Sneaky.
But to be honest, she couldn’t really blame him. If he was feeling half as frustrated by their lack of a physical relationship as she was, she was kind of surprised he hadn’t just pulled her into the bathtub because it was quicker.
And it meant he was thinking ahead about them. The same as with dinner—digging out her favourite recipe, her favourite wine, buying the food and making it... He was making an effort. A real, sustained effort.
And wasn’t that exactly what she’d asked for, really?
Didn’t he deserve the same in return?
Ducking back into the shadows, Maria watched Seb for a moment as he fiddled with the tub, until she was certain he hadn’t spotted she was there. Then she shimmied out of her costume under her robe, left it hanging off the back of the sofa and strode out onto the balcony to meet her husband.
Seb turned and smiled as she closed the door behind her. ‘Ready?’ he asked.
‘Definitely,’ Maria said.
Then she dropped the robe and watched Seb’s eyes widen.
* * *
The look on his face had made the risk of hypothermia totally worth it, Maria decided later. As she stretched out under the luxury sheets on Sebastian’s bed, watching his chest rise and fall as he slept beside her, she knew without a doubt she had made the right decision. Maybe he never would love her the way she loved him, but the new man she’d come home to had made up for not saying the words with the quality of his actions. Respect and adoration could be every bit as wonderful as that fabled true love nonsense, she’d decided.
Especially when he could make her body sing the way he had tonight. Every inch of her still tingled with the memory. She’d half thought, over the last year, that she must have imagined how phenomenal they were, moving together in sync, their bodies as one. But if anything, it had been even better than she remembered from their honeymoon.
A perfect moment.
It might be her very own Christmas miracle. Her husband really saw her at last—and she truly believed that they could be happy together, as a family.
Maria was still smiling as she fell asleep.
But when she woke up alone, a handful of hours later, it was a very different story.
CHAPTER TWELVE
SEB HAD HAD plans for this morning. Important plans that involved waking up before his son and persuading his wife to relive their hot tub activities from the night before. Just in case he’d only dreamed how amazing it had been. He hadn’t, he knew. No dream he’d ever experienced had been that vivid or that incredible.
From the moment she’d dropped that silky dressing gown, and he’d seen her perfect body again, skin glowing with the moonlight reflecting off the snow, he’d known that his Christmas was complete. Taking her into the water with him, holding her in his arms again, moving with her as they’d found their pleasure together... It had been the confirmation he’d needed that everything they’d been working towards had been possible.
She was his wife again. She trusted him with her body again, and her happiness. She would stay now; he knew it. Not because of the amazing sex but because of what it had meant for her to stand there naked on the balcony before him.
Trust. Partnership. That was what they’d wanted, and that was what they’d found again.
Maybe that partnership contract idea hadn’t been so stupid after all. And he’d been looking forward to thanking Maria for coming up with it—in a rather intimate, physical way—that morning.
But instead he found himself on a private helicopter, speeding towards Geneva to deal with a last-minute crisis with the Swiss merger.
The Italian arm of the business never had this sort of problem the day before Christmas Eve, he thought mulishly.
He hadn’t wanted to go. But he simply hadn’t had any other choice.
When his phone had buzzed just before five a.m. that morning, his first instinct had been to ignore it. Maria, deeply asleep beside him, hadn’t seemed to be bothered by it. And when he’d planned to wake up before Frankie did, he hadn’t meant quite that early.
But then it had buzzed again, and Maria had shifted in her sleep, giving a small moan, and he’d known he had to answer it before it woke her.
Of course, then he’d seen the screen, and the panicked text messages from his deputy, on duty in Geneva, and he’d known that this wasn’t going to be anything approaching a good day.
The contract he and Maria had spent hours picking apart, the one she’d helped him make sense of—the last deal his father had ever worked on—was about to implode. And he was the only person who could stop it. So, gathering up all the notes he and Maria had made, he’d kissed her sleeping forehead, and left.
The worst part—after leaving Maria—had been having to ride in a damn helicopter.
He’d taken this trip half a dozen times before, and travelled by helicopter transfer to the Mont Coeur chalet more times than he cared to remember. But that had been before his parents had died in a helicopter crash.
He hadn’t had too much time to think about it, to start with. At first, he’d just been concentrating on not waking Maria as he’d dressed, then on making sure he had all the relevant documents with him to try to salvage an almost impossible situation. This deal was only the first in a series that was supposed to secure the future of the company beyond the Italian borders. If it went south, his shares might not even be worth the paperwork it would take to sign them over.
His father had wanted a big gesture, something to show that his work was done, and Seb was ready to take over the company fully. And he’d found it—a huge expansion into new territories. He’d been so sure it was all tied up, every t crossed and every i dotted. And Seb had known that even if his father hadn’t lived to see it, Salvo Cattaneo’s legacy would live on through the company, getting bigger and brighter every year.
Until this morning, and a last-minute contract issue that could blow the whole thing. Worst of all, it was one that Maria had pointed out to him when they’d worked on the contract—one that he’d assured her would be fine.
It wasn’t anywhere close to fine, as it turned out.
He’d screwed up again. He’d put his father’s last-ever deal at risk. The whole company at risk. His father’s legacy hung on him getting this right.
And he could never let his father down.
So here he was, sitting aboard a precarious flying machine with whirring blades that made him see his parents’ te
rrified faces every time they rotated, preparing to fix it. Perfect way to spend the day before Christmas Eve, really.
Closing his eyes, Seb focused on Maria’s face in his mind. The gleam in her eyes as she’d dropped that robe and stepped into the hot tub, stark naked. The way she’d insisted on eating tiramisu—also naked—before she’d even let him kiss her. The way she’d melted in his arms when they’d finally, finally touched...
The helicopter banked sharply to the right, and Seb clung to the base of his seat with white knuckles, his heart racing with fear.
All he had to do was get through this helicopter ride, the meeting from hell, and then one more trip back home to Mont Coeur. Then he was taking Christmas Eve off, come hell or high water. He’d fix the contract, pick up a bottle of champagne on his way back to the helipad, and then he’d go home to Maria and Frankie and enjoy Christmas, in a way he’d never hoped to again.
He just had to make it through this. Then everything would be wonderful again.
How could it not be, now he had Maria back home where she belonged?
* * *
‘What do you mean, he left?’ Noemi’s beautiful brows crumpled up in a confused frown. ‘It’s the day before Christmas Eve. We all had plans. With Frankie. And You Know Who.’ She mouthed ‘Santa’ in a deliberate manner in case Maria hadn’t picked up on the inference.
She had. And even if she hadn’t, how could she have forgotten the promised Santa trip, with Frankie reminding her every moment since he’d woken up?
Although Seb seemed to have managed it. Probably because he hadn’t been there when Maria and Frankie had woken up.
Wordlessly, Maria handed Noemi the note Seb had left stuck to the bedside table for her to find that morning. Noemi scanned the sticky note, her eyes widening. Then she went back to the beginning and read it out loud.
‘“Had to fly to Geneva—work stuff. Hope to be back for dinner. S. x.” Well, that’s...succinct.’