About the Author

LYNNE GRAHAM was born in Northern Ireland and has been a keen romance reader since her teens. She is very happily married to an understanding husband who has learned to cook since she started to write! Her five children keep her on her toes. She has a very large dog who knocks everything over, a very small terrier who barks a lot, and two cats. When time allows, Lynne is a keen gardener.

Christmas with a Tycoon

The Italian’s Christmas Child

Lynne Graham

The Greek’s Christmas Bride

Lynne Graham

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-08534-2

CHRISTMAS WITH A TYCOON

The Italian’s Christmas Child © 2016 Lynne Graham The Greek’s Christmas Bride © 2016 Lynne Graham

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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www.millsandboon.co.uk

Version: 2020-03-02

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Table of Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

The Italian’s Christmas Child

Back Cover Text

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

EPILOGUE

The Greek’s Christmas Bride

Back Cover Text

Dedication

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

EPILOGUE

About the Publisher

The Italian’s Christmas Child

Lynne Graham

A Christmas consequence

Italian tycoon Vito Zaffari is waiting out the festive season while a family scandal fades from the press. So he’s come to his friend’s snow-covered English country cottage, determined to shut out the world.

Until a beautiful bombshell dressed as Santa literally crashes into his Christmas! Innocent Holly Cleaver sneaks under Vito’s defenses—he wants her like no other before and decides he must have her.

When Vito finds her gone the next day, he’s sure she’ll be easy to forget...until he discovers that their one night of passion has a shocking Christmas consequence!

Christmas is one of my favourite times of year, it’s about family and friends, so this is dedicated to you.

CHAPTER ONE

THE MOORLAND LANDSCAPE on Dartmoor was cold and crisp with ice. As the four-wheel drive turned off the road onto a rough lane, Vito saw the picturesque cottage sheltering behind winter-bare trees with graceful frosted branches. His lean, strong face grim with exhaustion, he got out of the car ahead of his driver, only tensing as he heard the sound of yet another text hitting his phone. Ignoring it, he walked into the property while the driver emptied the car.

Instant warmth greeted him and he raked a weary hand through the dense blue-black hair that the breeze had whipped across his brow. There was a welcome blaze in the brick inglenook fireplace and he fought the sense of relief threatening to engulf him. He was not a coward. He had not run away as his ex-fiancée had accused him of doing. He would have stood his ground and stayed in Florence had he not finally appreciated that the pursuit of the paparazzi and outrageous headlines were only being fuelled by his continuing presence.

He had grudgingly followed his best friend Apollo’s advice and had removed himself from the scene, recognising that his mother had quite enough to deal with when her husband was in hospital following a serious heart attack without also having to suffer the embarrassment of her son’s newly acquired notoriety. Undeniably, his friend had much more experience than Vito had of handling scandals and bad publicity. The Greek playboy had led a far less restricted life than Vito, who had known from an early age that he would become the next CEO of the Zaffari Bank. His grandfather had steeped him in the history and traditions of a family that could trace its beginnings back to the Middle Ages when the Zaffari name had stood shoulder to shoulder with words like honour and principle. No more, Vito reflected wryly. Now he would be famous for ever as the banker who had indulged in drugs and strippers.

Not his style, not his style at all, Vito ruminated ruefully, breaking free of his thoughts to lavishly tip his driver and thank him. When it came to the drug allegations, he could only suppress a groan. One of his closest friends at school had taken something that had killed him at a party and Vito had never been tempted by illegal substances. And the whores? In truth Vito could barely remember when he had last had sex. Although he had been engaged until a week earlier, Marzia had always been cool in that department.

‘She’s a lady to her backbone.’ His grandfather had sighed approvingly, shortly before his passing. ‘A Ravello with the right background and breeding. She will make a superb hostess and future mother for your children.’

Not now, though, Vito thought, glancing at his phone to discover that his ex had sent him yet another text. Dio mio, what did she want from him now? He had perfectly understood her decision to break off their engagement and he had wasted no time in putting the house she had been furnishing for their future occupation back on the market. That, however, had proved to be a move that had evidently rankled, even though he had assured Marzia that she was welcome to keep every stick of furniture in the place.

What about the Abriano painting? she’d texted.

He pointed out that his grandfather’s engagement gift would have to be returned. It was worth millions—how much more compensation was he to pay in terms of damages? He had offered her the house but she had refused it.

But in spite of his generosity, he still felt guilty. He had messed up Marzia’s life and embarrassed her. For probably the first time in his life he had wronged someone. On the spur of the moment he had made a decision that had hit Marzia very hard and even the sincerest apology could not lessen the impact of it. But he could not have told his former fiancée the truth because he could not have trusted her to keep it secret. And if the truth came out, his sacrifice would be pointless and it would plunge the only woman he had ever loved into gross humiliation and heartbreak. Vito had made a very tough choice and he was fully prepared to take the heat for it.

That, indeed, was why vanishing off-grid for a couple of weeks over Christmas still felt disturbingly gutless to Vito, whose natural instincts were pre-emptive and forceful.

* * *

‘Ritchie’s a lying, cheating scumbag!’ Holly’s flatmate and best friend, Pixie, ranted furiously down the phone.

Holly grimaced and pushed her hand through her heavy mane of black curling hair, her big blue eyes red-rimmed and sad as she checked her watch to see that she was still safely within her lunch hour. ‘You’re not going to get any argument from me on that score,’ she said ruefully.

‘He’s as bad as that last guy who borrowed all the money from you,’ Pixie reminded her with a typical lack of tact. ‘And the one before that who wanted to marry you so that you could act as a carer for his invalid mother!’

Wincing at her disheartening past history with men, Holly reflected that she could not have done worse in the dating stakes had she drawn up a specific list of selfish, dishonest losers. ‘Let’s not look back,’ she urged, keen to move on to more positive subjects.

Pixie refused to cooperate, saying, ‘So, what on earth are you planning to do now for your festive break with me, stuck in London and Ritchie out of the picture?’

A sudden grin lit Holly’s oval face with surprising enthusiasm. ‘I’m going to make Christmas for Sylvia instead!’

‘But she’s staying with her daughter in Yorkshire over the holiday...isn’t she?’

‘No, Alice had to cancel Sylvia at the last minute. Her house has been flooded by a burst pipe. Sylvia was horribly disappointed when she found out and then when I walked in on Ritchie with his floozy today, I realised that I could take two pieces of bad luck and make something good out of them...’

‘I really hate it when you pick yourself up off the floor and come over all optimistic again.’ Pixie sighed dramatically. ‘Please tell me you at least thumped Ritchie...’

‘I told him what I thought of him...briefly,’ Holly qualified with her innate honesty, for really she had been too squeamish to linger in the presence of her half-naked boyfriend and the woman he had chosen to cheat on her with. ‘So, is it all right for me to borrow your car to go to Sylvia’s?’

‘Of course it is. How else would you get there? But watch out: there’s snow forecast—’

‘They always like to talk about snow this close to Christmas,’ Holly demurred, unimpressed by the threat. ‘By the way, I’m taking our Christmas tree and ornaments with me and I’d already bought and made all the trimmings for a festive lunch. I’m going to put on that Santa outfit you wore for the Christmas party at the salon last year. Sylvia loves a laugh. She’ll appreciate it.’

‘Sylvia will be over the moon when she finds you on the doorstep,’ her friend predicted warmly. ‘Between losing her husband and having to move because she couldn’t manage the farmhouse alone any more, she’s had a horrible year.’

Holly held firmly on to the inspiring prospect of her foster mother’s happiness at her arrival while she finished her afternoon shift at the busy café where she worked. It was Christmas Eve and she adored the festive season, possibly because she had grown up mainly in foster care and had always been painfully conscious that she did not have a real family to share the experience with. In an effort to comfort her, Pixie had assured her that family Christmases could be a nightmare and that she was in love with an ideal of Christmas rather than the reality. But some day, somehow, Holly was determined to turn fantasy into reality with a husband and children of her own. That was her dream and in spite of recent setbacks she understood that it was hanging on to her dream that essentially kept her going through more challenging times.

Both she and Pixie had been fostered by Sylvia Ware from the age of twelve and the older woman’s warm acceptance and understanding had been far superior to the uncaring and occasionally neglectful homes Holly and Pixie had endured as younger children caught up in the care system. Holly had long regretted not paying more heed to Sylvia’s lectures about studying harder at school. Over the years Holly had attended so many different schools and made so many moves that she had simply drifted through her education, accepting that she would always be behind in certain subjects. Now at almost twenty-four, Holly had redressed that adolescent mistake by attending night classes to achieve basic qualifications but the road ahead to further education seemed so long and complex that it daunted her and she had instead chosen to study for a qualification in interior design online.

‘And what use is that to you?’ Pixie, who was a hairdresser, had asked baldly.

‘I’m really interested in it. I love looking at a room and thinking about how I can improve it.’

‘But people from our sort of background don’t get hired as interior designers,’ Pixie had pointed out. ‘I mean, we’re just ordinary workers trying to pay our bills, not people with fancy careers.’

And Holly had to acknowledge as she donned her friend’s Santa outfit that there was nothing fancy or impressive about her likely to combat that discouraging assurance. Fortunately the short dress had been far too generously sized on her infinitely more slender friend. Pixie might envy Holly’s curves but Pixie could eat whatever she liked and never put on a pound while Holly was engaged in a constant struggle to prevent her curves from taking over. Her golden skin tone hailed from an unknown father. He might or might not have been someone her erratic mother had met abroad. On the other hand he might simply have been a man who lived in the same street. Her only parent had told her so many lies that Holly had long accepted that the truth of her fatherhood would never be known.

At four feet ten inches tall, Holly, like her mother, lacked height. She pulled on warm black winter tights under the bright red satin and corseted dress. Thrusting her feet into cowboy boots rather than the heels Pixie had sported for her party a year earlier, Holly scowled at her gaudy, busty reflection in the mirror and jammed on the Santa hat in a defiant move. OK, she looked comical, she acknowledged, but her appearance would make Sylvia laugh and overlook the disappointment of not having her own daughters around her to celebrate Christmas Day with, and that was what was truly important.

Planning to spend the night on the sofa in Sylvia’s tiny living area, she packed her rucksack and carefully placed what remained of the decorations and the food into a box heavy enough to make her stagger on her final trip to the car. At least the food wouldn’t be going to waste, she thought with determined positivity, until a flashback of the ugly scene she had interrupted with Ritchie and the receptionist at his insurance office cut through her rebellious brain.

Her tummy rolled with nausea and her battered heart clenched. In the middle of the day as well, she thought with a shudder. She couldn’t imagine even having sex, never mind going at it on a desk in broad daylight. Possibly she wasn’t a very adventurous person. In fact both she and Pixie were probably pretty strait-laced. At twelve years old they had shuddered over the ugly chaos of broken relationships in their mothers’ lives and had solemnly decided to swear off men altogether. Of course once puberty had kicked in, with all its attendant confusing hormones, that rule had failed. At fourteen they had ditched their embargo on men while deciding that sex was the real danger and best avoided outside a serious relationship. A serious committed relationship. Holly’s eyes rolled at the memory of their mutual innocence. And so far neither she nor her friend had managed to have a serious committed relationship with a man.

All that considered thought about steering clear of sexual relationships hadn’t done her many favours either, Holly reflected with helpless insecurity. There had been men she really liked who ran a mile from what they saw as her outdated expectations and then there had been the others who stayed around for a few weeks or months, eager to be the first into her bed. Had she only ever been a sexual challenge to Ritchie? How long, for instance, had he been messing around with other women?

‘Did you expect me to wait for you for ever?’ Ritchie had shouted back at her, blaming her for his betrayal because she had held back on having sex with him. ‘What’s so special about you?’

Holly flinched at that ugly recollection because she had always known that there was nothing particularly special about her.

It was snowing as she drove off in the battered little hatchback that Pixie had christened Clementine, and she groaned. She loved the look of snow but she didn’t like to drive in it and she hated being cold. Thank goodness for the car, she acknowledged, as she rattled out of the small Devon town where she lived and worked.

Snow was falling fast by the time she reached Sylvia’s home, which was dismayingly dark. Perhaps the older woman was out at a church service or visiting a neighbour. Jamming down her hat over the mass of hair fighting to escape its confines, Holly rapped on the door and waited, stamping her feet to keep warm. After a couple of minutes she knocked again and then she followed the communal path to the little house next door, which was brightly lit, and knocked there instead.

‘I’m sorry to bother you but I wondered if you knew where Mrs Ware has gone and if she’ll be home soon,’ Holly asked with a friendly smile.

‘Sylvia left this afternoon. I helped her pack—she was in such a tizzy because she wasn’t expecting anyone,’ the elderly little woman at the door told her.

Holly frowned, her heart sinking. ‘So, she went to her daughter’s after all, then?’

‘Oh, no, it wasn’t the daughter who came, it was her son. Big tall chap in a suit. He’s taking her back to Bruges or Belgium or some place,’ the neighbour told her less certainly.

‘Brussels. That’s where Stephen lives. Do you know how long she’ll be away?’

‘A couple of weeks at least, she seemed to think...’

As deflated as a pricked balloon, Holly walked back to her car.

‘You watch yourself driving home,’ the old lady called after her. ‘There’s to be heavy snow tonight.’

‘Thanks, I will,’ Holly promised, forcing a smile. ‘Merry Christmas!’

And a very merry Christmas it was going to be on her own, she thought unhappily, annoyed to find that her eyes were prickling with tears. After all, Sylvia was going to have the best possible Christmas with her son and the grandchildren she rarely saw. Holly was really, really pleased that Stephen had swooped in from abroad to save the day. He and his wife were rare visitors but he had at least made the effort and now his mother wouldn’t have to spend her first Christmas as a widow alone. Holly sniffed and blinked back the tears, scolding herself for being so selfish. She was young and healthy and employed. She had nothing to complain about, nothing at all.

Maybe she was simply missing Pixie, she reasoned, as she drove with care on the steep, icy road that climbed up over the moors. Pixie’s kid brother was in some sort of trouble and Pixie had taken time off to go and stay with him and sort it out. It was probably financial trouble but Holly wouldn’t ask any awkward questions or offer unwelcome advice because she didn’t want to hurt her friend, who was deeply attached to her horribly self-centred sibling. Everyone had problems, she reminded herself doggedly, tensing as she felt the tyres of the car shift into a near skid on the slippery surface and slowing her speed even more. She had far fewer problems than most people and had no excuse whatsoever for feeling sorry for herself.

Ritchie? Well, that wasn’t an excuse. So, she had got hurt but then Pixie would point out that she was too soft in that line, too prone to thinking well of people and being knocked back hard when they let her down. Pixie was more of a cynic, strong on distrust as a means of self-defence, except when it came to her own brother.

Holly peered out of the windscreen because visibility was fading fast with the wipers unable to keep up with the heavy snow. She wasn’t the dramatic type, she assured herself, as the car coasted down a hill that seemed steeper than it had seemed when she drove over it earlier that evening, but the weather was foul and the light snowfall she had dimly expected now bore a closer resemblance to a blizzard.

And then without the smallest warning, and to the accompaniment of her strangled scream, the car glided in the most terrifying slow motion off the road into a ditch where it tilted over and wedged fast with a loud, nerve-racking crunch of metal. After switching off the engine, Holly breathed in slow and deep to calm herself. She was alive, no other car was involved and nobody was hurt. There was much to be thankful for, she told herself bracingly.

Sadly that was a conviction that took a beating once she climbed out with some difficulty, owing to the angle the car had crashed at, to inspect the damage. The side wing of Pixie’s elderly vehicle was crushed up against a large rock, which had presumably been placed to mark the entrance to the lane. My goodness, how much will the repairs cost? was her first fearful thought. It was her responsibility, not Pixie’s.

A spark of fear assailed her only after she had examined her surroundings. The road was deserted and lay under a covering of unbroken snow. It was a bad night and it was Christmas Eve and she didn’t think there would be much passing traffic, if any. As she stood there nursing her mobile phone and wondering what she was going to do, Holly had never felt more lonely. She had no close friend she could ring and drag out in such dreadful weather on such a special night. No, she was on her own, sink or swim. Consternation gripped her when she couldn’t get a signal on her phone to use it. Only then did she turn round to look again at the lane she stood beside and there, like a faint beacon in the darkness, she saw the lights of what could only be a house and relief filled her to overflowing. Hopefully it was occupied and the occupant had a landline she could use to call for a breakdown truck.

* * *

Vito was savouring a glass of award-winning wine and wondering what to do with the evening when the knocker on the door sounded. Taken aback, he frowned because he hadn’t heard a car and there were no lights outside. Did the local caretaker live within walking distance? He peered out through the spyhole and saw a red-and-white Santa hat. Someone was definitely at the wrong house because Vito hated Christmas. He yanked open the door and enormous blue eyes like velvet pansies looked up at him. At first he thought his visitor was a child and then his eyes dropped and took in the swell of breasts visible between the parted edges of her coat and he registered that, although she might be very small, she was all woman.

Holly stared up in wonderment at the male who appeared in the doorway. He looked like every fantasy male she had ever dreamt about meeting all rolled into one spectacular package. In fact he was so gorgeous with his black hair, designer stubble and dark, deep-set, mysterious eyes that he made her teeth clench in dismay because he didn’t look approachable or helpful or anything that might have encouraged her. That he wore a very formal dark business suit with a white shirt and natty gold tie didn’t help to relax her either.

‘If you’re looking for a party, you’re at the wrong house,’ Vito told her loftily, recalling his friend’s warnings about how sneaky the paparazzi could be. If he’d thought about that risk, he wouldn’t have answered the door at all.

‘I’m looking for a phone. Mine has no reception here and my car went off the road at the foot of your lane,’ Holly explained in a rush. ‘Do you have a landline?’

Exasperation flashed through Vito, who had far too much sensitive information on his cell phone to consider loaning it to anyone. ‘This isn’t my house. I’ll look and see,’ he fielded drily.

As he turned on his heel without inviting her in out of the heavily falling snow, Holly grimaced and shivered because she wasn’t dressed for bad weather, having only thrown on a raincoat to cover her outfit because she had known she would be warm inside the car. Not Mr Nice Guy, anyway, she thought ruefully. She had recognised the impatience in those electrifyingly dark magnetic eyes, watched the flare of his nostrils and the tightening of his wide, sculpted mouth as he’d bit back a withering comment. She was good at reading faces, even gorgeous ones, she conceded, as she shifted her feet in a vain effort to heat the blood freezing in her veins. She didn’t think she had ever seen a more handsome man, no, not even on a movie screen, but personality-wise she reckoned that there was a good chance that he was chillier than an icicle.

‘There is a phone... You may step inside to use it,’ he invited grudgingly, his foreign accent edging every syllable in a very attractive way.

Holly reddened with discomfiture, already well aware that she was not a welcome visitor. She dug out her phone to scroll through numbers for Pixie’s car mechanic, Bill, who ran a breakdown service. As she did so, she missed seeing the step in front of her and tripped over it, falling forward with a force that would have knocked the breath from her body had not strong arms snapped out to catch her before she fell.

‘Watch out...’ Taken aback by a level of clumsiness utterly unknown to a male as surefooted as a cat, Vito virtually lifted her into the porch. As her hair briefly brushed his face he was engulfed by the scent of oranges, sweet and sun-warmed. But it was only by touching her and seeing her face below the lights that he registered that she was almost blue with cold. ‘Maledizione, you’re freezing! Why didn’t you tell me that?’

‘It’s enough of an imposition coming to the door—’

‘Yes, I would surely have been happier to trip over your frozen corpse on my doorstep in the morning!’ Vito fielded scathingly. ‘You should’ve told me—’

‘You’ve got eyes of your own and an off-putting manner. I don’t like bothering people,’ Holly said truthfully while she frantically rubbed her hands over her raincoat in an effort to get some feeling back into her fingers before she tried to work her phone again.

Vito gazed down at her from his height of six foot one. He was bemused by her criticism when he was trying to be pleasant and when he could not recall when a woman had last offered him a word of criticism. Even in the act of breaking their engagement, Marzia had contrived not to speak a word of condemnation. Either a woman of saintly tolerance or one who didn’t give a damn who he might have slept with behind her back? It was a sobering thought.

An off-putting manner? Could that be true about him? His grandfather had taught him to maintain distance between himself and others and he had often thought that a useful gift when it came to commanding a large staff, none of whom dared to take liberties with their authoritarian CEO.

Thoroughly irritated by the thoughts awakened by his visitor and that unfamiliar self-questioning mode, he swiped the phone from between her shaking fingers and said firmly, ‘Go and warm up first by the fire and then make the call.’

‘Are you sure you don’t mind?’

‘I will contrive to bear it.’

Halfway towards the wonderful blaze of the log fire illuminating the dim interior, Holly spun round with a merriment in her eyes that lit up her whole face and she laughed. ‘You’re a sarky one, aren’t you?’

In the firelight her eyes were bright as sapphires and that illuminating smile made the breath catch in his throat because it lent her incredible appeal. And Vito was not the sort of male who noticed women very often and when he did he usually swiftly stifled the impulse. But for a split second that playful tone and that radiant smile knocked him sideways and he found himself staring. He scanned the glorious dark hair that fell free of the Santa hat as she whipped it off, before lowering his appreciative gaze to the wonderfully generous thrust of her breasts above a neat little waist, right down to the hem of the shimmering dress that revealed slim knees and shapely calves incongruously encased in cowboy boots. He threw his shoulders back, bracing as the pulse at his groin beat out a different kind of tension.

Holly connected momentarily with eyes of gold semi-veiled by the lush black sweep of his lashes and something visceral tightened low in her pelvis as she let her attention linger on his lean, hard bone structure, which was stunningly hard and male from his level dark brows to his arrogant classic nose and his strong, sculpted jawline. Just looking at him sent the oddest flash of excitement through her and she reddened uneasily, and deliberately spun back to the fire to hold her hands out to the heat. So, he was very good-looking. That didn’t mean she had to gape like an awestruck fan at a rock star, did it? She was only inside his house to use the phone, she reminded herself in embarrassment.

She flexed her fingers. ‘Where did you put my phone?’

As she half turned it was settled neatly into her hand and she opened it and scrolled through the numbers. He handed her the handset of the house phone and she pressed out Bill’s number, lifting it to her ear while carefully not glancing again in her host’s direction.

Vito was engaged in subduing his sexual arousal and reeling in shock from the need to do so. What was he? A teenager again? She wasn’t his type...if he had a type. The women in his life had invariably been tall, elegant blondes and she was very small, very curvy and very, very sexy, he conceded involuntarily as she moved about the room while she talked, her luxuriant hair rippling across her shoulders, her rounded hips swaying. She was apologising for disturbing someone on Christmas Eve and she apologised at great length instead of getting straight to the point of her problem with her car.

What were the chances that she was a particularly clever member of the paparazzi brigade? Vito had flown into the UK on a private plane to a private airfield and travelled to the cottage in a private car. Only Apollo and his mother, Concetta, knew where he was. But Apollo had warned him that the paps went to extraordinary lengths to steal photos and find stories they could sell. His perfect white teeth gritted. At the very least, he needed to check that there was a broken-down car at the foot of the lane.

‘Boxing Day?’ Holly was practically whispering in horror.

‘And possibly only if the snowplough has been through ahead of me,’ Bill told her apologetically. ‘I’m working flat out tonight as it is. Where exactly is the car?’

The older man was local and, knowing the road well, was able to establish where she was. ‘Aye, I know the house down there—foreign-owned holiday home as far as I know. And you’re able to stay there?’

‘Yes,’ Holly said in as reassuring a tone as she could contrive while wondering if she was going to have to bed down in Pixie’s car. ‘Do you know anyone else I could ring?’

She tried the second number but there was no response at all. Swallowing hard, she set the digital phone down. ‘I’ll go back to the car now,’ she told Vito squarely.

‘I’ll walk down with you... See if there’s anything I can do—’

‘Unless you have a tractor to haul it out of the ditch I shouldn’t think so.’ Holly buttoned her coat, tied the belt and braced herself to face the great outdoors again.

As she straightened her shoulders she looked round the room with belated admiration, suddenly noticing that the opulent décor was an amazing and highly effective marriage of traditional and contemporary styles. In spite of the ancient brick inglenook fireplace, the staircase had a glass surround and concealed lights. But she also noticed that there was one glaring omission: there were no festive decorations of any kind.

Vito yanked on his cashmere coat and scarf over the suit he still wore.

‘If you don’t have boots, I can’t let you go down there with me... You’ll get your shoes soaked,’ Holly told him ruefully, glancing at the polished, city-type footwear he sported with his incredibly stylish suit, which moulded to his well-built, long-legged frame as though specifically tailored to do so.

Vito walked into the porch, which boasted a rack of boots, and, picking out a pair, donned them. Her pragmatism had secretly impressed him. Vito was extremely clever but, like many very clever people, he was not particularly practical and the challenges of rural living in bad weather lay far outside his comfort zone.

‘My name is Holly,’ she announced brightly on the porch.

‘Vito...er...Vito Sorrentino,’ Vito lied, employing his father’s original surname.

His mother had been an only child, a daughter when his grandfather had longed for a son. At his grandfather’s request, Vito’s father had changed his name to Zaffari when he married Vito’s mother to ensure that the family name would not die out. Ciccio Sorrentino had been content to surrender his name in return for the privilege of marrying a fabulously wealthy banking heiress. There was no good reason for Vito to take the risk of identifying himself to a stranger. Right now the name Zaffari was cannon fodder for the tabloids across Europe and the news of his disappearance and current location would be worth a great deal of money to a profiteer. And if there was one gift Vito had in spades it was the gilded art of making a profit and ensuring that nobody got to do it at his expense.

His grandfather would have turned in his grave at the mere threat of his grandson plunging the family name and the family bank into such a sleazy scandal. Vito, however, was rather less naive. Having attended a board meeting before his departure, Vito was aware that he could virtually do no wrong. All the Zaffari directors cared about was that their CEO continued to ensure that the Zaffari bank carried on being the most successful financial institution in Europe.

CHAPTER TWO

‘YOU SAID THIS wasn’t your house,’ Holly reminded him through chattering teeth as they walked out into the teeth of a gale laced with snow.

‘A friend loaned it to me for a break.’

‘And you’re staying here alone?’

‘Sì...yes.’

‘By choice...alone...at Christmas?’ Holly framed incredulously.

‘Why not?’ Vito loathed Christmas but that was none of her business and he saw no need to reveal anything of a personal nature. His memories of Christmas were toxic. His parents, who rarely spent time together, had squabbled almost continuously through the festive break. His mother had made a real effort to hide that reality and make the season enjoyable, but Vito had always been far too intelligent even as a child not to understand what was happening around him. He had seen that his mother loved his father but that her love was not returned. He had watched her humiliate herself in an effort to smooth over Ciccio’s bad moods and even worse temper. He had listened to her beg for five minutes of her husband’s attention. He had eventually grasped that the ideal goal composed of marriage, family and respectability could be a very expensive shrine to worship at. Had he not been made aware that it was his inherent duty to carry on the family line, nothing would have persuaded Vito into matrimony.

He studied the old car in the ditch with an amount of satisfaction that bemused him. It was a shabby ancient wreck of a vehicle. It had to mean that Holly was not a plant, not a spy or a member of the paparazzi, but a genuine traveller in trouble. Not that that reality softened his irritation over the fact that he was now stuck with her for at least one night. He had listened to the phone call she had made. Short of it being a matter of life or death, nobody was willing to come out on such a night. Of course he could have thrown his wealth at the problem to take care of it but nothing would more surely advertise his presence than the hiring of a helicopter to remove his unwanted guest, and he was doubtful that even a helicopter could fly in such poor conditions.

‘As you see...it’s stuck,’ Holly pointed out unnecessarily while patting the bonnet of the car as if it were a live entity in need of comfort. ‘It’s my friend’s car and she’s going to be really upset about this.’

‘Accidents happen...particularly if you choose to drive without taking precautions on a road like this in this kind of weather.’

In disbelief, Holly rounded on him, twin spots of high colour sparking over her cheekbones. ‘It wasn’t snowing this bad when I left home! There were no precautions!’

‘Let’s get your stuff and head back to the house.’

Suppressing the anger his tactless comment had roused with some difficulty, Holly studied him in astonishment. ‘You’re inviting me back to the house? You don’t need to. I can—’

‘I’m a notoriously unsympathetic man but even I could not leave you to sleep in a car in a snowstorm on Christmas Eve!’ Vito framed impatiently. ‘Now, may we cut the conversation and head back to the heat? Or do you want to pat the car again?’

Face red now with mortification, Holly opened the boot and dug out her rucksack to swing it up onto her back.

The rucksack was almost as big as she was, Vito saw in disbelief. ‘Let me take that.’

‘No... I was hoping you’d take the box because it’s heavier.’

Stubborn mouth flattening, Vito reached in with reluctance for the sizeable box and hefted it up with a curled lip. ‘Do you really need the box as well?’

‘Yes, it’s got all my stuff in it...please,’ Holly urged.

Her amazingly blue eyes looked up at him and he felt strangely disorientated. Her eyes were as translucent a blue as the Delft masterpieces his mother had conserved from his grandfather’s world-famous collection. They trudged back up the lane with Vito maintaining a disgruntled silence as he carried the bulky carton.

‘Porca miseria! What’s in the box?’

‘My Christmas decorations and some food.’

‘Why are you driving round with Christmas decorations and food? Of course, you were heading to a party,’ he reasoned for himself, thinking of what she wore.

‘No, I wasn’t. I intended to spend the night with my foster mother because I thought she was going to be on her own for Christmas. But...turns out her son came and collected her and she didn’t know I was planning to surprise her, so when I went off the road I was driving home again.’

‘Where’s home?’

She named a town Vito had never heard of.

‘Where are you from?’

‘Florence...in Italy,’ he explained succinctly.

‘I do know where Florence is...it is famous,’ Holly countered, glancing up at him while the snow drifted down steadily, quietly, cocooning them in the small space lit by his torch. ‘So, you’re Italian.’

‘You do like to state the obvious, don’t you?’ Vito derided, stomping into the porch one step behind her.

‘I hate that sarcasm of yours!’ Holly fired back at him angrily, taking herself almost as much by surprise as she took him because she usually went out of her way to avoid conflict.

An elegant black brow raised, Vito removed the boots, hung his coat and scarf and then lifted the rucksack from her bent shoulders. ‘What have you got in here? Rocks?’

‘Food.’

‘The kitchen here is packed with food.’

‘Do you always know better than everyone else about everything?’ Holly, whose besetting fault was untidiness, carefully hung her wet coat beside his to be polite.

‘I very often do know better,’ Vito answered without hesitation.

Holly spread a shaken glance over his lean, darkly handsome and wholly serious features and groaned out loud. ‘No sense of humour either.’

‘Knowing one’s own strengths is not a flaw,’ Vito informed her gently.

‘But it is if you don’t consider your faults—’

‘And what are your faults?’ Vito enquired saccharine smooth, as she headed for the fire like a homing pigeon and held her hands out to the heat.

Holly wrinkled her snub nose and thought hard. ‘I’m untidy. An incurable optimist. Too much of a people-pleaser... That comes of all those years in foster care and trying to fit in to different families and different schools.’ She angled her head to one side, brown hair lying in a silken mass against one creamy cheek as she pondered. In the red Santa get-up, she reminded him of a cheerful little robin he had once seen pacing on a fence. ‘I’m too forgiving sometimes because I always want to think the best of people or give them a second chance. I get really cross if I run out of coffee but I don’t like conflict and avoid it. I like to do things quickly but sometimes that means I don’t do them well. I fuss about my weight but I still don’t exercise...’

As Vito listened to that very frank résumé he almost laughed. There was something intensely sweet about that forthright honesty. ‘Strengths?’ he prompted, unable to resist the temptation.

‘I’m honest, loyal, hardworking, punctual... I like to make the people I care about happy,’ she confided. ‘That’s what put me on that road tonight.’

‘Would you like a drink?’ Vito enquired.

‘Red wine, if you have it...’ Moving away from the fire, Holly approached her rucksack. ‘Is it all right if I put the food in the kitchen?’

She walked through the door he indicated and her eyebrows soared along with the ceiling. Beyond that door the cottage changed again. A big extension housed an ultra-modern kitchen diner with pale sparkling granite work surfaces and a fridge large enough to answer the storage needs of a restaurant. She opened it up. It was already generously packed with goodies, mainly of the luxury version of ready meals. She arranged her offerings on an empty shelf and then walked back into the main room to open the box and extract the food that remained.

Obviously, she was stuck here in a strange house with a strange man for one night at the very least, Holly reflected anxiously. A slight frisson of unease trickled down her spine. Vito hadn’t done or said anything threatening, though, she reminded herself. Like her, he recognised practicalities. He was stuck with her because she had nowhere else to go and clearly he wasn’t overjoyed by the situation. Neither one of them had a choice but to make the best of it.

‘You brought a lot of food with you,’ Vito remarked from behind her.

Holly flinched because she hadn’t heard him approach and she whipped her head around. ‘I assumed I would be providing a Christmas lunch for two people.’

Walking back out of the kitchen when she had finished, she found him frowning down at the tree ornaments visible in the box.

‘What is all this stuff?’ he asked incredulously.

Holly explained. ‘Would it be all right if I put up my tree here? I mean, it is Christmas Eve and I won’t get another opportunity for a year,’ she pointed out. ‘Christmas is special to me.’

Vito was still frowning. ‘Not to me,’ he admitted flatly, for he had only bad memories of the many disappointing Christmases he had endured as a child.

Flushing, Holly closed the box and pushed it over to the wall out of the way. ‘That’s not a problem. You’re doing enough letting me stay here.’

Dio mio, he was relieved that she was only a passing stranger because her fondness for the sentimental trappings of the season set his teeth on edge. Of course she wanted to put up her Christmas tree! Anyone who travelled around wearing a Santa hat was likely to want a tree on display as well! He handed her a glass of wine, trying not to feel responsible for having doused her chirpy flow of chatter.

‘I’m heading upstairs for a shower,’ Vito told her, because even though he had worn the boots, his suit trousers were damp. ‘Will you be all right down here on your own?’

‘Of course... This is much better than sitting in a crashed car,’ Holly assured him before adding more awkwardly, ‘Do you have a sweater or anything I could borrow? I only have pyjamas and a dress with me. My foster mum’s house is very warm so I didn’t pack anything woolly.’

Vito had not a clue what was in his luggage because he hadn’t packed his own case since he was a teenager at boarding school. ‘I’ll see what I’ve got.’

Through the glass barrier of the stairs, Holly watched his long, powerful legs disappear from view and a curious little frisson rippled through her tense body. She heaved a sigh. So, no Christmas tree. What possible objection could anyone have to a Christmas tree? Did Vito share Ebenezer Scrooge’s loathing for the festive season? Reminding herself that she was very lucky not to be shivering in Pixie’s car by the side of the road, she settled down on the shaggy rug by the hearth and simply luxuriated in the warmth emanating from the logs glowing in the fire.

Vito thought about Holly while he took a shower. It was a major mistake. Within seconds of picturing her sexy little body he went hard as a rock, his body reacting with a randy enthusiasm that astonished him. For months, of course, his libido had very much taken a back seat to the eighteen-hour days he was working. This year the bank’s revenues would, he reminded himself with pride, smash all previous records. He was doing what he had been raised to do and he was doing it extremely well, so why did he feel so empty, so joyless? Vito asked himself in exasperation.

Intellectually he understood that there was more to life than the pursuit of profit but realistically he was and always had been a workaholic. An image of Holly chattering by the fire assailed him. Holly with her wonderful curves and her weird tree in a box. She was unusual, not remotely like the sort of women Vito usually met, and her originality was a huge draw. He had no idea what she was likely to say next. She wasn’t wearing make-up. She didn’t fuss with her appearance. She said exactly what she thought and felt—she had no filter. Towelling off, he tried to stop thinking about Holly. Obviously she turned him on. Equally obviously he wasn’t going to do anything about it.

Why the hell not? The words sounded in the back of his brain. That battered old car, everything about her spelled out the message that she came from a different world. Making any kind of a move would be taking advantage, he told himself grimly. Yet the instant he had seen Holly he had wanted her, wanted her with an intensity he hadn’t felt around a woman since he was a careless teenager. It was the situation. He could relax with a woman who had neither a clue who he was nor any idea of the sleazy scandal currently clinging to his name. And why wouldn’t he want her? After all, he was very probably sex-starved, he told himself impatiently as he tossed out the contents of one of his suitcases and then opened a second before finding a sweater he deemed suitable.

Holly watched Vito walk down the stairs with the fluid, silent grace of a panther. He had looked amazing in his elegant business suit, but in black designer jeans and a long-sleeved red cotton tee he was drop-dead gorgeous and, with those high cheekbones and that full masculine mouth, very much in the male-model category. She blinked and stared, feeling the colour rise in her cheeks, her self-consciousness taking over, for she had literally never ever been in the radius of such a very handsome male and it was just a little like bumping into a movie star without warning.

‘Here... You can roll up the sleeves.’ Vito tossed the sweater into her lap. ‘If you want to freshen up, there’s a shower room just before you enter the kitchen.’

Holly scrambled upright and grabbed her rucksack to take his advice. A little alone time to get her giddy head in order struck her as a very good idea. When she saw herself in the mirror in the shower room she was affronted by the wind-tousled explosion of her hair and the amount of cleavage she was showing in the Santa outfit. Stripping off, she went for a shower, exulting in the hot water and the famous-name shower gel on offer. Whoever owned the cottage had to be pretty comfortably off, she decided with a grimace, which probably meant that Vito was as well. He wore a very sleek gold-coloured watch and the fit of his suit had been perfection. But then what did she know about such trappings or the likely cost of them? Pixie would laugh to hear such musings when the closest Holly had ever got to even dating an office worker was Ritchie, the cheating insurance salesman.

She pulled on the blue sweater, which plunged low enough at the neck to reveal her bra. She yanked it at the back to raise it to a decent level at the front and knew she would have to remember to keep her shoulders back. She rolled up the sleeves and, since the sweater covered her to her knees, left off her tights. Her hair she rescued with a little diligent primping until it fell in loose waves round her shoulders. Frowning at her bunny slippers, she crammed them back in her rucksack, deciding that bare feet were preferable. Cosmetics-wise she was pretty much stuck with the minimal make-up she had packed for Sylvia’s. Sighing, she used tinted moisturiser, subtle eyeliner and glossed her lips. Well, at short notice that was the best she could do. In any case it was only her pride that was prompting her to make the effort. After all, a male as sophisticated as Vito Sorrentino wouldn’t look at her anyway, she thought with a squirming pang of guilty disappointment. Why on earth was she thinking about him that way?

And thinking about Vito that way put her back in mind of Ritchie, which was unfortunate. But it also reminded her that she hadn’t taken her pill yet and she dug into her bag to remedy that, only to discover that she had left them at home. As to why a virgin was taking contraceptive precautions, she and Pixie both did on a ‘better safe than sorry’ basis. Both of their mothers had messed up their lives with early unplanned pregnancies and neither Holly nor Pixie wanted to run the same risk.

Of course a couple of years back Holly had had different and more romantic expectations. She had fondly imagined that she would eventually meet a man who would sweep her away on a tide of passion and she had believed that she had to protect herself in the face of such temptation. Sadly, nothing any boyfriend had yet made her feel could have fallen into a category that qualified as being swept away. Since then Holly had wondered if there was a distinct possibility that she herself simply wasn’t a very passionate woman. Still, Holly reasoned wryly, there was nothing wrong with living in hope, was there?

Somehow Vito had been fully expecting Holly to reappear with a full face of make-up. Instead she appeared with her face rosy and apparently untouched, his sweater drooping round her in shapeless, bulky folds, her tiny feet bare. And Vito almost laughed out loud in appreciation and relief. What remained of his innate wariness was evaporating fast because no woman he had ever yet met could possibly have put less effort into trying to attract him than Holly. Before his engagement and even since it he had been targeted so often by predatory women that he had learned to be guarded in his behaviour around females, both inside and outside working hours. His rare smile flashed across his lean, strong face.

Holly collided involuntarily with molten gold eyes enhanced by thick black lashes and then that truly heart-stopping smile that illuminated his darkly handsome features, and her heart not only bounced in her chest but also skipped an entire beat in reaction. She came to an abrupt halt, her fingers dropping from her rucksack. ‘Do you want me to make something to eat?’ she offered shakily, struggling to catch her breath.

‘No, thanks. I ate before you arrived,’ Vito drawled lazily, watching her shrug back the sweater so that it didn’t slip too low at the front. No, she really wasn’t trying to pull him and he was captivated as he so rarely was by a woman.

‘Then you won’t mind if I eat? I brought supper with me,’ she explained, moving past him towards the kitchen.

She’s not even going to try to entertain me, Vito reflected, positively rapt in admiration in receipt of that clear demonstration of indifference.

When had he become so arrogant that he expected every young woman he came into contact with to make a fuss of him and a play for him?

It wasn’t arrogance, he reasoned squarely. He was as rich as Midas and well aware that that was the main reason for his universal appeal. He poured Holly a fresh glass of wine and carried it into the kitchen for her. She closed the oven, wool stretching to softly define her heart-shaped derrière.

‘Do you have a boyfriend?’ he heard himself enquire, seemingly before his brain had formed the question, while his attention was still lodged on the sweater that both concealed and revealed her lush curves.

‘No. As of today I have an ex,’ Holly told him. ‘You?’

‘I’m single.’ Vito lounged back against the kitchen island, the fine fabric of his pants pulling taut to define long, muscular thighs and...the noticeable masculine bulge at his crotch. Heat surging into her cheeks, Holly dragged her straying attention off him and stared down at her wine. Since when had she looked at a man there? Her breath was snarled up in her throat and her entire body felt super sensitive.

‘What happened today?’ Vito probed.

‘I caught Ritchie having sex with his receptionist on his lunch break,’ Holly told him in a rush before she could think better of that humiliating admission. Unfortunately looking at Vito had wrecked her composure to such an extent that she barely knew what she was saying any more.

CHAPTER THREE

IN RECEIPT OF that startling confession, Vito had the most atrocious desire to laugh, but he didn’t want to hurt Holly’s feelings. Her cheeks had gone all pink again and her eyes were evasive as if that confession had simply slipped accidentally from her lips. He breathed in deep. ‘Tough. What did you do?’

‘Told him what I thought of him in one sentence, walked out again.’ Holly tilted her chin, anger darkening her blue eyes as she remembered the scene she had interrupted. ‘I hate liars and cheats.’

‘I’m shockingly well behaved in that line. Too busy working,’ Vito countered, relieved that she had not a clue about the scandal that had persuaded him to leave Florence and even less idea of who he was. In recent days he had been forced to spend way too much time in the company of people too polite to say what they thought but not too polite to stare at him and whisper. Anonymity suddenly had huge appeal. He finally felt that he could relax.

‘So, why are you staying here all alone?’ Holly asked, sipping her wine, grateful he had glossed over her gaffe about Ritchie without further comment.

‘Burnout. I needed a break from work.’ Vito gave her the explanation he had already decided on in the shower. ‘Obviously I wasn’t expecting weather like this.’

He was unusually abstracted, however, ensnared by the manner in which the blue of his sweater lit up her luminous eyes. He was also wondering how she could possibly look almost irresistibly cute in an article of his clothing when the thick wool draped her tiny body like a blanket and only occasionally hinted at the treasures that lay beneath. What was the real secret of her appeal? he was asking himself in bewilderment, even though the secret was right in front of him. She had a wonderfully feminine shape, amazing eyes and a torrent of dark hair that tumbled round her shoulders in luxuriant loose curls. But what was most different about Holly was that she was genuine as so few people dared to be. She put on no show and said nothing for effect; indeed she followed a brand of candour that was blunt to the point of embarrassing.

‘Why are you staring at me?’ Holly asked baldly, straightening her spine and squaring her little shoulders for all the world as though she was bracing herself for him to say something critical.

‘Am I?’ Vito fielded, riveting dark eyes brimming with amusement as he straightened to leave the kitchen. ‘Sorry... I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.’

He was setting up a games console when Holly joined him with her plate of savoury snacks. ‘I thought I’d have a game,’ he told her, ‘but perhaps you would rather watch TV—’

‘No, what game is it?’

It was a war game Holly knew well. ‘I’ll play you,’ she told him.

Vito shot her a startled glance. ‘You play?’

‘Of course I do. Every foster family had a console and you learned to play with the other kids to fit in,’ she pointed out wryly.

‘Dio mio...how many different families did you live with?’

‘I never counted but there were a lot of them. I’d get settled somewhere and then someone somewhere would decide I should have another go at bonding with my mother, and I’d be shot back to her again for a few months.’

Vito was frowning as he set up the game. ‘Your mother was still alive?’

‘Just not a good parent. It never worked out with her,’ Holly completed wryly, keen to gloss over the facts with as little detail as possible while she watched Vito, lean hips flexing down into powerful thighs as he bent down.

From her position kneeling on the floor, she could admire the fluidity of his long-fingered brown hands as he leant over the console. His every movement was incredibly graceful, she acknowledged. And when she glanced up at him she noticed the black density of his eyelashes and the definition that dark luxuriance lent to his already stunning dark eyes. Her nipples were tight little buds inside her bra and she felt hot.

‘Your father?’ Vito queried.

‘I had no idea who my father was so he didn’t come into the picture. But my mother still being around was the reason why I moved around so much, because she refused to allow me to be put up for adoption. Every time I went back to my mother and then had to leave her again to go back into care, I ended up with a new foster family.’ Holly grimaced and shrugged. ‘It was a messy way to grow up.’

Vito had always thought he had it rough with a tyrannical grandfather, warring parents and being an only child on whom huge expectations rested. But his glimpse at what lay on Holly’s side of the fence sobered him and gave him an unsettling new perspective. He had always had security and he had always known he was loved. And although Holly had enjoyed neither advantage, she wasn’t moaning about it, he thought with grudging appreciation.

As Vito lounged back on the sofa his six-pack abs rippled below the soft cotton stretched over his broad chest and Holly’s mouth ran dry. He was amazingly beautifully built and the acknowledgement sent colour surging into her cheeks because she had never looked at a man’s body and thought that before. But she couldn’t take her eyes off him and it mortified her. It was as if she had been locked back into a teenager’s body again because there was nothing sensible or controlled about what she was experiencing.

‘We’ll set the timer for a ten-minute challenge,’ Vito told her lightly, doubting that she would last the game that long.

Fortunately, Holly didn’t even have to think while she played him. In dark times the engrossing, mindless games had been her escape from the reality of a life that hurt too much. With the weapon she had picked she made kill after kill on screen and then the challenge was over and she had won.

‘You’re very fast,’ Vito conceded with a slashing grin of appreciation, because once again he could not think of a single woman who, having chosen to play him, would not have then allowed him to win even though she was a better player. Of course that was a debatable point when he didn’t actually know any other woman who could play.

‘Lots of practice over the years,’ Holly conceded, still recovering from the raw charisma of that wolfish grin that cracked right through his essential reserve. Gaming had relaxed him, warmed him up, melted that cool façade he wore to show the real man underneath. And now he didn’t just strike her as heartbreakingly handsome, he was downright irresistible. She shifted uneasily in her seat, her body tense and so weirdly super sensitive that even her clothes seemed to chafe her tender skin.

‘And the prize is...’ Vito’s attention locked like a missile to the soft pink fullness of her mouth and her nipples pinched into tight little points. ‘You get to put your Christmas tree up.’

Holly sprang off the seat. ‘Seriously?’ she exclaimed in surprise.

‘Seriously.’ Vito focused on that sparkling smile and gritted his teeth in a conscious attempt to cool off and quell his hard-on. He didn’t know what it was about her but one look from those melting blue eyes and he was hotter than hell. ‘Go ahead...’ He pinched one of the snacks on her plate by his feet. ‘Any more of these?’

Holly laughed. ‘I’ll put more on before I get the tree sorted.’

Vito watched her rush about full of energy, and suppressed a rueful sigh. It didn’t take a lot to make her happy. ‘Why does Christmas mean so much to you?’

‘I didn’t have it when I was very small,’ she admitted.

‘How can you not have Christmas?’

‘Mum didn’t celebrate it. Well, not in the family sense. There was no tree, no present, nothing. She went out partying but I didn’t know what the day was supposed to be until I went into care for the first time.’

Vito frowned. ‘And how did that happen?’

Holly hesitated, eyes troubled as her oval face stiffened. ‘You know, this is all very personal...’

‘I’m curious... I’ve never met anyone who grew up in care before,’ Vito told her truthfully, revelling in every fleeting expression that crossed her expressive little face. She was full to the brim with emotional responses. She was his exact opposite because she felt so much and showed even more. It shook him that he could find that ingenuousness so very appealing in a woman that he was challenged to look away from her.

Holly compressed her lips, those full pink lips with that dainty little cupid’s bow that called to him on a far more primitive level. ‘When I was six years old, Mum left me alone for three days over Christmas. I went to a neighbour because I was hungry and she called the police.’

Taken aback by that admission, Vito sat up very straight, dark-as-night eyes locked to her as she finished that little speech in an emotive surge. ‘Your mother abandoned you?’

‘Yes, but eventually she probably would have come back, as she’d done it before. I was put into a short-term foster home and the family gave me Christmas even though it was already over,’ Holly told him with a fond smile of remembrance.

‘And you’ve been making up for that loss ever since,’ Vito said drily, shrugging off the pangs of sympathy assailing him, taking refuge in edgy cynicism instead. He didn’t do emotion, avoiding such displays and feelings whenever he could because the memories of his mother’s raw pain in the face of his father’s rejections still disturbed him. As far as he was concerned, if you put your feelings out on display you were asking to be kicked in the teeth and it was not a risk he was prepared to take for anyone. Yet just looking at Holly he could tell that she had taken that same risk time and time again.

‘Probably. As obsessions go, Christmas is a fairly harmless one,’ Holly fielded before she got up to hurry into the kitchen and retrieve the snacks from the oven. After handing him the plate, she returned to winding the fairy lights round the small tree.

He watched the firelight flicker over her, illuminating a rounded cheekbone, a tempting stretch of gleaming thigh as she bent down, and the provocative rise of her curvy behind. ‘How old are you, Holly?’

Holly attached an ornament to a branch and glanced over her shoulder at him. As soon as she collided with his spellbinding dark golden eyes, her heart raced, her mouth ran dry and her mind went blank. ‘I’m twenty-four...tomorrow.’

Vito’s gaze glittered in the firelight. ‘It’s both Christmas and your birthday.’

‘Now it’s your turn. Tell me about you,’ Holly urged with unconcealed eagerness because everything about Vito Sorrentino made her insanely curious.

It should not have been an unexpected question but it hit Vito like a brick and he froze on the reality that having questioned her so thoroughly he could hardly refuse to respond in kind. He breathed in deep, squaring his broad shoulders, fighting his tension. ‘I’m the only child of ill-matched parents. Holiday periods when my father was expected to play his part as a family man were always very stressful because he hated being forced to spend time with us. Christmas fell into that category.’

‘Why haven’t they separated?’ He was so on edge talking about his family situation that it touched her heart. Such a beautiful man, so sophisticated and cool in comparison to her, so seemingly together and yet he too bore the damage of a wounding childhood. Holly was fascinated.

‘My mother was raised to believe that divorce is wrong...and she loves my father. She’s incredibly loyal to the people she loves.’ Vito spoke very stiffly because he had never in his life before shared that much about his family dynamics. He had been taught to live by the same code of secretive silence and polite denial that his mother had always observed. Even if the roof was falling in, appearances still had to be conserved. Breaking that code of silence with an outsider filled him with discomfiture.

‘That must’ve put a lot of pressure on you,’ Holly remarked, soulful big blue eyes pinned to him with an amount of sympathy far beyond what he considered necessary.

And yet inexplicably there was something in Vito that was warmed by that show of support. He came up off the sofa as though she had yanked a chain attached to his body, and pulled her up into his arms, and in neither of those moves did he recognise conscious thought or decision. It was instinct, pure instinct to reach for Holly.

He tugged her close, long brown fingers flying up to tilt her chin, and gazed down into those inviting clear eyes of hers. A split second later, he kissed her.

In shock, Holly simply stood there, conflicting feelings pulling her in opposing directions. Push him away, back off now, one voice urged. He finds me attractive, find out what it’s like, the other voice pleaded while she brimmed with secret pride. He touched her mouth slow and soft, nipping her lips lightly and teasingly, and she could hardly breathe. Her heart was thumping like a jackhammer inside her ribcage. His tongue eased apart the seam of her lips and flickered and a spasm of raw excitement thrilled down into her pelvis. With a hungry groan he tightened his arms round her.

Nothing had ever tasted as good as Vito’s mouth on hers and she trembled in reaction, her whole body awakening. Her hands linked round his neck as the hard, demanding pressure of his mouth sent a delicious heat spiralling down through her. She felt wonderfully warm and safe for the first time ever. In that moment of security she rejoiced in the glorious feel of his mouth and the taste of the wine on his tongue. His fingers splayed to mould to her hips and trailed down the backs of her thighs. Tiny little shivers of response tugged at her as she felt a tightening sensation at her core and her breasts felt achingly full.

Vito lifted his dark head. Dark golden eyes sought hers. ‘I want you,’ he husked.

‘I want you,’ Holly framed shakily and it was the very first time she understood the need to say that to someone.

In all the years she had thought about having sex it had always been because sex was expected of her in a relationship, never because she herself was tempted. In the face of those expectations, her body had begun to seem like something to cede, and not fully her own. And that had been wrong, so wrong, she finally saw. It should be her choice and her choice alone. But she was learning that only now in Vito’s arms and recognising the difference because she was finally experiencing a genuine desire for something more. And it was a heady feeling that left her bemused and giddy.

Staring up into Vito’s dark, dangerous eyes, she stretched up on tiptoe to reach him, simply desperate to feel his beautiful mouth on hers again. And the sheer strength of that physical connection, the locking in of every simultaneous sensation that assailed her, only emphasised how right it felt to be with him that way.

This was what all the fuss was about, she thought joyously, the thrumming pulse of need that drove her, the tiny little tremors of desire making her tremble, the overwhelming yearning for the hard, muscular feel of his body against hers. And as one kiss led into another he drew her down onto the rug again and the heat of the fire on her skin burned no more fiercely than the raw hunger raging through her with spellbinding force.

With her willing collusion he extracted her from the sweater and released the catch on her bra. He studied the full globes he had bared with unhidden hunger. ‘You have a totally amazing body, gioia mia.’

A deep flush lit Holly’s cheeks and the colour spread because she was not relaxed about nudity. Yet there in the firelight with Vito looking at her as though he were unveiling a work of art, she was horribly self-conscious but she felt no shame or sense of inadequacy. Indeed, the more Vito looked, the more the pulse of heat humming between her thighs picked up tempo. Long fingers shaping the plump curves of her breasts, Vito flicked a tongue over a straining pink nipple and a hungry groan of appreciation was wrenched from him as he dallied there, toying with her sensitive flesh in a caress that made her hips squirm while a new sense of urgency gripped her.

‘Kiss me,’ she urged breathlessly as he tugged at the tender buds of her breasts and an arrow of burning heat pierced her feminine core, only increasing her agitation.

He crushed her ripe mouth beneath his again, his tongue plunging deep, and for a split second it satisfied the craving pulling at her, and then somehow even that wasn’t enough any more. She shifted position restively, her legs sliding apart to let his hips slide between as she silently, instinctively sought more. Her hips rocked. She wanted and she wanted...

And then at last, as if he knew exactly what she needed, he smoothed his passage up a silken inner thigh and tugged off her panties. He stroked her, found the most needy place of all, and a current of almost unbearable excitement shot through Holly’s veins. Suddenly in the hold of her own explosive response she was all heat and light and sensation. A long finger tested her slick, damp core and she whimpered, her teeth clenching, the ferocious need clawing cruelly at her as her spine arched, her body all too ready to take charge.

There was no room for thought in the passion that had swept her away in the way she had always dreamed. But it wasn’t the same as her dream because what she was feeling was much more basic, much more wild and out of control than she had ever allowed herself to be. He moved to one side, yanking off his top, revealing an abdomen grooved with lean, hard muscle, and her hand slid greedily up over his chest, rejoicing in his sleek bronzed skin and the manner in which every muscle jerked taut the instant she touched him.

‘I have no condoms,’ Vito bit out in sudden frustration. ‘But I had a health check a few weeks ago and I’m clean.’

‘I’m on the pill,’ Holly framed shakily, belatedly jolted into rational thought by the acknowledgement that she wasn’t about to call a halt to their activities. And why was that? She had never wanted anything or anyone the way she wanted him and surely that was the way it was supposed to be? It felt right. He felt right.

Vito hauled in a shuddering breath of relief and came back down to her again, tasting her reddened mouth again with devouring appetite. Her hands smoothed over him, caressing every part of him she could reach from his wide brown shoulders to the satin-smooth expanse of his back. Desire drove her like an addictive drug. Beneath his touch she writhed, her reactions pitching her desire higher and higher until the mushroom of liquid-honey heat inside her flared up in ecstasy before spreading to every part of her. She gasped, shaken by an almost out-of-body feeling, her entire being singing with the potent rush of pleasure.

And then she felt him pushing at the heart of her, tilting her back for his entrance and she was wildly impatient, needing more, ready to try anything that he could give her. He filled her completely, thrusting deep with a slick, sure forcefulness that took her by surprise. The bite of pain was an equal surprise and she blinked back tears and sank her teeth into her lower lip, grateful that her face was against his shoulder where he couldn’t see her reaction.

‘You’re incredibly wet and tight,’ Vito growled in a roughened undertone. ‘It’s a hell of a turn-on, gioia mia.’

The pinch of discomfort evaporated as he moved and she arched up to receive him. He vented a groan of all-male satisfaction as she joined in, no longer separate in thought and behaviour. That overpowering hunger kicked back in as his fluid, insistent thrusts filled her with renewed enthusiasm. In fact the wild, sweet rhythm of his sensual possession fired a blinding, pulsing excitement inside her. Locked with his, her body was snatched up into a passionate climax that flooded her with exquisite sensation.

Coiling back from her, Vito saw the blood on her thighs. ‘Maledizione...you’re bleeding? Did I hurt you? Why didn’t you stop me?’

Brutally summoned back to reality without warning, Holly snaked back from him and hugged her knees in sudden mortification. ‘It’s all right—’

‘No, you being hurt is not all right in any way,’ Vito shot back at her grimly.

Holly could feel a beetroot-red flush start at her toes and slowly burn up over her whole body. Lifting her head, she clashed reluctantly with glittering dark eyes of angry concern. ‘I wasn’t hurt...at least not the way you mean,’ she explained grudgingly. ‘I was a virgin...and obviously there was some physical evidence of it...which I wasn’t expecting...’

‘A virgin?’ Vito exclaimed in raw disbelief. ‘You were a virgin?’

Snatching up the sweater he had taken off her, Holly pulled it over her again, struggling to slide her arms back into the sleeves. ‘Don’t make such a big deal of it,’ she urged while she was still safely submerged in the wool.

‘It is a big deal!’ Vito grated, springing upright to zip his trousers again and reach for his shirt.

Flushed and uncomfortable, Holly glanced at him unwillingly. ‘Maybe to me but I don’t see why it should bother you!’

‘Don’t you indeed?’ Vito riposted.

‘No, I don’t,’ Holly countered on a rising note of anger because his reaction was the very last thing she had expected from him and the topic mortified her.

Dark eyes flashing gold, Vito studied her. ‘You should’ve warned me. Why didn’t you?’

Holly stood her ground, her vexation stifling her embarrassment. ‘Because it was a private matter and none of your business.’

‘Nothing of that nature stays private when you’re having sex with someone!’

In discomfited retreat, Holly headed towards the shower room she had used earlier. ‘Well, I’ll take your word for that since it was my first experience.’

Vito was inflamed by her refusal to understand and chose to be blunt. ‘I feel like I took advantage of you!’ he admitted harshly.

Holly whirled back at the door. ‘That’s nonsense. I’m not a kid. My body, my choice.’

Vito snatched in a ragged breath, still reeling from the shock of her innocence. He hadn’t told her who he was or indeed anything important about himself. She didn’t, couldn’t understand that in his position he was innately suspicious of anything as unexpected as their encounter and on top of it the very tardy revelation that she was a virgin. With his experience, that revelation had smacked of a possible sting of some kind and he had immediately wondered if she had some kind of hidden agenda. Now gazing into her troubled face, belatedly recognising the hurt and sadness there, he wanted to kick himself for treating her like some sort of scam artist.

‘I’m sorry...’ Vito breathed abruptly. ‘I let my surprise push me into an overreaction, Holly. Of course, it’s your choice...’

Some of her tension evaporated but her eyes remained guarded. ‘I didn’t even think of warning you. And if I had thought of it, I probably would’ve been too embarrassed to mention it.’

‘I wrecked the moment,’ Vito groaned in acknowledgement. He moved forward to close his arms round her and somehow, even after that uneasy exchange, it felt like the best thing in the world to Holly. Her stiffness slowly ebbing, she rested against him, drinking in the heat and the comfortingly hard, masculine contours of his lean, muscular body against hers. ‘I also neglected to tell you that what we shared...it was amazing.’

‘You’re just saying that,’ she mumbled.

‘No. It was amazing, cara mia. Now let’s go upstairs and shower,’ Vito urged, easing her in a different direction, inexplicably keen to keep her close even though something in his brain was urging him to step back.

Amazing? Was that a polite lie? Just something a man said for the sake of it? He had flipped the situation on its head again and she didn’t know how he had achieved that. She blinked in surprise as the lights illuminated a much bigger bedroom than she had expected, airily furnished in stylish tones of grey.

Vito pushed open the door of a very spacious en-suite. ‘You first...unless you’d like company in the shower?’

Holly gave him a startled look. ‘I don’t think I’m ready for that yet.’

Vito laughed in appreciation and bent down to claim her swollen pink mouth with his own in a searing kiss that made every skin cell in her body sit up and take notice. ‘I’ll ask you again in the morning,’ he warned her.

Holly’s attention skated to the giant bed. ‘We’re going to share the bed?’

‘There is only one bedroom here. I was planning to take the sofa.’

‘No, I won’t banish you to the sofa,’ Holly breathed with a sudden grin as she slid past him into the en-suite while barely recognising her own thoughts or feelings. She only knew she didn’t want him to sleep downstairs on the sofa and away from her. That felt wrong.

She stood in the shower feeling astonishingly light-hearted for a woman who had strayed from values that were as ingrained in her as her usual honesty. But making love with Vito had felt right and it was hard to credit that anything that had felt so natural and right could possibly be wrong. After all, they were both single and nobody was being hurt by their being together. What harm could it possibly do for her to go with the flow for a change in a relationship instead of trying to plan everything or wait for some extraordinary special sign? And why on earth was she feeling guilty about Ritchie when he had cheated on her?

It wasn’t as though she had ever imagined that she was in love with Ritchie. She had only been seeing him for a few weeks and, even though he had been full of himself, he had been good company. Was what she felt with Vito a rebound attraction?

But how could it be? Ritchie couldn’t be compared to Vito on any level. Vito utterly overshadowed his predecessor in every way. And just like her secret fantasy, Vito had swept Holly away in the tide of passion she had always dreamt of experiencing. Of course, it wasn’t going anywhere, she reminded herself staunchly, suppressing a pang of sorrow at that acknowledgement. There would be no ongoing relationship with Vito. She didn’t need Vito to spell that out. What they had now was time out of time, separate from their normal lives and associations. Attraction had sparked purely because they were stuck together in a snowbound cottage, and she wasn’t foolish enough to try and make more of it, was she?

She wrapped a towel round herself rather than put on his sweater again and crept out of the bathroom. Clad only in his jeans, which were unbuttoned at the waistband, Vito was towelling his hair dry. He tossed aside the towel, finger-combing his black hair carelessly off his brow. ‘I used the shower downstairs.’

Holly hovered, suddenly awkward. ‘I could have done that. This is your room, after all.’

Vito saw the wary uncertainty in her blue eyes and knew he had put it there. Holly was nothing at all like the women he was accustomed to meeting. Nevertheless he had initially judged her by the cynical standards formed by years of experience with such women. Yet he sensed that she would have been very shocked by the scandal that he had been forced to leave behind him. He had wounded her by questioning her innocence yet that same innocence of hers ironically drew him like a beacon. He crossed the room and closed both arms round her, responding to the inbuilt drive to bridge the gap between them. ‘Tonight it’s our room. Let’s go to bed...’ he urged.

And Holly thought about saying no and heading down to the sofa. After all, she had broken her own rules and just because she had done that once didn’t mean she had an automatic excuse to keep on doing it. Indeed, if having sex with Vito had been a mistake, she was honour-bound to choose the sofa over him.

But sleeping alone wasn’t what she wanted and needed right then. She wanted to be with Vito. She wanted to make the most of the time they had together. She was even feeling sensible enough to know that it was fortunate that she wouldn’t be with Vito for much longer, for she reckoned that given the opportunity she would fall for him like a ton of bricks. That, of course, would be totally, unforgivably stupid. And she might be a little sentimental, but stupid she was not.

She looked at Vito, even though she knew she really shouldn’t, but there he was, etched in her head in an image that would burn for all time, she thought dizzily. He was beautiful, drop-dead beautiful and tonight...tonight he was all hers...

CHAPTER FOUR

AT DAWN, HOLLY sneaked out of bed and crept into the bathroom to freshen up. She grimaced at her reflection. Her hair was a mess. Her face reddened in places by Vito’s stubble. Her mouth was very swollen and pink. And when she stepped into the shower she swallowed a groan because every muscle she possessed complained as if she had overdone it in a workout.

But no workout, she thought dizzily, could possibly have been more demanding than the stamina required for a night in bed with Vito Sorrentino. He was insatiable and he had made her the same way, she conceded in stupefaction. She felt as though she had changed dramatically in less than twelve hours. She had learned so much about herself and even more about sex. Her body ached in intimate places and a bemused smile tilted her lips as she emerged from the en-suite again.

Vito was sprawled across the bed, a glorious display of bronzed perfection. Luxuriant black lashes flickered as he focused on her. ‘I wondered where you were,’ he muttered.

‘Bathroom,’ she whispered, barely breathing as she slid back under the duvet.

Vito reached for her with a sleepy hand and pulled her back against him. She shivered in contact with the raw heat and scent of him. ‘Go back to sleep,’ he told her thickly.

He wanted her again. What the hell was wrong with him? How could he want her again when he had already had her so many times? She had to be sore too, he reminded himself in exasperation. He was being a selfish bastard. As soon as he heard the deep, even tenor of her breathing sink into sleep, he eased out of the bed, went for a cold shower and got dressed.

Nothing in Vito’s mental rule book covered what had happened the night before. He hadn’t had a one-night stand in many years and none had been extraordinary on any level. Sex was sex, a temporary release and pleasure. He was practical about sex, cool about sex. His desire had never controlled him and he would never let it do so. But then he had never ever been intimate with a woman he wanted over and over again, and his voracious hunger for Holly even after having her downright unnerved him. What was wrong with him? Was he in some weird frame of mind after the trying ordeal of the publicity fallout he had endured over the past week? In his opinion it certainly wasn’t normal to want a woman that much. It smacked of unbalance, of unhealthy obsession. It was fortunate that their time together had a built-in closing date, he told himself grimly.

Even so, it was Christmas Day as well as being Holly’s birthday and it bothered him that he had nothing to give her. Vito was so accustomed to gift-giving and other people’s high expectations of his gifts that he felt very uncomfortable in that situation. In an effort to make the day special for Holly he decided to make her breakfast in bed. He couldn’t cook but how difficult could it be to make breakfast? He could manage orange juice and toast, couldn’t he?

Holly was stunned when she blinked into drowsy wakefulness because Vito was sliding a tray of food on to her lap. She stared down in wonderment at the charred toast. ‘You made me breakfast?’

‘It’s your birthday. It’s not much but it’s the best I can do.’

Holly tried not to look at him as though he were the eighth wonder of the world but that was certainly how he struck her at that moment because nobody had ever given Holly breakfast in bed before, no, not even when she was ill. It was a luxury she could barely even imagine and that Vito should have gone to that much effort to spoil her thrilled her. So, she didn’t make a sound when her first sip of tea gave her a mouthful of the teabag that had not been removed and she munched through the charred toast without complaint. It was the thought that counted, after all, and that Vito had thought touched her heart. In addition, the effect of having Vito carelessly sprawled at the foot of the same bed sent her pulse rate rocketing. She remembered all the things they had done and tried desperately to feel guilty about them. But it didn’t work. One look into those inky-black-lashed dark golden eyes of his and she was shot off to another planet.

‘Thanks,’ she said even though it took great effort to locate her voice.

‘I’m not great in the kitchen. If it had only been for me I would have cooked one of the ready meals,’ he admitted.

‘It was very thoughtful of you.’ Holly was registering how very lucky she was not to be facing roast meat for breakfast and she gratefully drank her orange juice, which was so cold it froze her teeth. As she drained the glass she pushed the tray away and he swept it up and put it on the floor.

He came back to the bed and moved towards her with the sinuous grace of a stalking cat and her mouth ran dry, her heartbeat racing. ‘I was going to get up, organise lunch,’ she framed shakily.

‘Way too early for that, bellezza mia,’ Vito husked, up close, his breath fanning her cheek and his luxuriant black hair brushing her chin as he bent his head to press his mouth to the pulse point below her ear.

And her whole body went into free fall as though he had hit a button. Breath fled her parted lips as she sank back into the pillows and gazed up at him with luminous blue eyes. ‘Vito—’

He closed her mouth with the onslaught of his own. ‘No, we don’t talk,’ he told her after kissing her breathless. ‘We already know all we need to know about each other.’

‘I don’t even know what you do,’ she began.

‘I’m in business...and you?’

‘Waitress...well, waitress with aspirations,’ she adjusted jerkily when he tensed against her. ‘I want to be an interior designer but it’s more a dream than reality.’

‘It takes work to turn dreams into reality.’

Holly smiled up at him. ‘Vito...I’ve had to work hard for everything in life but sometimes getting a break relates more to resources and luck than slaving away.’

‘This is getting way too serious,’ Vito objected when he found himself on the brink of offering her advice.

Holly let her fingers drift up to brush his black hair off his brow, her attention locked to his lean, darkly handsome features even as her heart had sunk because she was scarily well attuned to his body language. ‘Agreed. Let’s stay away from the real world.’

His long, lean body relaxed against hers again and tears stung her eyes as she blinked against his shoulder. The news that she was a waitress had been too sharp a stab of reality for Vito, highlighting as it did the difference in their statuses. His clothing, even the variety and expense of the food in the refrigerator, not to mention the stylish opulence of her surroundings all told Holly that Vito inhabited a rather more privileged place in society than she did. And while here at the cottage without other people around, that difference didn’t really matter. She knew it would matter very much outside these walls.

‘I still want you,’ Vito confided thickly, running the tip of his tongue along her collarbone.

Her tummy flipped, her feminine core clenched and she stiffened. Reality was intruding whether she wanted it to or not because she was too tender to engage again in the kind of intimacy he was probably envisaging. ‘I can’t,’ she whispered tightly, a small hand smoothing down a denim-clad thigh, feeling the ripple of his muscles tightening in response.

‘Maybe later,’ Vito murmured sibilantly, fingers spearing into her hair to lift her mouth to his. ‘But in the short term there are other things we can do, gioia mia.’

Holly laughed and buried her face in his shoulder. ‘You’re so shameless.’

‘Why wouldn’t I be? You’ve been brilliant. I can’t understand why you were still untouched.’

‘It was a promise I made to myself when I was very young...to wait. It just seemed sensible to wait until I was an adult and then...’ Holly sighed. ‘Somewhere along the line it became a burden, a tripwire in relationships that held me back from who I could be.’

Vito gazed down at her with a frown of incomprehension. ‘But why me? Why did you choose me?’

‘Maybe it was because you let me put my Christmas tree up,’ she teased, because there were all too many reasons why she had chosen him and very few she was prepared to share. There was no safe way to tell a man that he had been her fantasy without him getting the wrong idea and assuming that she was feeling more than she was supposed to feel in terms of attachment.

Her fingers slid up caressingly to the firm bulge at his crotch and exerted gentle pressure and he groaned, dark head falling back, wide sensual mouth tightening, his broad chest vibrating against her. Holly leant over him, staring down into lustrous eyes that glittered like precious gold. ‘Maybe it’s because you act as though I’m the most ravishing female you’ve ever met, even though I’m perfectly ordinary. But perhaps that’s your true talent. Maybe you treat all women the same way.’

‘No. I’ve never been with any woman the way I’ve been with you...’ Vito surveyed her with frowning force, probing that statement, worrying about it because it was true. He had never felt so comfortable with a woman or so relaxed. He hadn’t once thought about work or about the shocking scandal he had left behind him in Italy. Furthermore Holly was completely unique on his terms because for the first time ever he was with a woman who didn’t know who he was, cherished no financial expectations and in truth attached no undue importance to him. He was Mr Anonymous with Holly and he liked the freedom of that one hell of a lot.

Holly unzipped his jeans with a sense of adventure. Her most driving need was to give him pleasure and she didn’t understand it. Shouldn’t she be more selfish? The catch in his breathing was followed by a long, unrestrained sound of rising hunger. She had distracted him with sex, she thought guiltily. She didn’t want to talk about being a waitress, about any of the things that separated them as people in the outside world, and his unashamed sexual response to her gave her a shocking sense of power.

Heaven for Vito was the gentle friction of her mouth and the teasing, erotic stroke of her tiny fingers. His hand knotted in her hair and he trembled on the edge of release, gruffly warning her, but she didn’t pull away. Then the sheer liberating wash of pleasure engulfed him and wiped him out.

Holly watched Vito sleep with a rueful grin. She went for another shower, donned the dress she had packed and dried her hair. Downstairs, she switched on the television and tuned it to a channel playing Christmas carols before going into the kitchen and beginning to organise the lunch she had prepared with such care. It shook her to acknowledge that she hadn’t even known Vito Sorrentino existed the day before.

The shame and embarrassment she had fought off at dawn began to creep up again through the cracks in her composure. She had broken all her rules and for what? A one-night stand with a male she would probably never hear from or see again? How could she be proud of that? But would it have been any better to lose her virginity with a sleazy, cheating liar like Ritchie, who had pretended that she meant much more to him than she did?

She thought not. Anyway, it was too late for regrets, she reminded herself unhappily. What was done was done and it made more sense to move on from that point than to torture herself over what could not be changed. How much, though, had all the wine she had imbibed contributed to her recklessness? Her loss of inhibition? Stop it, stop it, she urged herself fiercely, stop dwelling on it.

Vito came down the stairs when she was setting the table. ‘You should have wakened me.’

‘You were up much earlier than I was,’ she pointed out as she retrieved the starters from the kitchen. ‘Hungry?’

Vito reached for her instead of a chair. ‘Only for you.’

Her bright blue eyes danced with merriment. ‘Now, where did you get that old chestnut from?’

In answer Vito bent his tousled dark head and kissed her and it was like an arrow of fire shooting through her body to the heart of her. She quivered, taken aback all over again by the explosive effect he had on her. His sensual mouth played with hers and tiny ripples of arousal coursed through her. Her breasts swelled, their buds tightening while heat and dampness gathered between her legs. It took enormous willpower but she made herself step back from him, almost careening into the table in her haste to break their connection. Suddenly feeling out of control with him seemed dangerous and it was dangerous, she told herself, if it made her act out of character. And whether she liked it or not, everything she had done with Vito was out of character for her.

‘We should eat before the food gets cold,’ she said prosaically.

‘I’ll open a bottle of wine.’

‘This is an incredibly well-equipped house,’ Holly remarked as he poured the wine he had fetched from the temperature-controlled cabinet in the kitchen.

‘The owner enjoys his comforts.’

‘And he’s your friend?’

‘We went to school together.’ A breathtaking smile of amused recollection curled Vito’s mouth. ‘He was a rebel and although he often got me into trouble he also taught me how to enjoy myself.’

‘Pixie’s like that. We’re very close.’ Holly lifted the plates and set out the main course.

‘You’re a good cook,’ Vito commented.

‘My foster mother, Sylvia, was a great teacher. Cooking relaxes me.’

‘I eat out a lot. It saves time.’

‘There’s more to life than saving time. Life is there to be savoured,’ Holly told him.

‘I savour it at high speed.’

The meal was finished and Holly was clearing up when Vito stood up. ‘I feel like some fresh air,’ he told her. ‘I’m going out for a walk.’

From the window, Holly watched him trudge down the lane in the snow. There was an odd tightness in her chest and a lump in her constricted throat. Vito had just rebelled against their enforced togetherness to embrace his own company. He hadn’t invited her to join him on his walk, but why should he have? Out of politeness? They weren’t a couple in the traditional sense and he didn’t have to include her in everything. They were two people who had shared a bed for the night, two very different people. Maybe she talked too much, maybe he was tired of her company and looking forward to the prospect of some silence. It was not a confidence-boosting train of thought.

Vito ploughed up the steep gradient, his breath steaming on the icy air. He had needed a break, had been relieved when Holly hadn’t asked if she could accompany him. A loner long accustomed to his own company, he had felt the walls closing in while he’d sat surrounded by all that cosy Christmas spirit.

And that really wasn’t Holly’s fault, Vito conceded wryly. Even her cheerful optimism could not combat the many years of bad Christmas memories that Vito harboured. Sadly the stresses and strains of the festive season were more likely to expose the cracks in an unhappy marriage. His mother’s resolute enthusiasm had never contrived to melt his father’s boredom and animosity at being forced into spending time with his family.

They had never been a family, Vito acknowledged heavily, not in the truest sense of the word. His father had never loved him, had never taken the smallest interest in him. In fact, if he was honest with himself, his father sincerely disliked him. From an early age Vito had been treated like the enemy, twinned in his father’s mind with the autocratic father-in-law he fiercely resented.

‘He’s like a bloody calculator!’ Ciccio had condemned with distaste when his five-year-old son’s brilliance at maths was remarked on. ‘He’ll be as efficient as a cash machine—just like his grandfather.’

Only days earlier, Vito’s relationship with his father had sunk to an all-time low when Ciccio had questioned his son’s visit to the hospital where he was recovering from his heart attack. ‘Are you here to crow over my downfall?’ his father had asked nastily while his mother had tried to intervene. ‘My sins have deservedly caught up with me? Is that what you think?’

And Vito had finally recognised that there was no relationship left to rescue with his father. Ciccio bitterly resented his son’s freedom from all financial constraints yet the older man’s wild extravagance and greed had forced Vito’s grandfather to keep his son-in-law on a tight leash. There was nothing Vito could do to change those hard facts. Even worse, after his grandfather had died it had become Vito’s duty to protect his mother’s fortune from Ciccio’s demands, scarcely a reality likely to improve a father and son relationship.

For the first time Vito wondered what sort of relationship he would have with his son if he ever had one. Momentarily he was chilled by the prospect because his family history offered no encouragement.

Holly had just finished clearing up the dishes when the knocker on the front door sounded loudly. She was stunned when she opened the door and found Bill, who ran the breakdown service, standing smiling on the doorstep.

‘I need the keys for Clementine to get her loaded up.’

‘But it’s Christmas Day... I mean, I wasn’t expecting—’

‘I didn’t want to raise your hopes last night but I knew I’d be coming up this way some time this afternoon. My uncle joins us for lunch and he owns a smallholding a few fields away. He has to get back to feed his stock, so I brought the truck when I left him at home.’

‘Thank you so much,’ Holly breathed, fighting her consternation with all her might while turning away to reach into the pocket of her coat where she had left the car keys. She passed the older man the keys. ‘Do you need any help?’

He shook his head. ‘I’ll come back up for you when I’m done.’

‘I’ll get my stuff together.’ With a weak smile and with every sensitive nerve twanging, Holly shut the door again and sped straight upstairs to gather her belongings. She dug her feet into her cowboy boots and thrust her toiletries and make-up bag back into her rucksack.

And throughout that exercise she wouldn’t let herself even think that she could be foolish enough to be disappointed at being picked up and taken home. Clearly, it was time to leave. She had assumed that she would have one more night with Vito but fate had decreed otherwise. Possibly a quick, unexpected exit was the best way to part after such a night, she thought unhappily. There would be neither the time nor the opportunity for awkward exchanges. She closed her rucksack and checked the room one last time. Reminding herself that she still had to pack the Christmas tree, she went back down wondering anxiously if Vito would make it back before she had to leave.

She flipped open her cardboard box and stripped the tree of ornaments and lights, deftly packing it all away while refusing to think beyond the practical. She raced into the kitchen to dump the foil containers she had used to transport the meal, pausing only to lift a china jug and quickly wash it before placing it in the box. That was that then, all the evidence of her brief stopover removed, she conceded numbly.

She didn’t want to go home, she didn’t want to leave Vito, and the awareness of that stupid, hopeless sense of attachment to him crushed and panicked her. He would probably be relieved to find her gone and he would have cringed if he saw tears in her eyes. Men didn’t like messy and there could be nothing more messy or embarrassing than a woman who got too involved and tried to cling after one night. This one-night-and-walk-away stuff is what you signed up for, Holly scolded herself angrily. There had been no promises and no mention of a future of any kind. She would leave with her head held high and no backward glances.

All the same, she thought hesitantly, if Vito wasn’t coming back in time to see her leave, shouldn’t she leave a note? She dug into her rucksack and tore a piece of paper out of a notebook and leant on the table. She thanked him for his hospitality and then hit a brick wall in the creative department. What else was there to say? What else could she reasonably say?

After much reflection she printed her mobile-phone number at the foot of the note. Why not? It wasn’t as if she was asking him to phone her. She was simply giving him the opportunity to phone if he wanted to. Nothing wrong with that, was there? She left the note propped against the clock on the shelf inside the inglenook.

Holly wore a determined smile when Bill’s truck backed into the drive. She had her box and her rucksack on the step beside her in a clear face-saving statement that she was eager to get going but there was still no sign of Vito. She climbed into the truck with a sense of regret but gradually reached the conclusion that possibly it was preferable to have parted from Vito without any awkward or embarrassing final conversation. This way, nobody had to pretend or say anything they didn’t mean.

* * *

Vito strode into the cottage and grimaced at the silence. He strode up the stairs, calling Holly’s name while wondering if she had gone for a bath. He studied the empty bathroom with a frown, noting that she had removed her possessions. Only when he went downstairs again did he notice that the Christmas decorations had disappeared along with her. The table was clear, the kitchen immaculate.

Vito was incredulous. Holly had done a runner and he had no idea how. He walked out onto the doorstep and belatedly registered that the old car no longer lay at the foot of the lane in the ditch. So much for his observation powers! He had been so deep in his thoughts that he hadn’t even noticed that the car had gone. Holly had walked out on him. Well, that hadn’t happened to him before, he acknowledged grimly, his ego stung by her sudden departure. All his life women had chased after Vito, attaching strings at the smallest excuse.

But would he have wanted her to cling? Vito winced, driven to reluctantly admit that perhaps in the circumstances her unannounced disappearance was for the best. After all, what would he have said to her in parting? Holly had distracted him from more important issues and disrupted his self-control. Now he had his own space back and the chance to get his head clear. And that was exactly what he should want...

* * *

‘When you’re finished throwing up you can do the test,’ Pixie said drily from the bathroom doorway.

‘I’m not doing the test,’ Holly argued. ‘I’m on the pill. I can’t be pregnant—’

‘You missed a couple of pills and you had a course of antibiotics when you had tonsillitis,’ her friend and flatmate reminded her. ‘You know that antibiotics can interfere with contraception—’

‘Well, actually I didn’t know.’ Holly groaned as she freshened up at the sink, frowning at her pale face and dark-circled eyes. She looked absolutely awful and she felt awful both inside and out.

‘Even the pill has a failure rating. I don’t know... I leave you alone for a few weeks and you go completely off the rails,’ the tiny blonde lamented, studying Holly with deeply concerned eyes.

‘I can’t be pregnant,’ Holly said again as she lifted the pregnancy testing kit and extracted the instructions.

‘Well, you’ve missed two periods, you’re throwing up like there’s no tomorrow and you have sore boobs,’ Pixie recounted ruefully. ‘Maybe it’s chickenpox or something.’

‘All right, I’ll do it!’ Holly exclaimed in frustration. ‘But there is no way, just no way on earth that I could be pregnant!’

Some minutes later she slumped down on the side of the bath. Pixie was right and she was wrong. The test showed a positive. The door opened slowly and she looked wordlessly up at her friend and burst into floods of tears.

‘Remember how we used to say that the babies we had would be precious gifts?’ Pixie breathed as she hugged her sobbing friend. ‘Well, this baby is a gift and we will manage. We don’t need a man to survive.’

‘I can’t even knit!’ Holly wailed, unable to concentrate, unable to think beyond the sheer immensity of the challenges she was about to face.

‘That’s OK. You won’t have time to knit,’ her friend told her, deadpan.

Holly was remembering when she and Pixie had talked innocently about their ideal of motherhood. Both of them had been born unwanted and had suffered at the hands of neglectful mothers. They had sworn that they would love and protect their own babies no matter what.

And the vague circumstances suggested by ‘no matter what’ had actually happened now, Holly reflected heavily, her sense of regret at that truth all-encompassing. Her baby would not be entering the perfect world as she had dreamt. Her baby was unplanned, however, but not unwanted. She would love her child, fight to keep him or her safe and if she had to do it alone, and it looked as though she would, she would manage.

‘If only Vito had phoned...’ The lament escaped Holly’s lips before she could bite it back and she flushed in embarrassment.

‘He’s long gone. In fact, the more I think about him,’ Pixie mused tight-mouthed, ‘the more suspicious I get about the father of your child. For all you know he could be a married man.’

‘No!’ Holly broke in, aghast at that suggestion.

‘Well, what was Vito doing spending Christmas alone out in the middle of nowhere?’ Pixie demanded. ‘Maybe the wife or girlfriend threw him out and he had nowhere better to go?’

‘Don’t make me feel worse than I already do,’ Holly pleaded. ‘You’re such a pessimist, Pixie. Just because he didn’t want to see me again doesn’t make him a bad person.’

‘He got you drunk and somehow persuaded you into bed. Don’t expect me to think nice things about him. He was a user.’

‘I wasn’t drunk.’

‘Let’s not rehash it again.’ Her flatmate sighed, her piquant face thoughtful. ‘Let’s see if we can trace him online.’

And while Pixie did internet searches on several potential spellings of Vito’s surname and came up with precisely nothing, Holly sat on the sofa hugging her still-flat stomach and fretting about the future. She had already secretly carried out all those searches weeks earlier on Vito and was too proud to admit to the fact, even to her friend.

‘I can’t find even a trace of a man in the right age group. The name could be a fake,’ her friend opined.

‘Why would he give me a fake name? That doesn’t make sense.’

‘Maybe he didn’t want to be identified. I don’t know...you tell me,’ Pixie said very drily. ‘Do you think that’s a possibility?’

Holly reddened. Of course it was a possibility that Vito had not wanted to be identified. As to why, how could she know? The only thing she knew with certainty was that Vito had decided he didn’t want to see her again. Had he felt otherwise, he would have used the phone number she had left him and called her. In the weeks of silence that had followed her departure from the cottage, she had often felt low. But that was foolish, wasn’t it? Vito had clearly made the decision that he had no desire to see her again.

And why should she feel hurt by that? Yes, he had said that night with her was amazing but wasn’t that par for the course? The sort of thing a man thought a woman expected him to say after sex? How could she have been naive enough to actually believe that Vito had truly believed they were something special together? And now that little bit of excitement was over. What was done was done and what was gone, like her innocence, was gone. Much as her tidy, organised life had gone along with it, she conceded unhappily, because, although she would embrace motherhood wholeheartedly, she knew it would be incredibly tough to raise a baby alone without falling into the poverty trap.

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