done that.’ He raised his hand to halt any interruption, even though she had no intention of interrupting because she had been thoroughly silenced by the tone of his voice. ‘I...was afraid.’

  ‘Afraid? Afraid? Matteo, there’s no way I... I can believe that. Isn’t being afraid just one of the hundreds of things you don’t do?’ Bewilderment nudged a way past her defences. She felt as though she was suddenly standing on quicksand.