The Italian's Christmas Child

by Lynne Graham

  Silvestro spread wide the dining-room door and Vito saw the table set in a pool of candlelight and flowers and thought…what the hell? He spun back as Holly drew level with him, her blue eyes bright but her small face oddly tight and expressionless. A pang ran through Vito’s long, lean frame because he was accustomed to his wife greeting him at the end of the day as though he had been absent for a week…and in truth he thoroughly enjoyed the wholehearted affection she showered on both him and his son.

  ‘You look magnificent, bellezza mia,’ Vito declared, while frantically wondering what occasion he had overlooked and how he could possibly cover up that reality rather than hurt Holly’s feelings by admitting his ignorance.

  She was so vulnerable sometimes. He saw that sensitivity in her and marvelled that she retained it even after all the disappointments life had faced her with. His primary role was to protect Holly from hurt and disillusionment. He didn’t want her to lose her innocence. He didn’t want her to turn cynical or bitter. But most of all he never ever wanted to be the man who disillusioned her.

  ‘Glad you like the dress,’ Holly said a tad woodenly. ‘Shall we sit down?’

  ‘I’m no match for your elegance without a shower and a change of clothes,’ Vito pointed out with a slight line dividing his black brows into the beginnings of a frown because her odd behaviour was frustrating him.

  ‘Please sit down. We’ll have a drink,’ Holly suggested, because she had laid that photo of Marzia and him at his place at the table and she was keen for him to see it before she lost her nerve at confronting him in what was starting to feel a little like a badly planned head-on collision.

  Maybe she should have been less confrontational and given him warning. Only not if the price of that was Vito coming up with a polite story that went nowhere near the actual truth. She didn’t believe he would lie to her but he wouldn’t want to upset her and he would pick and choose words to persuade her in a devious way that her concerns were nonsensical.

  Vito was on the edge of arguing until he glimpsed the photo, and its appearance was so unexpected that it stupefied him. He stared down at the photo of himself dancing with Marzia in wonderment while Silvestro poured his wine. Why were they apparently celebrating this inappropriate photograph with rose petals scattered across the table and the finest wine? His frown of incomprehension deepened.

  ‘What is this?’ he demanded with an abruptness that startled Holly as he swept up the photo.

  Consternation gripped Holly because he didn’t sound puzzled, he sounded downright angry. ‘I wanted to ask you to explain that picture,’ she muttered warily.

  ‘So you set me up with some sort of a romantic dinner and tell me I can’t have a shower? And sit me down with a photo of my ex?’ Vito exclaimed incredulously. ‘This is more than a little weird, Holly!’

  Legs turning wobbly as she encountered scorching dark golden eyes of enquiry, Holly dropped reluctantly down into her chair. ‘I’m sorry. I just wanted to get it over with and I wanted you to say exactly what’s on your mind.’

  ‘Weird!’ Vito repeated with an emphatic lack of inhibition, crumpling the photo into a ball of crushed paper and firing it into the fire burning merrily across the room. ‘Where did you get that photograph from and when did you see it?’

  Holly sketched out the details, her heart beating very fast. She hadn’t expected to feel guilty but now she did because taking Vito by surprise had only annoyed him.

  ‘Today?’ Vito stressed in astonishment. ‘But that photo is at least three years old!’

  ‘Three years old…’ Holly’s voice trailed off as she studied him in disbelief.

  ‘It was taken at our engagement party. Why on earth would it be printed again now?’ he questioned.

  Holly scrambled out of her seat and pelted off to find the magazine she had cut the photo from. Reappearing, she planted it into Vito’s outstretched hand while Silvestro struggled to set out the first course of the meal.

  ‘Per l’amor di Dio…’ Vito groaned. ‘You need to learn to read Italian!’

  ‘It’s not going to happen overnight,’ she grumbled.

  ‘That photo was quite cleverly utilised to symbolise the fact that I have now cut my ties to the Ravello Investment Bank,’ Vito framed in flat explanation. ‘Note the way our hands are pictured apart…’

  ‘What does the Ravello Bank have to do with anything? What ties?’

  ‘Marzia is a Ravello,’ Vito informed her drily. ‘When we got engaged I agreed to act as an investment adviser to the Ravello Bank. When Marzia ditched me her father begged me to retain the position as Ravello was going through a crisis and my resignation would have created talk and blighted their prospects even more.’

  Holly blinked. She had become very pale. ‘I had no idea you had any business links to Marzia and her family.’

  ‘As of yesterday I don’t. I resigned the position and they have hired the man I recommended to take my place. Once you and I were married it no longer felt appropriate for Marzia’s family and mine to retain that business link,’ Vito pointed out wryly.

  Holly had been blindsided by an element of Vito’s former relationship with Marzia that she could not have known about. A business connection, not a personal one. ‘You know, I assumed that that was a recent picture of you with Marzia,’ Holly confided. ‘I thought that dinner you mentioned last week must have been a dinner dance.’

  ‘Had it been I would have taken you with me or bowed out early to get home to you. As it was I was landed with a group of visiting government representatives, whose company I found as exciting as watching paint dry,’ Vito told her drily and pushed back his chair. ‘May I have my shower now?’

  ‘No, we can’t just abandon dinner!’ Holly breathed in dismay. ‘Not when Francisco has gone to so much trouble to make us a memorable meal.’

  ‘So, you’ve been down to the kitchen and have finally met our chef?’ Vito gathered in some amusement.

  ‘Yes, he’s a real charmer, isn’t he?’

  ‘I’m sure he can reheat the food,’ Vito pronounced impatiently.

  ‘But we haven’t finished talking yet,’ Holly protested, all her expectations thrown by Vito’s eminently down-to-earth explanation of that photo and its meaning.

  ‘Why are you dressed as though you’re about to attend a costume ball?’ Vito shot at her.

  Holly went red. ‘I wanted to show you that if I made the effort I could polish up and look all glam like Marzia.’

  Vito groaned out loud. ‘You look amazing but I don’t want you to look all glam like Marzia.’

  ‘But you bought me all those fancy clothes…’

  ‘Only to cover every possible occasion. And when would you have bothered going shopping?’ Vito enquired drily. ‘You hate shopping for clothes.’

  Holly compressed her lips. ‘You don’t like me glammed up? Or you don’t want me copying Marzia?’

  ‘Both,’ Vito told her levelly as he signalled Silvestro and rose from his chair again. ‘I like you just to be yourself. You’re never fake. I hate fake. But why did you think I would be out dancing any place with Marzia?’

  ‘What are you doing?’ Holly gasped as he scooped her bodily out of her seat.

  ‘I’m going for my after-work shower and you’re either coming in with me, which would sacrifice all the effort you have gone to, or you’re waiting in bed for me,’ Vito informed her cheerfully.

  ‘I thought you still cared for Marzia,’ Holly finally confessed on the way up the stairs. ‘I thought you might still love her.’

  Vito grunted with effort as he reached the landing. ‘I can carry you upstairs but I can’t talk while I’m doing it,’ he confided. ‘I never loved Marzia.’

  ‘But you got engaged to her… You lived with her!’

  ‘Yes, and what an eye-opening experience that was!’ Vito admitted, thrusting wide the door of their bedroom. ‘I asked her to marry me in the first place because she was everything my grandfather told me I should look for in
a wife. I wasn’t in love with her and when we lived together I discovered that we had nothing in common. I don’t want to dance the night away as if I’m still in my twenties but Marzia does. She has to have other people around all the time. She likes to shop every day and will avoid any activity that wrecks her hair…up to and including a walk on a windy day and sex.’

  ‘Oh…’ Open-mouthed and taken aback by that information, Holly fell very still as Vito ran down the zip on her dress.

  ‘I was relieved when she ditched me. Not very gallant but it’s the truth. We weren’t suited.’

  ‘Was my ring…? I’ve always wanted to ask,’ Holly interrupted, extending her ring finger. ‘Was it Marzia’s before you gave it to me?’

  An ebony brow shot up. ‘Are you joking? Marzia didn’t return her engagement ring and even if she had I hope I would’ve had more class than to ask you to wear it.’

  ‘You never loved her?’ Holly was challenged to credit that fact because it ran contrary to everything she had assumed about his engagement.

  ‘When I met Marzia, I had never been in love in my life,’ Vito admitted ruefully. ‘I got burned young watching my mother trying to persuade my father to love her. I spent my twenties waiting to fall in love, convinced someone special would eventually appear. But it didn’t happen and I was convinced it never would. I decided I was probably too practical to fall in love. That’s why I got engaged to Marzia the week after my thirtieth birthday. At the time she looked like the best bet I had. Similar banking family and background.’

  ‘My word…that sounds almost…almost callous,’ Holly murmured in shock. ‘Like choosing the best offer at the supermarket.’

  ‘If it’s any consolation I’m pretty sure Marzia settled for me because I’m extremely wealthy.’

  Vito yanked loose his tie and shed his jacket. Holly’s dress slid down her shoulders and for an instant she stopped its downward progress and then she let it go and shimmied out of it. In many ways she was still in shock from Vito’s honesty. He had never fallen in love? Not even with the gorgeous Marzia, who by all accounts had irritated him in spite of her pedigreed background and family. She swallowed hard, trying not to wonder how much she irritated him.

  ‘You’re definitely not joining me in the shower,’ Vito breathed in a roughened undertone as he took in the coffee-coloured silk lingerie she sported below the dress that had tumbled round her feet. ‘You can’t deprive me of the fun of taking those off.’

  His shirt fell on the floor and she lifted it and the trousers that were abandoned just as untidily to drape them on a chair along with her dress. Sharing a bedroom with a male as organised as Vito had made her clean up her bad habits. Vito had paused to rifle through his jacket and he strode back to her to stuff a jewellery case unceremoniously into her hand. ‘I saw it online, thought you’d like it.’

  ‘Oh…’ Holly flipped open the case on a diamond-studded bracelet with a delicate little Christmas tree charm attached. ‘Oh, that’s very pretty.’

  ‘It’s very you, isn’t it?’ Vito remarked smugly.

  ‘Why didn’t you give it to me downstairs over dinner?’ Holly exclaimed, struggling to attach it to her wrist until he stepped forward to clasp it for her.

  ‘I forgot about it. You swanning down to greet me dressed like Marie Antoinette put it right out of my mind.’

  ‘And then you just virtually threw it at me,’ Holly lamented. ‘There’s a more personal way of giving a gift.’

  ‘You mean romantic.’ Vito sighed as he strode into the en-suite bathroom, still characteristically set on having his shower. ‘Shouldn’t the thought behind the gift count more?’

  Holly thought about that and then walked to the bathroom doorway to sigh. ‘You’re right. I’m sorry. It’s a cute, thoughtful present and I love it. Thank you.’

  ‘My thank you was your face. It lit up like a child’s when you saw the Christmas tree,’ Vito confided with amusement before he turned the water on.

  Holly kicked off her shoes, stared down appreciatively at the bracelet encircling her wrist and lay down on the bed. He had never loved Marzia. Marzia was wiped from Holly’s standard stock of worries for ever. Marzia was the past—a past Vito neither missed nor wanted to revisit. That, she decided, was a very encouraging discovery.

  All of a sudden hiding her love, being so painfully careful not to let those words escape in moments of joy, seemed almost mean and dishonest. Vito loved Angelo so freely. She witnessed that every day. Her husband hadn’t even had to try to love his son and Angelo loved his father back. Perhaps in time Vito could come to love her too, she reflected hopefully. When he had told her that he much preferred her to just be herself around him without the fancy clothes or any airs her heart had taken wings. He liked her as she was. Wasn’t that wonderful?

  Vito strode out of the en suite, still towelling dry his hair. ‘We’ll have a very special Christmas this year. For the first time I’ll happily celebrate the season. That’s the effect you and Angelo have had on my Scrooge-like outlook.’

  ‘I’m grateful because I will always love Christmas.’

  ‘Because that’s how we met,’ Vito reasoned. ‘And I’ve never forgotten how appealing you looked dressing that little tree at the cottage.’

  ‘Is that so? And yet you made me fight for the opportunity,’ Holly reminded him.

  ‘You gave me a fresh look at the world and it’s never been the same since,’ Vito intoned very seriously as he settled down on the bed beside her and closed her into his arms.

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Remember I said I went through my twenties waiting for someone special to appear?’

  Holly nodded and rubbed her cheek against a damp bronzed shoulder.

  ‘And then she came along when I was thirty-one years old and, unfortunately, incredibly wary and set in my ways.’

  Her brow furrowed because she thought she had missed a line somewhere. ‘Who came along?’

  ‘You did,’ Vito pointed out gently. ‘And I wasn’t waiting or looking for love any more, and my practical engagement had gone belly-up. So, when you appeared and you made me feel strange I didn’t recognise that it was special. The sex was incredible but I was blind to the fact that everything else was incredible too.’

  ‘I made you feel…strange?’ Holly exclaimed in dismay.

  ‘Confused, unsure of myself. I behaved differently with you, I felt more with you…and it troubled me. So, like an idiot, I walked away from what I didn’t understand,’ he completed.

  ‘I wish you’d found my note,’ Holly lamented.

  ‘When you walked out first, I told myself that was for the best, that we could never work in the real world. But we do work,’ Vito told her with quiet satisfaction. ‘We work like a dream on every level and I have never been as happy as I am now…’

  Holly was thinking about what he had said and a spark of excitement lit inside her.

  ‘If you and Angelo hadn’t found me again, where would I be now? The heart and soul of my world was the Zaffari Bank but the bank wasn’t enough to satisfy me.’

  ‘Are you trying to tell me that you fell for me that night?’ Holly whispered shakily.

  ‘Well, if you have to ask, obviously I’m not doing a very good job of the telling.’ Vito groaned. ‘What you made me feel unnerved me. I wouldn’t even let myself try to trace you because I was too proud. If you didn’t want me I wasn’t going to chase after you. I tried very hard to forget that night. I even tried to sleep with other women.’

  ‘And how did that go?’ Holly broke in to demand.

  ‘It didn’t. I made excuses to myself that I was stressed, overtired. I had endless fantasies about you.’

  ‘Me…the temptress,’ Holly framed blissfully. ‘Who would ever have thought it?’

  ‘You’re the love of my life…the only love I have ever had,’ Vito husked, clamping her to his long, powerful length with strong arms. ‘And I fell hard. I fell so hard I can’t imagine ever living without you an
d our son. You have brought passion and fun into my daily life and I never had either before.’

  ‘I love you too,’ Holly muttered almost shyly.

  Vito smiled down at her with burnished golden eyes and her heart skipped a beat. He kissed her with hot, hungry fervour and she ran out of breath. He lifted his tousled dark head and murmured, ‘I have one special request. Would you consider having another child?’

  ‘Another?’ Holly gasped in astonishment.

  ‘Not immediately,’ Vito hastened to assure her. ‘I want to share your next pregnancy, be there when my child is born, and experience everything I missed out on with our son. If you employ an assistant, even if you get pregnant I don’t see why you shouldn’t still be able to concentrate on your interior design plan.’

  Holly smiled at that prospect. Her very successful bedroom project had quickly spread to include other major rooms at the castello. She had had the adjoining reception room done in toning colours before moving on to attack the scarlet Victorian dining room. At present she was well aware that the castello was large enough to offer her the chance to utilise her talents and gain proper experience before she considered moving on to tackle outside projects.

  ‘I’ll think about another baby,’ she told him thoughtfully. ‘I would prefer Angelo not to be an only child.’

  Vito stared down at her as she gazed up at him with starry eyes. He loves me, he loves me, he loves me, she was thinking on a happy high. She ran an appreciative hand up over a long, muscular, hair-roughened thigh and sensible conversation ceased around that point. Vito told her he loved her. Holly told him she loved him too. No sooner had they exchanged those sentiments than they both succumbed to an overwhelming desire to dispel the tension with the passion they shared.

  Long after, Vito lay studying Holly as she slept, marvelling at how happy he felt. He wondered if he could persuade her into another sexy Santa outfit at Christmas and wondered if it would be a little pushy to buy one for her. Pushiness came so naturally to him that he soon convinced himself that his laid-back bride would simply laugh.