Page 34 of Italian’s Christmas Acquisition

“Hello,” she said cheerfully.

“Who is this?”

“Melody Stevens, this is Rocco Moretti. We got snowed in up at the inn,” she said.

“Oh,” Melody said.

Noelle smiled cheerfully.

“We need to go out to dinner soon,” she said.

“Oh, we will,” Noelle said.

She walked back out of the coffeehouse holding Rocco’s hand still, and drinking the hot chocolate. He grimaced as he said, “It’s very sweet.”

“Yes,” she said. “It is.”

They looked around, she wondered if maybe, just maybe, him having an attachment to the town would change the way that he saw Holiday House. If it would change his intentions.

“So,” she said. “What do you think?”

“I hate it.”

He took another sip of hot chocolate.

She simply stared at him. “You... You hate it?”

“Yes. Everyone knows you...they talk to you constantly. It is saccharine to the point of being sickening, and I am not talking about the hot chocolate. The decorations are too bright, and it is too much. But you clearly love it.”

“I do,” she said.

“You love it, and you would do anything to preserve your life here, yes?”

“Yes.”

Her heart was pounding, she didn’t know where this was going.

“I have something to ask you.”

“Okay.”

He looked around the street, and the Christmas lights reflected in his dark eyes. Then he looked back at her, and they were nothing but coal black. “Noelle Holiday, I want you to be my wife.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

NOELLEWASSHOCKED. Immobilized. Of all the things she’d expected from her first sexual experience—which had been amazing but clearly, clearly a one-off—a proposal hadn’t been on the list.

She might have been only just recently a virgin, but she wasn’t an idiot.

“Excuse me?”

She was so aware that she was standing out there on the streets of this town where everybody knew her. Where everyone had opinions on who she was, with this man. And it had been an extremely fun lark, until this moment. Until she had begun to realize that whatever she thought was happening, Rocco knew better. Until she had begun to realize that he never just did anything. This had been a calculated, coordinated move. He wasn’t going to look at the town with her simply because he wanted to. No. Of course not. There was something else at play with him. She had forgotten for a moment who he was. Even though she had been telling herself to be conscious of it. To be aware.

“Why?” she asked.

Not the response she ever saw herself giving to a man in her fantasies when he proposed. But then, the man had never been Rocco.

She couldn’t have conjured him up in her fantasies no matter how hard she tried.

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