The Italian's Christmas Child

As she straightened her shoulders she looked round the room with belated admiration, suddenly noticing that the opulent décor was an amazing and highly effective marriage of traditional and contemporary styles. In spite of the ancient brick inglenook fireplace, the staircase had a glass surround and concealed lights. But she also noticed that there was one glaring omission: there were no festive decorations of any kind.

Vito yanked on his cashmere coat and scarf over the suit he still wore.

‘If you don’t have boots, I can’t let you go down there with me… You’ll get your shoes soaked,’ Holly told him ruefully, glancing at the polished, city-type footwear he sported with his incredibly stylish suit, which moulded to his well-built, long-legged frame as though specifically tailored to do so.

Vito walked into the porch, which boasted a rack of boots, and, picking out a pair, donned them. Her pragmatism had secretly impressed him. Vito was extremely clever but, like many very clever people, he was not particularly practical and the challenges of rural living in bad weather lay far outside his comfort zone.

‘My name is Holly,’ she announced brightly on the porch.

‘Vito…er…Vito Sorrentino,’ Vito lied, employing his father’s original surname.

His mother had been an only child, a daughter when his grandfather had longed for a son. At his grandfather’s request, Vito’s father had changed his name to Zaffari when he married Vito’s mother to ensure that the family name would not die out. Ciccio Sorrentino had been content to surrender his name in return for the privilege of marrying a fabulously wealthy banking heiress. There was no good reason for Vito to take the risk of identifying himself to a stranger. Right now the name Zaffari was cannon fodder for the tabloids across Europe and the news of his disappearance and current location would be worth a great deal of money to a profiteer. And if there was one gift Vito had in spades it was the gilded art of making a profit and ensuring that nobody got to do it at his expense.

His grandfather would have turned in his grave at the mere threat of his grandson plunging the family name and the family bank into such a sleazy scandal. Vito, however, was rather less naive. Having attended a board meeting before his departure, Vito was aware that he could virtually do no wrong. All the Zaffari directors cared about was that their CEO continued to ensure that the Zaffari bank carried on being the most successful financial institution in Europe.

CHAPTER TWO

‘YOU SAID THIS wasn’t your house,’ Holly reminded him through chattering teeth as they walked out into the teeth of a gale laced with snow.

‘A friend loaned it to me for a break.’

‘And you’re staying here alone?’

‘Sì…yes.’

‘By choice…alone…at Christmas?’ Holly framed incredulously.

‘Why not?’ Vito loathed Christmas but that was none of her business and he saw no need to reveal anything of a personal nature. His memories of Christmas were toxic. His paren

ts, who rarely spent time together, had squabbled almost continuously through the festive break. His mother had made a real effort to hide that reality and make the season enjoyable, but Vito had always been far too intelligent even as a child not to understand what was happening around him. He had seen that his mother loved his father but that her love was not returned. He had watched her humiliate herself in an effort to smooth over Ciccio’s bad moods and even worse temper. He had listened to her beg for five minutes of her husband’s attention. He had eventually grasped that the ideal goal composed of marriage, family and respectability could be a very expensive shrine to worship at. Had he not been made aware that it was his inherent duty to carry on the family line, nothing would have persuaded Vito into matrimony.

He studied the old car in the ditch with an amount of satisfaction that bemused him. It was a shabby ancient wreck of a vehicle. It had to mean that Holly was not a plant, not a spy or a member of the paparazzi, but a genuine traveller in trouble. Not that that reality softened his irritation over the fact that he was now stuck with her for at least one night. He had listened to the phone call she had made. Short of it being a matter of life or death, nobody was willing to come out on such a night. Of course he could have thrown his wealth at the problem to take care of it but nothing would more surely advertise his presence than the hiring of a helicopter to remove his unwanted guest, and he was doubtful that even a helicopter could fly in such poor conditions.

‘As you see…it’s stuck,’ Holly pointed out unnecessarily while patting the bonnet of the car as if it were a live entity in need of comfort. ‘It’s my friend’s car and she’s going to be really upset about this.’

‘Accidents happen…particularly if you choose to drive without taking precautions on a road like this in this kind of weather.’

In disbelief, Holly rounded on him, twin spots of high colour sparking over her cheekbones. ‘It wasn’t snowing this bad when I left home! There were no precautions!’

‘Let’s get your stuff and head back to the house.’

Suppressing the anger his tactless comment had roused with some difficulty, Holly studied him in astonishment. ‘You’re inviting me back to the house? You don’t need to. I can—’

‘I’m a notoriously unsympathetic man but even I could not leave you to sleep in a car in a snowstorm on Christmas Eve!’ Vito framed impatiently. ‘Now, may we cut the conversation and head back to the heat? Or do you want to pat the car again?’

Face red now with mortification, Holly opened the boot and dug out her rucksack to swing it up onto her back.

The rucksack was almost as big as she was, Vito saw in disbelief. ‘Let me take that.’

‘No… I was hoping you’d take the box because it’s heavier.’

Stubborn mouth flattening, Vito reached in with reluctance for the sizeable box and hefted it up with a curled lip. ‘Do you really need the box as well?’

‘Yes, it’s got all my stuff in it…please,’ Holly urged.

Her amazingly blue eyes looked up at him and he felt strangely disorientated. Her eyes were as translucent a blue as the Delft masterpieces his mother had conserved from his grandfather’s world-famous collection. They trudged back up the lane with Vito maintaining a disgruntled silence as he carried the bulky carton.

‘Porca miseria! What’s in the box?’