Page 9 of Italian’s Christmas Acquisition

“I understand.” He walked all the way down the steps, and turned around the room, looking around them. “This is... Quaint. But you must admit, the appetite for such a place has never been lower than it is now.”

Suddenly, she was seized by the urge to sneeze. She couldn’t fight it. She inhaled, and then rocked forward hard, covering her face as best she could.

When she looked up, he had drawn back, his hands touching the collar of his suit jacket. The man was in a suit at six in the morning.

“Are you well?”

“I’m feeling a bit under the weather,” she said.

“That is unfortunate.”

“Well. The chores will not wait for anyone. I need to figure out how to fix my snowplow.”

“If you worked for me, the chores would wait. You would have sick leave.”

“Well, I wouldn’t today, Mr. Moretti.”

“You think not?”

“Yeah. I think not.”

“I’m not sure exactly what game you’re playing.”

“Well, remind me again what game you’re playing,” she said. “Because I’m curious. What exactly was your name again?”

“I came up here to convince you that this place is not where you want to be.”

“Ironic,” she said. “Because now you’re stuck here.”

“Excuse me?”

“I can see that you’re the kind of man who is used to getting his way. The kind of man who thinks he’s in control of everything. But I regret to inform you, Mr. Moretti, that you don’t control the weather.”

CHAPTER THREE

ROCCOLOOKEDAROUNDthe space, he felt an increasing sense of discomfort. There were thingseverywhere. The decor could best be described as dust catching. He was not amused. Nor was he impressed. The sooner a place like this was torn to the ground, all the better as far as he was concerned. It was the antithesis to everything that he created in his resorts. He strived for clean lines, for minimalism. Modern luxury, with no nonsense.

This place was entirely nonsense. And now, this... Sneezing creature in the nightgown was telling him that he was stuck here?

Then there was...her.

She was not dressed as a reindeer just now. But her red hair remained untamed, and her face was dotted with freckles. Her sweater was chunky and had a snowflake pattern and she had eyeshadow with glitter. She was maximalist, as a human.

And she was beautiful. Like everything he’d never wanted wrapped into an enticing package that should be as off-limits as it was forbidden.

He was not accustomed to that. The lure of the forbidden. His life was controlled. His space was his own and everything in it had been put there specifically by him.

This place was not his. The weather was not his to control.

And the way he felt about her was like all of these things that were so foreign to him wrapped up in lush, soft-looking skin.

What was this? If they were unresolved issues from his childhood come back to haunt him, he’d happily skip them.

It said a lot about him, perhaps, that he was suddenly afraid his childhood torment had manifested in his adult years as a kink for a woman who seemed to representchaos.

There was a psychological breakthrough.

That which he could not control as a child, he wanted to screw as a man.

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