left the kitchen, shutting the door behind him, leaving her to take as long as she possibly could filling the dishwasher, wiping the counters and in the end going through the contents of the fridge and binning everything that no longer had any lifespan left whatsoever.
It was after midnight by the time she finally headed up to the bedroom and she was dead on her feet.
So he was going to be in her bedroom. That meant nothing. She was going to be cool and composed because he was right—she wasn’t a kid and she was going to stop behaving like one. She was the only one who could determine the direction of her life and her choices and she was going to remember that.
This felt like a crucial moment for her. She was at a crossroads. She either carried on in no particular direction, escaping her family’s well-intentioned guidance by drifting from one job to another, or else she buckled down and asserted herself. It was odd that a perfect stranger had been the one to bring her to this point.
He told her things that she didn’t want to hear but it was thanks to him that she had actually stood up to Candice instead of backing away. She had always been treated like the baby of the family and she had followed through, fulfilling their expectations, becoming the family member happy to drift through life while other people got on with responsible living and grown-up decision making.
When she stood back and looked at it through objective eyes, she was mortified.
From now on, things were going to change. They already had.
Filled with the rosy glow of assertiveness, Rosie pushed open the bedroom door and there he was on the chaise longue, semi-reclining, and it looked painful. His laptop was open and his legs looked as though they weren’t quite sure where they should go. Over the end of the sofa? Uncomfortable. On the ground? Likewise. He was way too tall and too big for the piece of furniture to which he had been consigned but the fact that he had obeyed orders touched her.
He shifted his big, muscular bulk as she walked in, drawing attention… Forget about the inadequacies of his makeshift bed, the guy was semi-naked.
Low-slung, loose-fitting jogging bottoms. That was it. He was half-naked and she stood by the door, shamelessly gaping for a few seconds, before walking in and shutting the door behind her.
Thank God he hadn’t switched on the overhead light. Instead, he had swivelled the angle-poise lamp by the bed in the direction of the chaise longue. Rosie hoped that in a half-dark room the beetroot red of her cheeks wouldn’t immediately be visible.
‘You took your time,’ Matteo said, now standing up and stretching before dumping the laptop on her dressing table.
Rosie’s vocal cords had dried up. She cleared her throat and stared straight past his spectacular, burnished bronze body to the window just behind him. Seemed a safer option. That said, he still managed to intrude into the entire periphery of her vision. He was so tall, muscles densely packed, the flat lines of his stomach tapering to a narrow waist and spirals of dark hair arrowing down…
‘There was a lot of tidying to do in the kitchen,’ she croaked. ‘You… I see you’ve made yourself comfortable on the chaise longue.’
Matteo glanced over his shoulder and grimaced. ‘I’m not sure that comfortable would be the appropriate word.’
Rosie had expected complaints. Maybe a show of resentful acceptance of the boundaries she had laid down, possibly even fully fledged refusal to accommodate her wishes. But his voice was remarkably even and she felt something…quite different from those waves of taboo attraction. She felt the stirrings of affection.
She glanced at her lovely king-sized bed and Matteo followed the direction of her gaze.
‘I’m in your house,’ he said, walking to the window and back to the sofa, exercising his long limbs. ‘The bed is yours.’
‘I’m half your size.’
‘Rules of the house apply here,’ Matteo drawled drily, flexing his muscles again and then sinking back down onto the chaise longue, his dark eyes pinned to her face as she remained hovering like a visitor in her own bedroom. He grinned. ‘Relax. There’s no need to start thinking about playing the self-sacrificing martyr by giving up your bed for me, Rosie. If the shoe was on the other foot and you were in my house, I’d be sprawled out on the bed and you’d be trying to squeeze into the clothes hamper in the bathroom. It’s late. Forget I’m here and go to sleep.’
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