‘Used to be.’ He pressed his thumbs briefly over his eyes and then looked at her with none of his usual self-assurance.
Rosie had no intention of melting but she knew that she was straining towards him, closing the gap without really realising it. She had pressed her hands on the squidgy sofa and was leaning forward.
‘Don’t say anything you don’t mean, Matteo.’
‘I’m not. This comes from the heart, and if I’m not as fluent as I usually am it’s because I’m not accustomed to this sort of speech. Rosie, my life, before I met you, was so well-ordered,’ Matteo confessed in a roughened undertone. ‘No surprises. Relationships, women... I knew how to deal with both. I never wanted any sort of long-term, committed involvement with anyone and I always made that clear at the start of a relationship. I wasn’t raised to see the up sides of forming any emotional attachments.’
Rosie was holding her breath. She reached out to cover his hand with hers, her heart softening even as her head tried to be stern and unforgiving.
He didn’t remove his hand. In fact, he curled his fingers into hers and tugged her ever so slightly closer to him so that their knees were touching and she could feel the warmth flowing from his body towards her.
‘I wasn’t abandoned as a baby,’ he said roughly. ‘My mother—shockingly, in this day and age—died in childbirth. I know this because I was told when I was old enough by one of the carers at the home. I was raised single-handedly by my father until I was four. I remember him. A kind man—this is simply what I have managed to put together over the years using all the resources at my disposal, including hunting down some of the staff who worked there when I was a child, and people who briefly knew him where he worked. My father died at Christmas. He’d left me with a neighbour so that he could go buy some presents. It was an accident. Poor weather conditions.’
‘Matteo!’
‘It was a long time ago.’ Matteo smiled. ‘But I suppose you could say that the experience toughened me up. I learned very young that no one was going to rescue me. I had to make my own way in the world and I couldn’t depend on anyone. I had lost both my parents. My faith in loving anyone had taken a fatal beating.’
‘That’s why Christmas is the one time of year you avoid,’ she said slowly.
‘I have pictures. Not many. Memories.’ He sighed. ‘When I met you, you couldn’t have been more different from the women I was accustomed to going for.’
‘As you made crystal-clear,’ Rosie murmured. Her mind was taken up with images of a young Matteo, lost, confused and bewildered by the abrupt death of his father, abandoned to fate. Her heart constricted and she had to swallow back tears. He did this to her. Showed her sides to him that made him irresistible. Beneath the harsh, controlled front there was so much humanity.
‘I got sucked in without really understanding how. A first for me. And then I met your family, all of them, and what I experienced was also a first. I experienced what it felt like to be surrounded by the closeness of people who cared about you. I experienced what it felt like to be a part of something bigger. It was...disorienting.’
‘We can overwhelm.’
‘In a positive way.’ He angled a smile. ‘You’re very lucky, Rosie, but not as lucky as I am to have met you. What started out as a charade turned into something else very quickly. We became lovers and it was nothing like I’d ever felt before.’
Keep talking, Rosie thought, please don’t stop.
‘It was...unsettling. When you confronted me after meeting Bethany and laid into me because I hadn’t defended you, well, it made me take stock of just how far I’d been drawn into a situation that had somehow spiralled out of control. All my old habits kicked back into gear big time.’ He grimaced. ‘I was programmed not to care, to focus on what was tangible, namely work. You wanted what was not in the brochure and I told myself that it was for the best that things ended, not just for me, but for you as well. I told myself that you deserved better. Maybe, Rosie, you do.’
‘Never,’ Rosie breathed shakily. ‘I met you and you turned my life upside down in five seconds flat. I didn’t want to fall in love with you, Matteo, but I just couldn’t help myself, even though my head was telling me all the time that I was being an idiot.’
‘You fell in love with me.’ He flung his head back for a few seconds, eyes closed, and then when he looked at her there was no doubt in her mind that her feelings for him were returned. The love and tenderness in his eyes brought a lump to her throat. ‘I wasn’t sure. I’d hoped. Then you left and it felt as though my world had come to an abrupt stop. I was greedy, Rosie. Greedy for you and hungry for the chaos and joy of having an extended family. I thought I’d locked up my heart and thrown away the key, but I was wrong.
‘I came here, bearing gifts...lots of them.’ He squeezed her slender fingers. ‘In a gesture of shameless blackmail. I intended to ingratiate myself until I won you over. Anything, my darling. I realised that I would have done anything.’
He’d brought something else aside from sack-loads of presents but Rosie didn’t find that out until later, when the carols were blaring in the background and her entire family was scattered between the living room and the kitchen, with Candice’s children weaving between them in a state of high excitement.
He gathered them all in one place and he took out from his pocket that last thing he had brought with him. A little black box.
Rosie watched in stunned silence as he showed her that her beautiful, arrogant, guy...the guy who claimed to have lost the key to his heart...could be breathtakingly romantic after all.
He knelt in front of her, in front of her entire congregated family—including the kids, who had fallen silent for ten seconds—and he proposed.
And what else could she do but say yes? Yes, yes, yes!
EPILOGUE
MATTEO LOOKED DOWN at Rosie from the towering heights of a precariously balanced ladder. In his hand he held a star. In his head he was trying to figure out how he was going to get the damn thing to sit perfectly atop the massive Christmas tree that adorned the living room of the townhouse into which they had moved three months previously.
It wasn’t quite the countryside, but neither was it the heart of the city. It was perfectly located in the leafy borough of Richmond.
‘Please be careful up there,’ Rosie said anxiously. ‘You look way too big for that ladder.’
‘Finishing touches.’ Matteo smiled. ‘You want everything to be perfect for when the troops arrive in a week for turkey with all the trimmings, don’t you?’
He angled the star, waited until approval from his beloved wife was given, and then slowly dismounted. Then he stood back to look at their creation.
Arm around her, he pulled her gently against him. Outside, the darkness was blocked out by thick curtains. Inside, the glittering lights on the tree and the presents waiting to be handed out to family was a Christmas scene worthy of a postcard. Or a fairy tale. Matteo thought that it was certainly his fairy tale.
He’d found his princess, even if he hadn’t immediately known it, and he had married her. In record time, a mere few weeks after he had proposed in front of a delighted audience of people who were now as close to him as he could ever have hoped.
He smelled the floral sweetness of Rosie’s hair and murmured softly, ‘Do you wish we could have returned to the slopes and celebrated our first proper Christmas together there?’
Rosie twisted and looked up at him, smiling.
‘You know you put your foot down when I suggested popping over for a few days.’ She smiled, reaching up to stroke his face.
‘Can you blame me?’
‘My darling, I’m six months’ pregnant. I think travelling is still allowed.’
Matteo rested his hand on her swollen stomach and felt it again, that surge of pride, love, tenderness and a fierce need to protect the beautiful woman who had becom
e his wife.
He’d gone from tough, hard-as-nails tycoon to a guy who was happy to admit that he was vulnerable.
‘You can’t be too careful,’ Matteo growled, swivelling her gently so that they were facing one another. He gazed down at her with love. ‘But we’ll get there. Maybe next year. Maybe next Christmas. Return to the place where all this began.’
‘And maybe bump into Bob and Margaret.’ Rosie smiled, thinking of the couple who had been almost as thrilled at their wedding as she and Matteo had been themselves. ‘I gather from her email that they’re getting quite proficient.’ She reached up on tiptoe to kiss him and, as always, the touch of his cool lips made her squirm with sudden desire. ‘Who knows? You might get there one day.’
‘I intend to.’ Matteo grinned and deepened his kiss, his hand curving over her breast, caressing it and knowing that she would be wet for him. ‘I can’t have you teaching our kids how to ski so that they can taunt their old man that they’re better than him on the slopes.’
‘In that case, we can get cracking as soon as this baby arrives.’
‘And until then...’ he ushered her over to the sofa and settled her into it as delicately as if she was a piece of priceless china ‘...feet up, young lady. I can do more than just stick a star on a tree. Your wish is my command.’
‘You’re here, Matteo.’ Rosie looked at him lovingly. ‘I have no more wishes.’
* * *
If you enjoyed The Italian’s Christmas Proposition
you’re sure to enjoy these other stories by Cathy Williams!
The Tycoon’s Ultimate Conquest
Contracted for the Spaniard’s Heir
Marriage Bargain with His Innocent
Shock Marriage for the Powerful Spaniard
Available now!
Keep reading for an excerpt from Christmas Baby for the Greek by Jennie Lucas.
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Christmas Baby for the Greek
by Jennie Lucas
CHAPTER ONE
WAS THERE ANYTHING worse than a wedding on Christmas Eve, with glittering lights sparkling against the snow, holly and ivy decking the halls and the scent of winter roses in the air?
If there was, Holly Marlowe couldn’t think of it.
“You may now kiss the bride,” the minister said, beaming between the newly married couple.
Heartbroken, Holly watched as Oliver—the boss she’d loved in devoted silence for three years—beamed back and lowered his head to kiss the bride.
Her younger sister, Nicole.
The guests in the pews looked enchanted at the couple’s passionate embrace, but Holly felt sick. Fidgeting in her tight red maid-of-honor dress, she looked up at the grand stained-glass windows, then back at the nave of the old New York City church, lavishly decorated with flickering white candles and red roses.
Finally, the newly married couple pulled apart from the kiss. Snatching her bouquet back from Holly’s numb fingers, the bride lifted her new husband’s hand triumphantly in the air.
“Best Christmas ever!” Nicole cried.
There was a wave of adoring laughter and applause. And though Holly had always loved Christmas, striving to make it magical and full of treats each year for her little sister since their parents had died, she thought she’d hate it for the rest of her life.
No. A lump rose in Holly’s throat. She couldn’t think that way. She couldn’t be selfish. Nicole and Oliver were in love. She should be happy for them. She forced herself to smile as the “Hallelujah” Chorus pounded from the organ in the alcove above.
Smiling, the bride and groom started back down the aisle. And Holly suddenly faced the best man. Oliver’s cousin, and his boss. Which made him her boss’s boss.
Stavros Minos.
Dark, tall and broad-shouldered, the powerful Greek billionaire seemed out of place in the old stone church. The very air seemed to vibrate back from him, moving to give him space. He hadn’t been forced to wear some ridiculous outfit that made him look like a deranged Christmas lounge singer. Of course not. She looked over his sleek suit enviously. She couldn’t imagine anyone forcing Stavros Minos to do anything.
Then Holly looked up, and the Greek’s black eyes cut through her soul.
He glanced with sardonic amusement between her and the happy couple, as they continued to walk down the aisle to the cheers of their guests. And his cruel, sensual lips curved up at the edges, as if he knew exactly how her heart had been broken.
Holly’s mouth went dry. No. No, he couldn’t. No one must ever know that she’d loved Oliver. Because he wasn’t just her boss now. He was her sister’s husband. She had to pretend it never happened.
The truth was nothing had happened. She’d never said a word about her feelings to anyone, especially Oliver. The man had no idea that while working as his secretary, Holly had been secretly consumed by pathetic, unrequited love. No one had any idea. No one, it seemed, except Stavros Minos.
But it shouldn’t surprise her the billionaire Greek playboy might see things no other person could. Nearly twenty years ago, as a teenager, he’d single-handedly started a tech company that now owned half the world. He was often in the news, both for his high-powered business dealings and conquests of the world’s most beautiful women. Now, as organ music thundered relentlessly around them, Stavros looked at Holly with a strange knowing in his eyes.
Wordlessly, he held out his arm.
Reluctantly, Holly took it, and tried not to notice how muscled his arm was beneath his sleek black jacket. His biceps had to be bigger than her thigh! It seemed ridiculously unfair that a man so rich and powerful could also be so good-looking. It was why she’d carefully avoided looking at him whenever she’d liaised with his executive assistants—he had three of them—at work.
Shivering, she avoided looking at him again now as they followed Oliver and Nicole. The faces of the guests slid by as Holly smiled blindly at everyone in the packed wooden pews until she thought her face might crack.
Outside the old stone church, on a charming, historical lane in the Financial District, more guests waited to cheer for the couple, tossing red and white rose petals that fell against the thin blanket of snow on the ground.
The afternoon sunlight was weak and gray against the lowering clouds when Holly reached the safety of the waiting limo. Dropping Stavros’s arm, she scrambled inside and turned to stare fiercely out the window, blinking fast so no one would see her tears.
She couldn’t be sad. Not today. Not ever. She was happy for her sister and Oliver, happy they’d be leaving her today to start new adventures together around the world. Happy.
“Whew.” Nicole flopped into the seat across from her in a wave of white tulle that took most of the space in the back of the limo. She grinned at her new husband beside her. “We did it! We’re married!”
“Finally,” Oliver drawled, all lazy charm as he looked down at his bride. “That was a lot of work. But then, I never thought I’d let anyone put the marriage noose round my neck.”
“’Til you met me,” Nicole murmured, turning her face up to be kissed.
Smiling, he lowered his head. “Exactly.”
Holly felt her own seat move as Stavros
Minos sat beside her. As the door closed behind him, and the limo pulled away from the curb, she unwillingly breathed in his intoxicating scent of musk and power.
Oliver turned smugly to his cousin. “How about it, Stavros? Did the ceremony give you any ideas?”
The Greek tycoon’s handsome face was colder than the icy winter air outside. “Such as you can’t imagine.”
How dare he be so rude? Holly thought incredulously. But then, the commitment-phobic playboy famously despised weddings. He obviously was unhappy to be forced to attend his cousin’s wedding. And unlike Holly, he didn’t feel any compunction to hide his feelings. Luckily, the happy couple didn’t seem to notice.
Oliver snorted. “I was going to invite Uncle Aristides today, him being family and all that, but I knew you wouldn’t like it.”
“Generous of you.” His voice was flat.
Holly envied Stavros Minos’s coldness right now, when she herself felt heartbroken and raw. Her sister’s pressure for Holly to move with them to Hong Kong after they returned from their honeymoon in Aruba had been ratcheted up to an explosive level. Oliver had already quit at Minos International. If Holly stayed, she’d soon be working for the notoriously unpleasant VP of Operations. Or else she had a standing offer from a previous employer who’d moved back to Europe.
But if she was going to leave New York, shouldn’t she move to Hong Kong, and work for Oliver in his new job? Shouldn’t she devote herself to her baby sister’s happiness, forever and ever?
“You really hate weddings, don’t you, Stavros?” Oliver grinned at his cousin. “At least I won’t have to see your grouchy face at the office anymore, old man. Your loss is Sinistech’s gain.”
“Right.” Stavros shrugged. “Let another company deal with your three-hour martini lunches.”
“Quite.” Oliver’s grin widened, then he licked his lips. “I can hardly wait to explore Hong Kong’s delights.”
The Italian's Christmas Proposition (HQR Presents) Page 16