The Italian's Christmas Proposition

‘And?’ Matteo tilted his head and looked at her with raised eyebrows. ‘You don’t like him? Ex-lover? Bad break-up? Where are we going with this one?’

‘You’re very rude, aren’t you?’ She scowled and then, without warning, he smiled at her and all that sexiness was thrown into such stark focus that she was temporarily shocked into silence.

The harsh beauty of his face was no longer forbidding. All of a sudden, Rosie glimpsed at what true sexiness in a guy was all about and in an instant every boyfriend she had ever had faded into insignificance. She had gone out with silly little boys. The glorious specimen sprawled in front of her was just the opposite. He was all man, an alpha male in the prime of his life. She felt faint.

‘No one has ever said that to me before,’ Matteo drawled. ‘Should I be irritated, bemused or intrigued?’

Rosie squirmed. She wasn’t sure how to answer that question or whether he even expected an answer. She felt hot and bothered, as if she was coming down with something.

‘My parents think that Bertie and I might be a good match and I guess…’ She hesitated. ‘I acted without thinking. Candice was sitting across from me, ruining my entire Christmas. I just looked down and spotted Bob and Margaret and the guy they said they’d been doing business with, and I knew that you were all leaving, so I…told my sister that I couldn’t possibly face Bertie because I’d been having a fling with you, which hadn’t worked out and I was all broken up. It seemed safe. You were going and there was no way I thought she was ever going to…do what she ended up doing.’

Hearing it spoken out loud, Rosie couldn’t imagine why she had done what she had. Why hadn’t she just stood her ground and refused?

She knew why. Because it had always been her nature to follow the path of least resistance and that had evolved into her just going with the flow.

‘I should have just told Candice that if Bertie was going to be on the scene then I would make sure not to be there. I should have had a bit more will power. Instead, I acted on impulse, and I’m sorry.’

‘I’m getting the picture of someone who lets her family run her life for her. Am I right?’

‘Is there anything I can do to make it up to you?’

‘You shouldn’t make offers like that,’ Matteo murmured. ‘A guy could get all the wrong ideas.’

Heat coursed through her body, a slow burn from the inside out. Her breasts ached and her nipples, straining against her bra, felt ultra-sensitive, tingling. She imagined the pads of his fingers rubbing them and her breathing became shallow and laboured. She had no experience when it came to this kind of sophisticated, lazy flirting. If that was even what it was. All she could do was stare at him while her mind continued to play with all sorts of graphic, contraband images.

What on earth was wrong with her?

This guy reeked of danger and yet the pull she felt was overpowering.

‘So, now that we’re an item, what happens next?’

‘I…well…’

‘In the thick of this relationship, our hot, two-week clandestine fling, where were we supposed to be meeting? My room at the hotel? Your parents’ chalet? Neither of the above? It’s a mystery that Bob and Margaret didn’t jump in with a string of questions about our so-called affair, bearing in mind most of my time over the past few days has been spent with them working on finishing touches to my deal.’

‘How am I supposed to know?’ Rosie retorted truthfully. ‘I didn’t stop to think things through.’

Impulse on that scale was unheard of in Matteo’s world and it was strangely refreshing to glimpse a life where variables were given a chance to survive. Not for him, and yet… ‘Well, we’re going to have to come up with some sort of plausible story or else the whole thing falls apart, and I’m not about to let that happen.’

‘Because of this deal you’re working on?’

‘I just need to get past the finishing line.’

‘Why?’

‘Come again?’

‘Why would a deal mean so much to you that you would go along with this charade instead of just calling me out? I mean, you seem to have enough money…’

‘You’ve lived a life of comfort,’ Matteo said coolly. ‘From that vantage point, it’s easy to come out with platitudes about not needing money or having enough of it. Tell me, have you ever told anyone that the best things in life are free? Take it from me, they seldom are. Now, back to my question—what happens next? Your sister is staying with you. Having witnessed our show of love, presumably she expects nothing less than a formal meeting with the man who’s head over heels in love with you?’

Rosie’s brain was only just beginning to move on from what he had said about her attitude towards money. She was mortified to realise that he was right. She’d led a charmed life and it was easy to take all that for granted when you knew that it would always be there. For all her free-spirited travelling, she would never have fallen very far, because there would always have been a cushion waiting for her.

‘She’s probably curious,’ Rosie admitted.

‘And the over-protective family? Will the grape vine be buzzing with news of our whirlwind romance?’

Rosie shot him a sheepish smile and pushed some tangled blonde curls off her face.

‘“Buzzing” might be an understatement,’ she confessed.

‘But at least the ex-lover won’t be on the scene now you’re spoken for.’ He’d felt it again. A charge of electricity, powerful and disorientating. Primal. She represented everything he steered clear of when it came to women, and yet she was uniquely appealing and he had no idea from where the appeal stemmed.

‘Bertie was never an ex,’ Rosie was obliged to point out. ‘Never even came close! Our families have known each other for ages and, somewhere along the line, he got it into his head that he wanted to ask me out on a date. I was seventeen at the time. I’ve never fancied him but now he’s a big shot in the City somewhere and everyone thinks he could be a suitable match.’ She rolled her eyes.

Matteo didn’t say anything. His dark eyes were lazy and thoughtful. ‘So I’ll be meeting the family,’ he murmured.

‘You don’t have to. I could tell them that you’ve been called away on business. Candice has met you. She’ll understand.’

‘Why will she understand?’

‘Because…’ Rosie thought that, for someone as forbidding as he was, it was oddly easy to talk to him. ‘Because she has two children now, but before that she was a successful lawyer, so she understands the demands of work. She’ll get it if you pay a flying visit and then disappear.’

Rosie frowned and sat forward. ‘That would work,’ she said slowly. ‘If you disappear, then there won’t be the complication of your meeting my parents and the rest of the family. That way, I can gradually warn them that the big romance isn’t actually going as planned. These things happen,’ she thought aloud. ‘People meet and think that they’ve fallen in love but it turns out to be a mistake.’

‘And naturally,’ Matteo said soothingly, ‘That’s exactly what will happen but, for the moment, that solution is off the cards.’

‘Why?’

‘Because my deal hasn’t been finalised. Bob and Margaret are here for another week. Skiing, having fun and making sure the last details of my purchase are drawn up and inspected via email by their lawyers in London. Until signatures are on the dotted line, we’re in love and thinking of building a future together. Once everything’s signed, sealed and delivered, then the hasty unravelling of our relationship can begin.’ He gave an elegant shrug which implied that that was the way forward and there was nothing she could do about it, whether she wanted to or not.

‘It’ll be harder on my parents if they actually meet you face to face.’

‘Tough.’ Matteo didn’t bother beating about the bush. ‘I didn’t ask for this.’

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.

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