Italian’s Christmas Acquisition

Chapter Eleven

CHAPTER ELEVEN

W HEN R OCCO SHOWED up to the board meeting the next day, he knew that he was going to be met with sterling opposition.

“This is how you tell us that you are engaged?” Jeremiah Ulster, one of the oldest members of the board, tossed his phone into the center of the table, pictures of him and Noelle plastered into a tell-all article. Of course, he and Noelle had told nothing. But everyone knew at this point he had been snowed in on the mountain, and they knew that she was the person he had been snowed in with. People wanted to believe in romance so desperately, that they fashioned one out of it. And that suited him just fine.

“It is not my fault that the press decided to fill in their version of the truth without my speaking to you. But, as you know, I was indisposed for a while, and could not communicate, and when Noelle and I arrived in the city last night we had an event to attend.”

“You were making a show of it,” Jeremiah said.

“Yes,” he said. “Perhaps I was. And perhaps that will serve as a reminder that I am not a child to be scolded, whether or not my mother put you in your position or not. This is my company, and I make decisions based on what I feel is best. The expansion ends. I am to be married.”

“Surely we have to approve that,” Jeremiah said, and he searched around as if he was hunting for a stack of bylaws.

“You don’t,” Rocco said. “I simply must wed within three months of informing you. Which I shall do. And then within a year of the marriage, my wife must be pregnant, or we must be in the process of pursuing surrogacy or adoption.”

“You are quite well versed,” Jeremiah said.

“Because it is my life,” Rocco said. “It is my life, and I will do with it what I choose. I have chosen to marry Noelle Holiday. It is my right. She is the woman that I have chosen. And I am not building a resort in Wyoming.”

“What?” This came from Rosalie, another older member of the board.

“No, I am not. Because my wife, Noelle, will be preserving her family home rather than agreeing to any changes.”

“You’ve cut a deal with her,” Rosalie said. “That much is obvious.”

“And what incentive would I have to do that?” Rocco asked. “She is the one who benefits from it, not me. I found that I had a change of heart up on the mountain.”

“I don’t believe it,” Jeremiah said.

“It is not for you to believe. It is what is happening. You were all happy with my mother’s mental deterioration because she gave you more power. And the eternal expansion lines your pockets. But I do not work for you. And I am not someone you can take advantage of. Perhaps it has not been clear. I am Rocco Moretti. And I will have my way.”

He stormed out of the meeting, his heart hammering. He was furious. Every single one of them had a stake in the way that things had gone with his mother.

And they would pay for it. By watching their easy profits slip away. And once he had total control of everything, he would oust them. He also knew that they were going to drip feed terrible PR stories to the media. There were going to be competing narratives now. He called Noelle as soon as he got into the car.

“Oh,” she said. “I didn’t expect to hear from you.”

“I just had a rather explosive meeting. You have to be aware that there is going to be negative press. Because the board is opposing this marriage. They have no control, but once we have a child, I can begin the process of replacing them, and they don’t like that. They are going to make it sound as if this marriage is an entirely Machiavellian scheme on my part.”

There was a short pause on the other end of the line. “Isn’t it?”

For some reason he didn’t like that. Not after the explosiveness of last night. Not after everything.

“Still. You may feel differently when you see it plastered in black-and-white. They will do their best to smear us and to smear you.”

“I can handle it,” she said.

“I hope that’s true. Because we are going to have to ramp up our efforts. We will be attending a great many events leading up to Christmas. I’m going to get you a wedding planner, and we are going to plan a Christmas charity event.”

“That’s a lot,” she said.

“I’m a lot. If you hadn’t noticed.”

“Yes,” she said. She sounded sad.

Perhaps it was the reminder that all of this served a very specific purpose. He could admit, even if just to himself, that he was somewhat surprised by how jarring it was to have to contend with the fact that there was a scheme at play here. Especially when last night had felt... Like they were the only two people on earth.

“You forget,” she said. “I have run a Christmas tree farm in a small town for years. I can handle intense. I can handle holly and jolly. We have nearly a month until the big day. We can accomplish a lot in that time.”

“You are perfect for this,” he said.

And only after he hung up the phone did he realize how true that was.

“You are perfect for this.”

Noelle clung to that. Day in and day out over the next few weeks.

She started working on planning the charity event he wanted to throw. She talked about it endlessly when they would go out to different functions. And she ignored the venomous headlines that came out about them.

The tell-alls from women he had slept with before. Talking about his prowess and how cold he was.

It hurt her, to read those stories. She tried not to. Because there really was no point. It didn’t benefit her in any way.

It didn’t help her. It only hurt.

So she ignored them. Because he had warned her. And he had been very, very right.

Their outings together created their own fight against the narrative.

She stood by him.

She nearly had apoplexy, though, when a story came out about her mother.

The gold-digging mother-in-law who had been unfaithful to her husband before his death, and who wanted nothing more than to get a big payout. Had she in fact orchestrated this alliance between her daughter and Rocco?

The idea of her mother being that strategic was hilarious.

The revelations about the infidelity less so.

This just... It destroyed everything. Shattered her pretty childhood snow globe into thousands of pieces. Had she known anything about her own life?

She didn’t know if the allegations were true or not. But Christopher Farmer, a man who lived down the road from them had given an interview in the paper about it. That they had been lovers. He had clearly gotten a payout of some kind.

Noelle called her mother. “Mom,” she said. “Is this true?”

“Noelle, life is complicated,” her mom said. “I regret it. And your dad forgave me. It happened a long time ago.”

“You just never really loved us, did you?” Noelle asked.

“I do,” her mom said. “I did.”

“Well, you’re partying in Boca with my fiancé’s money, so I guess you love how useful I am to you.”

Noelle hung the phone up.

She tried to forget that happened when Rocco came home and she lost herself in his touch.

That was the one place where everything felt like it made sense.

In bed with him.

At least there she had some sanity. Or rather, a really perfect brand of insanity. There was also Melody.

And Daniela, her wedding planner, who was lovely, and quickly becoming a friend.

“Weddings are stressful for anybody,” she said. “But especially so when there’s this big of a circus around it.”

“The board is bound and determined to mess all of this up. I’m not going to let them,” she said.

Because she thought of that little boy, whose mother had controlled everything, and hadn’t taken care of him at all. And that helped. When nothing else did.

Of course, nothing helped the shambles she felt like her emotions were in, but it at least gave her the will to go on.

She found that she liked New York more than she would’ve imagined. Was happier there than she had thought possible. When she didn’t wear makeup, and she put on a hat, nobody recognized her. Because she was only famous as Rocco Moretti’s beautiful, made-up fiancée.

So when she was just Noelle, nobody looked at her. Nobody saw her. That was something that never happened at home. She couldn’t be anonymous if she wanted to, and given the amount of phone calls she had gotten since the news about her mother’s infidelity had been splashed all over the news, there would be no sanity to be had at home.

She understood that.

And she wanted nothing to do with that.

At Christmastime, the city was beautiful. And she found herself going to the tree at Rockefeller Center often, gazing up at it, thinking about home, and finding a way to feel nostalgic about it.

She was meeting Daniela for lunch, and to have a conversation about flowers. The Christmas event was looming, and she was feeling especially... Fraught.

It was just a lot. Everything.

She wasn’t used to this. This feeling of being turned inside out, exposed. Yes, in a small town everybody knew her, which was its own issue, but there was also the issue of the way she lived her life. She didn’t parade her business around. She never had. She went internal. She focused on her bed-and-breakfast. Her only sanity was him. That was her version of going internal now. Losing herself in his touch, in his arms.

She and Daniela passed by a storefront on Fifth Avenue that had exceedingly shocking lingerie outfits on the manikins in the window.

“I think I’d like to go in there,” she said.

“Planning for the honeymoon?” Daniela asked.

“Or just Tuesday,” she said brightly.

Because she really was this whole other person now. This woman who reveled in her sexuality.

She was cautiously amused by herself. By this change in her.

Even while there was a bit of foreboding lingering in the background. A small amount of fear that this could rebound on her. That she would be utterly entirely lost at sea if something happened to their relationship.

But it was no matter.

Because it was too late, that was the thing. She was out in the middle of the ocean, in a small inflatable raft, clinging to a rope that kept her tethered.

Rocco was the rope.

If she lost hold of him, she didn’t know what would happen.

But she was already in the middle of the sea.

So she bought five different lace and transparent silk outfits, so little fabric for so much money, and she let herself enjoy it. Let herself get excited thinking about what he would do when he saw them.

What are you doing?

It was a text from Melody, right as she exited the store.

Just spent a ridiculous amount of Rocco’s money on underwear.

I have to get an Italian boyfriend.

Fiancé.

And she added a smiley face for good measure.

Even with the heaviness of the media barrage, she felt buoyant.

And she followed that buoyancy down Fifth Avenue, and she and Daniela made an appointment with one another to do wedding dresses the next week.

Then she walked the rest of the way back to Rocco’s penthouse, enjoying the bustle. Now that she was getting used to the rhythm of the city, she did find beauty in it.

It was different than the beauty she was born into. Different than the life she had chosen for herself.

But it was beautiful all the same.

She didn’t expect to find Rocco home in the middle of the day, and yet when she got to the penthouse, he was. Standing there with his back to her, facing the scene below. His posture looked especially straight, his figure imposing with his jet-black hair ruthlessly tamed into place, and his black suit so expertly cut to the lines of his body.

But there was an aura of something radiating from him that actually frightened her.

“Rocco?”

He turned toward her, a glass of scotch in his hand. He was home in the middle of the day, and he was drinking in the middle of the day. That was a bad sign.

“What...”

“Have you not seen?”

“No. I’ve been out shopping with Daniela.”

“Well, it is only a matter of time. They’ve done it.”

“They’ve done what?”

“The board has decided, in their infinite pettiness, to publish my mother’s greatest secret.”

“Oh...”

And admittedly, she didn’t understand why that was a problem. She couldn’t say that to him, not while he looked like the very angel of death, but Rocco was amazing for what he had been through. For coming out of the life that he had been brought up in as well as he had.

He shouldn’t bear any embarrassment or shame because of it.

She could see, though, that he did not feel that way.

“Rocco...”

“They published pictures of the house. The inside of the house. Of all the things. All the horrible, disgusting things, piled up past the windows. You couldn’t even see outside anymore. It blocked the daylight. My mother’s staff... They betrayed her. They were complicit in it. They lived in it. They enabled her, and now they have gone and exposed her. Exposed me.”

“Rocco, none of it had anything to do with you. You were just a child.”

“I lived in it,” he said. “And you scrub your skin, and try to clean yourself, but the smell will not come out. It still doesn’t. I can still... Feel it, on me like a film. Don’t you understand? Nobody that lived in that house was separate from it. I am not separate from it.”

“But it isn’t... None of it was your fault.”

“She was my mother. And... There is nothing half so horrible as hating a person for what they do to you and loving them just as fiercely. Wanting to protect them. Because even if she didn’t know the full scale of how ashamed she should be, I did. I did, and I took it all on myself, onto my own shoulders. I know how wrong it was. I know how... How sick she was. But it was never out. It was not her legacy. I took that all into myself, onto myself, to avoid ever having it be something that marred her name forever, and now they have just done it.”

She took her phone out, and she googled it. And there it was. Pictures. This beautiful, stately manner home, with piles of garbage as if it were a bespoke landfill.

There were rooms that had semblances of order to the stacks. Books, magazines, newspapers. But others that were simply... Indistinct mounds of trash. The kitchen... There was food everywhere. On every surface. She could imagine the smell. Why it had been so difficult for him to eat, why he couldn’t just trust anything.

He was so fastidious, so clean, so perfect.

It was an assault to think of him living this way. To think of how he’d had to bear that. And even though she didn’t think he should carry any of the shame, she could see that he did.

Perhaps it was very like her own shame. This feeling of not being enough to make her mother happy. Maybe he felt that too.

Because for all that he was this creature of order and authority, he had been helpless then.

The kind of man he was... It no doubt aided him.

He likely thought the world saw this and saw his failure.

“I have lived with you for nearly a month,” she said. “And you do not allow me total control of your space. It is yours. You have very clear boundaries.”

“Yes,” he said.

“In her way, so did your mother. You could no more sweep in and control everything than I can now.”

“I’m not like my mother,” he said.

Horror burst in her chest. “I didn’t mean it that way. I only meant—”

“Do not seek to give advice on something you can’t possibly understand. You are upset because your parents had the same sort of issues that everyone has the world over. A minor infidelity, the ache of suburban ennui. Your childhood was happy. Your parents managed to hide it from you. You have any idea what I would give to have had my mother hide her psychosis from me? Rather than including me in the middle of it? Do not try to understand me. Do not seek to compare. It is an absolute injustice.”

He stepped away, going into his room and closing the door firmly behind him.

And she knew there was no reaching him. Not now.

He didn’t care about this...this thing that had hurt her so much and he’d used this to push her away rather than bringing them closer together.

Over the next few days it was a grim march to Christmas Eve. She didn’t even try to ask him about having a Christmas tree in the penthouse. Of course he would never allow it.

It would be clutter.

And he didn’t allow that, however mad he got when he felt like she was attempting to compare him to her mother.

But they had their charity event tonight, and the entire purpose of the barrage of attacks that they had been under was so that they couldn’t show their faces. Was so they would decide to call off their marriage. This trial by media had one purpose. And even if Rocco couldn’t do this now, she would.

He was her lifeline.

And he had denied her these past few days. He hadn’t so much as spoken to her, much less touched or kissed her.

She felt alone. Adrift.

It was as awful as she had feared that it would be.

And yet she was still here, so she would still fight.

The night of the gala, she dressed up in a very fitted emerald green dress with a sweetheart neckline, one of the strapless, glorious concoctions she had bought the other day with Daniela, before everything had fallen apart, securely underneath.

If only she could feel as put together as she looked.

But not even very fancy underwear could save her from the havoc Rocco was wreaking on her heart.