CHAPTER SIX
ROSIE STARED UP at the ceiling. She hadn’t drawn the curtains and the silver light, the reflection of the moon shining down on endless white outside, illuminated everything in the bedroom.
This had always been her favourite time of the year—the run up to Christmas. The entire resort was a winter wonderland of tiny lights, Christmas trees and carols booming through the village, ratcheting up the excitement. Every year, the entire family would meet for a week at the chalet and it would mark the beginning to the countdown for them. They would put up a tree and the board games would come out. Family time.
She should have been alive with anticipation. Instead, she eyed the empty chaise longue and realised that her thoughts had been entirely occupied with Matteo.
At a little after one in the morning, he would be sound asleep in a proper bed instead of lying awake, cramped and uncomfortable, on a sofa that she, inches shorter, would have found a challenge.
She thought about him bedding down without complaint and then waking up and busying himself on his computer at some ridiculously early hour in the morning, also without complaint. She knew that he would have spent his entire time at the chalet falling off a sofa in the middle of the night, perfectly accepting that, if that was his designated sleeping area, then so be it.
He had a childhood without any luxuries. As a small boy growing into a young man learning how to be tough and ambitious enough to ignore the siren call of violence—all that had prepared him to accept discomfort should it come his way. He might be worth billions now but she got the feeling that the past he seldom discussed was never forgotten.
Caught up in the fruitless exercise of thinking about him and trying to work him out, she finally decided to get out of bed and head down to the kitchen for something to eat.
She’d barely touched a thing all day and the gateau was beckoning.
The chalet was in darkness as she made her way downstairs to the kitchen. Through the vast glass doors, she paused to take in the expanse of snowy white outside.
She shivered, feeling the chill, because the central heating had switched off at midnight. She should have slung on a bathrobe but satisfying her rumbling tummy had been far too pressing. Plus, she was sick of thinking about Matteo and then mentally asking herself why she couldn’t put him out of her mind.
She’d managed to find every excuse under the sun for her relentless absorption with him, starting with It’s perfectly understandable, considering the way we were thrown together then going on to It would be unnatural for me not to think about him and There wouldn’t be a woman alive who wouldn’t be thinking of him if she was sharing a house with him...who could ignore someone who looks the way he does?
She didn’t bother turning on the kitchen light due to the unfounded suspicion that it might filter all the way upstairs to where Matteo was sleeping and alert him to the fact that there was someone downstairs.
As a consequence, she banged her foot against the edge of one of the chairs and hopped in agony for a few seconds until the pain subsided, then she opened the fridge and knelt down to inspect the contents.
She wanted to resist the cake but the alternative of eating whatever remained of the options Matteo had generously bought didn’t tempt.
She reached out to cut a sliver of the gateau which Matteo had shoved in the fridge, not bothering to remove the knife he had earlier used to cut it, when the sound of his voice coming from behind her almost shocked her into having a heart attack.
With a yelp, she scuttled back and shot to her feet, heart pounding and mouth dry, and she spun round to look at him. The kitchen was still in darkness but to her horror that didn’t last long because he banged on the switch and the room was flooded with light.
Never had Rosie felt more conscious of her state of undress. The tee shirt might be baggy but she was excruciatingly aware of the heavy weight of her bra-less breasts pushing against it, and her shorts were tiny. Way too small.
For a few seconds, she couldn’t speak at all. She studied him, her thoughts in frantic disarray. She’d glimpsed him without a shirt on but this time... The man was awesome, she thought weakly, so very tall, so very well built. So very, very under-dressed. Not only was he half-naked, but the safe option of tracksuit bottoms had been jettisoned in favour of boxers that revealed long, muscular legs and a stomach as flat as a wash board.
‘What are you doing here?’ she managed accusingly. In timely fashion, she reminded herself that this was, actually, her house and he was the guest so why should she feel as though she’d been caught red-handed stealing the family heirlooms? How was it that he somehow found it so effortless to exert control and thereby give the impression that he owned everything around him even if he didn’t?
‘I heard a noise.’
His voice was terse and, reading into that abrupt response, Rosie could only imagine his annoyance at finding his sleep disrupted yet again.
‘I made sure to be quiet!’
‘Noise travels around here.’
They stood and stared at one another and, suddenly conscious of herself, she crossed her arms over her breasts and was disconcerted when he followed that gesture. Was he trying to embarrass her on purpose? She swung away but the heavy silence was getting to her.
‘I just came down to get something to drink.’ She thought of the gateau and silently bid farewell to the chunk of lovely, comforting calories. ‘Are you just going to stand there? I’m sorry if I woke you up. I had no idea I made any noise. I banged my toe but I didn’t think I yelped loud enough for you to hear.’
‘I might as well get myself something to drink as well now that I’m down here,’ Matteo muttered, moving forward with the quiet grace of a panther to open the fridge and extract two bottles of water, one of which he handed to her.
Instead of walking towards the door, he remained standing next to her, unsettling in his masculine beauty, holding her transfixed gaze until her legs began to feel wobbly.
Water in hand, she began backing away towards the door, eyes on him the whole time.
‘I thought someone had broken in.’ He moved towards her, his voice lacking its usual cool self-control. He sounded as though he needed to clear his throat.
‘That’s rare over here.’ Rosie breathed, watching wide-eyed as he stopped in front of her. There was nowhere else to go so she remained where she was, staring up at him and trying hard to play it cool when her pulse was racing and her heart was slamming against her rib cage. ‘You could sleep with the doors open and no one would break in.’
‘You have the most amazing eyes,’ Matteo murmured.
‘Matteo...’
‘I like it when you say my name in that breathy little voice.’
‘Matteo, don’t.’
‘I’m not doing anything.’
But he was. Right now, he was. He was lifting one hand to sift it through her wildly tousled fair curls. Her mouth ran dry. She badly wanted to touch him but she had no idea how this kind of game went. He traced the outline of her mouth with his finger, then cupped the side of her face and stared at her for a long moment until her head was swimming.
‘What’s going on?’ she whispered.
‘As if you don’t know.’ He laughed softly. ‘Haven’t I told you how sexy I find you? I’m attracted to you, mia bellissima. And it’s mutual, or are you going to deny it?’
‘You’re a good-looking man,’ Rosie prevaricated.
‘Would you like this good-looking man to kiss you?’
Rosie nodded, an unfamiliar, but powerful heat running through her body.
He lowered his head and the kiss...took her to heaven and left her there. His mouth was cool and when he inserted his tongue she reached up on tiptoe and wrapped her hands around his neck to pull him down closer to her.
A little groan escaped her. Her breasts felt heavy, her nipples sensitise
d to the point of painful. She ached for him and curved her body in a wriggling movement that invited him to slip his hand underneath the tee shirt.
For a second, Rosie stilled, but only for a second. He brushed her waist with his hand while he continued to ravish her with a never-ending kiss. Of its own volition, her body seemed to have closed what little gap there had been between them.
Lost in a world of sensation, and feeling as though her body was alive for the very first time, Rosie only realised that he had gently propelled her towards the kitchen table when she bumped against the edge of it.
He eased her apart from him and kept his eyes locked to hers when he began to slip the tee shirt up.
Mesmerising eyes, Rosie thought. Bottomless and fringed with indecently long lashes. Inch by inch the tee shirt was lifted until she was standing in front of him, her breasts exposed.
She felt a surge of feminine power when his nostrils flared as he looked down at her body.
She reached behind to prop herself against the table, clutching the edge with her hands and leaning ever so slightly back so that her body was inclined towards his, towards his heated, appreciative gaze.
He cupped her breasts in his hands and massaged them, simultaneously rolling his thumbs over the stiffened peaks. The groans became restless whimpers.
She wanted much more than this.
She wanted everything.
And suddenly, she realised that she was never going to get what she wanted. She was never going to get anything deep or significant with this guy.
Was this her?
Everything that was rooted in principle and tradition flared into life and she caught his hands in hers and looked at him with troubled eyes.
‘I’m not sure I can do this,’ she said on a miserable sigh, and just like that he dropped his hands and she lowered the tee shirt. ‘I know we’re adults, and this is what adults do when they fancy one another, but I’m not sure this is...me.’
‘You’re not...sure?’
‘I’ve only had one serious relationship, Matteo, and that was a long time ago and it didn’t end well. I thought we were going somewhere, heading somewhere, but it turned out that he was using me. Maybe not to start with, maybe there was something genuine there at the beginning, but in the end the family money, the trust fund...it all meant more to him.’
‘What does a relationship you had years ago have to do with this?’
There was genuine bewilderment in his voice, and that threw her, because in her head the two seemed to be tied together, but why? Did he have a point? Did one bad relationship have to influence every relationship thereafter?
Confusion seeped in. She wondered what, exactly, she was looking for. Permanence? Of course, she came from a secure and loving background. Her parents had been with one another for a lifetime and beyond. But did that mean that the only route open to her was with a guy she would end up marrying and settling down with?
What about the benefits of just having fun? Despite all the adventures she had had on her travels, hadn’t she been at pains to avoid the greatest adventure of all—getting involved with someone? Opening up to them, whatever the outcome? Relationships had lasted five minutes because split decisions had been made that he wasn’t the one.
‘If you have to turn this into a drama in five acts, then maybe I misjudged things.’ Matteo’s voice had cooled and he stepped away from her, leaving behind an icy-cold void. ‘I’m sorry.’ His eyes were as dark and as deep as a glacier.
‘Matteo...’
‘I’m going to head up, Rosie. I’ll see you in the morning.’
He spun round on his heels and soundlessly left the kitchen. In his wake, she subsided onto one of the kitchen chairs and thought, but she couldn’t make sense of any of her thoughts. Matteo came from a different world from hers and not just in the material sense. He was hard, tough, had dragged himself up by the bootstraps and had battled whatever adversities he had faced to do it. He had money now but he had learnt from his experiences and now lived his life accordingly.
Something inside her shifted, adjusted and settled into another place and she began heading up the stairs, straight to the bedroom where he had been put.
He was up, lounging on the bed with his hands clasped behind his head, staring at the ceiling.
She could see him in the silver light filtering through the windows because, like her, he hadn’t drawn the thick curtains, preferring the distant view of craggy, soaring, snowy mountains.
‘I know I’m soft,’ Rosie began, walking into the room, fired up.
‘What the...?’
‘Just let me say what I have to say!’
‘Go to bed, Rosie. I’m not in the mood for a raging sermon from you. You don’t have to justify your decisions to me.’
‘I know I’m soft. I’ve been spoilt. I don’t take anything for granted, believe me I don’t, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not aware of all the privileges I’ve grown up with. Maybe you think that that has something to do with me wanting the fairy-tale ending when it comes to romance and you could be right. My big relationship ended with a whimper but don’t you dare tell me that you don’t see what that has to do with anything.’
Matteo had sat up and she was propelled towards the bed—towards him.
Against the white bed linen, his burnished gold body, the deep, rich colour of someone in whom exotic genes ran like a thread of gold, was a powerful, lithe reminder of his intense masculinity.
‘We’re all affected by our pasts.’ She perched on the edge of the bed and stared at him. His face was in shadow but she knew that he was watching her. She just didn’t know what he was thinking, but when did she ever? ‘You are. You haven’t had my past, but you’re as affected by yours as I am by mine. Our pasts are what shape us, and I’m not going to have you tell me that you have no idea what one broken relationship has to do with anything. You don’t let anyone into your life because of what you went through. You don’t like Christmas, and there would be a reason for that somewhere, buried in your past. So, I was hurt once and I never want to be hurt again.’
‘You’ve said your piece and I’ve listened, Rosie. You should go to sleep now.’
‘I’m attracted to you.’
‘Don’t go there,’ Matteo warned in a dangerously low voice. ‘I don’t like game playing.’
‘Isn’t that what we’ve been doing ever since we met one another?’
‘Wrong phrasing. I don’t want any woman thinking she has to play games with me.’
‘I’m not,’ Rosie told him abruptly. She felt a surge of empowerment from her decision taken with eyes wide open. ‘We’re attracted to one another, and it’s not about whether this will lead anywhere or not. I know it’s not going anywhere. I know I’m not your type and you’re not mine. So I’m not going to be hurt. I’m going to have fun.’
‘What are you saying?’
Reckless daring swept through her in a now or never moment as she pulled the tee shirt over her head and stood in front of him, fighting hard not to succumb to crippling self-consciousness.
He wasn’t saying anything but his silence wasn’t the silence of someone politely about to channel her out of the bedroom and that was encouraging. The silence was still and thick with electricity.
She stepped out of the rest of her clothes and for a few seconds squeezed her eyes shut.
‘Come.’
One word and it was enough.
This was a situation far removed from both their comfort zones and, if she only subliminally recognised the danger that particular novelty carried, then Matteo was all too aware of it.
Novelty, in his rarefied world, was a scarce commodity. He’d suffered the indignities of being the poor kid at a rich school, where he’d earned a scholarship to board at the age of thirteen. He’d learned the hard way to ignore every single thing that wasn�
�t worth taking on board and that had included all manner of insults and verbal abuse. Ambition, an intellect that was in the stratosphere, an ability to take risks...all of those things had propelled him onwards and upwards, and he had had no time to relax...until now.
He’d made it. He had more money than most people could dream of. Enough to turn his back on work and live on a beach, drinking cocktails, for the rest of his life. But, in the cold light of day, there was a part of him that acknowledged that he was bored. What else was there to get? He could have anything he wanted. Any woman he wanted. All those top-notch career women, brainy, beautiful and independent, would still do anything he asked. He could read it in the way they looked at him, the way they listened to what he said, even in the way they sometimes played hard to get.
But she was right. His past had made him the person he was today, locked in a controlled world where he called the shots and there were no unpleasant surprises on any front—material or emotional.
Then into his safe, predictable and obscenely wealthy life this woman had parachuted and she was nothing like any woman he’d met before.
On paper, she made no sense. Life had taught him to walk away from poor little rich girls with their aggrieved air of entitlement and their healthy trust funds. He had no time for anyone for whom life was easy. His admiration was reserved for those who had faced at least some of the tough mountains he had had to conquer. Most of the women he had dated had worked hard to climb the ladder of success. They had gone beyond the call of duty and battled in a world that was largely, and stupidly, male dominated. Some had made marks that would live on after them.
There was no way that Rosie Carter could possibly qualify for any of those categories. She came from a privileged, private-school background but she surprised him at every turn. It had taken guts to do what she had just done. She was a breath of fresh air and he wanted her more than he had ever wanted any woman in his entire life.
The Italian's Christmas Proposition (HQR Presents) Page 9
