The Italian's Christmas Proposition (HQR Presents)

by Cathy Williams

  His dark eyes scoured her face. He could read the tension and anxiety there, and of course she had a point. She clearly came from a tight-knit family unit. The less they were hurt by her behaviour, the better, but as far as he was concerned that was not his problem. Matteo didn’t allow sentiment to rule his life. It simply wasn’t in his nature. He had managed to remain focused, to stay on course with his life—unlike many of the kids he had grown up with, who had ended up either in jail or six feet under. That said, a life spent in foster care had toughened him. He had known what it meant to have nothing, to be a face and a name in a system and not much more. He had climbed out of that place and forged his way in the world.

  That brief spell of respite at the place he was in the process of buying had shown him that there were alternatives in life. He had held onto that vision and it had seen him through.

  He had realised that the only way to escape the predictability of becoming one of the victims of the Social Services system was to educate himself and he had applied himself to the task with monumental dedication. By the time he had hit Cambridge University, he had been an intellectual force to contend with.

  He’d known more than his tutors. His aptitude for mathematics was prodigious. He’d been head-hunted by a newly formed investment bank and had swiftly risen to the top before breaking free to become something of a shooting star in the financial firmament. Money had given him the opportunity to diversify. It had allowed him to get whatever he wanted at the snap of a finger. Money had been his passport to freedom and freedom had been his only goal for his entire adult life.

  Money had also jaded his palate, made life predictable. Being able to have whatever and whomever you wanted, he had reflected time and again, did not necessarily guarantee excitement.

  He hadn’t had a woman in months and he hadn’t been tempted.

  Now here he was and, in that instant, Matteo decided that he was going to go with the flow and make the best of the situation into which he had been catapulted. Moreover, he was going to enjoy the experience.

  ‘I have a suite here, at this hotel,’ he mused. ‘Bob and Margaret are at another location, further down the slopes. If I’m the new man in your life, then I’ll be expected to be at your parents’ chalet with you, I presume?’

  ‘Wait. What? Now, hang on just a minute...’

  ‘It’s hardly likely that we’re in the thick of a stormy, passionate affair and I’m bedding down on my own in a hotel room while you’re miles away in a chalet somewhere with nothing but the telly and a good book for company. Is it?’

  ‘Well, no. but...’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But this isn’t a normal situation, is it? I mean, we’re not actually involved with one another, are we?’

  ‘You need to follow the plot line here,’ Matteo imparted kindly. ‘There will be people we will need to convince and no one, not even traditional and church-going Bob and Margaret, will be persuaded that this is the affair of a lifetime if we’re crossing paths off and on.’

  ‘Stop being patronising,’ Rosie said absently. What did he mean by being at the chalet with her? Sharing a bedroom? She paled at the thought because suddenly her little white lie had taken on a life of its own and was galloping away at speed.

  Matteo burst out laughing and she focused on his handsome face and glared.

  ‘I hadn’t banked on this,’ she said tightly. ‘You may find the whole thing hilarious but I don’t.’

  ‘I don’t find anything hilarious about this situation,’ Matteo shot back and, she thought for the millionth time, there was no need for him to remind her that she had brought this mess on herself. ‘But here we are. I’m going to move into your parents’ chalet today.’

  ‘Candice will know that you haven’t been living with me,’ Rosie pointed out.

  ‘How?’

  ‘There would be signs of us sharing a bedroom. You would have left stuff behind. Clothes on the backs of chairs. Shaving foam. Bedroom slippers. Aftershave...’

  His eyebrows shot up, his expression halting her in mid-flow.

  ‘I have never spent a night in any woman’s house and, if I had, I certainly wouldn’t have left anything behind.’

  Rosie’s mouth fell open and she gaped at him. ‘You’ve never stayed at a woman’s overnight?’ He was so arrogant, so beautiful, so sophisticated—she found it impossible to credit that he had never spent the night with a woman.

  What woman, she guiltily thought, would let him out of her bed? It was an inappropriate thought but it lodged in her head, pounding with the steady force of a drum beat.

  Matteo made a dismissive gesture with his hand that was both elegant and strangely exotic and she watched him from under lowered lashes, fascinated and mesmerised by the strong, proud lines of his handsome face.

  ‘I’m a normal, red-blooded man with a healthy libido,’ Matteo told her wryly. ‘I work hard and I play hard, but I don’t do love, and I never encourage a woman to think, even for a second, that I might.’

  ‘And if you spent a night with a woman...it would mean that you’re interested in more than just sex?’

  ‘Forget about me,’ Matteo drawled. ‘The danger would lie in her believing that there might be more to it than sex.’

  ‘And yet you’re okay with spending time in the chalet with me?’

  ‘Oh, but you’re not my woman,’ Matteo purred silkily. ‘And this isn’t about sex. This is a little pretend game that’ll be over just as soon as I get what I’m after...’

  CHAPTER THREE

  ROSIE THOUGHT THAT it was one thing to produce Matteo as a boyfriend, like a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat then yanking him off stage before anyone had time to suss that it was all sleight of hand. It was something else to hold him up to scrutiny, which was what she would be doing by having him in the chalet with her. He would be spun around for inspection, asked questions, quizzed about his intentions. How was she going to deal with all that without cracking? How was he?

  Her sisters, in particular, had all made it their mission to make Rosie keep them posted on her love life and she had always obliged. They had met a couple of her fleeting boyfriends and had not held back from making their opinions known, politely but firmly. She was so much younger than them and they had never really stopped treating her like the baby of the family.

  Hence, Rosie thought with uncharacteristic bitterness, the reason why she was where she was now.

  She had bolted from the prospect of having their idea of a suitable partner presented to her instead of standing her ground—but why on earth had it occurred to them that they could actually match her up with someone of their choosing in the first place?

  This time, she was going to deal with the situation calmly. If there were too many questions, she would just stop answering. If the quizzing from Candice and Emily went too far, she would tell them to back off.

  Matteo was a perfect stranger, but some of his remarks had been a little too perceptive for comfort. They had made her see herself in a different and more critical light than she had ever done before.

  She wasn’t silly and she didn’t feel entitled but she was a trust-fund baby in the truest sense of the word and she had felt embarrassed to acknowledge the fact.

  ‘You’re going to be held up to the spotlight,’ she warned. ‘Five minutes with Candice is quite different to several days with my entire family.’

  ‘I can take the heat,’ Matteo drawled. ‘Can you?’

  Rosie looked at him steadily. ‘I know what you think of me,’ she said, matching him for self-composure and liking the way she felt empowered by it. ‘That I live off my parents, and float from one thing to the next and allow my entire family to have a say in my life, but this time round I am definitely going to take the heat.’ She grinned suddenly. ‘They’ll be shocked.’

  ‘Good,’ Matteo murmured approvingly. ‘Sometimes
it’s worthwhile to shock.’

  ‘I just have one condition.’

  ‘I’m all ears,’ Matteo said wryly.

  ‘I’m the one to do the breaking up.’

  Matteo looked at her, at a loss for a suitable response.

  ‘I can tell from your stunned expression that no one’s ever broken up with you before, am I right? None of those women you refuse to spend the night with, just in case they get ideas, has ever broken up with you...?’

  ‘Fate has smiled on me in that respect.’

  ‘Well,’ Rosie countered drily, ‘Either smiled on you or else made you incredibly arrogant.’

  Matteo grinned and then he burst out laughing. ‘You’re the most unexpected woman I’ve ever met,’ he murmured. His eyes were lazy and shuttered and feathered over her like a caress. ‘I’ve never met anyone as honest and outspoken. You contradict your background. So...you want to break up with me. I don’t see why not. Maybe it’s high time I suffered from a broken heart, and it works for you, doesn’t it?’

  Rosie nodded slowly. ‘I’m tired of my family feeling ever so slightly sorry for me.’

  ‘So you dump the eligible guy and you instantly gain their respect. Well, we’ll have to make sure that I’m the very besotted boyfriend, won’t we? Now, why don’t I check out of my suite here and we can both go to your chalet and begin this game...?’

  * * *

  His suite was breath-taking. Huge, with several rooms, including an open-plan kitchen, fully equipped but, she imagined, seldom used.

  ‘You want this to be a convincing act?’ he had put to her as they had emerged from the private room where they had been ensconced for ages. ‘You come with me to my suite while I pack my things. Then we check out together. I was here on business when we met. Now that your family are coming over, it’s only natural I shift base so that we can be together and meet them as a couple.’

  Rosie looked at him as he efficiently gathered his belongings. While he packed, he conducted a series of calls in Italian, phone to his ear as he wandered from bedroom to living area, from bathroom to office, picking things up and tossing them in a case he had dumped on the glass table in the living area.

  She got the feeling that he had forgotten about her completely.

  ‘I don’t know anything about you,’ was the first thing she said when he was finally off the phone and the last of his things had been flung into the suitcase.

  Here, in his suite, nerves assailed her. There was something so sleek and so innately dangerous about him that she found it impossible to think that they could convince her very perceptive and inquisitive family that they were really an item. Up close and personal, the force of his personality was more powerful, not less. She’d told herself that she wasn’t going to be browbeaten by their curiosity and their questions, but how on earth were they going to believe that she, Rosie, bubbly, extrovert and carefree, had lost her heart to someone like Matteo?

  Add to that the fact that he really was a stranger and the uphill task of convincing anyone seemed insurmountable.

  In the act of zipping his suitcase, Matteo paused and looked at her for a few seconds.

  She hadn’t moved from her position by the door. She looked nervous and he marvelled that a lifetime of privilege—which had clearly been her background, judging from what she had told him—had managed to leave her unscathed. He hadn’t been kidding when he had told her that she was unexpected. He met a lot of privileged people. Young and old, and even the most charming—they all had a very similar veneer of confidence borne from the assumption that the world was theirs for the asking. They all spoke loudly and with booming confidence. Most drew distinct lines between the people who served them and the people on their own level.

  Rosie was as skittish as a kitten, open, guileless and honest to a fault, and that surprised and charmed him.

  Now, looking at her, Matteo wondered whether he hadn’t agreed to this charade because a part of him found her intriguing.

  Rosie took a few hesitant steps forward and peered at the half-shut suitcase.

  ‘You haven’t brought any ski wear? Or have you stored it somewhere else?’

  Matteo strolled to the small kitchen and withdrew a bottle of water from the fridge, which he held out to her. When she declined, he unscrewed the cap and drank.

  ‘I don’t ski,’ he admitted. He dumped the empty bottle on the counter and hesitated momentarily, then he moved to the sofa and sat down, watching as she followed suit to sit facing him. ‘And stop looking so nervous. I’m not going to pounce on you.’

  ‘I know you’re not.’ She stifled a wave of nerves brought on by him telling her to stop looking nervous. ‘We’re not in public now. You know a lot about me, but I don’t know anything about you, and I’m going to have to if our story is going to be credible. I’m surprised you don’t ski,’ she admitted.

  ‘There’s a time for learning to ski,’ Matteo said wryly. ‘It’s fair to say I missed the slot.’

  ‘Those obligatory school trips to the slopes can be a bore,’ Rosie reminisced. ‘I guess I’m lucky my parents were crazy about skiing. I can remember staring down fields of snow with little skis on when I was about three.’ She laughed, throwing her head back, catching some of her hair in her hand and twisting it into a pony tail before releasing it.

  Matteo smiled. ‘Tell me more about your family. Your sister is married with two children and was a lawyer before she settled on motherhood...’

  Rosie was transfixed by that smile. It was so genuinely curious that she felt her nerves begin to abate. She told him about Emily, sister number two and a chartered surveyor. Also married. Pregnant with her first. She chatted about her parents. Her mother had been a lecturer and her father a high-ranking diplomat before they’d retired three years ago.

  ‘And they didn’t approve of past boyfriends,’ he encouraged. ‘Hence Bertie...’

  Rosie grimaced. ‘Hence Bertie. Not at all my type.’

  ‘No? And what is your type, Rosie?’

  Rosie opened her mouth to recite what she had always taken for granted—that she, free-spirited unlike her sisters, was attracted to other free spirited souls, unlike her brothers-in-law. Except, was she really?

  He saved her from having to stumble through an answer by saying gently, ‘You’re very lucky. Riding lessons...skiing holidays from the age of three...house in the country and pied à terre in London. I’m guessing you dated guys your family didn’t approve of as a form of quiet rebellion.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ she countered but she could feel his observations too close to the bone. ‘I’ve always been adventurous,’ she concluded unconvincingly.

  Matteo shrugged, ready to let it go and surprised that he had been lured into psychoanalysing her when he rarely felt inclined to plumb the depths of any woman.

  ‘You wanted to know about me,’ he said indifferently. ‘Think of an upbringing as far from yours as it is possible to be.’

  Rosie frowned. When she looked around her, all she could see was the trappings of wealth. He was clearly far, far richer than her parents or indeed anyone that she had ever known. He was in a league of his own and she didn’t understand where he was going with that enigmatic remark.

  He was sophisticated, polished and, if there was something of the street fighter about him, then she presumed that the richer you were the more ruthless you had to be.

  ‘Did you grow up here? In Italy? I heard you on the phone, speaking in Italian...’

  ‘I was born here but my parents went to England in search of a better life when I was a baby.’ Matteo paused, uncomfortable with sharing details of his past but knowing that she was entitled to information up to a point. ‘There was nothing for them here in Italy and they were young and hopeful. Unfortunately, life did not quite work out the way they planned. My mother contracted a virus shortly after they arrived in England,
and was taken into hospital, but by the time they diagnosed meningitis it was too late.’

  Rosie covered her mouth with her hand and stared at him. There was a remoteness about his features that mirrored the cool briskness of his voice. He was stating facts with all emotion removed from the recital. More than anything, she felt her heart twist at that. It was a defence mechanism to protect himself from the pain of losing a parent at such a young age. That was something she felt instinctively, just as she also knew instinctively that this proud, arrogant man would not appreciate her sharing her thoughts with him.

  In that moment, he was so very human that she wanted to reach out and touch him. She sat on her hands just in case they decided to disobey the warning bells in her head telling her to avoid any such spontaneous show of affection.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Matteo,’ she contented herself by saying and he lowered his eyes, thick lashes brushing his aristocratic cheekbones, before he looked at her once again, fully composed.

  ‘Don’t be. It’s history.’

  ‘And where is your father now?’ she asked. ‘Does he live over here? He must have been devastated at the time. Did he return to Italy?’

  ‘My father died when I was four and I was taken into foster care. No, he did not return to Italy. I have maintained my links, however. I have a villa on the outskirts of Venice and at the moment I’m in the process of expanding my operations to Naples. Hence my conference call earlier.’

  ‘Foster care?’

  ‘It’s of no importance.’ He stood up and glanced around, making sure that he was leaving nothing behind.

  Rosie thought differently. It was of monumental importance and it gave her valuable insight into this forbidding stranger now phoning down for a porter to come and collect his belongings.

  He was so cold, she thought, so contained, and there was a very good reason for that.

  He was walking towards the door and she shot to her feet and hurried behind him. Instead of opening the door, however, he stared down at her, his dark eyes shuttered.