The Italian Billionaire's New Year Bride

Your driveway. The guy was assuming she actually owned the house. Maybe in some wild dream or fantasy she would actually own a house in the Hamptons. Phoebe couldn’t stop smiling as she closed the door.

The pizza was lukewarm. But it didn’t matter. She hadn’t realized she was quite so hungry. She carried it through to the library and looked around. Even though the fire was lit she still felt a little cold. She hesitated for only a few seconds before she ran back up the stairs and pulled the new bedclothes from the bed. There was no point in being cold.

Two slices of pizza later, she’d found a book that could make her hair curl even tighter and she settled down on the rug in front of the fire. This could be interesting.

* * *

Matteo let out another curse as his car skidded and he struggled to stop the back end fishtailing. Although the roads from the city had been glistening with snow, the gritters had been out and main highways were clear. The roads through the hamlets and villages of the Hamptons were a little different. He’d had the choice of any car in the garage and had chosen the one he’d thought most practical. The large four-by-four had initially made the journey easy, but the hardest part of the journey was now his own driveway. It currently resembled some kind of ice rink.

He frowned as he finally pulled up outside the house. He’d never intended to be this late, but a conference call had gone on much longer than expected. So by the time he’d started the journey to the Hamptons it was already dark. There was another car sitting in front of the house—one he didn’t recognize.

It was New Year’s Eve. Who on earth would still be here? Chances were it was nobody. Maybe one of the workers had decided to take a ride home with someone else—perhaps to join in some New Year’s celebrations.

Matteo had tactfully given apologies to three potential party invitations, and the last place on earth he wanted to be right now was in the heart of New York at Times Square. The streets had been crammed as he’d left the city and they’d be worse by now.

He stepped outside of the car and promptly landed on his butt. He got up quicker than he’d gone down, groaning and rubbing his backside, flicking his head from side to side. Of course no one had seen him—no one was here. But his reactions were just automatic. He pulled his phone from his pocket praying the screen wasn’t smashed.

The spider’s web across the glass told him otherwise.

He held it up to the alarm scanner. Nothing. Nothing happened. He tried again, then frowned as he turned the key in the lock. A couple of seconds and a few careful steps later he was inside the house.

As soon as he was in the entrance hall he knew something wasn’t right.

There was...something.

A noise. A smell.

He turned in that direction and started walking. At the end of the corridor there was a glow. None of the lights were on in this part of the house. He could easily flick the switches. But he was far too stubborn minded to slow down. He shook his head as he kept walking. For the first time since he’d been a teenager, every bad horror movie he’d ever watched suddenly made sense. He’d always shouted at the screen before—why haven’t you put on the lights? Why are you walking toward the trouble? But here he was, doing exactly the same.

That car still bothered him. But it could easily belong to one of the clean-up crew who didn’t want to drive a small car home in the snow and had traveled home with someone else. The door had been locked, but the alarm hadn’t been on.

Could this be an intruder? Someone who’d heard the house was being renovated and had decided there might be something worth stealing?

His hands clenched into fists. Matteo didn’t need any kind of weapon. He was more than a match for any intruder.

As he strode down the corridor he realized where the light was coming from. The library? Why on earth would any intruder go to the library? It was a place he’d never spent much time in; he hadn’t even remembered to direct Phoebe here when she was looking around the house.

There was something strange about the light. And the smell. Was something burning?

His heart rate quickened as he swung the door open—to the most peaceful scene.

Phoebe was lying curled up on the floor, covered in blankets in front of a flickering fire.

A fire. Of course. Although the house had multiple fireplaces, Matteo had never seen any of the fires lit in this house. They’d only stayed here for a few weeks one fateful summer. It hadn’t even occurred to him that the light might be coming from one of the fireplaces.

Phoebe’s curls were fanned out all around her, her head on a cushion that must have come from one of the high-back chairs. On the floor in front of her was a pizza box, with only a few slices missing.