them and her breathing became shallow and laboured. She had no experience when it came to this kind of sophisticated, lazy flirting. If that was even what it was. All she could do was stare at him while her mind continued to play with all sorts of graphic, contraband images.
What on earth was wrong with her?
This guy reeked of danger and yet the pull she felt was overpowering.
‘So, now that we’re an item, what happens next?’
‘I…well…’
‘In the thick of this relationship, our hot, two-week clandestine fling, where were we supposed to be meeting? My room at the hotel? Your parents’ chalet? Neither of the above? It’s a mystery that Bob and Margaret didn’t jump in with a string of questions about our so-called affair, bearing in mind most of my time over the past few days has been spent with them working on finishing touches to my deal.’
‘How am I supposed to know?’ Rosie retorted truthfully. ‘I didn’t stop to think things through.’
Impulse on that scale was unheard of in Matteo’s world and it was strangely refreshing to glimpse a life where variables were given a chance to survive. Not for him, and yet… ‘Well, we’re going to have to come up with some sort of plausible story or else the whole thing falls apart, and I’m not about to let that happen.’
‘Because of this deal you’re working on?’
‘I just need to get past the finishing line.’
‘Why?’
‘Come again?’
‘Why would a deal mean so much to you that you would go along with this charade instead of just calling me out? I mean, you seem to have enough money…’
‘You’ve lived a life of comfort,’ Matteo said coolly. ‘From that vantage point, it’s easy to come out with platitudes about not needing money or having enough of it. Tell me, have you ever told anyone that the best things in life are free? Take it from me, they seldom are. Now, back to my question—what happens next? Your sister is staying with you. Having witnessed our show of love, presumably she expects nothing less than a formal meeting with the man who’s head over heels in love with you?’
Rosie’s brain was only just beginning to move on from what he had said about her attitude towards money. She was mortified to realise that he was right. She’d led a charmed life and it was easy to take all that for granted when you knew that it would always be there. For all her free-spirited travelling, she would never have fallen very far, because there would always have been a cushion waiting for her.
‘She’s probably curious,’ Rosie admitted.
‘And the over-protective family? Will the grape vine be buzzing with news of our whirlwind romance?’
Rosie shot him a sheepish smile and pushed some tangled blonde curls off her face.
‘“Buzzing” might be an understatement,’ she confessed.
‘But at least the ex-lover won’t be on the scene now you’re spoken for.’ He’d felt it again. A charge of electricity, powerful and disorientating. Primal. She represented everything he steered clear of when it came to women, and yet she was uniquely appealing and he had no idea from where the appeal stemmed.
‘Bertie was never an ex,’ Rosie was obliged to point out. ‘Never even came close! Our families have known each other for ages and, somewhere along the line, he got it into his head that he wanted to ask me out on a date. I was seventeen at the time. I’ve never fancied him but now he’s a big shot in the City somewhere and everyone thinks he could be a suitable match.’ She rolled her eyes.
Matteo didn’t say anything. His dark eyes were lazy and thoughtful. ‘So I’ll be meeting the family,’ he murmured.
‘You don’t have to. I could tell them that you’ve been called away on business. Candice has met you. She’ll understand.’
‘Why will she understand?’
‘Because…’ Rosie thought that, for someone as forbidding as he was, it was oddly easy to talk to him. ‘Because she has two children now, but before that she was a successful lawyer, so she understands the demands of work. She’ll get it if you pay a flying visit and then disappear.’
Rosie frowned and sat forward. ‘That would work,’ she said slowly. ‘If you disappear, then there won’t be the complication of your meeting my parents and the rest of the family. That way, I can gradually warn them that the big romance isn’t actually going as planned. These things happen,’ she thought aloud. ‘People meet and think that they’ve fallen in love but it turns out to be a mistake.’
‘And naturally,’ Matteo said soothingly, ‘That’s exactly what will happen but, for the moment, that solution is off the cards.’
‘Why?’
‘Because my deal hasn’t been finalised. Bob and Margaret are here for another week. Skiing, having fun and making sure the last details of my purchase are drawn up and inspected via email by their lawyers in London. Until signatures are on the dotted line, we’re in love and thinking of building a future together. Once everything’s signed, sealed and delivered, then the hasty unravelling of our relationship can begin.’ He gave an elegant shrug which implied that that was the way forward and there was nothing she could do about it, whether she wanted to or not.
‘It’ll be harder on my parents if they actually meet you face to face.’
‘Tough.’ Matteo didn’t bother beating about the bush. ‘I didn’t ask for this.’
His dark eyes scoured her face. He could read the tension and anxiety there, and of course she had a point. She clearly came from a tight-knit family unit. The less they were hurt by her behaviour, the better, but as far as he was concerned that was not his problem. Matteo didn’t allow sentiment to rule his life. It simply wasn’t in his nature. He had managed to remain focused, to stay on course with his life—unlike many of the kids he had grown up with, who had ended up either in jail or six feet under. That said, a life spent in foster care had toughened him. He had known what it meant to have nothing, to be a face and a name in a system and not much more. He had climbed out of that place and forged his way in the world.
That brief spell of respite at the place he was in the process of buying had shown him that there were alternatives in life. He had held onto that vision and it had seen him through.
He had realised that the only way to escape the predictability of becoming one of the victims of the Social Services system was to educate himself and he had applied himself to the task with monumental dedication. By the time he had hit Cambridge University, he had been an intellectual force to contend with.
He’d known more than his tutors. His aptitude for mathematics was prodigious. He’d been head-hunted by a newly formed investment bank and had swiftly risen to the top before breaking free to become something of a shooting star in the financial firmament. Money had given him the opportunity to diversify. It had allowed him to get whatever he wanted at the snap of a finger. Money had been his passport to freedom and freedom had been his only goal for his entire adult life.
Money had also jaded his palate, made life predictable. Being able to have whatever and whomever you wanted, he had reflected time and
