Читать книгу The Italian's Christmas Proposition / Christmas Baby For The Greek - Cathy Williams - Страница 13

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.

‘The only reason I’ve told you what I have,’ he stated, ‘Is because you have a point. Relationships aren’t built on two people knowing absolutely nothing about one another, and this has to be a credible relationship until all the paperwork is done on the deal I’m working on with Bob and Margaret.’

‘You haven’t told me why it’s so important.’

‘Nor will I. And I should tell you that you should save the questions if any of them involve further delving into my past. I’ve given you sufficient information for us to pull this charade off. The confidences end there. The fact is we are not in a relationship. This is a temporary and fictitious arrangement and all we need to establish is a sufficiently credible basis from which we can answer the most straightforward questions.’ He opened the door and they walked in silence to the lift, then rode down to the busy foyer.

All the while, thoughts were buzzing around in her head like wasps. He had opened a door and, having peered in, she wanted to have another look.

As soon as they were back in the public domain, he slung his arm over her shoulders, only breaking apart to sign himself out.

There was a background hum of Christmas carols being played which followed them out of the hotel onto the snow-covered slopes.

Rosie had been to many ski resorts with her family over the years but they had fallen in love with this one and had made it their annual destination. The ski resort was situated in the heart of the Southern Alps in the Veneto region of Northern Italy. From here, Venice was a couple of hours away, and she figured that Matteo had probably arranged for his clients to come to this particular resort because it had suited him. He couldn’t have picked a more beautiful spot for the uninitiated.

The mountainous, pink and orange backdrop of the Dolomites was picture-postcard perfect, soaring up, commanding the valley and everything nestled inside it. The vista never failed to impress and Rosie stopped and stared at the sight.

‘You don’t know what you’re missing.’ She turned to him impulsively.

‘Meaning?’

‘You should learn to ski. I could teach you.’ She laughed at the horror etched on Matteo’s lean face and slowly he grinned.

‘You don’t give up, do you?’ he murmured, staring out at the panoramic view with her. Out here, everything was shrouded in silence, and the hue from the rising mountains was quite special. He had always used his Venetian villa as a bolthole. It had never occurred to him that this glorious place existed. But then again, he didn’t ski, so why would it have?

He gazed back down to her upturned face. She had dimples when she smiled. She had stuffed a woolly hat on her head and her tangled white-blonde curls trailed in disarray from under it. Wrapped up in countless layers, her small, curvaceous body was tempting beyond endurance and Matteo spun around on his heels, indicating that they should make for her car now.

‘What do you mean?’ Rosie tripped alongside him, keeping some distance but feeling the impact of his presence slamming into her at every step.

‘I mean, others would have tactfully retreated once I warned them off trying to get to know me.’

‘That’s very egotistical of you.’ She swerved into the hotel car park, heading towards the four-wheel-drive car that was kept on permanent standby, as the villa was used by the family out of season as well.

‘Egotistical?’

‘I don’t want to get to know you,’ Rosie lied, beeping open the doors and hoisting herself into the driver’s seat. She waited until he was sitting in the passenger seat before turning to him. In the late-evening light he was all shadows and angles, and he sent a shiver of fierce excitement racing down her spine. ‘I just thought that, if we’re going to be stuck with one another for days on end, it might give us something to do aside from arguing, and anyway, it’s a shame to be here and not try your hand at it.’

She started the engine and the car shuddered into life.

‘I’ve never had any woman tell me that she has to think of things to do if she’s going to be stuck with me,’ Matteo said, amused in spite of himself. ‘Sure you know how to handle this thing in snowy terrain?’

‘The road to the chalet is clear and gritted, Matteo, so there’s no need to be nervous—and of course I know how to handle it.’ She glanced across at him. ‘Don’t tell me that you think women can’t drive as good as men?’

‘Can they, though?’

Rosie heard the lazy teasing in his voice and she burst out laughing.

Her heart skipped a beat. A thread of something beyond excitement suddenly sparked and sizzled in her veins.

‘Probably better.’ She was focused one hundred percent on the road ahead of her, taking it very slowly, but she didn’t want to lose the moment. She liked this. ‘Are you scared of giving it a go? The skiing, I mean?’

‘Terrified,’ Matteo drawled.

‘I’ll make sure you’re all right.’

‘Will you, now? That’s an offer that’s almost too good to pass up.’

They were nearing the chalet—a left-hand turn off the main road and then just a short drive to the warmth of the ski lodge. The drive was short but hazardous, but the car was equipped for all conditions and handled the steep climb to the chalet with aplomb. Ahead, the bright lights were welcoming.

Candice was waiting for them, dressed to go out but making sure she stayed put to ask questions. Having shaken off the snow, hung various jackets and coats and dumped shoes and boots and all the other paraphernalia, Rosie faced her elegant, glamorous sister with a strength of purpose she had never really experienced before.

From behind, she was aware of Matteo approaching, but the touch of his hand on her waist, curving to rest just under her breasts, still made her flush. She hesitantly slipped her arm around him to complete the picture she knew he was striving to convey. The pressure of his palm on her rib cage and the crazy tingling of her nipples in heated response fogged up her brain and she knew that she was beetroot-red.

She wanted to moan and chewed down on her lip in horror, especially when he lazily circled his fingers on the woolly jumper, applying just the right amount of pressure.

She had whipped off the woolly hat and in a matter of a few heart-stopping seconds he sifted his fingers into her hair and tilted her chin so that she was gazing up at him. Then he lowered his mouth to graze over hers…and all those things she had read about in magazines suddenly made complete sense. Lust…desire…whatever you wanted to call it…

She had had one serious relationship that had, in retrospect, been nothing more than the optimism of youth to be loved and a need to be rescued from her abortive university career. It had lasted a matter of months and had certainly not prepared her for the high-voltage charge of craving that shot through her body when his lips met hers. Nothing she had ever experienced had. Confusion tore into her, darkening her eyes, sending a slight tremble through her body.

Her vocal cords seemed to have dried up, but it didn’t matter, because Candice was smiling and Matteo had eased into charismatic gear and was saying all the right things, asking all the right questions, giving her cool, contained sister little chance of asking questions back.

‘I’d really love to hear about the two of you and how you met.’ She glanced at her watch, while from the sidelines Rosie breathed a sigh of relief. ‘But I’m going to catch up with some friends I haven’t seen for ages. Before the family descend tomorrow evening. By the way, they can’t wait to meet you. Hope you don’t mind but I couldn’t help but share the news with everyone—and get them to hold off on trying to set you up with Bertie.’

‘Actually,’ Rosie heard herself say, ‘I do mind, Diss. It was my place to tell them that Matteo and I are…er…going out.’

‘Yes, I suppose so but…’ Bright colour poured into Candice’s cheeks. For the first time in living memory, she was discomfited by her much younger sister, and Rosie realised that this was what she should have been doing all along. Taking control of her life and owning her decisions.

‘It’s done now,’ she said quietly. ‘It doesn’t matter.’ Oddly, Matteo’s hand cupping the nape of her neck gave her a certain amount of strength.

‘I do apologise, Rosie. I was just so excited that you’d actually met someone…’

Candice shifted, aware that she was treading in unchartered waters, accustomed as she was to compliance from her younger sister.

‘Socially acceptable?’ Matteo interjected coolly. He tightened his hold on Rosie and she leant against him, loving the strength he imparted. He was as solid as a rock.

‘That’s not quite what I meant.’ Candice reddened.

‘My track record hasn’t been great,’ Rosie said appeasingly.

Candice gave her a bright, relieved smile and moved towards her for a quick hug before standing back and looking at them both with her head to one side.

‘You two make a fantastic couple,’ she said. ‘I was quite prepared to thump you when Rosie told me that you’d let her down. I can’t tell you how happy I am for the both of you that whatever misunderstanding you had has been sorted. I can just tell that you’re meant for one another.’ She winked at her sister.

‘Hang on, Candice,’ Rosie interjected, horrified and embarrassed that ‘holiday fling’ was morphing into ‘marriage on the cards’. ‘We’ve really only just met! We’re still getting to know one another.’

Candice was laughing, heading for the door. ‘That’s how all relationships begin, Rosie! Anyway, don’t wait up for me, guys. That car could pull a sled in an avalanche, but if I feel too tired to head back then I’ll just stay over with Mick and Carol. They’ve already invited me and they’ve got oodles of room. I’ll text and let you know.’

With which she left in a flurry of air kisses, slamming the door behind her, leaving Rosie alone with Matteo.

‘So…’ He looked around him. ‘Nice place, Rosie.’ It was open-plan, big but not huge, and with all the clutter of hectic family life left behind from one holiday to the other—well-thumbed books, games, toys and all sorts of bits and pieces collected over the years. The floors were deep, rich wood and there was a clutter of artwork on the walls, pictures done by Rosie and her sisters. In the sitting area, colourful throws were tossed onto the deep, comfortable sofas, and in the corner the television was rumbling on, volume low, because Candice had forgotten to switch it off.

Looking around her, Rosie saw the place through his eyes. It was the essence of upper-middle-class comfort.

‘Can I ask you something?’ She waited until he had turned full circle to look at her.

‘Ask away.’

‘I know you said you didn’t want me prying into your private life…’

Matteo realised that her prying was a lot less objectionable than expected. He wondered whether that was because, for the first time in his life, he had opened up about his past with another human being. Of course, he had had very little choice, given the situation, and none of it mattered anyway, because they would be parting company before Santa dropped down the chimney with his sack of goodies, but it was still a little unnerving.

He wasn’t the confiding sort and he grimly told himself that he wasn’t going to change any time soon. A leopard never changed its spots and his reticence was solidly ingrained. He had always lived his life with the assumption that, when it came to other people and his private life, information was purely on a need-to-know basis.

Like now, was what sprang to mind.

‘Then don’t,’ he informed her silkily.

‘I was just curious to find out how you…ended up where you did.’

‘Rich and powerful?’ He sat on one of the squashy sofas, which was a lot more comfortable than the pale leather ones in his place in London. He thought of that halfway house and the boisterous fun he had had there all those years ago. He’d never thought he would ever laugh again after he’d been put into foster care, but he had. The place had been designed to broaden the horizons of the underprivileged kids who went there and it had worked, at least for him.

‘There’s that modesty of yours again,’ Rosie teased lightly, but her curiosity was getting the better of her fast and she joined him on the sofa, opposite end, but close enough to hear every word he was saying.

‘When you’re a kid in care, you have to make an effort not to slide down to the lowest common denominator,’ Matteo told her conversationally. ‘No one has any dreams for you. You have to make sure you have dreams for yourself or you sink to the bottom fast. I was lucky. I was bright. I learned the value of education.’ He shrugged. ‘I studied. I never skipped class. I set my sights on the only thing that mattered.’

‘What was that?’

‘Freedom. When you grow up without any advantages, money is the only thing that buys freedom, and by the age of eighteen I’d come to the conclusion that I would just have to make money and a lot of it. I was gifted at maths and got into Cambridge University. Got a first-class degree and was lucky enough to get taken on by a burgeoning investment bank. By twenty-five I’d made my first million. The bonuses were insane, but that life didn’t suit me. I don’t like taking orders or working for other people. So I jacked it in and began scouting around for companies to buy. Small IT companies, mainly. That’s the long and short of it. Rags to riches.’

‘Your opinion of me must be very low.’ She thought of her cosseted background, the trust fund that kept her going, the university career she had jettisoned because she had been bored stiff.

Matteo looked at her. She had such a transparent face. Yes, he really should have a low opinion of her, but there was something about her…

‘You’re not the sort of woman I would normally be drawn to,’ he was forced to concede.

She raised aquamarine eyes to his, and his jaw tightened, because she was hurt.

‘That’s not meant to be an insult, Rosie,’ he said roughly.

‘I know that. It’s the truth. What sort of women are you drawn to, just out of interest?’

‘Career women,’ he admitted.

‘Of course.’

‘We’re poles apart,’ he reminded her. ‘I’m sure you wouldn’t, under normal circumstances, go for someone like me.’

‘Definitely not.’ Rosie tilted her chin at a mutinous angle, pride coming to her rescue, because it cut to the quick that, whether he found her sexy or not—and she hated herself for dwelling on that stupid, throwaway compliment—he would never have given her the time of day if he hadn’t been dumped into playing out this charade. ‘I’m just shocked at how easily Candice fell for the charade,’ she mused truthfully.

‘People believe what they want to believe,’ Matteo said with a shrug. ‘Human nature. Your family want what they think is best for you and someone rich, powerful and wearing a suit fits the narrative.’ He looked at her. ‘And here’s another reason why no one will question this too deeply…’

Matteo looked at her flushed, pretty face ,but then his eyes drifted down to the tightness of her jumper straining over full breasts and the curve of her hips.

The atmosphere shifted. He could feel it and he knew that she would as well. He was just looking, he thought, because he wasn’t going to encourage any further complication to an already complicated and annoying situation. He was going to be sticking around for a handful of days and then he would be off, leaving her to assert her independence and damn him for the bastard he really wasn’t at all.

‘What’s that?’ Rosie asked breathlessly.

‘The most obvious reason of all. Opposites attract…’