Italian’s Christmas Acquisition

Chapter Eight

CHAPTER EIGHT

N OELLE WAS SHOCKED . Immobilized. Of all the things she’d expected from her first sexual experience—which had been amazing but clearly, clearly a one-off—a proposal hadn’t been on the list.

She might have been only just recently a virgin, but she wasn’t an idiot.

“Excuse me?”

She was so aware that she was standing out there on the streets of this town where everybody knew her. Where everyone had opinions on who she was, with this man. And it had been an extremely fun lark, until this moment. Until she had begun to realize that whatever she thought was happening, Rocco knew better. Until she had begun to realize that he never just did anything. This had been a calculated, coordinated move. He wasn’t going to look at the town with her simply because he wanted to. No. Of course not. There was something else at play with him. She had forgotten for a moment who he was. Even though she had been telling herself to be conscious of it. To be aware.

“Why?” she asked.

Not the response she ever saw herself giving to a man in her fantasies when he proposed. But then, the man had never been Rocco.

She couldn’t have conjured him up in her fantasies no matter how hard she tried.

“Because. I either have to continue building, forever and ever, or I have to marry and produce an heir. You don’t want me to build over the top of Holiday House. Increasingly, I don’t want that either.”

“Why not?” she asked.

“Because it would hurt you,” he said. “And I don’t want to do that.”

She clung to that. Imagined holding it in her fist like a bright, shiny jewel.

If he cared about hurting her did that mean he cared?

Or was this the manipulation?

She didn’t know, but she knew what she wanted to believe.

“But... But what would marriage between us entail?”

“I think we only just had a small sample of what it entails,” he said, his voice low and seductive, and how she hated him for that. How she hated him for the ease with which he could take her back there. Could make her want to say yes regardless of whether or not it made any sense.

That bastard.

Was this what he had always planned on doing?

“You are looking at me as if I am a monster, and you did not look at me like that only moments ago,” he said.

Her face went all hot and she resented it.

“You... Is that why you slept with me?” She was so aware that she knew the people who were passing by, at least by face, if not by name. So aware that she was playing out this intimate moment for all the town to see.

“No,” he said. “Of course not. Of course that is not why.”

“Was it your plan all along?”

“No. My plan was to bulldoze your bed-and-breakfast and build a hugely lucrative resort property. But this is another way forward. An alternative.”

“What if I don’t want your alternative?”

“Then I will proceed as I had originally planned. That is up to you. Though I do not know why you would want to make it so difficult.”

She realized then that she was standing at the cusp of an improbable issue. An unsolvable problem. She couldn’t go back to the life that she had known before he had come into it. That was the simple truth. She had been trying so hard to cling to her existence. To what she knew. And part of her had believed that once he left, as long as she won, as long as she was able to win this fight with him, then she would be able to go back to the way things had been. To that simpler time. Her simpler self.

But it wasn’t true.

She was changed by knowing him.

It was an utterly horrendous thing to realize. She was altered for having met the man. Part of her would always be missing if he was gone from her.

No, she wasn’t in love with him, but she felt something for him. There was no pretending that she didn’t. And if he left, if he went away, it wouldn’t be like he had never come there. Because she could never be untouched by him. Unkissed by him. She could never go back to how it had been before she was possessed by him. She was changed. Forevermore.

And always she would be living a half life. The one from before and the one after.

“So wait a minute,” she said. “I marry you and...”

“I will give your mother the money that she wants. She will be cared for. The mother-in-law of a billionaire. You will have Holiday House, preserved, though you will not be able to be there all the time, you will of course be able to go there as you wish.”

“But you and I will be married.”

“Yes. And I live mostly in New York City.”

She grimaced. “New York City. I have never been there, but it sounds vile.”

He chuckled. “Most people are enamored of it. It is the greatest city in the world, after all.”

“Subjective, I’m certain. Also, I love it here. I love it here more than I love anything else.”

“How nice for you,” he said. “I think you will find that isn’t true for others. I for example, find that I am not so charmed by this place.”

“No, of course not. That would be far too convenient. Can’t you just fall in love with this place and decide not to build here out of the goodness of your heart?”

He shook his head. “I don’t do anything out of the goodness of my heart. But the truth is, eventually, I will have to marry, and I will have to have an heir. You took care of me. When I was ill. You made me feel at ease. You are exactly the woman that I should want as the mother to my child. Yes, I find your house not to my taste, but it is homey. I think. At least, I suppose that is what others would say.”

“But not you.”

“I find it cluttered. But it is not dangerously so.”

She didn’t have any idea what he meant by that. By dangerously cluttered. What on earth could that mean?

“I think that you would be a good mother. I think that you could learn to be a good wife. We are compatible in bed.”

She looked around, wildly. “I know everyone here.”

“I don’t. But in any case, you and I would suit.”

“How? I hate the sound of the place that you call home, you hate the place that I call home. You think my house is cluttered. You think that I’m a silly small-town girl.”

“You were also a virgin,” he said, lowering his voice. “I take the gift that you gave me seriously.”

“You make it sound like it’s medieval times. Should I be grateful you didn’t hang the bloodied sheet out the window?”

He frowned. “Did you bleed?”

“If so, not enough to worry about.”

“I don’t want to have hurt you.”

“I’m a woman, Rocco, if I got wound up about a little blood I’d be beset all the time.”

He considered that. “I don’t mean to sound medieval. But perhaps a bit old-fashioned. I cannot help myself. I cannot ignore the fact that you have never been with another man, and yet you chose to be with me. There are things I cannot give, Noelle. I will be honest with you in that. I cannot give love. I will not give you a conventional life. I do not think that we will sit warmly around the dinner table all together, and talk of our day. I will come and see you, and the child. You will stay with me sometimes. You will be... The better parent, I feel, in the child’s life.”

“I didn’t even tell you if I wanted children,” she said, even as she felt her stomach cramp low. The idea of carrying a baby... Of course she had always wanted a traditional life. It was the thing that she thought about often. Her family home, her family legacy. In order to truly realize that dream, she had seen herself having her own family. She had also seen herself living with that family at Holiday House. She hadn’t considered being a part-time single mother.

But she couldn’t go back to that simple dream. Because she could no longer put a blank face in the place of the father, the husband. The only man that she could imagine was Rocco. And she didn’t have to be in love with him for that to be the case. She wasn’t in love. She wasn’t that naive, she wasn’t that simple. But she also knew that attraction like they shared didn’t just pop up all the time. In twenty-four years, she hadn’t experienced it. Now that she knew it existed, she could never settle for less. Was she going to wait another twenty-four years for a man to show up who ignited her imagination in that way?

She thought of her mother, her father, who had clearly been incompatible in the end. They had loved each other. They truly had. But her mother had wanted to escape the life that they had built, whatever she had thought going into it. What that taught her was that you couldn’t know for certain what you would want in the future. You could only make decisions as best you could right then.

It was all you could do.

It was the only thing.

She might be unhappy if she decided to marry him. But she would be unhappy if she didn’t. She would still be in this fight. This fight to keep Holiday House, this fight to... To find herself. Because in the end, that’s what she was trying to do. She had tried to do it by keeping everything the same. She had been lonely. Happy in so many ways, how she loved the Christmas tree farm. How she loved the house. How she loved the people in this town. But she was unsatisfied. She was unfulfilled. Maybe she could be half and half. The before and the after. Noelle, with her child, with her warmth and her Christmas, at Holiday House, and Rocco’s wife in New York when he needed it.

Yes, what he was offering had a bleakness to it. But, she was happy with him now. She had been these past few days. He was a good man.

He would continue to be a good man. Who was to say that it wouldn’t be enough?

Who could know for certain?

“I will marry you. But I need it in writing that Holiday House will be safe.”

“It will.”

“What will become of the other properties that you bought?”

“A preserve. For the local wildlife, and for the town.”

She couldn’t help herself. She threw her arms around him. “Rocco, that is amazing. The most beautiful gift that you could’ve given.”

“You’re very welcome,” he said, his voice turning to stone. “Then we have ourselves a bargain.”

“Yes.”

“How long will it take for you to secure staff that can manage in your stead?”

“I do have staff. But...”

“Then it will work out. If I need to call someone in from one of my hotels to help manage, then I shall.”

“I have a feeling they will feel that that is entirely beneath them.”

“But I’m their boss, so they shall do as I ask.”

“Oh.”

She felt right then that she hadn’t exactly understood what she was saying yes to. Because she knew the man in context of her life, she knew him in black-and-white on a Google search. But she didn’t fully understand the place that he occupied in the world. How could she? How could she.

“We must leave as soon as possible,” he said. “I have to announce my engagement so I can put a stop to my mother’s expansion stipulations.”

Her whole life was changing, and she could barely catch her breath.

But she realized it didn’t matter.

Because she was prepared to follow him, breathless.

So perhaps his manipulation had worked.

She wasn’t even sure she cared if that were true.

Rocco did not tarry. He called his people in as quickly as they could arrive and had them help pack Noelle’s necessities. He asked that they outfit the plane with clothing and makeup suitable for his bride. She was cute in her normal attire, but cute would not be fitting for a Moretti bride.

Then she was bundled up and loaded onto his private plane, as he did his best to make sure that everything at the bed-and-breakfast and Christmas tree farm was secured to Noelle’s specifications.

As they stood there in the doorway of Holiday House, all her things being put in the car caravan so that they could make the journey to New York with them, he palmed the jewelry box in his pocket. He had his assistant whisk the finest diamond she could get her hands on immediately to him. Because he would have this secured as soon as possible.

He held the box out, and opened it. “Here. Until we can sign a contract, this is my promise to you. There are expectations that come with it.”

She was looking at the ring, boggling.

“Expectations?”

“When we get off the plane there will doubtless be paparazzi there. You must expect it. By now, the world knows that I have been snowed in at the top of a mountain. And I prefer to make the most of the story. I am considered a ruthless, heartless property developer.”

“Yes. I have some experience with that.”

“So you have. But this will change the story. Do you not understand all the ways in which you are perfect for this position?”

“You make it sound like a job.”

“In many ways it is. For my wife, being married to me was always going to be a job. Not only will there be media attention it is...possible that the board of my company will be unhappy with the development.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Eternal expansion suits them, of course.”

“Right.”

“I was content to continue putting marriage off. I am only thirty.”

“Ah right, and sperm is everlasting. You could put it off until you were eighty.”

He laughed. “I never had the inclination to do that. But I have been caught between two things all this time. The desire to be free from this excessive expansion my mother has commanded, and the desire to not yet marry. Neither option truly exists. But only when I met you did I see marriage as the more... Peaceful option. Why shouldn’t I be a father? I would, after all, do better at it than my own mother. My own father being nonexistent, it would be impossible to do worse.”

“Well, I don’t think that’s true. I think sometimes presence can be worse than absence. Depending precisely on how the presence manifests itself.”

“Indeed.” He thought of his mother again. Of the darkness of the house. The fetid smell. Of how she loved her things more than she had ever loved him. She could name the price of each one of them, where they had come from, the date they had been bought. She never even remembered his birthday.

“Will you wear my ring?”

She looked at him. “This ring exists so that you have a good story to tell. So that when your picture is taken as we get off the plane people will know that you fell in love with the innkeeper you were trapped on the mountain with.”

“Yes. That is exactly why it exists.”

She looked around. “I think this is the kind of thing I might’ve thought was romantic under different circumstances. I mean, if you had gotten down on one knee, and my family was here. If my dad wasn’t gone. Oh, yeah, if we were in love.”

She looked wounded, and what he didn’t want was for her to have second thoughts, because now that he was set on this plan, he was convinced that it was the best way forward. No question.

He didn’t want to continue on the way he had been. It felt like a life continually out of his control whereas...

One with her felt like it might, perhaps, be a path to a life that was much more his own.

Both were his mother’s grand design, and he could not readily articulate why one felt better than the other.

Perhaps, it was Noelle.

“Would you like me to get down on one knee?”

“No. I don’t need you to do that. Thanks, though. That’s...”

He could see that he was losing her. He could see that she was afraid. That she was questioning things. He knew what connection they had. Where it was strongest. He cupped the back of her head and leaned down, claiming her mouth. He kissed her, deep and long until he lost himself entirely. Until he couldn’t remember what he had been trying to do. Until there was nothing but her. Her softness. His need for her. Her lips, her sighs. Everything.

He was consumed by it, just as much as she was. He was caught in his own trap. It was a hell of a thing. It was unlike anything he had ever experienced before.

He did not know if he wished to drown in it, or turn away from it, never to touch it again. When he moved away from her, her eyes were still closed. She was breathing hard. So was he.

“It is not all a story,” he said. “It is not all terribly unromantic.”

Her eyes fluttered open.

“Yes,” she said.

She put her hand out, and he took the ring carefully from the box, sliding it onto her finger. It glittered there. A promise of something.

And it was one of the few times he could honestly say that the addition of something made it better, and not simply more cluttered. Not worse.

On her, the ring was beautiful.

“Let’s go,” he said, gesturing toward the car.

“Okay,” she said, turning to look back at the bed-and-breakfast.

“You will be back,” he said.

“I know,” she said.

“You look as if I’m dragging you away forever.”

“You’re certainly dragging me into the unknown.”

“Didn’t I already do that?”

Her cheeks went pink. “You can’t make everything about sex.”

“And why not? Sex is what brought us here. It is not a bad thing. It is our connection. It is certainly real.”

“Yes,” she said softly. “It is.”

She was silent on the car ride to the airfield, and when they boarded the private plane, her eyes went round. “I... I had no idea that a private plane was this luxurious. But I’ve only flown one time.”

“Really?”

“Yes. To visit my aunt in Ohio. I was a kid. I don’t even really remember it. But I... This is incredible.”

“It is a necessity,” he said.

He didn’t feel entirely comfortable with her all over the plane, and he wasn’t sure why. He was used to being around people who were blasé about wealth and luxury. Even if they were impressed they would never venture to behave as if they were. The disparity between the two of them was all the clearer here.

“It is yours now,” he said. “What I mean is, everything that is mine is now yours.”

“It... It is?”

“Yes,” he said. “It is. We are sharing our wealth.”

For some reason, that made him feel better.

“I... Good,” she said. “I... I don’t need wealth really. But it makes me feel better to know that you see me as a partner, and not simply an acquisition.”

He didn’t argue with her. He probably should. She wasn’t exactly the same as an object, but she was primarily one. A wife that he’d needed to acquire in order to fulfill certain terms.

And yet, within that, she mattered.

Of course she did. It couldn’t have been anyone, or he would’ve married already.

She was...everything he should not want, and yet he did want her. How could he let go of such a glorious mystery?

All his life he’d felt isolated. She made him feel something more.

He did not want to let that go.

“You got awfully quiet,” she said.

“Do not concern yourself with my silence,” he said, settling into one of the plush leather chairs on the plane, and inviting her to do the same. His stewardess bustled about the cabin, bringing them both drinks.

“Champagne?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “To celebrate.”

“Oh,” she said, looking at her hand.

She looked back up at the stewardess and smiled. “Of course.”

The stewardess beamed back, and then left the two of them alone.

“My staff sign ironclad NDAs,” he said. “You have no need to put on a show in front of Elise.”

“Well, I feel uncomfortable,” she said. “Lying.”

“It isn’t a lie. I came to your bed-and-breakfast, we were snowed in. We were overcome by our attraction to one another.”

“Were you?”

She was staring at him, with the intense copper eyes that he found so attractive, generally speaking, but a bit off-putting now.

“Yes,” he said.

He felt pinned to the spot, but he also didn’t see the use in denying it. “What is it you need to hear, Noelle? That I was attracted to you in a way that felt uncommon? In a way that tested me, and I failed that test?”

“What test?”

“It felt entirely ungentlemanly of me to claim you like I did when we were trapped in the way that we were. And yet I did, because I could not resist you. Because you were... Everything that I wanted and more. Because you are the most beautiful woman that I have ever seen. It doesn’t even matter if that is strictly true in a measurable sense. You are the only one that I can remember. And I could not imagine not taking this opportunity to secure a wife when I found one who would suit me so well. You see how it is?”

“I... I suppose so.”

“Is that what you wanted to hear? That you are special?”

“Not if you’re only telling me that so that I’ll shut up.”

“I am not,” he said.

He realized that this was the longest he had ever spoken to another person about something other than business in a very long time. But then, that was true of this whole lost weekend with her. She wanted to understand the way in which she was different? He couldn’t begin to list a single way that she was the same.

“You have experiences that I don’t have,” she said. “It makes me feel... I wonder what you see in me, I guess. Is this obligation because you were my first or...”

“No. What I see in you is the ability to be a warm and caring mother. But also... I want you.” He met her gaze. “I have never cared much about a specific woman. I have cared for my own pleasure. I seek out women who are the same. So that I do not have to think about them. They think of themselves. I think of myself. I have never been... Warm. You make me feel warm.”

He didn’t know if what he had said made any sense at all; he wasn’t even certain why he’d said it.

“My whole childhood felt magical,” she said. “Holiday House is the most wonderful place to grow up. I loved it so much. I always have. I imagined growing up there. Growing old there. Raising children there. I don’t know where I thought I was going to meet a man. The boys that I knew in town never impressed me. Not because I’m a snob just because... Well. Maybe I am a snob. I never wanted them. I could never quite explain why. But I didn’t. Still, I imagined a warm and happy life there. When my father died, and my mother left, I suddenly realized that the life that I thought was happening around me wasn’t. My mother didn’t love the bed-and-breakfast. She felt trapped there. Their relationship wasn’t everything that I had believed it to be, and it made me realize for the first time that a fantasy, a dream that you have when you’re a child, doesn’t mean anything. It isn’t guaranteed to come true. So I’ve been up there, clinging to that place, feeling more and more lonely. Wishing for a life I didn’t have anymore. Wishing for the confidence that I used to have that my life was going to turn out okay. You disrupted everything.”

“You do not find me warm?”

“I find you terrifying. The prospect of something that I never once imagined, but it seems like I would be a fool to say no. Not because you’re a billionaire. Because it saves Holiday House. And because... I want you. That has to matter for something.”

“Certainly.”

“You said some things... When you were feverish. About your childhood.”

“What things?”

“They probably didn’t mean anything. You were probably completely out of your mind.” She frowned. “Except you did remember kissing me. And I thought you might not.”

“Tell me.”

“You talked about traveling through a secret passageway. And always being in your room.”

“That is true,” he said. His chest felt icy, and he didn’t like it. Because what he wanted was to forget his childhood had ever happened. That was what he wanted.

And yet... She had shared something of herself. And he had already shared something of himself, even if he had done so when he hadn’t meant to. Eventually, they would have to speak of it, because they were going to have to share a house and he was going to have to explain some of his eccentricities.

He had never considered that. What it actually meant to have to share space with another person.

Even while they had packed up all the things that she possessed to come to his penthouse in New York City, he hadn’t fully thought all that through. He had imagined tucking her up in a space in the house, rather than integrating her. But then... Wasn’t he simply treating her like his mother, only in the reverse?

“As you know, my mother reached a point where she could no longer leave the house.”

“You did mention that, yes.”

“There was nothing that could be done about it. She was a complete and total shut-in. Her phobias took over. She began to seek ways that she could control her surroundings. The way that she found peace...” He gritted his teeth. It was difficult for him to try and justify what his mother had done when he was so angry. And yet, he had done a fair amount of work to try and assign meaning to all that she had done. For his own peace, as well as her memory. Still there were times when all he wanted to do was rage.

This was one of those times.

Because having to expose it all again. To speak to somebody about it. To admit the truth to Noelle felt exposing, even if it shouldn’t. Both of the conditions that he had lived in as a child, and of his mother. And as much as he often resented his mother and her memory, he still loathed exposing her. It went against his own need to also protect. Still, he did his best. “She began to collect things. Small things at first, but it grew. And the issue with something like that, when it becomes a compulsion, when it weaves together with all the other existing phobias is that it quickly takes over every part of your life. Every room of the house.”

She was staring at him. “You said... You sometimes ate expired food.”

“She would hoard food as well. There was no way of knowing, often, how old something was. And she did not like to throw it out. The two members of staff that she had enabled her. I don’t know if they became used to the surroundings, or if it didn’t matter to them because they knew that my mother would remember them in her will, and they would be paid handsomely for the trouble of living in squalor. But for whatever reason, they acted as if everything was fine. But I couldn’t. I stayed in my room as much as possible, I locked my mother out. I would not allow it to become a dumping ground for her things. I could not allow it. The only measure of peace that I had in that house was my own space. And that is why when I left I would go through the secret passages.”

“You... You were so isolated,” she said. “When you said that you grew up in a wealthy family, that is by far not what I imagined.”

“It is not what anyone imagines. But mental illness doesn’t care if you have money. She could’ve had access to treatment, yes, but she didn’t take advantage of that access. She didn’t want to be fixed. She didn’t want to be better. Perhaps she couldn’t have been. Perhaps it was impossible for her to be better than she was, I will never know. What I know is she lived her last years in darkness, and isolation, and in secret. And then she wanted me to continue on in her quest to hoard things. In this case, property. And I have done so, because it has grown the business, but you can see, I hate this. This empty acquisition. This need to own. I keep very little in my home, you will find.”

“Oh,” she said.

“I like there to be space.”

“It makes sense. All the... You’re quite particular.”

“Now that I can control my surroundings, I do so.” He could hear himself. He could hear himself talking about control, and he could even recognize that was a close neighbor of his mother’s issues. But he did not think it was wrong. He did not think that he was wrong. Not truly. What he did, he did as a matter of his own survival. His own mental clarity. He liked to feel as far removed from his childhood as possible.

“I thought my childhood was perfect,” she said softly. “But, my mother ran away from it all as soon as she could. I thought that she loved our life. I thought that she loved me. But the truth is, if anything, she loved my dad. As soon as he was gone, so was she. And I know it’s not what you went through. But it’s just funny to me, how I’m clinging to my childhood as best I can, to the memory of what I thought it was. Trying to prove that it was perfect. And you’re running as far away from yours as possible.”

It was two different things. The opposite things, even, and yet there was something in the sadness in her voice that made him feel like they were connected by an invisible string. He wasn’t sure that he liked the sensation, but there it was. Powerful. Intense.

“And yet here you are, in the midst of change,” he said, and he wasn’t sure if he was pointing it out to put distance between them or simply to see what she would do. She looked down. “I made my choice.”

“You must admit, I steered you quite strongly.”

She nodded. “You did. You also underestimate my ability to fight, Rocco. I am strong and stubborn.”

“In my experience you are not so hard to persuade.”

She shook her head. “I have been opposing my mother on the sale of that house for two years now. I am very hard to persuade. I live up there, in perfect happiness with my own company. You... Changed something in me. You made me see that something else could exist. I didn’t quite understand what that might look like. I still don’t. But I’m here.”

“You should go and get changed,” he said.

“My suitcases...”

“No. In the bedroom there is some clothing for you. You will have your picture taken when you get off the plane.”

“And I have to look a certain way.”

“Yes.”

“Like I belong with you.”

He paused for a moment. “You are in the midst of change, as I only just pointed out. I think it is only fair for me to acknowledge that you are the one that will have to change the most. I am bringing you into my life. You will accompany me to different events as and when I need you to. You will get off this plane and create the photo op that I want you to create. You will have my child.”

“Presumably the child will also be mine.”

“Yes. I have no desire, nor the inclination or ability to be a full-time father. But these things... These changes, you’re making for me. I am not changing. I feel that must be abundantly clear.”

“Rocco, if you think that you can get married, bring a woman into your home, bring a child into your home and experience no change at all, I’m not sure you’re living in reality. I think it’s only fair to point that out to you.” She stood up and stretched. “Now. I guess I’ll go change.” She laughed. “I only meant my clothes. But I suppose in reality it means... Everything.”