The Italian's Christmas Secret

She leaned forward to kiss him and Matteo could never remember being kissed like that before. A kiss not fuelled by sexual hunger but filled with the promise of something he didn’t recognise, something which started his senses humming. He murmured something in objection when she pulled back a little, her eyes of profondo blu looking dark and serious, but at least when she wasn’t kissing him he was able to think straight. He didn’t understand the way she made him feel, but maybe that didn’t matter. Because weren’t the successes of life—and business—based on gut feeling as much as understanding? Hadn’t he sometimes bought a hotel site even though others in the business had told him he was crazy—and turned it into a glittering success because deep down he’d known he was onto a winner? And wasn’t it a bit like that now?

‘I will learn to interact with my son,’ he said.

‘That’s a start,’ she said hesitantly.

The look on her face suggested that his answer had fallen short of the ideal—but he was damned if he was going to promise to love his son. Because what if he failed to deliver? What if the ice around his heart was so deep and so frozen that nothing could ever penetrate it? ‘And I want to marry you,’ he said suddenly.

Now the look on her face had changed. He saw surprise there and perhaps the faint glimmer of delight, which was quickly replaced by one of suspicion, as if perhaps she had misheard him.

‘Marry me?’ she echoed softly.

He nodded. ‘So that Santino will have the security you never had, even if our relationship doesn’t last,’ he said, his voice cool but certain. ‘And so that he will be protected by my fortune, which one day he will inherit. Doesn’t that make perfect sense to you?’

He could see her blinking furiously, as if she was trying very hard to hold back the glitter of disappointed tears, but then she seemed to pull it all toge

ther and nodded.

‘Yes, I think marriage is probably the most sensible option in the circumstances,’ she said.

‘So you will be my wife?’

‘Yes, I’ll be your wife. But I’m only doing this for Santino. To give him the legitimacy I never had. You do understand that, don’t you, Matteo?’

She fixed him with a defiant look, as if she didn’t really care—and for a split second it occurred to him that neither of them were being completely honest. ‘Of course I understand, cara mia,’ he said softly.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

KEIRA HEARD FOOTSTEPS behind her and turned from the mirror to see Claudia in a pretty flowery dress, instead of the soft blue uniform she usually wore when she was working.

‘Is everything okay with Santino?’ Keira asked the nursery nurse immediately, more out of habit than fear because she’d been cradling him not an hour earlier as she had dressed her baby son in preparation for his parents’ forthcoming marriage.

Claudia smiled. ‘He is well, signorina. His father is playing with him now. He says he is teaching him simple words of Italian, which he is certain he will remember when eventually he starts to speak.’

Keira smiled, turning back to her reflection and forcing herself to make a final adjustment to her hair, even though she kept telling herself that her bridal outfit was pretty irrelevant on what was going to be a purely functional wedding day. But Matteo’s father and stepmother were going to be attending the brief ceremony, so she felt she had to make some sort of effort. And surely if she did her best it might lessen their inevitable disbelief that he was going to marry someone like her.

‘What kind of wedding would you like?’ Matteo had asked during that drive back from Rome after she’d agreed to be his wife.

Keira remembered hedging her bets. ‘You first.’

She remembered his cynical laugh, too.

‘Something small. Unfussy. I’m not a big fan of weddings.’

So of course Keira had agreed that small and unfussy would be perfect, though deep down that hadn’t been what she’d wanted at all. Maybe there was a part of every woman which wanted the whole works—the fuss and flowers and clouds of confetti. Or maybe that was just her—because marriage had always been held up as the perfect ideal when she’d been growing up. There had been that photo adorning her aunt’s sideboard—the bouquet-clutching image which had stared out at her over the years. She recalled visiting for Sunday tea when her mother was still alive, when attention would be drawn to Aunt Ida’s white dress and stiff veil. ‘Wouldn’t you have loved a white wedding, Bridie?’ Ida used to sigh, and Keira’s mother would say she didn’t care for pomp and ceremony.

And Keira had thought she was the same—until she’d agreed to marry Matteo and been surprised by the stupid ache in her heart as she realised she must play down a wedding which wasn’t really a wedding. It was a legal contract for the benefit of their son—not something inspired by love or devotion or a burning desire to want to spend the rest of your life with just one person, so it didn’t really count. At least, not on Matteo’s part.

And hers?

She smoothed down her jacket and sighed. Because even more disturbing than her sudden yearning to wear a long white dress and carry a fragrant bouquet was the realisation that her feelings for Matteo had started to change. Was that because she understood him a little better now? Because he’d given her a glimpse of the vulnerability and loss which lay beneath the steely exterior he presented to the world? Maybe. She told herself not to have unrealistic expectations. Not to wish for things which were never going to happen, but concentrate on being a good partner. To give Matteo affection in quiet and unobtrusive ways, so that maybe the hard ice around his heart might melt a little and let her in.

He was doing his best to change, she knew that. In the busy days which followed their return from his Roman villa, he had meticulously paid his son all the attention which had been lacking before. Sometimes he would go to Santino if he woke in the night—silencing Keira’s sleepy protests with a kiss. Occasionally, he gave the baby a bottle and, once, had even changed his nappy, even though he’d protested that this was one task surely better undertaken by women.

But as Keira had watched him perform these fatherly duties she had been unable to blind herself to the truth. That it was simply a performance and Matteo was just going through the motions. He was being a good father, just as he was a good lover—because he was a man who excelled in whatever he did. But it was duty which motivated him. His heart wasn’t in it, that much was obvious. And as long as she accepted that, then she’d be fine.

She turned away from the mirror, wondering if there was anything she’d forgotten to do. Matteo’s father, Massimo, and his wife, Luciana, had arrived only a short while ago because the traffic from Rome had been bad. Since they were due at the town hall at noon, there had been little opportunity for Keira to exchange more than a few words of greeting and introduce them to their new grandson. She’d been nervous—of course she had—she suspected it was always nerve-racking meeting prospective in-laws, and most people didn’t have to do it on the morning of the wedding itself.

Massimo was a bear of a man, his build bulkier than Matteo’s, though Keira could see a likeness around the jet-dark eyes. Her prospective stepmother-in-law, Luciana, was an elegant woman in her fifties, who had clearly embraced everything facial surgery had to offer, which had resulted in a disturbingly youthful appearance.