The Italian's Christmas Proposition. CATHY WILLIAMS

       CHAPTER THREE

      ROSIE THOUGHT THAT it was one thing to produce Matteo as a boyfriend, like a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat then yanking him off stage before anyone had time to suss that it was all sleight of hand. It was something else to hold him up to scrutiny, which was what she would be doing by having him in the chalet with her. He would be spun around for inspection, asked questions, quizzed about his intentions. How was she going to deal with all that without cracking? How was he?

      Her sisters, in particular, had all made it their mission to make Rosie keep them posted on her love life and she had always obliged. They had met a couple of her fleeting boyfriends and had not held back from making their opinions known, politely but firmly. She was so much younger than them and they had never really stopped treating her like the baby of the family.

      Hence, Rosie thought with uncharacteristic bitterness, the reason why she was where she was now.

      She had bolted from the prospect of having their idea of a suitable partner presented to her instead of standing her ground—but why on earth had it occurred to them that they could actually match her up with someone of their choosing in the first place?

      This time, she was going to deal with the situation calmly. If there were too many questions, she would just stop answering. If the quizzing from Candice and Emily went too far, she would tell them to back off.

      Matteo was a perfect stranger, but some of his remarks had been a little too perceptive for comfort. They had made her see herself in a different and more critical light than she had ever done before.

      She wasn’t silly and she didn’t feel entitled but she was a trust-fund baby in the truest sense of the word and she had felt embarrassed to acknowledge the fact.

      ‘You’re going to be held up to the spotlight,’ she warned. ‘Five minutes with Candice is quite different to several days with my entire family.’

      ‘I can take the heat,’ Matteo drawled. ‘Can you?’

      Rosie looked at him steadily. ‘I know what you think of me,’ she said, matching him for self-composure and liking the way she felt empowered by it. ‘That I live off my parents, and float from one thing to the next and allow my entire family to have a say in my life, but this time round I am definitely going to take the heat.’ She grinned suddenly. ‘They’ll be shocked.’

      ‘Good,’ Matteo murmured approvingly. ‘Sometimes it’s worthwhile to shock.’

      ‘I just have one condition.’

      ‘I’m all ears,’ Matteo said wryly.

      ‘I’m the one to do the breaking up.’

      Matteo looked at her, at a loss for a suitable response.

      ‘I can tell from your stunned expression that no one’s ever broken up with you before, am I right? None of those women you refuse to spend the night with, just in case they get ideas, has ever broken up with you…?’

      ‘Fate has smiled on me in that respect.’

      ‘Well,’ Rosie countered drily, ‘Either smiled on you or else made you incredibly arrogant.’

      Matteo grinned and then he burst out laughing. ‘You’re the most unexpected woman I’ve ever met,’ he murmured. His eyes were lazy and shuttered and feathered over her like a caress. ‘I’ve never met anyone as honest and outspoken. You contradict your background. So…you want to break up with me. I don’t see why not. Maybe it’s high time I suffered from a broken heart, and it works for you, doesn’t it?’

      Rosie nodded slowly. ‘I’m tired of my family feeling ever so slightly sorry for me.’

      ‘So you dump the eligible guy and you instantly gain their respect. Well, we’ll have to make sure that I’m the very besotted boyfriend, won’t we? Now, why don’t I check out of my suite here and we can both go to your chalet and begin this game…?’

      His suite was breath-taking. Huge, with several rooms, including an open-plan kitchen, fully equipped but, she imagined, seldom used.

      ‘You want this to be a convincing act?’ he had put to her as they had emerged from the private room where they had been ensconced for ages. ‘You come with me to my suite while I pack my things. Then we check out together. I was here on business when we met. Now that your family are coming over, it’s only natural I shift base so that we can be together and meet them as a couple.’

      Rosie looked at him as he efficiently gathered his belongings. While he packed, he conducted a series of calls in Italian, phone to his ear as he wandered from bedroom to living area, from bathroom to office, picking things up and tossing them in a case he had dumped on the glass table in the living area.

      She got the feeling that he had forgotten about her completely.

      ‘I don’t know anything about you,’ was the first thing she said when he was finally off the phone and the last of his things had been flung into the suitcase.

      Here, in his suite, nerves assailed her. There was something so sleek and so innately dangerous about him that she found it impossible to think that they could convince her very perceptive and inquisitive family that they were really an item. Up close and personal, the force of his personality was more powerful, not less. She’d told herself that she wasn’t going to be browbeaten by their curiosity and their questions, but how on earth were they going to believe that she, Rosie, bubbly, extrovert and carefree, had lost her heart to someone like Matteo?

      Add to that the fact that he really was a stranger and the uphill task of convincing anyone seemed insurmountable.

      In the act of zipping his suitcase, Matteo paused and looked at her for a few seconds.

      She hadn’t moved from her position by the door. She looked nervous and he marvelled that a lifetime of privilege—which had clearly been her background, judging from what she had told him—had managed to leave her unscathed. He hadn’t been kidding when he had told her that she was unexpected. He met a lot of privileged people. Young and old, and even the most charming—they all had a very similar veneer of confidence borne from the assumption that the world was theirs for the asking. They all spoke loudly and with booming confidence. Most drew distinct lines between the people who served them and the people on their own level.