The Christmas Marriage Rescue (Lakeside Mountain Rescue 4)

Laughing, Christy fastened the necklace around her throat and stood back to judge the effect. It was perfect. With a conspiratorial smile at her daughter, she slipped her feet into the extravagant strappy shoes she’d purchased and picked up her bag.

‘Well? What’s the verdict?’

‘You look like something from the Christmas tree,’ Ben breathed from the doorway. ‘Like a real live princess.’

‘Which has to be better than a dead princess,’ Katy said dryly, rolling her eyes and sliding off the bed. ‘Come on. We’d better make sure Dad isn’t planning on wearing that ribbed jumper he’s been in all day.’

‘I’m not wearing a jumper.’ His voice deep and disturbingly masculine, Alessandro appeared in the doorway, dressed in a black dinner jacket that emphasised the width of his powerful shoulders.

He looked startlingly handsome and Christy caught her breath.

After all these years, she thought to herself, he still made her stare.

And he was staring, too.

His gaze slid from her eyes to her mouth, then lingered on the swell of her breasts revealed by the cut of the fabric and then finally rested on the hemline, which stopped a long way short of her knees.

‘You’re not going out like that.’

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Poised for a compliment, Christy felt her happiness shatter. ‘Sorry?’

‘It isn’t the sort of dress you should be wearing. It’s revealing and it’s—’ Alessandro broke off, the expression in his eyes dark and dangerous as he struggled to find the right words. ‘It’s just not suitable.’

Christy felt her own temper rise.

The dress was perfect and she knew she looked fabulous. All day she’d been cocooned in the delicious anticipation of the moment when he saw her in the dress. And he’d spoiled it.

‘Why isn’t it suitable?’

Alessandro prowled around the room, his expression dark and ominous. ‘You are a wife and a mother, and that dress makes you look like…’ He inhaled sharply and stabbed long fingers through his hair, ‘it makes you look like…’

‘A woman?’ Christy slotted in helpfully. ‘You didn’t think I could still work in A and E, but I’ve proved you wrong. You didn’t think I could still be a useful member of the mountain rescue team, but I proved you wrong there, too. To you, I’ve ceased to be an individual. To you, I’m just a wife and a mother.’ Her voice cracked as she said the words. ‘But I’ve got news for you. Yes, I’m a wife and a mother, but I’m also a woman, Alessandro Garcia, and it’s time you remembered that fact and stopped behaving like a caveman.’

Having delivered that speech, she walked from the room with as much dignity as she could muster, given the ridiculous height of the heels she’d chosen.

* * *

Alessandro stood in the centre of the room, his powerful shoulders rigid with tension as he struggled to control his simmering temper.

‘Well…’ His daughter’s voice came from directly behind him. ‘I’d say that you really messed that one up!’

Disturbed from his contemplation of that exact same fact, Alessandro rounded on his daughter with a growl. ‘I did not ask for your opinion.’

‘Maybe not, but I’m in this family, too!’ Katy put her hands on her hips, her temper flaring as quickly as his. ‘I don’t see why I should have to sit around and watch the two of you ruin everything. Mum bought a new dress and she looks nice—for an older person,’ she added quickly as an afterthought, and Alessandro frowned.

‘Your mother is only thirty-two.’

‘Is she that old?’ Katy shuddered and pulled a face. ‘Hard to imagine.’

At any other time Alessandro would have laughed but he was too busy contemplating the facts to respond to the horror in his daughter’s expression.

Thirty-two. Many women weren’t even married at that age, he mused. Christy was still young. He’d met her young and made her pregnant almost immediately.

And his daughter was right. She had looked nice in the dress. More than nice. Gorgeous. Sexy. Stunning.

Closing his eyes to clear the image of long slender legs and tempting feminine curves, he realised that Christy had been spot on in her accusation. He was behaving like a caveman. The truth was that he didn’t want any other man admiring what was his. Especially at the moment, when their relationship was so precarious.