This Christmas and Forever: A heartwarming anthology of billionaire holiday romances...

by Clare Connelly

  Despite his amusement, he felt a strong surge of protective instinct, and it made him angry with her. “And you accuse me of taking foolish risks?” He unzipped his white race jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders. She was slim, but he had forgotten how slender and frail she was. A small frown touched his lips as his hands connected with the slimness of her shoulders. He brought the jacket around her front and pressed the zips together. Slowly, he eased the zip up, unaware of how completely still Elizabeth was.

  She couldn’t look away. As he concentrated on shielding her from the elements, she concentrated on his face. His tan was dark, and there was a smattering of tiny freckles across the bridge of his nose. His lashes were longer than any man had a right to possess, and they fanned against his cheeks now, as he eased the zip over her breasts. She took in a breath of awareness as his knuckles grazed the sensitized swell.

  His dark eyes lifted to her face, and scanned her features thoughtfully. “It was kind of you,” he said, still breathtakingly close to her.

  “What was?” She had forgotten what they were speaking about.

  “Looking after Agnes.”

  “Oh.” She nodded spasmodically. “She was cold.”

  “And now you are.” He reached down and again touched her soft cheek. “Come, Elizabeth, let’s go inside. And quickly, before you turn into even more of an icicle.”

  She stiffened imperceptibly. She was aware of her reputation as an ice-queen. It was something she had relied on, from time to time, to ward off unwelcome advances. But for some inexplicable reason, that he thought that of her sat uneasily on her shoulders now. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He regarded her carefully. “Only that you are so cold you’re shivering. Another moment and I fear you’ll actually pass out.”

  “Oh.” She nodded. “Of course.” She fell into step beside him, and it was no hardship to maintain his pace. She was grateful for the exertion.

  “I’m really very grateful that you’ve agreed to this, Antonio.”

  “Di niente,” he said with a brush of his strong, tanned hand. “It’s nothing.”

  She looked away, to her left, out over the green earth that had had a huge black race track carved into it. “When did you get into driving?”

  “I’ve always loved it. Even as a very young boy, I was obsessed with speed and power.”

  She grimaced. “I don’t understand the attraction.”

  “Ah. One day I will take you driving, Elizabeth. Then you may feel what I feel. The throttle of a car like that, beneath you; it almost takes on a life of its own, but at the same time, it is also as if we have become one. Not unlike making love with a woman you are completely in tune with, driving the perfect lap makes me feel complete, and very satisfied.”

  Elizabeth’s pulse quickened. Did he just refer to making love? As if she needed any more help thinking of him as a sexual creature. With a great will of effort, she kept her expression neutral. “I’ve never felt like that about anything.”

  It fascinated him, and he thought of her husband, and wondered what responses he had invoked in this in-control woman. “You have no passions?”

  She thought about Rose. She loved her daughter, passionately, but it wasn’t quite the same thing. “No. Not really.”

  He stopped walking and took hold of her left hand. He fingered her engagement ring, and surprisingly, she didn’t mind. “I am sorry about your husband.”

  She straightened her shoulders. “You heard?”

  “Agnes,” he acknowledged.

  “I didn’t have her picked as a gossip.”

  He moved his head from side to side. “Is it something you seek to keep private?”

  “Of course not. It’s common knowledge. I was surprised you didn’t know about Alastair, actually.”

  He began walking again, but instead of retracing her earlier steps to the main entrance, he led them instead towards a side entrance.

  “As I said to you last week, I live in Rome. I only bought Ravens Manor a little over two months ago. Local concerns have not been on my radar.”

  She bit down on her lip. “Why did you? Buy Ravens Manor, I mean.”

  “Are you avoiding the topic of your late husband?”

  She colored. “No. Yes. Perhaps.” She threw him a small, tight smile. “It’s still difficult for me to talk about.”

  “I see.” He didn’t. Agnes had told him the man in question had passed away years ago. A long time to still be so evasive.

  “Are you avoiding my question?” She volleyed back at him, after a few moments of silence.

  The lopsided look he gave her sent her pulse racing. His hair was tussled from the helmet and she felt an overwhelming desire to stand up on tiptoes and run her hands through it. Completely ridiculous. She balled her hands into fists by her side, and then started to unzip the jacket he’d given her. After all, it smelled of him, that masculine, woody scent that was unmistakably his, and that wasn’t helping her mental state one little bit.

  He took the jacket as she handed it over, thinking how good it had looked on her. It did not escape his notice that she took care to avoid touching his hands, as she clumsily dropped it over his arm and then pulled her own hands away. “You are not the only one with secrets, Elizabeth,” he said cryptically, tossing the jacket on a hall stand behind him. The furnishings of Ravens Manor were as they had been. While it wasn’t his taste, he had been persuaded to retain the historical pieces while he contemplated just what he was going to do with the home that had a surprising personal relevance to him. And so he persevered with heavy oak and ornately carved furniture when his personal tastes ran to the more modern and austere.

  “Really?” She arched her brows, her face a study in curious interest.

  “What is so surprising about that?”

  “Oh.” Her smile was small. “You just seem like someone… uncomplicated.”

  He laughed, and ruffled a hand through his hair. It fell in a disheveled mess about his handsome face and she felt the now-familiar lurch of awareness as she covertly studied him.

  “In what way am I uncomplicated?”

  Her breath caught in her throat as she became fully aware of how close they were standing. “I…” she furrowed her brow as she tried to make sense of what she had meant. Making personal comments about Antonio Casacelli was just what she shouldn’t be doing. Not if she wanted to defuse this arc of tension she was feeling. She pulled herself up to her full height and infused as much cool superiority into her tone as possible. “It doesn’t matter. I was just thinking aloud. Perhaps you’d give me a tour so we can work out how we’ll do this.”

  “Do what?” He was still so close, so very close, that his breath fanned her forehead. She didn’t step away.

  “The ball.” Her words came out husky and she blinked, trying to clear the sensual fog in her mind. “Usually we have an area for canapés and cocktails to be served, and then a more formal sit down dinner follows, with a charity auction.”

  He nodded, his face suddenly focused. In fact, in the blink of an eye, he became so business-like that she wondered if she’d completely imagined the atmosphere that had been zinging between them. “Yes. I had my assistant conduct some research after we met. Your fundraising has been impressive, Elizabeth.”

  “Thank you,” she conceded, but his compliment had left her feeling light-headed. “I take the charity seriously.” Her pointed look showed that she hadn’t forgotten his insults the last time we met.

  “You lost your husband to cancer?”

  She thought about changing the subject again. After all, she’d already told him that she didn’t want to talk about Alastair. But it would be churlish to ignore the question. After all, her reasons for supporting cancer research were all lined out on the Alastair’s Foundation website. “I thought you’d researched me?”

  He slanted her a curious look. “My assistant researched your work.”

  “Of course.” She felt a foolish ache inside her. Sh
e had wanted him to research her. She had been hoping he’d been as fascinated by her as she had by him. “Yes. Alastair had cancer. Bone cancer. When I met him, it was end-stage.”

  Antonio nodded slowly, but in truth, he didn’t understand. “How old were you?”

  “When I met him? Twenty.”

  “Twenty years old. It’s young to get married at all, let alone to a terminal cancer patient.”

  “Perhaps.” Her expression assumed a faraway look as she remembered the first time she’d met cynical, esoteric Alastair. “But we fell in love very quickly. I didn’t want to waste a moment of what time we had left.”

  Jealousy, hot and sharp, sliced through him. “I see.” Though he didn’t. He’d never felt like that about anyone.

  “I don’t have much time, Antonio. I think we should get down to business.”

  He studied her features, set in a determined, unemotional way, and again, the knowledge that he was going to do whatever it took to make her lose that veneer of cool washed over him. “Of course. This way, Elizabeth.”

  God, she loved the way he said her name. It was soft and breathy and made her wonder what it would be like if he said it against her mouth. The thought appeared out of nowhere and she angled her head away from him as they walked down the dimly lit hallway.

  “I find English winters incredibly depressing,” he confided out of nowhere a few moments later.

  “Do you?” It has surprised her. “Then why are you here at this time of year?”

  His shrug was one of pure indolence, though it disguised a deep pain. “I bought the property. I wanted to make sure the renovations were completed well.”

  “And you couldn’t do that from Rome?”

  “Certamente, no. I believe people perform their best work if they know they’re being watched. Though I employed only the best contractors, naturally, I still wanted to oversee their progress personally.”

  Her smile was genuine. “You’re a control freak.”

  He nodded. “Yes. It is something I learned from my father.”

  Now, Elizabeth shrugged her slender shoulders. “I don’t know if it’s a skill that can be learned. I think it’s far more likely that you were born this way.”

  “Genetics?” He thought of the flaccid, unimpressive man who had been biologically responsible for his being. There was nothing in that cluster of cells that Antonio recognized in himself. No. He might not have been a Casacelli by blood, but he was as determined and alpha-male as his brothers were, and as his father had been. “I don’t believe genetics have that great an impact on who we become.”

  An image of Rose popped into Elizabeth’s mind and she thought of the beautiful little girl who was the spitting image of her father, Alastair. Except for Rosie’s clear blue eyes, the girl was pure Sanderson. “Either way, you’re a control freak. Whether you were born that way or learned the skill, I can tell now that working with you has the potential to be difficult.”

  “Perhaps.” He titled his face down to her, his dark eyes searching hers. “But I think it also promises to be very, very enjoyable. For us both.”

  A frisson of excitement ran the length of Elizabeth’s spine, and again, breathlessness overtook her. It wasn’t helped when Antonio pressed his hand into the small of her back, ostensibly to propel her down a different hallway. This one was yet to be renovated, judging by the dark green carpet and musty smell. Unconsciously, she wrinkled her nose.

  “My contractors will have completed work on this section of the building a week before Christmas Eve.” Antonio said, as if he’d read her thoughts.

  It was on the tip of Elizabeth’s tongue to ask if he was certain, but one look at his implacable, confident profile was all the answer she needed. When Antonio Casacelli asked for something, people would obviously bend over backwards to make it happen.

  “And this is the ball room.” He pushed open a pair of heavy oak doors, and Elizabeth couldn’t help but see the way his shirt lifted at the back when he did so, revealing a perfect expanse of olive skin. It looked warm and soft and she had to dig her nails into her palms to resist the urge to reach out and touch it. Ridiculous.

  She looked beyond him, forcing herself to focus instead on the room he had just stepped into.

  The ball room of Ravens Manor was, quite simply, the most stunning room she had ever seen.

  Highly polished black and white tiles spread the length of the floor, with the exception of an inlaid parquetry portion in the middle, which was obviously purpose built as a dance floor. Down the center of the room, hanging from the centre of ornately sculpted ceiling roses were heavy, glistening crystal chandeliers, the largest of which was in the very center of the room, above the dance floor.

  “Oh, Antonio.” Forgetting herself, and who she was with, she reached out and gripped his forearm. “It’s exquisite.”

  Antonio was thinking exactly the same thing, but he wasn’t looking at the room. “Just the word I would have chosen,” he murmured huskily, drawing her attention back to his face.

  Elizabeth’s heart skipped a beat as she sought his eyes, and the powerful hunger she saw there fairly took her breath away. He was going to kiss her. And she couldn’t wait.

  Chapter 4

  They stood toe to toe, and she felt as though his eyes were magnetic, for all the ability she had to look away. Her throat felt as though it was constricted, making breathing difficult. A muscle clenched in Antonio’s mouth and she thought he really was going to do it. To press his lips to hers and give her body what it had been craving since that first moment she’d seen him.

  Only he didn’t. He flicked a smile in her direction and disentangled her hand from his arm, moving across the ballroom and pressing a button.

  “I had state of the art wiring put in as soon as the house became mine,” he indicated the concealed light switches, which Elizabeth now realized were in each recess of the ballroom. She didn’t know him well enough to deduce if his words were intended to fan the flames of guilt that were already alive inside of her. The demise of Bashir was solely hers.

  “Clever you,” she drawled, smarting from the way he’d put her aside when she’d been aching to be in his arms. Frustration with her wayward thoughts made her abrupt.

  He tilted her a sardonic gaze. “It seemed wise in a house of this age.”

  “I’m surprised you were able to organize it so swiftly.”

  His shrug was pure indolence. “Money talks.”

  “And you have money,” she said with barely concealed distaste.

  “You find that arrogant?”

  Her eyes flew to his, and for the first time since arriving that day, she remembered that no contracts had been signed. He’d verbally agreed to host the ball, but she needed to tread lightly with him lest he change his mind. “I’m not impressed by wealth,” she said in what she hoped was a conversation killing tone.

  “And yet you married someone supremely wealthy,” he pointed out. “I find it hard to believe money didn’t play a part.”

  Elizabeth mouth gaped in surprise. No one had been so bold as to question her motives to her face, though she was sure many discussed it behind her back. If it wasn’t Alastair’s money or title, it was the age difference of twenty one years that people found salacious. “Lucky for us both then that I don’t care what you believe.”

  His lips tilted in an imitation of a smile. “It is not an insult,” he continued, apparently unwilling to get the hint. “I have never met a woman not influenced by financial considerations.”

  Heat was rising in Elizabeth like an irrepressible force. “Then I pity you for the kind of women you must associate with.”

  “And you think you’re so different?”

  “Yes,” she said from between clenched teeth. “My God. The sheer arrogance, to think you can just put me in that category of woman, simply because my late husband happened to be wealthy.”

  “It is not because he happened to be wealthy, but because I doubt you would have married a dying
man were he not as rich as Croesus.”

  Elizabeth never swore, but she was tempted to now. “Blast it,” she said crossly, running a hand across her forehead. “My marriage is none of your business, Signore.”

  “And yet you want me to open the doors of my home to hundreds of strangers. Don’t you think it’s a simple courtesy, that we know a little about one another’s motives?”

  “Motives?” She threw him a quizzical glance, but her heart was beating hard in her chest. “My motives are simply to raise money so that clever people can find a cure for one of the deadliest diseases on the planet. So that one day, maybe people won’t have to go through what Al did. What I did.”

  “How touching,” he responded dryly. “I suppose the fame and acclaim you attract has nothing to do with it, then?”

  “The fame?” She frowned. She would personally shy away from the limelight, except her high profile was a great asset to the foundation. “I don’t seek fame.”

  “Nonsense,” he said with a wave of his hands. “You must realize, Elizabeth, that you are dealing with someone who already sees the worst in people. You do not need to pretend with me.”

  “What made you so cynical?” She snapped. “Is it so hard for you to believe that I could be working from motives that are purely good?”

  “Yes,” he responded honestly, compressing his lips so that his mouth was simply a slash is his strong, symmetrical face.

  “Fine.” She raised her hands in the air in a gesture of surrender. “Believe what you want.” She stormed away from him, towards the entrance of the room.

  “Where are you going?” His voice was commanding, and she had to fight with all her might not to stop walking. Lady Sanderson did not obey.

  “I’ve seen enough,” she called over her shoulder. “This room will be sufficient.”

  “Not so fast.” It was quietly spoken, but menacing enough, to halt her in her tracks. “You have already walked out on me one time too many. Do not make a habit of it, bella.”

  Elizabeth let out a sharp laugh of disbelief as she spun around and found him standing right behind her. “Then you were accusing me of being a bored, rich housewife looking for a frivolous cause to support. Now you’re actually saying worse; that I married Al just because of his money?”