The Italian's Christmas Child(28)

‘So you set me up with some sort of a romantic dinner and tell me I can’t have a shower? And sit me down with a photo of my ex?’ Vito exclaimed incredulously. ‘This is more than a little weird, Holly!’

Legs turning wobbly as she encountered scorching dark golden eyes of enquiry, Holly dropped reluctantly down into her chair. ‘I’m sorry. I just wanted to get it over with and I wanted you to say exactly what’s on your mind.’

‘Weird!’ Vito repeated with an emphatic lack of inhibition, crumpling the photo into a ball of crushed paper and firing it into the fire burning merrily across the room. ‘Where did you get that photograph from and when did you see it?’

Holly sketched out the details, her heart beating very fast. She hadn’t expected to feel guilty but now she did because taking Vito by surprise had only annoyed him.

‘Today?’ Vito stressed in astonishment. ‘But that photo is at least three years old!’

‘Three years old...’ Holly’s voice trailed off as she studied him in disbelief.

‘It was taken at our engagement party. Why on earth would it be printed again now?’ he questioned.

Holly scrambled out of her seat and pelted off to find the magazine she had cut the photo from. Reappearing, she planted it into Vito’s outstretched hand while Silvestro struggled to set out the first course of the meal.

‘Per l’amor di Dio...’ Vito groaned. ‘You need to learn to read Italian!’

‘It’s not going to happen overnight,’ she grumbled.

‘That photo was quite cleverly utilised to symbolise the fact that I have now cut my ties to the Ravello Investment Bank,’ Vito framed in flat explanation. ‘Note the way our hands are pictured apart...’

‘What does the Ravello Bank have to do with anything? What ties?’

‘Marzia is a Ravello,’ Vito informed her drily. ‘When we got engaged I agreed to act as an investment adviser to the Ravello Bank. When Marzia ditched me her father begged me to retain the position as Ravello was going through a crisis and my resignation would have created talk and blighted their prospects even more.’

Holly blinked. She had become very pale. ‘I had no idea you had any business links to Marzia and her family.’

‘As of yesterday I don’t. I resigned the position and they have hired the man I recommended to take my place. Once you and I were married it no longer felt appropriate for Marzia’s family and mine to retain that business link,’ Vito pointed out wryly.

Holly had been blindsided by an element of Vito’s former relationship with Marzia that she could not have known about. A business connection, not a personal one. ‘You know, I assumed that that was a recent picture of you with Marzia,’ Holly confided. ‘I thought that dinner you mentioned last week must have been a dinner dance.’

‘Had it been I would have taken you with me or bowed out early to get home to you. As it was I was landed with a group of visiting government representatives, whose company I found as exciting as watching paint dry,’ Vito told her drily and pushed back his chair. ‘May I have my shower now?’

‘No, we can’t just abandon dinner!’ Holly breathed in dismay. ‘Not when Francisco has gone to so much trouble to make us a memorable meal.’

‘So, you’ve been down to the kitchen and have finally met our chef?’ Vito gathered in some amusement.

‘Yes, he’s a real charmer, isn’t he?’

‘I’m sure he can reheat the food,’ Vito pronounced impatiently.

‘But we haven’t finished talking yet,’ Holly protested, all her expectations thrown by Vito’s eminently down-to-earth explanation of that photo and its meaning.

‘Why are you dressed as though you’re about to attend a costume ball?’ Vito shot at her.

Holly went red. ‘I wanted to show you that if I made the effort I could polish up and look all glam like Marzia.’

Vito groaned out loud. ‘You look amazing but I don’t want you to look all glam like Marzia.’

‘But you bought me all those fancy clothes...’

‘Only to cover every possible occasion. And when would you have bothered going shopping?’ Vito enquired drily. ‘You hate shopping for clothes.’

Holly compressed her lips. ‘You don’t like me glammed up? Or you don’t want me copying Marzia?’

‘Both,’ Vito told her levelly as he signalled Silvestro and rose from his chair again. ‘I like you just to be yourself. You’re never fake. I hate fake. But why did you think I would be out dancing any place with Marzia?’

‘What are you doing?’ Holly gasped as he scooped her bodily out of her seat.

‘I’m going for my after-work shower and you’re either coming in with me, which would sacrifice all the effort you have gone to, or you’re waiting in bed for me,’ Vito informed her cheerfully.

‘I thought you still cared for Marzia,’ Holly finally confessed on the way up the stairs. ‘I thought you might still love her.’

Vito grunted with effort as he reached the landing. ‘I can carry you upstairs but I can’t talk while I’m doing it,’ he confided. ‘I never loved Marzia.’

‘But you got engaged to her... You lived with her!’

‘Yes, and what an eye-opening experience that was!’ Vito admitted, thrusting wide the door of their bedroom. ‘I asked her to marry me in the first place because she was everything my grandfather told me I should look for in a wife. I wasn’t in love with her and when we lived together I discovered that we had nothing in common. I don’t want to dance the night away as if I’m still in my twenties but Marzia does. She has to have other people around all the time. She likes to shop every day and will avoid any activity that wrecks her hair...up to and including a walk on a windy day and sex.’

‘Oh...’ Open-mouthed and taken aback by that information, Holly fell very still as Vito ran down the zip on her dress.

‘I was relieved when she ditched me. Not very gallant but it’s the truth. We weren’t suited.’

‘Was my ring...? I’ve always wanted to ask,’ Holly interrupted, extending her ring finger. ‘Was it Marzia’s before you gave it to me?’

An ebony brow shot up. ‘Are you joking? Marzia didn’t return her engagement ring and even if she had I hope I would’ve had more class than to ask you to wear it.’

‘You never loved her?’ Holly was challenged to credit that fact because it ran contrary to everything she had assumed about his engagement.

‘When I met Marzia, I had never been in love in my life,’ Vito admitted ruefully. ‘I got burned young watching my mother trying to persuade my father to love her. I spent my twenties waiting to fall in love, convinced someone special would eventually appear. But it didn’t happen and I was convinced it never would. I decided I was probably too practical to fall in love. That’s why I got engaged to Marzia the week after my thirtieth birthday. At the time she looked like the best bet I had. Similar banking family and background.’

‘My word...that sounds almost...almost callous,’ Holly murmured in shock. ‘Like choosing the best offer at the supermarket.’

‘If it’s any consolation I’m pretty sure Marzia settled for me because I’m extremely wealthy.’

Vito yanked loose his tie and shed his jacket. Holly’s dress slid down her shoulders and for an instant she stopped its downward progress and then she let it go and shimmied out of it. In many ways she was still in shock from Vito’s honesty. He had never fallen in love? Not even with the gorgeous Marzia, who by all accounts had irritated him in spite of her pedigreed background and family. She swallowed hard, trying not to wonder how much she irritated him.

‘You’re definitely not joining me in the shower,’ Vito breathed in a roughened undertone as he took in the coffee-coloured silk lingerie she sported below the dress that had tumbled round her feet. ‘You can’t deprive me of the fun of taking those off.’

His shirt fell on the floor and she lifted it and the trousers that were abandoned just as untidily to drape them on a chair along with her dress. Sharing a bedroom with a male as organised as Vito had made her clean up her bad habits. Vito had paused to rifle through his jacket and he strode back to her to stuff a jewellery case unceremoniously into her hand. ‘I saw it online, thought you’d like it.’

‘Oh...’ Holly flipped open the case on a diamond-studded bracelet with a delicate little Christmas tree charm attached. ‘Oh, that’s very pretty.’

‘It’s very you, isn’t it?’ Vito remarked smugly.

‘Why didn’t you give it to me downstairs over dinner?’ Holly exclaimed, struggling to attach it to her wrist until he stepped forward to clasp it for her.

‘I forgot about it. You swanning down to greet me dressed like Marie Antoinette put it right out of my mind.’

‘And then you just virtually threw it at me,’ Holly lamented. ‘There’s a more personal way of giving a gift.’

‘You mean romantic.’ Vito sighed as he strode into the en-suite bathroom, still characteristically set on having his shower. ‘Shouldn’t the thought behind the gift count more?’