The Christmas Eve Bride

Rocco studied her with inscrutable dark eyes. In the charged silence that he allowed to linger, his lean, powerful face remained impassive.

‘I can’t understand why you should even think such a thing of me…it’s nonsensical!’

‘Is it? I remember you telling me that you once very much wanted to be a journalist…’

Amber stilled in consternation and surprise. Had she told Rocco that? During one of those trusting chats when he had seemed to want to know every tiny thing about her? Evidently, she had told him but she hadn’t given him the whole picture. During her teens, Amber’s parents had put her under constant pressure to produce better exam results and, when they’d finally realised that she was not going to become a doctor, a lawyer or a teacher, she had been instructed to focus on journalism instead. They had signed her up for an extra-curricular media studies course on which she had got very poor grades.

‘And how desperately disappointed you were when you couldn’t get a job on a newspaper,’ Rocco finished smoothly.

For the first time it occurred to Amber that, eighteen months back, Rocco had had more reason than she had appreciated to believe that the prospect of media limelight might have tempted her into talking about their relationship. She was furious that one insignificant little piece of information casually given out of context could have helped to support his belief that she was guilty as charged.

‘Do you know the only reason I went for that job? My parents had just died… It was their idea that I should try for a career in journalism, not my own. And what I might or might not have wanted at the age of sixteen has very little bearing on the person I am now,’ Amber declared in driven dismissal.

Rocco continued to regard her in level challenge. ‘I can concede that. But when we met, you were employed in a merchant bank and studying for accountancy exams. Give me one good reason why you should now be pretending to be a gardener?’

‘Because, obviously, it’s not a pretence! It’s the only job I could get…at least the only work that it’s convenient for me to take right now.’ In a nervous gesture as she tacked on that qualification, Amber half opened her hands and then closed them tight again, her green eyes veiling, for the last thing she wanted to touch on was the difficulties of being a single parent on a low wage.

‘Convenient?’ Rocco queried.

‘I live in a cottage in the coachyard here. Accommodation goes with the job. My sister lives nearby and I like being close to her—’

‘You never mentioned that you had a sister while I was with you.’

Amber flushed a dull guilty red for she had allowed him to assume that she was as alone in the world as he was. Rocco was an only child, born to older parents, who had both passed away by the time he’d emerged from his teens.

‘So explain why you kept quiet about having a sister,’ Rocco continued levelly.

But there was no way Amber felt she could tell him the honest truth on that score. She had been terrified that Rocco would meet her gorgeous, intellectual big sister and start thinking of Amber herself as very much a poor second best. It had happened before, after all. It didn’t matter that Opal was twelve years older and happily married. People were always amazed when they learnt that the highly successful barrister, Opal Carlton, was Amber’s sibling. From an early age, Amber had been aware that she was a sad disappointment to her parents, who, being so clever themselves, had expected equally great things from their younger daughter as well. Her best had never, ever been good enough.

‘Well, I have a sister and I’m very fond of her,’ she mumbled, not meeting his eyes because she was ashamed that she had kept Opal hidden like a nasty secret when indeed she could not have got through the past year without her sister’s support.

‘Why are you feeding me this bull?’ Rocco demanded with sardonic bite. ‘Nothing you’ve said so far comes anywhere near explaining why you should suddenly be clutching a wheelbarrow instead of fingering a keyboard!’

Amber swallowed hard. ‘Within a month of that kiss-and-tell story appearing in print, I was at the top of the hit list at Woodlawn Wyatt. They said they were overstaffed and, along with some others, I lost my job.’

‘That doesn’t surprise me,’ Rocco conceded without sympathy. ‘Merchant banks are conservative institutions—’

‘And the regular banks are still shedding staff practically by the day so I couldn’t find another opening,’ Amber admitted, tight-mouthed, hating the necessity of letting him know that she had struggled but failed to find similar employment. ‘I also suspect that, whenever a reference was taken up with my former employers, the knives came out—’

‘Possibly,’ Rocco mused in the same noncommittal tone. ‘But had you stayed in London—’

‘Being out of work in a big city is expensive. I hadn’t been with Woodlawn Wyatt long enough to qualify for a redundancy payment. I moved in with my sister for a while—’

‘This is a rural area but it’s also part of the commuter belt. Surely you could have found employment more—’

Her patience gave out. ‘Look, I’m happy as I am and I only came up here in the first place to ask you to back off and just forget you ever saw me!’

Rocco lounged back against the polished footboard on the elegant sleigh bed, bringing their eyes into sudden direct contact and somehow making her awesomely aware that they were in a bedroom together. ‘Do you really mean that?’

Amber blinked but it didn’t break the mesmerising hold of his arresting dark golden eyes for long enough to stifle the terrifying tide of sheer physical longing that washed over her. Memory was like a cruel hook dragging her down into a dangerous undertow of intimate images she was already fighting not to recall. Rocco tumbling her down on his bed and kissing her with the explosive force that charged her up with the passion she had never been able to resist; Rocco’s expert hands roving over her to waken her in the morning; the sheer joy of being wanted more than she had ever been wanted by anyone in her entire life.

‘What are you t-talking about?’ Amber stammered, dredging herself out of those destabilising and enervating memories.

‘Do you really want me to forget I ever saw you?’ Rocco viewed her steadily from beneath inky black lashes longer than her own.

‘What else?’ Already conscious of her heightened colour and quickened breathing, Amber was very still for every fibre of her being was awake to the smouldering atmosphere that had come up out of nowhere to entrap her.

‘Liar…’ The effect of the husky reproof Rocco delivered was infinitely less than the sudden sensual smile of amusement that curled his wide, eloquent mouth.

Images from a distant, happier past assailed Amber: the sound of a smile in his deep voice on the phone, the feeling of euphoria, of being appreciated when he looked at her in just that way. What way? As if there were only the two of them in the whole wide world, as if she was someone special. Before Rocco came along, nobody had ever made Amber feel special or important or needed.

Her breath catching in her throat, she stared back at him, wholly enchanted by the charisma of that breathtaking smile. ‘I’m not lying…’ she muttered without even being aware of what she was saying.

Rocco reached out and closed his hands over hers. At first contact, a helpless shiver ran through her. Slowly, he smoothed out her tightly clenched fingers, one by one. Like a rabbit caught in car headlights, she gazed up at him, heart banging against her ribcage, aware only of him and the seductive weakness induced by the heat blossoming inside her. He eased her inches closer. His warmth, the feel of his skin on hers again, the powerful intoxicant of his familiar scent overpowered her senses.

‘I said I wouldn’t touch you again if I was dying but…’ The rasp of his voice travelled down her responsive spine like hot, delicious honey.

‘But?’

’Dio…’ Rocco husked, drawing her the last couple of inches. ‘I believe I could be persuaded otherwise, tabbycat…’

The sound of that endearment made her melt.

‘However, you would have to promise to keep it quiet—’

‘Quiet?’ All concentration shot, she didn’t grasp what he was talking about.

‘I don’t want to open a newspaper on Monday morning to find out how I scored between the sheets again—’

‘Sorry…?’

Without warning, Rocco released her hands and, since he was just about all that was holding her upright on her wobbling lower limbs, she almost fell on top of him. He righted her again with deft cool. ‘Think about it,’ he advised, stepping away from her.

For an instant, Amber hovered, breathing in deep, striving to get her brain into gear again. She did not have to think very hard. ‘Apart from the obvious, what are you trying to imply?’

‘I’m bored this weekend and you challenged me.’

In considerable emotional disarray as she appreciated that she had been standing there transfixed and hypnotised, entirely entrapped by the sexual power he had exercised over her, Amber spun round. ‘I beg your pardon?’

Rocco sent her a sizzling glance of mockery. ‘Maybe I want to see you faking it for my benefit.’

Amber reddened to the roots of her hair. ‘No chance,’ she said curtly and stepped past him to hurry back out to the sitting room.

Without the slightest warning whatsoever, the door she was heading for opened and Kaye Winton walked in. At the sight of Amber, she frowned in astonishment, pale blue eyes rounding. ‘What are you doing up here?’

Mind a complete blank, Amber found herself glancing in desperation at Rocco.

Brilliant dark eyes gleaming, Rocco said, ‘I asked for someone to remove the flowers.’