LYNNE GRAHAM: Christmas With A Tycoon: The Italian's Christmas Child / The Greek's Christmas Bride

‘Food.’

‘The kitchen here is packed with food.’

‘Do you always know better than everyone else about everything?’ Holly, whose besetting fault was untidiness, carefully hung her wet coat beside his to be polite.

‘I very often do know better,’ Vito answered without hesitation.

Holly spread a shaken glance over his lean, darkly handsome and wholly serious features and groaned out loud. ‘No sense of humour either.’

‘Knowing one’s own strengths is not a flaw,’ Vito informed her gently.

‘But it is if you don’t consider your faults—’

‘And what are your faults?’ Vito enquired saccharine smooth, as she headed for the fire like a homing pigeon and held her hands out to the heat.

Holly wrinkled her snub nose and thought hard. ‘I’m untidy. An incurable optimist. Too much of a people-pleaser... That comes of all those years in foster care and trying to fit in to different families and different schools.’ She angled her head to one side, brown hair lying in a silken mass against one creamy cheek as she pondered. In the red Santa get-up, she reminded him of a cheerful little robin he had once seen pacing on a fence. ‘I’m too forgiving sometimes because I always want to think the best of people or give them a second chance. I get really cross if I run out of coffee but I don’t like conflict and avoid it. I like to do things quickly but sometimes that means I don’t do them well. I fuss about my weight but I still don’t exercise...’

As Vito listened to that very frank résumé he almost laughed. There was something intensely sweet about that forthright honesty. ‘Strengths?’ he prompted, unable to resist the temptation.

‘I’m honest, loyal, hardworking, punctual... I like to make the people I care about happy,’ she confided. ‘That’s what put me on that road tonight.’

‘Would you like a drink?’ Vito enquired.

‘Red wine, if you have it...’ Moving away from the fire, Holly approached her rucksack. ‘Is it all right if I put the food in the kitchen?’

She walked through the door he indicated and her eyebrows soared along with the ceiling. Beyond that door the cottage changed again. A big extension housed an ultra-modern kitchen diner with pale sparkling granite work surfaces and a fridge large enough to answer the storage needs of a restaurant. She opened it up. It was already generously packed with goodies, mainly of the luxury version of ready meals. She arranged her offerings on an empty shelf and then walked back into the main room to open the box and extract the food that remained.

Obviously, she was stuck here in a strange house with a strange man for one night at the very least, Holly reflected anxiously. A slight frisson of unease trickled down her spine. Vito hadn’t done or said anything threatening, though, she reminded herself. Like her, he recognised practicalities. He was stuck with her because she had nowhere else to go and clearly he wasn’t overjoyed by the situation. Neither one of them had a choice but to make the best of it.

‘You brought a lot of food with you,’ Vito remarked from behind her.

Holly flinched because she hadn’t heard him approach and she whipped her head around. ‘I assumed I would be providing a Christmas lunch for two people.’

Walking back out of the kitchen when she had finished, she found him frowning down at the tree ornaments visible in the box.

‘What is all this stuff?’ he asked incredulously.

Holly explained. ‘Would it be all right if I put up my tree here? I mean, it is Christmas Eve and I won’t get another opportunity for a year,’ she pointed out. ‘Christmas is special to me.’

Vito was still frowning. ‘Not to me,’ he admitted flatly, for he had only bad memories of the many disappointing Christmases he had endured as a child.

Flushing, Holly closed the box and pushed it over to the wall out of the way. ‘That’s not a problem. You’re doing enough letting me stay here.’

Dio mio, he was relieved that she was only a passing stranger because her fondness for the sentimental trappings of the season set his teeth on edge. Of course she wanted to put up her Christmas tree! Anyone who travelled around wearing a Santa hat was likely to want a tree on display as well! He handed her a glass of wine, trying not to feel responsible for having doused her chirpy flow of chatter.

‘I’m heading upstairs for a shower,’ Vito told her, because even though he had worn the boots, his suit trousers were damp. ‘Will you be all right down here on your own?’

‘Of course... This is much better than sitting in a crashed car,’ Holly assured him before adding more awkwardly, ‘Do you have a sweater or anything I could borrow? I only have pyjamas and a dress with me. My foster mum’s house is very warm so I didn’t pack anything woolly.’

Vito had not a clue what was in his luggage because he hadn’t packed his own case since he was a teenager at boarding school. ‘I’ll see what I’ve got.’

Through the glass barrier of the stairs, Holly watched his long, powerful legs disappear from view and a curious little frisson rippled through her tense body. She heaved a sigh. So, no Christmas tree. What possible objection could anyone have to a Christmas tree? Did Vito share Ebenezer Scrooge’s loathing for the festive season? Reminding herself that she was very lucky not to be shivering in Pixie’s car by the side of the road, she settled down on the shaggy rug by the hearth and simply luxuriated in the warmth emanating from the logs glowing in the fire.

Vito thought about Holly while he took a shower. It was a major mistake. Within seconds of picturing her sexy little body he went hard as a rock, his body reacting with a randy enthusiasm that astonished him. For months, of course, his libido had very much taken a back seat to the eighteen-hour days he was working. This year the bank’s revenues would, he reminded himself with pride, smash all previous records. He was doing what he had been raised to do and he was doing it extremely well, so why did he feel so empty, so joyless? Vito asked himself in exasperation.

Intellectually he understood that there was more to life than the pursuit of profit but realistically he was and always had been a workaholic. An image of Holly chattering by the fire assailed him. Holly with her wonderful curves and her weird tree in a box. She was unusual, not remotely like the sort of women Vito usually met, and her originality was a huge draw. He had no idea what she was likely to say next. She wasn’t wearing make-up. She didn’t fuss with her appearance. She said exactly what she thought and felt—she had no filter. Towelling off, he tried to stop thinking about Holly. Obviously she turned him on. Equally obviously he wasn’t going to do anything about it.

Why the hell not? The words sounded in the back of his brain. That battered old car, everything about her spelled out the message that she came from a different world. Making any kind of a move would be taking advantage, he told himself grimly. Yet the instant he had seen Holly he had wanted her, wanted her with an intensity he hadn’t felt around a woman since he was a careless teenager. It was the situation. He could relax with a woman who had neither a clue who he was nor any idea of the sleazy scandal currently clinging to his name. And why wouldn’t he want her? After all, he was very probably sex-starved, he told himself impatiently as he tossed out the contents of one of his suitcases and then opened a second before finding a sweater he deemed suitable.

Holly watched Vito walk down the stairs with the fluid, silent grace of a panther. He had looked amazing in his elegant business suit, but in black designer jeans and a long-sleeved red cotton tee he was drop-dead gorgeous and, with those high cheekbones and that full masculine mouth, very much in the male-model category. She blinked and stared, feeling the colour rise in her cheeks, her self-consciousness taking over, for she had literally never ever been in the radius of such a very handsome male and it was just a little like bumping into a movie star without warning.