Page 36 of Italian’s Christmas Acquisition

He chuckled. “Most people are enamored of it. It is the greatest city in the world, after all.”

“Subjective, I’m certain. Also, I love it here. I love it here more than I love anything else.”

“How nice for you,” he said. “I think you will find that isn’t true for others. I for example, find that I am not so charmed by this place.”

“No, of course not. That would be far too convenient. Can’t you just fall in love with this place and decide not to build here out of the goodness of your heart?”

He shook his head. “I don’t do anything out of the goodness of my heart. But the truth is, eventually, I will have to marry, and I will have to have an heir. You took care of me. When I was ill. You made me feel at ease. You are exactly the woman that I should want as the mother to my child. Yes, I find your house not to my taste, but it is homey. I think. At least, I suppose that is what others would say.”

“But not you.”

“I find it cluttered. But it is not dangerously so.”

She didn’t have any idea what he meant by that. By dangerously cluttered. What on earth could that mean?

“I think that you would be a good mother. I think that you could learn to be a good wife. We are compatible in bed.”

She looked around, wildly. “I know everyone here.”

“I don’t. But in any case, you and I would suit.”

“How? I hate the sound of the place that you call home, you hate the place that I call home. You think my house is cluttered. You think that I’m a silly small-town girl.”

“You were also a virgin,” he said, lowering his voice. “I take the gift that you gave me seriously.”

“You make it sound like it’s medieval times. Should I be grateful you didn’t hang the bloodied sheet out the window?”

He frowned. “Did you bleed?”

“If so, not enough to worry about.”

“I don’t want to have hurt you.”

“I’m a woman, Rocco, if I got wound up about a little blood I’d be beset all the time.”

He considered that. “I don’t mean to sound medieval. But perhaps a bit old-fashioned. I cannot help myself. I cannot ignore the fact that you have never been with another man, and yet you chose to be with me. There are things I cannot give, Noelle. I will be honest with you in that. I cannot give love. I will not give you a conventional life. I do not think that we will sit warmly around the dinner table all together, and talk of our day. I will come and see you, and the child. You will stay with me sometimes. You will be... The better parent, I feel, in the child’s life.”

“I didn’t even tell you if I wanted children,” she said, even as she felt her stomach cramp low. The idea of carrying a baby... Of course she had always wanted a traditional life. It was the thing that she thought about often. Her family home, her family legacy. In order to truly realize that dream, she had seen herself having her own family. She had also seen herself living with that family at Holiday House. She hadn’t considered being a part-time single mother.

But she couldn’t go back to that simple dream. Because she could no longer put a blank face in the place of the father, the husband. The only man that she could imagine was Rocco. And she didn’t have to be in love with him for that to be the case. She wasn’t in love. She wasn’t that naive, she wasn’t that simple. But she also knew that attraction like they shared didn’t just pop up all the time. In twenty-four years, she hadn’t experienced it. Now that she knew it existed, she could never settle for less. Was she going to wait another twenty-four years for a man to show up who ignited her imagination in that way?

She thought of her mother, her father, who had clearly been incompatible in the end. They had loved each other. They truly had. But her mother had wanted to escape the life that they had built, whatever she had thought going into it. What that taught her was that you couldn’t know for certain what you would want in the future. You could only make decisions as best you could right then.

It was all you could do.

It was the only thing.

She might be unhappy if she decided to marry him. But she would be unhappy if she didn’t. She would still be in this fight. This fight to keep Holiday House, this fight to... To find herself. Because in the end, that’s what she was trying to do. She had tried to do it by keeping everything the same. She had been lonely. Happy in so many ways, how she loved the Christmas tree farm. How she loved the house. How she loved the people in this town. But she was unsatisfied. She was unfulfilled. Maybe she could be half and half. The before and the after. Noelle, with her child, with her warmth and her Christmas, at Holiday House, and Rocco’s wife in New York when he needed it.

Yes, what he was offering had a bleakness to it. But, she was happy with him now. She had been these past few days. He was a good man.

He would continue to be a good man. Who was to say that it wouldn’t be enough?

Who could know for certain?

“I will marry you. But I need it in writing that Holiday House will be safe.”

“It will.”

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