The Italian's Christmas Secret

She stared straight ahead at the wild flurry of snowflakes. It was strange. She worked with men and for men and knew most of their foibles. She’d learnt that in order to be accepted it was better to act like one of the boys and not stand out. It was the reason she wore her hair short—though not the reason she’d cut it in the first place. It was why she didn’t usually bother with make-up, or wearing the kind of clothes which invited a second look. The tomboy look suited her just fine, because if a man forgot you were there, he tended to relax—though unfortunately the same rule didn’t seem to apply to Matteo Valenti. She’d never met a less relaxed individual.

But that wasn’t the whole story, was it? She clutched the steering wheel tightly, unwilling to admit the real reason why she felt so self-conscious in his company. Because wasn’t the truth that he had blown her away the moment they’d met, with the most potent brand of charisma she’d ever encountered? It was disturbing and exciting and scary all at the same time and it had never happened to her before—that thing of looking into someone’s eyes and hearing a million violins start playing inside your head. She’d gazed into the darkest eyes she’d ever seen and felt as if she could drown in them. She’d found herself studying his thick black hair and wondering how it would feel to run her fingers through it. Failing that, having a half-friendly working relationship would have satisfied her, but that was never going to happen. Not with a man who was so abrupt, narrow-minded and judgmental.

She’d seen his expression when she’d been assigned to him, his black gaze raking over her with a look of incredulity he hadn’t bothered to disguise. He’d actually had the nerve to ask whether she felt confident behind the wheel of such a powerful car and she had been tempted to coolly inform him that yes, she was, thank you very much. Just as she was confident about getting underneath the bonnet and taking the engine to pieces, should the need arise. And now he was snapping at her and making no attempt to hide his irritation—as if she had some kind of magical power over the weather conditions which had suddenly hit them from out of the blue!

She shot a nervous glance towards the heavy sky and felt another tug of anxiety as she met his hooded dark eyes in the driver’s mirror.

‘Where are we?’ he demanded.

Keira glanced at the sat-nav. ‘I think we’re on Dartmoor.’

‘You think?’ he said sarcastically.

Keira licked her lips, glad he was now preoccupied with staring out of the window instead of glaring so intently at her. Glad he was ignorant of the sudden panicked pounding of her heart. ‘The sat-nav lost its signal a couple of times.’

‘But you didn’t think to tell me that?’

She bit back her instinctive response that he was unlikely to be an expert on the more rural parts of the south-west since he’d told her he hardly ever visited England. Unless, of course, he was implying that his oozing masculinity was enough to compensate for a total lack of knowledge of the area.

‘You were busy with a phone call at the time and I didn’t like to interrupt,’ she said. ‘And you said...’

‘I said what?’

She gave a little shrug. ‘You mentioned that you’d like to travel back by the scenic route.’

Matteo frowned. Had he said that? It was true he’d been distracted by working out how he was going to deal with his father, but he didn’t remember agreeing to some guided tour of an area he’d already decided wasn’t for him, or his hotels. Hadn’t it simply been a case of agreeing to her hesitant suggestion of an alternative route, when she’d told him that the motorways were likely to be busy with everyone travelling home for the Christmas holiday? In which case, surely she should have had the sense and the knowledge to anticipate something like this might happen.

‘And this snowstorm seems to have come from out of nowhere,’ she said.

With an effort Matteo controlled his temper, telling himself nothing would be achieved by snapping at her. He knew how erratic and emotional women could be—both in and out of the workplace—and had always loathed overblown displays of emotion. She would probably burst into tears if he reprimanded her, followed by an undignified scene while she blubbed into some crumpled piece of tissue and then looked at him with tragic, red-rimmed eyes. And scenes were something he was at pains to avoid. He liked a life free of drama and trauma. A life lived on his terms.

Briefly, he thought about Donatella waiting for him at a party he wasn’t going to be able to make. At the disappointment in her green eyes when she realised that several weeks of dating weren’t going to end up in a swish Roman hotel bedroom, as they’d planned. His mouth hardened. He’d made her wait to have sex with him and he could tell it had frustrated the hell out of her. Well, she would just have to wait a little longer.

‘Why don’t you just get us there as safely as possible?’ he suggested, zipping shut his briefcase. ‘If I miss the party, it won’t be the end of the world—just so long as I get home for Christmas in one piece. You can manage that, can’t you?’

Keira nodded, but inside her heart was still racing faster than it should have been considering her sedentary position behind the wheel. Because she was rapidly realising that they were in trouble. Real trouble. Her windscreen wipers were going like crazy but no sooner had they removed a thick mass of white flakes, there were loads more their place. She’d never known such awful visibility and found herself wondering why she hadn’t just risked the crowds and the traffic jams and gone by the most direct route. Because she hadn’t wanted to risk a displeasure she suspected was never very far from the surface with her billionaire client. Matteo Valenti wasn’t the kind of person you could imagine sitting bumper to bumper on a road of stationary traffic while children in Santa hats pulled faces through the back windows. To be honest, she was surprised he didn’t travel round by helicopter until he’d informed her that you got to see a lot more of the natural lie of the land from a car.

He seemed to have informed her about quite a lot of things. How he didn’t like coffee from service stations and would rather go without food than eat something ‘substandard’. How he preferred silence to the endless stream of Christmas songs on the car radio, though he didn’t object when once she changed the station to some classical music, which she found strangely unsettling—particularly when a glance in the mirror showed her that he had closed his eyes and briefly parted his lips. Her heartbeat had felt very erratic after that particular episode.

Keira slowed down as they drove past a small house on which an illuminated Santa Claus was driving his sleigh above a garish sign proclaiming Best Bed & Breakfast on Dartmoor! The trouble was that she wasn’t used to men like Matteo Valenti—she didn’t imagine a lot of people were. She’d watched people’s reactions whenever he emerged from the limousine to cast his eye over yet another dingy hotel which was up for sale. She’d witnessed women’s gazes being drawn instinctively to his powerful physique. She’d watched their eyes widen—as if finding it hard to believe that one man could present such a perfect package, with those aristocratic features, hard jaw and sensual lips. But Keira had been up close to him for several days and she realised that, although he looked pretty perfect on the surface, there was a brooding quality underneath the surface which hinted at danger. And weren’t a lot of women turned on by danger? As she clamped her fingers around the steering wheel, she wondered if that was the secret of his undeniable charisma.

But now wasn’t the time to get preoccupied about Matteo Valenti, or even to contemplate the holidays which were fast approaching and which she was dreading. It was time to acknowledge that the snowstorm was getting heavier by the second and she was losing control of the big car. She could feel the tyres pushing against the weight of the accumulating drifts as the road took on a slight incline. She could feel sweat suddenly beading her brow as the heavy vehicle began to lose power and she realised that if she wasn’t careful...

The car slid to a halt and Keira’s knuckles whitened as she suddenly realised there were no distant tail lights in front of them. Or lights behind them. She glanced in the mirror as she turned off the ignition and forced herself to meet the furious black stare which was being directed at her from the back seat.

‘What’s going on?’ he questioned, his tone sending a shiver rippling down Keira’s spine.

‘We’ve stopped,’ she said, turning the key again and praying for them to start moving but the car stayed exactly where it was.

‘I can see that for myself,’ he snapped. ‘The question is, why have we stopped?’

Keira gulped. He must have realised why. Did he want her to spell it out for him so he could shovel yet more blame on her? ‘It’s a heavy car and the snow is much thicker than I thought. We’re on a slight hill, and...’

‘And?’

Face facts, she told herself fiercely. You know how to do that. It’s a difficult situation, but it’s not the end of the world. She flicked the ignition and tried moving forward again but despite her silent prayers, the car stubbornly refused to budge. Her hands sliding reluctantly from the wheel, she turned round. ‘We’re stuck,’ she admitted.

Matteo nodded, biting back the angry exclamation which was on the tip of his tongue, because he prided himself on being good in an emergency. God knew, there had been enough of those over the years to make him an expert in crisis management. Now was not the time to wonder why he hadn’t followed his instincts and demanded a male driver who would have known what he was doing, instead of some slip of a girl who didn’t look strong enough to control a pushbike, let alone a car this size. Recriminations could come later, he thought grimly—and they would. First and foremost they needed to get out of here—and to do that, they needed to keep their wits about them.

‘Where exactly are we?’ he said, speaking slowly as if to a very small child.

She swivelled her head to look at the sat-nav for several silent seconds before turning to meet his gaze again.

‘The signal has cut out again. We’re on the edge of Dartmoor.’

‘How close to civilisation?’

‘That’s the trouble. We’re not. We’re miles from anywhere.’ He saw her teeth dig into her lower lip as if she were trying to draw blood from it. ‘And there’s no Wi-Fi connection,’ she finished.

Matteo wanted to slam the flat of his hand against the snow-covered window but he sucked in an unsteady breath instead. He needed to take control.

‘Move over,’ he said roughly as he unclipped his seat belt.

She blinked those great big eyes at him. ‘Move over where?’

‘Onto the passenger seat,’ he gritted out as he pushed open the car door to brace himself against a flurry of snowflakes. ‘I’m taking over.’

He was pretty much covered in ice by the time he got into the car and slammed the door shut, and the bizarre thought which stuck in his mind was how deliciously warm the seat felt from where her bottom had been sitting.

Furious for allowing himself to be distracted by something so basic and inappropriate at a time like this, Matteo reached for the ignition key.

‘You do know not to press down too hard on the accelerator, don’t you?’ she said nervously. ‘Or you’ll make the wheels spin.’

‘I don’t think I need any driving lessons from someone as incompetent as you,’ he retorted. He started the engine and tried moving forward. Nothing. He tried until he was forced to surrender to the inevitable, which deep down he’d known all along. They were well and truly stuck and the car wasn’t going anywhere. He turned to the woman sitting beside him who was staring at him nervously from beneath her peaked cap.

‘So. Bravo,’ he said, his words steeped in an anger he could no longer contain. ‘You’ve managed to get us stranded in one of the most inhospitable parts of the country on one of the most inhospitable nights of the year—just before Christmas. That’s some feat!’

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Saying sorry isn’t going to help.’

‘I’ll probably get the sack,’ she whispered.

‘You will if I have anything to do with it—that’s if you don’t freeze to death first!’ he snapped. ‘If it were down to me, I would never have employed you in the first place. But the consequences to your career are the last thing on my mind right now. We need to start working out what we’re going to do next.’

She reached into the glove compartment for her mobile phone but he wasn’t surprised to see her grimace as she glanced down at the small screen. ‘No signal,’ she said, looking up.

‘You don’t say?’ he said sarcastically, peering out of the window where the howling flakes showed no signs of abating. ‘I’m guessing there’s no nearby village?’