The Italian's Christmas Child

‘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.