Page 32 of Italian’s Christmas Acquisition

It didn’t seem possible, and yet it did. She was the strangest woman that he had ever met. The only person that he had ever met who was as isolated as he was.

He let that realization rest heavy on his shoulders. He wasn’t a virgin. He had traveled the world. And many women had touched his body. But no one had touched him deeper than that.

Her life was different. She was in this small town, where anyone you slept with, you would have to contend with again. He imagined it changed the complexion of how people did things.

Perhaps.

“Noelle...”

“Okay,” she said, sounding grumpy. “I was. But... I don’t expect anything from you.”

She looked sad, though. And the trouble was, he now expected something. The trouble was, something had changed. This place, it didn’t mean anything to him, not specifically, and it did to her.

Which was beginning to matter. She was not just a faceless person he could fling money at. Was not just a number or a statistic. She was a woman. Who had taken care of him.

Sex was one thing. It was everything else.

But he was caught. Caught in the web of his mother’s making. In her game.

He had wanted to dodge it. He had thought that he could serve his own ambitions while completing the terms of the will, and it would never bother him. But it bothered him now.

There was only one other way to sidestep it.

He would have to think about this. Not what he was going to do. He was determined on that. But how he was going to do it.

Rocco Moretti had yet to enter into a battle that he hadn’t won. But he had a feeling if anyone was going to challenge him in ways that he couldn’t anticipate, it was her.

She had been pushing him from the moment they’d met. Refusing to give in to offers of money, caring for him even when she claimed not to like him.

But he would be able to win. He knew it.

Just then, the phone rang.

“Oh,” she said, scrambling up. It was the landline.

“You have an actual phone?” he asked.

“This is a bed-and-breakfast,” she said. She was naked, shivering, she didn’t quite know what to do with herself, but she gathered herself to answer the phone.

“Holiday House.”

“Is that you, Noelle?”

“Yes,” she said.

“This is Fred, we’re headed up to plow your road.”

“Oh,” she said. “Thank God.”

“Everything should be open for you within the hour.”

“Thank you,” she said.

She hung up the phone. And suddenly she felt bereft. They were free now. They had... Cared for each other while they were sick. She had just lost her virginity.

And the roads would be open.

He could leave. She was suddenly seized with the strangest sense of grief. It didn’t make any sense. She shouldn’t be grieving.

---