The Italian's Christmas Secret

‘So Paola’s been spying on me, has she?’ Keira questioned, her voice dipping with disappointment that the genial housekeeper seemed to have been taking her inventory.

‘Don’t be absurd. She was going to clean them for you and couldn’t find any others you could wear in the meantime.’

Keira scrambled up off the lounger and stared into his hard and beautiful features. He really came from a totally different planet, didn’t he? One which was doubtless inhabited by women who had boots in every colour of the rainbow and not just a rather scuffed brown pair she’d bought in the sales. ‘So don’t take me with you,’ she said flippantly. ‘Leave me behind while you go out to all your fancy places and I can stay home and look after Santino, wearing my solitary pair of boots.’

A flicker of a smile touched the corners of his lips, but just as quickly it was gone. ‘That isn’t an option, I’m afraid,’ he said smoothly. ‘You’re going to have to meet people. Not just my friends and the people who work for me, but my father and stepmother at some point. And my stepbrother,’ he finished, his mouth twisting before his gaze fixed her with its ebony blaze. ‘The way you look at the moment means you won’t fit in. Not anywhere,’ he continued brutally. ‘And there’s the chance that people will talk about you if you behave like some kind of hermit, which won’t make things easy for you. Apart from anything else, we need to learn more about each other.’ He hesitated. ‘We are parents, with a child and a future to consider. We need to discuss the options open to us and that won’t be possible if we continue to be strangers to one another.’

‘You haven’t bothered coming near me since we got here,’ she said quietly. ‘You’ve been keeping your distance, haven’t you?’

‘Can you blame me? You were almost on your knees with exhaustion when you arrived.’ He paused as his eyes swept over her again. ‘But you look like a different person now.’

Keira was taken aback by the way her body responded to that slow scrutiny, wondering how he could make her feel so many different things, simply by looking at her. And if that was the case, shouldn’t she be protecting herself from his persuasive power over her, instead of going on a falsely intimate trip to Rome?

‘I told you. I don’t want to leave the baby,’ she said stubbornly.

‘Is that what’s known as playing your trump card?’ he questioned softly. ‘Making me out to be some cruel tyrant who’s dragging you away from your child?’

‘He’s only little! Not that you’d know, of course.’ She paused and lifted her chin. ‘You’ve hardly gone near him.’

Matteo acknowledged the unmistakable challenge in her voice and he felt a sudden chill ice his skin, despite the warmth of the October day. How audacious of her to interrogate him about his behaviour when her own had hardly been exemplary. By her keeping Santino’s existence secret he had been presented with a baby, instead of having time to get used to the idea that he was to become a father.

Yet her pointed remark about his lack of interaction struck home, because what she said was true. He had kept his distance from Santino, telling himself that these things could not be rushed and needed time. And she had no right to demand anything of him, he thought bitterly. He would do things according to his agenda, not hers.

‘Rome isn’t far,’ he said coolly. ‘It is exactly two hundred kilometres. And I have a car constantly on standby.’

‘Funnily enough that’s something I do remember—being at your beck and call!’

‘Then you will know there’s no problem,’ he said drily. ‘Particularly as my driver is solid and reliable and not given to taking off to remote areas of the countryside in adverse weather conditions.’

‘Very funny,’ she said.

‘We can be back here in an hour and a half should the need arise. We’ll leave here at ten tomorrow morning—and be back early the next day. Less than twenty-four hours in the eternal city.’ He gave a faintly cynical laugh. ‘Don’t women usually go weak at the knees at the prospect of an unlimited budget to spend on clothes?’

‘Some women, maybe,’ she said. ‘Not me.’

But Keira’s stubbornness was more than her determination not to become a rich man’s doll. She didn’t know about fashion—and the thought of what she might be expected to wear scared her. Perhaps if she’d been less of a tomboy, she might have flicked through glossy magazines like other women her age. She might have had some idea of what did and didn’t suit her and would now be feeling a degree of excitement instead of dread. Fear suddenly became defiance and she glared at him.

‘You are the bossiest man I’ve ever met!’ she declared, pushing a handful of hair over her shoulder.

‘And you are the most difficult woman I’ve ever encountered,’ he countered. ‘A little gratitude might go down well now and again.’

What, gratitude for his high-handedness and for making her feel stuff she’d rather not feel? Keira shook her head in frustration as she tugged her T-shirt down over her straining jeans.

‘I’ll be ready at ten,’ she said, and went off to find Santino.

She put the baby in his smart new buggy to take him for a walk around the estate, slowly becoming aware that the weather had changed. The air had grown heavy and sultry and heavy clouds were beginning to accumulate on the horizon, like gathering troops. When eventually they returned to the farmhouse, Santino took longer than usual to settle for his sleep and Keira was feeling out of sorts when Paola came to ask whether she would be joining Signor Valenti for dinner that evening.

It was the first time she’d received such an invitation and Keira hesitated for a moment before declining. Up until now, she’d eaten her supper alone or with Claudia and she saw no reason to change that routine. She was going to be stuck with Matteo in Rome when clearly they were going to have to address some of the issues confronting them. Why waste conversation during a stilted dinner she had no desire to eat, especially when the atmosphere felt so close and heavy?

Fanning her face with her hand, she showered before bed but her skin still felt clammy, even after she’d towelled herself dry. Peering up into the sky, she thought she saw a distant flash of lightning through the thick curtain of clouds. She closed the shutters and brushed her hair before climbing into bed, but sleep stubbornly eluded her. She wished the occasional growl of thunder would produce the threatened rain and break some of the tension in the atmosphere and was just drifting off into an uneasy sleep when her wish came true. A loud clap of thunder echoed through the room and made her sit bolt upright in bed. There was a loud whoosh and heavy rain began to hurl down outside her window and quickly she got up and crept into Santino’s room but, to her surprise, the baby was sound asleep.

How did he manage to do that? she thought enviously—feeling even more wide awake than before. She sighed as she went back to bed and the minutes ticked by, and all she could think about was how grim she was going to look, with dark shadowed eyes and a pasty face. Another clap of thunder made her decide that a warm drink might help relax her. And wasn’t there a whole stack of herb teas in the kitchen?

To the loud tattoo of drumming rain, she crept downstairs to the kitchen with its big, old-fashioned range and lines of shiny copper pots hanging in a row. She switched on some low lighting and not for the first time found herself wistfully thinking how homely it looked—and how it was unlike any place she had imagined the urbane Matteo Valenti would own.

She had just made herself a cup of camomile tea when she heard a sound behind her and she jumped, her heart hammering as loudly as the rain as she turned to see Matteo standing framed in the doorway. He was wearing nothing but a pair of faded denims, which were clinging almost indecently to his long and muscular thighs. His mouth was unsmiling but there was a gleam in his coal-dark eyes, which made awareness drift uncomfortably over her skin and suddenly Keira began to shiver uncontrollably, her nipples tightening beneath her nightshirt.

CHAPTER SEVEN