Page 45 of Italian’s Christmas Acquisition

“He really is,” Noelle agreed.

She looked at the dress. “I have to go. I have to get ready for this... This thing.”

“What thing?”

“A big party. Where everyone is going to be watching me and judging me next to this man, who is sophisticated and gorgeous. And deciding whether or not I’m good enough for him, I guess.”

“Well, you make it sound very fun.”

She suddenly realized what an interesting trap she had stepped into. Rocco had all the power. If he decided to, he could send her back home, demolish the bed-and-breakfast anyway. They weren’t married yet. No agreements had been signed.

She could’ve come all this way only to go right back.

And it was even more impossible to imagine going back to the way things had been before now.

She had come so far, and yet, she still had nothing to hold on to, not really.

Except for him.

This wildly difficult man that had woven himself around her existence.

“I better look great in this dress.”

CHAPTER TEN

HEWASABOUTto go in and fetch her when she emerged. And his heart nearly exited his chest, straight through his rib cage. He had never been affected so by a woman. And he couldn’t quite pinpoint why it was happening now.

But with or without reason she affected him all the same.

The dress was... She looked like a present. All red and satin and he wanted to unwrap her more than anything.

It was a complicated series of straps that crossed low in the front, showing her glorious cleavage.

The back was almost entirely bare, the satin hugging the curve of her rear, before cascading out around her feet like a waterfall.

She was... Everything.

“You will do,” he said.

She looked at him like he was certifiable. Nobody ever did that. Nobody was brave enough. Nobody but her.

“You are beautiful,” he said. “Does that fix things?”

“Why is it so difficult for you to compliment me?”

“What is difficult is finding words for what I feel.” That was honest. He wasn’t sure that he liked it, because he felt as if she had extracted a compromise from him. And he was determined not to be changed by this.

He wanted to build a hedge around his space, as he had done when he was a child, to keep himself protected. Pure. Controlled.

Control.

A word that cut both ways with such precision. He did not care for it.

And yet, it was what also protected him. Even while it was what had victimized him. But his control, that never failed him.

And so, his control was how he would choose to live.

“You look all right too,” she said, lifting a brow.

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