feet under. That said, a life spent in foster care had toughened him. He had known what it meant to have nothing, to be a face and a name in a system and not much more. He had climbed out of that place and forged his way in the world.
That brief spell of respite at the place he was in the process of buying had shown him that there were alternatives in life. He had held onto that vision and it had seen him through.
He had realised that the only way to escape the predictability of becoming one of the victims of the Social Services system was to educate himself and he had applied himself to the task with monumental dedication. By the time he had hit Cambridge University, he had been an intellectual force to contend with.
He’d known more than his tutors. His aptitude for mathematics was prodigious. He’d been head-hunted by a newly formed investment bank and had swiftly risen to the top before breaking free to become something of a shooting star in the financial firmament. Money had given him the opportunity to diversify. It had allowed him to get whatever he wanted at the snap of a finger. Money had been his passport to freedom and freedom had been his only goal for his entire adult life.
Money had also jaded his palate, made life predictable. Being able to have whatever and whomever you wanted, he had reflected time and again, did not necessarily guarantee excitement.
He hadn’t had a woman in months and he hadn’t been tempted.
Now here he was and, in that instant, Matteo decided that he was going to go with the flow and make the best of the situation into which he had been catapulted. Moreover, he was going to enjoy the experience.
‘I have a suite here, at this hotel,’ he mused. ‘Bob and Margaret are at another location, further down the slopes. If I’m the new man in your life, then I’ll be expected to be at your parents’ chalet with you, I presume?’
‘Wait. What? Now, hang on just a minute…’
‘It’s hardly likely that we’re in the thick of a stormy, passionate affair and I’m bedding down on my own in a hotel room while you’re miles away in a chalet somewhere with nothing but the telly and a good book for company. Is it?’
‘Well, no. but…’
‘But?’
‘But this isn’t a normal situation, is it? I mean, we’re not actually involved with one another, are we?’
‘You need to follow the plot line here,’ Matteo imparted kindly. ‘There will be people we will need to convince and no one, not even traditional and church-going Bob and Margaret, will be persuaded that this is the affair of a lifetime if we’re crossing paths off and on.’
‘Stop being patronising,’ Rosie said absently. What did he mean by being at the chalet with her? Sharing a bedroom? She paled at the thought because suddenly her little white lie had taken on a life of its own and was galloping away at speed.
Matteo burst out laughing and she focused on his handsome face and glared.
‘I hadn’t banked on this,’ she said tightly. ‘You may find the whole thing hilarious but I don’t.’
‘I don’t find anything hilarious about this situation,’ Matteo shot back and, she thought for the millionth time, there was no need for him to remind her that she had brought this mess on herself. ‘But here we are. I’m going to move into your parents’ chalet today.’
‘Candice will know that you haven’t been living with me,’ Rosie pointed out.
‘How?’
‘There would be signs of us sharing a bedroom. You would have left stuff behind. Clothes on the backs of chairs. Shaving foam. Bedroom slippers. Aftershave…’
His eyebrows shot up, his expression halting her in mid-flow.
‘I have never spent a night in any woman’s house and, if I had, I certainly wouldn’t have left anything behind.’
Rosie’s mouth fell open and she gaped at him. ‘You’ve never stayed at a woman’s overnight?’ He was so arrogant, so beautiful, so sophisticated—she found it impossible to credit that he had never spent the night with a woman.
What woman, she guiltily thought, would let him out of her bed? It was an inappropriate thought but it lodged in her head, pounding with the steady force of a drum beat.
Matteo made a dismissive gesture with his hand that was both elegant and strangely exotic and she watched him from under lowered lashes, fascinated and mesmerised by the strong, proud lines of his handsome face.
‘I’m a normal, red-blooded man with a healthy libido,’ Matteo told her wryly. ‘I work hard and I play hard, but I don’t do love, and I never encourage a woman to think, even for a second, that I might.’
‘And if you spent a night with a woman…it would mean that you’re interested in more than just sex?’
‘Forget about me,’ Matteo drawled. ‘The danger would lie in her believing that there might be more to it than sex.’
‘And yet you’re okay with spending time in the chalet with me?’
‘Oh, but you’re not my woman,’ Matteo purred silkily. ‘And this isn’t about sex. This is a little pretend game that’ll be over just as soon as I get what I’m after…’
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