Page 25 of Italian’s Christmas Acquisition

She tried to busy herself in the kitchen. She made homemade soup, and thought about him saying he didn’t like leftovers. He had an issue with fresh food. But then he had said he was rich. And he had talked about locking his bedroom door and escaping through secret passages.

His story didn’t line up or make sense, and she mused on that as she quickly delivered him soup.

She decided to google him. She didn’t get any more information from there. In fact, she got far less. The family was wealthy, Italian, and had been in property development for nearly a century. His mother had been a brilliant businesswoman. Beautiful, too. There were pictures of her online, but only to a point. He had said that she had retreated from public life. That they hadn’t left their house.

While no articles stated that directly, it was definitely implied. But there were no further details. None whatsoever.

But if she connected the dots, and filled in the blank spaces using what she knew of him—sophisticated and wild all at the same time—she had no trouble believing...

That he’d been a child left on his own. That he hadn’t learned how to connect with people, not really. That he was a man who needed control because his mother had controlled so much of his life until that moment.

She sighed and pushed back away from the computer. Then she went into the kitchen, and stood there at the counter. She shouldn’t want to go back upstairs so badly. She shouldn’t miss him. He was herenemy.

Except that didn’t feel like the right label, and it should.

Was she that stupid? A man was handsome so it didn’t feel right to label him the bad guy? He was the bad guy. He was a property developer who devoured adorable, unique places like Holiday House. He didn’t care about her. He didn’t care about what she wanted. Except he had taken care of her, even though he had no idea how to do it. And now he was lying upstairs all feverish. And handsome.

More than handsome.

She chewed on her thumbnail.

She made another cup of tea, and decided to go back upstairs. When she walked through his bedroom door, she saw him lying there on the bed, one muscular arm thrown up over his face, his body completely out of the covers, his chest bare. Every time he took a breath, the muscles on his chest and stomach shifted. She was fascinated by him. Surely there was no harm in looking, just for a moment. At the well-defined muscles, the tanned skin and dark hair that covered them. At just how very masculine he was. She had no experience of this. And she didn’t wish that she did. Because it was a sort of magical thing for it to be him. Because he was so singular. So glorious.

She let out a sharp breath, and walked over to his bedside, putting the cup of tea down on the side table.

And she let herself take in all that masculine beauty. She felt outside herself in that moment, even in this very familiar room.

As she looked at every dip and hollow of muscle on his chest, his stomach.

Just looking at him made her feel...bold.

What if...

Her breathing quickened.

What if he was the first? What if he was...for her. Not forever, obviously, she wasn’t that silly. But there had to be a first, didn’t there? And he was definitely the only man who had ever made her feel like this.

She wanted her same life, she did.

But what if she could be different in it? Just for a while...

He shifted, lowering his arm. Sweat beaded on his forehead, and he looked... In pain. Which she hated.

She frowned, and put her hand against his face. He was burning. Without thinking, she let her hand drift down his cheek, the line of his jaw. The dark shadow of his beard was rough against her finger. He had been clean-shaven when he had arrived, but not so now.

She hadn’t realized quite how fascinating men were. Quite how different.

Her admiration of them had always been distant. Mostly fictional. The problem with the men in town was that she had known them since they were boys. And they were distinctly uninteresting. It was difficult to see someone as sexy when you could so clearly remember them from middle school. Middle school was the least sexy phase of life.

And it had badly damaged the way that she saw every local guy.

It didn’t seem to inhibit many of the people that she knew from school. So many of them had married each other.

It was just that... It had never been right for her. She was very clear on that. She’d wanted to find someone who captured her imagination.

So here she was, snowed in with a mysterious, handsome stranger. No one would ever think that would happened to Noelle Holiday. No, she was staid and boring. She was a homebody. She was old before her time, basically a cat lady without cats living on top of the mountain by herself.

And she was happy with that.

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