Her eyes were wide as she stared at him in obvious shock. “You say that as though you’ve just written your own death warrant,” she muttered after a minute, wrenching her hand free. “And I’ve had enough of people liking me ‘except for this’ or ‘except for that’. I’ve had enough of people wishing with all their souls that they didn’t actually care about me.”
He shook his head. “That’s not what I’m saying.”
She was wary, but didn’t insist on leaving him.
“Nothing’s changed,” he frowned. “Nothing can change, for many reasons – yours and mine. This is what it is: a few days out of time. But I don’t want to ignore you and avoid you. I don’t want to push you away when the truth is, you’re all I can think about, Isabella Moss.”
She startled, her eyes lifting to his, her teeth jabbing into her lip.
“I don’t want you to ignore me.”
“You sure? Because you made it pretty obvious that’s exactly what you wanted the day after we —,”
“Yes, I know,” he agreed sotto voice. “I panicked.”
More surprise etched itself across her face. “You panicked?”
“You looked at me as though — you were so happy and I freaked out. I don’t do this. Ever. Being trapped here together means I can’t —,”
“Escape,” she supplied with a hint of fiery sarcasm. “Are you really such a shit that you only have sex with women you can run away from?”
Despite the tenor of their argument, he laughed, a short, sharp sound. “I suppose I do.”
She, however, was not amused. “Why?”
His smile dropped. No. He wasn’t going there.
“My point is, I think we should work out a different way to exist here. Something more — mutually satisfying than this.”
She tilted her head to the side. “You’re talking about sex again.”
Desire flared in the pit of his stomach. “I’m talking about sex,” he agreed. “And company.”
“So if we sleep together you’ll deign to speak to me afterwards this time?”
“Do you really think I’m such a bastard that this is a quid pro quo?”
“If I do think you’re a bastard, whose fault is that?”
Surprised at the accuracy of her insult, he dipped his head, not sure what his face would show but wanting to hide it from her.
She’d asked why he was like this, and as much as he hated talking about Carmen and Avery, he suspected that if anyone had earned a right to know and understand, it was the woman standing opposite him.
“I hate Christmas.”
The statement was, on the surface, out of left field. But she didn’t react like that. She didn’t tell him ‘so what’ or ‘I know’. Instead, Isabella waited, reaching across for her glass of wine, the sip she took some kind of tacit agreement to stay – for now – and hear him out.
“I always have. Even as a boy, despite the fact my grandmother makes a big fuss every year, and in our family it is a huge deal.” He grimaced. “I’m not like them. At all.”
“Your family?” She prompted, her fingers delicate on the bowl of the glass, her eyes watchful.
He nodded once, but didn’t elaborate on that score. It wasn’t really relevant, even though her own upbringing probably predisposed this woman to understand, better than anyone, the scars his childhood had left on his soul.
He didn’t like to dwell on that part of his past. He was luckier than most. He had his brothers and cousins, Yaya and until a few years ago, Gianfelice.
“I don’t understand. So you don’t like Christmas and that means…what?”
He compressed his lips. “It’s not —,” he swore under his breath, dragging his fingers through his thick hair, turning away from her to get his bearings. If he told her this, she’d look at him differently. She should look at him differently.
He discarded the beer bottle and strode to the fridge, pulling another out then bracing his hips on the countertop. She was waiting, watching him, her face holding no judgement. Only her eyes showed a hint of curiosity, a spark of something like concern.
“I used to be involved with a woman. Carmen.” The words emerged clinical and cold, despite the raw emotion behind them. He hadn’t spoken to anyone about this in a long time, if ever. Only Raf, who’d been with him in the car on that awful, fateful night.
A flicker at Isabella’s lips showed her surprise, but still she said nothing, only took another sip of her wine before shifting, pulling up to sit on the edge of the benchtop, her beautiful body languid and graceful with the gesture.
“We were dating for a few months. It wasn’t serious, but I liked her. She had a baby – Avery.” The word was thick with guilt. Heat spread through his body as he prepared to break his silence on this subject.
“You had a baby?”
“Not mine,” he clarified. “The baby was hers with her ex husband. They’d broken up while she was pregnant, before we met. In any event, she came to Italy to spend Christmas with me. She brought Avery.” Memories of that time rang through him. He braced a palm on the bench top, needing support.
He found it hard to continue, almost impossible to find the right words, yet there was something about Isabella that made him push through that, determined to identify the right way to explain what he meant.
“We were just going to stay in Rome but then I got the brilliant idea of wanting to surprise her with this place.” He ground his teeth together. “It was Avery’s first real Christmas. She was fifteen months old and Carmen wanted it to be perfect for her. I thought this place would be like something out
