His For Christmas: Christmas in Da Conti's Bed / His Until Midnight / The Most Expensive Night of Her Life

‘I…guess so.’

He frowned as he noticed that her teeth had started to chatter. ‘You’re shivering. You need to get into bed.’

‘I don’t—’

‘I’m not listening to any objections,’ he said emphatically. ‘I’m going to undress you and put you to bed and then I’m going to make you tea.’

She wriggled. ‘Why don’t you go and make the tea and I’ll undress myself?’

He frowned, and there was a heartbeat of a pause. ‘Alannah, are you shy?’

She attempted a light little laugh, which didn’t quite come off. ‘Me? Shy? Don’t be ridiculous. How could I possibly be shy when I’ve exposed my body to the harsh glare of the camera?’

Placing his palms on either side of her face, he stared down into her wide blue eyes. ‘But stripping for a camera is a very anonymous thing to do,’ he said slowly. ‘While stripping for a man is intensely personal.’

She pulled a face. ‘Stick with the day job, Niccolò—I don’t think analysis is really your thing.’

Niccolò frowned. No, it wasn’t his thing at all. Normally he ran a million miles from trying to work out what was going on in a woman’s head. But most women weren’t perplexing enigmas, were they? They didn’t answer one question and immediately make you want to ask them a hundred more.

‘You’re shy,’ he repeated. ‘Are you going to tell me why?’

Alannah stifled a sigh as she looked at him, because telling Niccolò anything was the last thing she wanted. His lovemaking had left her feeling soft and vulnerable enough to have her defences weakened. And she wasn’t stupid. She might despise the men who persisted in thinking of her as nothing but a body—yet surely that was the main attraction for Niccolò, no matter how much he might try to deny it. Wouldn’t he be disappointed to discover the mundane truth about her?

Because iconic glamour models were supposed to typify sexuality, not belong to a band of women who had always found sex rather overrated until now.

‘Yes, I’m shy,’ she admitted grudgingly. ‘I don’t really like men looking at my body. I’m hung up about it. I hate being thought of as nothing but a pair of gravity-defying breasts. That’s probably why I’m not usually able to relax very much. Why my sex life has been…’

Her words tailed off as she became aware that she’d said too much and she braced herself as she waited for him to distance himself, like a man who thought he’d bought a racy sports-car—only to find that he’d landed himself with a second-hand model which kept breaking down.

‘Why your sex life has been, what?’ he prompted softly.

She pulled a face. ‘You really want me to spell it out for you? Isn’t your ego healthy enough already without the added boost of me telling you how good you are in bed?’

He took her hand and lifted it to his lips, unable to hide his slow, curving smile of satisfaction. ‘Am I?’

‘You know you are.’ She pulled her hand away. ‘I’m sure I’m not the first woman to tell you that.’

‘No, but you’re the first woman who is such a mass of contradictions that you have my head spinning. You have a wildness…’

‘Niccolò—’

He silenced her with a long kiss and when he finally raised his head, it was to subject her to a look of narrow-eyed thoughtfulness. ‘I think we’ve done the subject to death for tonight,’ he said. ‘You’re tired and so am I, and you’re right—it is a school night. Bedtime,’ he added firmly.

‘I’m not sure,’ she said.

‘Well, I am. Relax, mia tentatrice.’

He was unbuttoning her dress again and suddenly Alannah had no desire to stop him. She lay there as he slid the silky garment from her body until she was left in just her hold-ups and her bra and, automatically, her palms moved towards her breasts—to protect them from his seeking gaze. But to her surprise he wasn’t even looking at her breasts. He was sliding down her hold-ups as impersonally as if he’d been undressing a child who had been caught in a storm. Even her bra was removed with nothing but deft efficiency, so that she was naked and snuggled beneath the warm duvet almost before she’d realised it.

She blinked as he captured her in that searing ebony gaze.

‘Now…was that so traumatic?’ he questioned silkily.

She shook her head. ‘I wasn’t expecting…’ Her words tailed off.

‘You thought I would be unable to resist drooling as I ogled your breasts? That you find yourself surprised by my sensitivity?’

‘Something like that,’ she mumbled.

He smiled, the pad of his thumb trailing a path over her bottom lip and causing it to tremble. ‘You and me both,’ he said drily, before getting up to let himself quietly out of the room.

While he was gone, Alannah took the opportunity to look around what was one of the most impersonal bedrooms she’d ever seen. There were no photos on display. No real hints as to what kind of man Niccolò really was. She knew his parents were dead—but there was no misty-eyed memorial of their wedding day. She remembered Michela clamming up whenever anyone had asked her about her folks—and hadn’t she been a bit like that herself if people wanted to know about her father? It had seemed too crass to tell them the truth. Oh, my mother was fresh out of Ireland and she had her drink spiked…

She hadn’t found out the whole story until three days before her mother had died. That Bridget Collins had woken up in her dingy hostel room with a splitting headache and vague, shifting memories of what had happened the night before—as well as a terrible soreness between her legs. She’d never seen the man again and the shame of it was that she didn’t even know his surname. Nine months later Alannah had been born and her mother’s over-protectiveness had kicked in.

Alannah stared at the photograph opposite the bed—a smoky, atmospheric monochrome study of a brooding Mount Vesuvius. If she’d known all that stuff before…if she’d been able to make sense of why her mother had been so unbelievably strict with her—would it have changed anything?

Probably not. And even if it had—it was all irrelevant now. Because you could never go back. You could never wipe out the things you’d done. Everyone knew that.

She was almost asleep by the time Niccolò returned, carrying a tray of camomile tea. Her eyelashes fluttered open as he sat down and the bed sank beneath his weight.

‘This will help you sleep,’ he said.

She didn’t think she needed any help, but she drank the flower-filled brew anyway and then settled back down against the bank of pillows while Niccolò gently stroked her hair.

She wriggled her bare toes and stretched out her body and at that precise moment she didn’t think she’d ever felt quite so blissfully content. Until a dark memory flickered into her mind like an evil imp—reinforcing the disturbing thought that they hadn’t remembered to use protection….

CHAPTER SEVEN (#u28fcd623-d7d3-51d6-808d-cf8c103bc13d)

‘ANYONE WOULD THINK,’ said Niccolò slowly, ‘that you were trying to avoid me.’

Alannah looked up to find herself caught in the spotlight of a pair of ebony eyes, which cut into her like dark twin lasers. Winter light was flooding into the main reception room of the still bare Sarantos apartment, emphasising its vast and elegant dimensions. She had been there all morning, sitting on the newly upholstered window seat and sewing tassels onto a cushion, but the sight of the Sicilian standing in the doorway made her suspend her needle in mid-air.

She tried to compose herself and to say the right thing. Just as she’d been trying to do the right thing, ever since she’d crazily decided to have sex with him. She needed to treat what had happened as a one-off, and keeping their relationship on a purely professional footing was the only sane solution.

For both of them.

She put the needle down and pushed her empty coffee mug along the floor with the tip of her sneaker. ‘Of course I’m not trying to avoid you,’ she said lightly. ‘You’re my boss—I wouldn’t dare.’

‘Is that so?’ He walked towards her. ‘So why wouldn’t you have dinner with me last night?’

‘I explained that,’ she protested. ‘I had to travel to Somerset to buy some paintings and the man who owned the shop was just about to close up for the holidays, so it was the only day I could go. And then on the way back, there were loads of leaves on the line so the train was delayed. Didn’t you get my voicemail message?’

‘Oh, yes, I got your voicemail message,’ he said impatiently. He stood looking down at her, feeling perplexed and more than a little frustrated. This had never happened to him before. Usually he had to barricade his bedroom once a woman had been granted access to it—he couldn’t remember a lover ever being so reluctant to return. His mouth tightened. ‘But the fact remains that on Tuesday we had sex and I’ve barely seen you since.’

She shrugged. ‘That’s just the way it’s worked out. You’re employing me to get this apartment done in a hurry and that’s what I’m trying to do. That’s my primary role, isn’t it? You’re not paying me to keep appearing at your office door and haunting you.’

Niccolò felt his mouth dry. He wouldn’t mind her appearing at his office door. She was making him think of a few very creative uses for his desk… He swallowed. ‘Am I going to see you later?’