Italian’s Christmas Acquisition

Chapter Four

CHAPTER FOUR

H ER HEAD WAS POUNDING . Or perhaps it was just a pounding happening outside. It was difficult to say. She sat up, feeling groggy, and wondered if she had fallen asleep, or if she had just drifted out of consciousness for a moment.

She looked at the clock. Only twenty minutes had passed since she had come upstairs. It was possible that she had dozed. She felt terrible. She rolled out of bed, and went over to the window, and what she saw outside made her brows rise.

He was out there. Chopping wood.

In a suit.

Without thinking, she opened up the window. “What are you doing?” She looked down at the man himself, knee-deep in the snow wearing clothing that probably cost more than she had ever seen in her life.

“Go back to bed,” he said, looking up at her ferociously.

“Are you practicing to cut me into tiny pieces and take the house from me, or...?”

“I am not practicing the fine art of dismemberment. I am cutting firewood. That I might warm the library, seeing as you have a chill.”

“Oh,” she said. “Why that is very kind of you. Suspiciously so.”

“I hate to be suspicious.”

“Somehow, I don’t think that you do.”

“I promise, I do not wish to murder you.”

“Well, very reassuring.” But then she felt not so great, so as amazing as the sight below was, she ended up making her way back to her bed.

She must have dozed again, because when she opened her eyes, the door to the bedroom was open, and it had grown darker outside. “Here,” said a very masculine voice.

She looked over. He was standing there holding a tray with a steaming bowl and a steaming mug.

“What is it?”

“I opened a can of soup. And I made tea.”

“Oh. Well, that’s very nice of you.”

Still suspicious.

“Yes. It was.” He sounded pleased with himself, if a bit surprised.

She looked around. “I don’t want to be ungrateful, but I find that I don’t really relish the idea of trying to eat soup in bed.”

“I have built a fire,” he said.

“Excellent,” she said. “Maybe I’ll eat down in the library. It’s only a cold.”

She sneezed.

“Yes. Let us... I will carry the food. If you sneeze whilst carrying the tray it is likely to cause a small disaster.”

“I am nothing if not a small disaster.” She got out of bed, clutching a tissue in her hand, and followed him out of the room.

“Are you?” he asked.

“Am I what?”

“A small disaster.”

He was asking about her now? What strange dimension had she fallen into. He was cutting wood and caring for her and acting like...he cared about getting to know her, which couldn’t be true.

She looked at his face—dear God he was handsome—and she tried to get a handle on what he was thinking. What he felt about anything.

He was a mystery, and she didn’t think it was only because she had limited experience with men. He was...something else.

No leftovers. No experience making soup.

So cold in so many ways and yet...he’d taken care of her, so he wasn’t entirely cold.

“It feels like it. Because how else have I found myself in this position? Snowed in on a mountaintop with a nonworking snowplow and a very large stranger who clearly wishes to be rid of me.”

“Did I say that I wish to be rid of you?”

“You’re trying to buy me out.” She felt it prudent to point out—to him and to herself—that even though he’d been kind to her while she was sick he was still trying to fundamentally upend her way of life.

“That has nothing to do with my desires for you either way.”

She felt a little bit warm suddenly. That was an odd collection of words for him to use in regard to her. Definitely a collection of words no man had ever used in her presence.

“Well, I’m only me. For all that it’s worth.”

“And you want to stay here. I can’t say that I fully understand.”

She led the way toward the library, but stopped at the entrance to the kitchen. She looked inside. It looked like... A disaster had occurred.

Not a small one.

“What happened in here?”

“I won’t leave it,” he said.

“You opened a can of soup and made tea?” It looked like he’d performed surgery.

Every cabinet was opened, and there was water all over the place. The microwave was open, and she could see a noodle hanging down from the top of it.

“I have never made soup before.”

“You opened a can and warmed it up. That’s technically not making soup. Not trying to be unkind.”

He scowled. “I am not accustomed to doing such tasks.”

“I bet you never cut wood either. But you didn’t cut your hand off. So there’s that. Have you ever boiled water before?” she asked him.

“Of course not,” he said. “What occasion would I have had to boil water?”

“I don’t know. We don’t actually know each other. We’re just stuck here, on a mountaintop. Because that’s the way things are.” She looked around. “Would you like a hand cleaning up?”

“Of course not. You’re unwell. I want you to go sit and eat your soup. I will clean.”

“I bet you don’t know how to clean either.”

His expression went thunderous. “I know how to clean.”

She went into the library, and sat in a large chair, propping her feet up on a tufted ottoman. He handed her the tray with her soup and tea. It really was a nice gesture, all things considered. What a strange man he was. Not that she had any experience of men to compare him to anybody else. Not that she had any experience with men. She loved her hometown, but the men here were boring. She’d known them for too long, and when you’d known a man when he was thirteen there was little to make him interesting in his twenties.

And the good-looking, exciting men that came to town were either with their wives or husbands. That was just how it went. And there was a parade of very handsome men. Wealthy, sophisticated. Completely out of reach.

He was the first eligible man she had met around here. If you could call a towering inferno of rock, rage and capitalism eligible .

Actually, she didn’t even know if the eligible bit was true. Maybe he was engaged to the woman who would free him from his life of eternal expansion. Though she couldn’t actually get a read on if he wanted that or not.

He definitely didn’t seem to like being under the control of anyone or anything, but she had no idea what he thought about that versus finding a wife. She had no real idea what he thought about anything.

Though she was unhappy to admit he was clearly more complex than she’d initially thought. When she’d told him he was worse than a serial killer.

He wasn’t, obviously. Since, in fairness, a serial killer wouldn’t have nursed her back to health.

She picked up a saltine cracker and ducked it into her chicken soup.

She heard a great commotion going on in the next room, and she ignored it deliberately as she chewed on the corner of the cracker.

He reappeared about twenty-five minutes later.

“Are you well?” he asked.

“I’m fine. Are you engaged?”

He looked stunned by the question. “No,” he said.

“Just wondering. I didn’t think you were.”

“I’m not certain how to take that.”

“Oh, at face value, I would suggest. There was no hidden meaning. I was only curious. Plus you know you mentioned that whole thing about your mother, and marriage and a child. I thought maybe you’d taken steps toward that. I thought it was funny, because you’re the first eligible bachelor that I’ve ever met in this town—” She swallowed some of her tea, and her throat felt wretched. Then, she felt embarrassed, because she shouldn’t have exposed herself in quite that way.

“I am not engaged. Eligible is another question.”

She laughed. “That’s funny, because I was thinking the same thing.”

“Have you got a husband?”

“If you talked to my mother then you already know that I don’t. And you already know that some of her objection to me staying in this place is that I’m not going to meet anybody.” She frowned. “One of the worst things about my mother wanting to get out of here so quickly is that it makes me feel like she never actually loved our lives. That she never actually loved my father in quite the way that I thought she did.”

He only stared at her. There was no kinship there. No understanding.

“Well, wouldn’t you feel that way if you found out that your mother was desperate to escape the life that she had lived with your father?”

“I never knew my father.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. It means nothing to me.”

“So you were raised just by your mother?”

“Yes.”

“In Italy?”

“Yes. In Italy.”

“Really only two people here. We might as well make small talk.”

It was just a polite thing to do. And yes, sometimes the out-of-towners, the people who came from cities, they resisted it. They didn’t really understand what the point of it was, or what she was doing in trying to engage them, but she was insistent on giving her guests the small-town experience. Plus she just liked meeting new people and hearing about their lives.

She loved her life.

But it was the only one she’d lived. Obviously. But she’d just never...gone away to college or lived in another state or tried life in a city or anything. So a window into how someone else lived always fascinated her.

“I was raised here,” she said. “Obviously. This place has been in my father’s family for generations. It means the world to me. My grandmother lived here as the innkeeper until she passed away, when I was fifteen. Then for a couple of years we had somebody else live here as a caretaker, and when I turned eighteen, I took the job.”

“And your parents lived where?”

“Oh, in town. We worked up here, but we lived closer to things. My mother already sold that house. To pay for her new condo in Florida. She likes it better where the sun shines all the time. But I don’t.”

“Have you ever lived where the sun shone all the time?”

“No.”

“Then how do you know you will not like it?”

“Did you think that you would like making soup?” she asked.

“No.”

“Sometimes you just know things.”

They were silent for a moment. She wanted to push him. Press for more information, but she also didn’t want to cause drama.

“So,” she said. “You’re from Italy.”

“Yes,” he said slowly, as if answering questions was a particularly strange thing for him. “From the Italian Alps. My mother is from a very old, very wealthy family, and she had more money than sense. She got herself pregnant when she was older. And decided to never reveal to anyone the identity of her baby’s father. That was me.”

“Oh. But she... She was very wealthy.” Which she imagined didn’t fix everything, but it had to fix a lot of things.

“My great-great-grandfather was a count, and also a real estate developer. The company had passed through two generations of our family before going to my mother. She did quite well in aspects of the job. Though, in the end, she receded from public life, and did most of her business online. Far before it was trendy for people to work remotely.”

“Oh.”

“There,” he said, his tone definitive. “That is my story.”

“That’s not your story. That’s a biography of your company, mostly. Why did she end up leaving you instructions like she did in her will? Why did you end up in that position?”

“She was eccentric,” he said.

That only piqued her curiosity further. Because eccentric was not a word she would ever use to describe him. So how had he come to be? And what had she been like really?

“It sounds like it.”

“At the end of her life she did not leave the house at all. We were very isolated. She liked to control everything.” He stood there in the doorway, something reticent about his stance. “If I were a psychologist I would suggest that something traumatic happened to her. But I do not know.”

“Oh.”

Well. That wasn’t fun eccentric.

He hesitated before speaking. “We were quite cut off from the rest of the world for the past decade of her life. It made things difficult. But she always wanted to maintain the level of control that she had in her home. And she wanted to make sure that she controlled me after she died. Hence the will.”

“I see.” She felt she had to stop saying oh . But she didn’t really know what else to say to this...list of facts.

She could sense that he had compassion for his mother, but there was also anger. A lot of anger. She couldn’t really blame him. She was frustrated that her mom was trying to control her life. That she was trying to take this from her. She could imagine that he didn’t feel any better about it.

“Did you have staff?”

“Two members of staff. That had been with my mother for all of her life. They were elderly.”

“So that’s why you don’t know how to make food.”

“Yes.”

“But you clean.”

“I’m a man who has lived on my own for any number of years. And while I am happy to order food, I like to keep my surroundings in a certain level of order.”

“You don’t have a cleaning staff.”

“I do. But you cannot have your home too clean.”

He looked around the cluttered library, his expression one of pure disdain.

“I take it you don’t like shelves packed full of books? And figurines and doilies?”

“No,” he said.

“I do. It’s history. Knowledge. A lot of this was collected over the years by my family. It’s important to us. It’s part of our story.”

“I will never feel that way about dust catchers, I’m afraid. They do not appeal to me.”

“Sorry,” she said. “That’s a little bit intense.”

“I’m a little bit intense.”

She laughed. “What are you going to eat?”

“I made myself a bowl of soup. I ate it before I delivered yours.”

“Well, when I noticed the mess you really should have given yourself that credit. You made two bowls of soup. That’s why it was such a disaster.”

He didn’t even seem on the verge of cracking a smile. What a tough customer. He was gorgeous. Truly, the most incredible man she had ever seen in person, but he would be impossible to try to deal with on a daily basis. Or at all. Ever. She didn’t know how anyone dealt with him. Maybe nobody really did. Maybe that was the perk of being a billionaire. Nobody really ever contended with you. They just sort of let you exist around them.

“I’m attached to this place,” she said. “I love it.”

“I consider that adjacent to mental illness,” he said.

She gaped at him. “I’m sorry, what? People love their familial homes. You yourself were just talking about the fact that you descended from a long line of important people, you had a familial home, and a business. How is what I feel for this bed-and-breakfast different than that?”

“It simply is,” he said.

“But that doesn’t make any sense.”

“It can cross a line, into foolishness. When you are so attached to a place that you begin to hurt yourself in the pursuit of hanging onto it, when you love things so much that you would choose them over the people in your life, then yes, I do believe it is adjacent to mental illness. And I will not apologize for that.”

“You should. It’s offensive.”

“I don’t care if I’m offensive.”

She felt heat beneath his words, he was personally upset about this. Personally inflamed by it.

“You think that me refusing to sell this place because my mother wants the money is me choosing a place over my family.”

“Yes,” he said.

“It isn’t. I would pay her for it. I would buy it from her. But I either have to be able to get financing, or I have to be able to make payments to her. I need time. Also, I can’t give her the exorbitant sum that you are. But isn’t there a point where wanting more money is simply greed?”

“Isn’t there a point where wanting stuff is simply accumulation?”

“I don’t understand the difference in the two things.”

“Money can afford you the opportunity to live somewhere with a view that you like. You can live in a sleek, clean surrounding, and money allows you to do that comfortably. With good food. Without the worry of scarcity.”

“My mother is hardly living in scarcity. If that’s what she told you, then it is a gross exaggeration. What she wants is to be done living what I consider to be a modest life. But I’m not done with it. I love it.”

“Things are not inherently valuable. They have only the sentiment that you attached to them. You can simply carry a memory in your heart.”

“Haven’t you ever heard that home is where your heart is?”

“I have never had that experience.”

There was something there that he wasn’t sharing. And she wasn’t sure that she needed him to. Nor was she sure she even wanted to hear about it. There was no point getting to know this man. Who was in opposition to her in every way. Who was insulting. Who was a threat to her way of life.

“Thank you for the soup,” she said. “And the crackers. But I’m tired and I’m going to go to bed.”

“All right then,” he said.

She stood up, and brushed past him, and as she did, she stumbled slightly, he grabbed her arm, and steadied her, and she found herself looking up, way up, into the fathomless depths of his black eyes.

Her throat froze, going tight. Her heart slammed itself against her breastbone like it was attempting a jailbreak. He smelled... Well, she could hardly smell, but from what she could tell he smelled of wood smoke and skin. She had never been close enough to smell someone else’s skin.

“Oh,” she said. “I think I’m delirious.”

She practically windmilled away from him, and carried on up the stairs. And then she lay down on the bed, her hand pressed to her heart.

That was insanity. And she was not going to indulge it.