Hot Christmas Nights: Tuscan Nights / Christmas Tango / Tied Up in Tinsel

Chapter 3 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 4 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 5 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

Tuscan Nights (#ulink_58d36239-4c0a-5360-91a0-f6e005cbd568)

Farrah Rochon

Dedicated to my sister-in-law, Ayeshia Roybiskie.

I love having you as a sister.

And over all these virtues put on love,

which binds them all together in perfect unity.

—Colossians 3:14

Chapter 1 (#ulink_8cc58c3a-7c10-5daa-af56-b0fb8f064626)

Aiden Williams buried his chin deeper into his wool scarf as he shifted from one foot to the other on the cobblestones in front of Forno Leoncini. Cursing himself for leaving his gloves in the car, he blew into his cupped hands before shoving them into the pockets of his corduroys.

What had previously been a light snowfall had gained strength over the past few minutes, the thick flakes swirling around him as the wind kicked up. He knew he couldn’t stand out here forever, but he wasn’t ready to make his presence known. Not yet.

Despite the cold, his skin grew hot as he peered through the bakery’s garland-framed windowpane. His eyes focused on the woman standing before a rectangular stone table, her flour-covered fist punching a ball of dough. The last time he’d seen her in the flesh, she was standing in a church vestibule, wearing a wedding gown, preparing to marry his older brother, Cameron.

Three years later, Aiden was still conflicted over how he felt about Cameron being a no-show for his own wedding. On the one hand, he was grateful he had not been forced to endure years of seeing Nyla and his brother living as man and wife. Aiden doubted he would have been able to stomach it, knowing that she was only pretending.

Yet Cameron’s decision to stand her up at the altar had been the catalyst that prompted Nyla’s hasty move to Europe. She’d left Atlanta a week after the aborted nuptials and had not been back since.

But here she was, a mere twenty feet away. And she was as sexy as ever. More gorgeous than he remembered, if that was even possible.

Aiden turned up his coat collar as the snow began to fall in earnest. Uncertainty, entwined with a heavy dose of nervousness, kept him rooted where he stood, just outside the warm glow cast by the bakery’s interior lights. He was unsure how Nyla would react to him tracking her down to this small town tucked away in the hills of the Siena region in Tuscany.

He’d debated the entire drive here whether to contact her but decided against giving Nyla any notice. Aiden was convinced she’d make an excuse for why he shouldn’t come, just as she had done the previous three times he’d suggested they meet in the month since he’d been in Zurich, Switzerland, consulting on an IT project for a worldwide banking giant—a job he only accepted because it brought him to Europe.

No, he wasn’t giving her a chance to back out this time. He’d come too far to find her—he’d crossed a damn ocean.

Yet Aiden still couldn’t bring himself to take these last few steps. Because worse than having Nyla make excuses about why she couldn’t see him would be to have her flat-out reject him to his face.

His gut clenched with a sharp ache. Nyla wouldn’t do that.

Even though she had.

Aiden mentally blocked the words she’d spoken the last time he saw her face-to-face, as he had more times than he could count over the past three years. He never believed them anyway. Guilt and fear had forced her to say the things she’d said that day. He knew what was in Nyla’s heart.

Which was why, when she mentioned on Facebook that she would be spending Christmas alone, he canceled his nonstop flight to Atlanta and rented a car instead. He’d made the six-and-a-half-hour drive from Zurich to San Gimignano, Italy, in just under eight hours. If not for the snow, which he’d never driven in before, and the road signs written in a language he didn’t understand, he would have been here much sooner.

Once he’d made the decision to finally go to her, Aiden couldn’t get here fast enough. Now he just needed to take this final step.

Not yet.

His eyes remained focused on Nyla as she labored over the dough, punching it down, flipping it over and reshaping it. Memories of the countless hours he’d spent perched on the kitchen counter at his parents’ home, or—later, as they became closer—at Nyla’s house in Kirkwood, watching her do this very same thing, had his chest tightening with a mercifully sweet ache.

His favorite fantasy of all time was imagining Nyla coming to him, sweaty from the kitchen heat, with that sexy smile that used to curve up the corner of her mouth. She would crook her finger and he would obey. He would take her then and there, on the kitchen table, up against the counter. Anywhere he damn well pleased.

Aiden shut his eyes against the onslaught of wanting that crashed through him.

Why had he let her pretend that the attraction between them was one-sided? Why had he let her get away without fighting for her?

None of that mattered anymore. She was here now, and Aiden wasn’t letting her get away.

He straightened his spine.

He hadn’t come all this way to stare at Nyla through a window. He’d come with one goal in mind, to convince her that he was the Williams brother she should have been with all along.

“You can do this,” he whispered.