‘The prospect of working suddenly didn’t seem quite so enticing.’ He circled her and stared down at her for a few seconds until she reluctantly lifted her eyes to his.
‘I was trying to ease the way to us breaking up,’ she confessed. ‘Until you came along and demolished all my efforts. Why couldn’t you have just taken the lead from me and backed me up when I started insinuating that this was probably just a fling?’
Matteo shrugged. ‘Maybe I’m so arrogant that the thought of being written off as a fling dented my ego.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ Rosie muttered.
‘Maybe…’ he murmured.
Rosie didn’t know what was going through his head, but his expression wasn’t the expression of an arrogant alpha male with a sore ego.
‘Just maybe it got on my nerves hearing your sister assume that a man like me could never look twice at someone like you.’
‘I’m not asking for your pity.’
‘If you don’t assert yourself, you’ll be walked over.’
‘Thank you very much for the words of advice.’
‘You’ve stood up to your sister once. You can do it again. Try it a few times and you might find that it becomes a way of life.’
‘You don’t like me prying into your private life, Matteo, and I don’t like you thinking that you can analyse me.’
‘But you’ve set a precedent. Don’t get me wrong,’ he grated. ‘Your life is none of my business but it affronts something in me when I hear you being treated like a kid who needs other people to look after her. You’re not a kid.’
‘I know that,’ Rosie muttered grudgingly. She sneaked a glance at him from under her lashes. ‘I did actually stick up for you when she told me that it was strange for you to be working when you should be desperate to spend time in my company.’
‘Did you, now?’
Rosie could see the speculation in his eyes at that admission. ‘I thought it might be a good idea to let her know that work came first with you.’
Matteo burst out laughing, his grey eyes darkening with appreciation. ‘More of those foundations being laid down.’
‘It might have been if you had got on board with me instead of branching out and doing your own thing.’
Matteo shrugged, the smile lingering on his lips, and began heading towards the door. ‘I’m hitting the sack. Coming?’
‘I’ll… I think I’ll stay down here and finish tidying the kitchen,’ Rosie told him. For a while she’d forgotten the prospect ahead of sharing her bedroom with him but it was all coming back to her now at great speed. On the spot she decided that she would stay out of harm’s way in the kitchen, at least long enough for him to fall asleep so that when she finally joined him he would be dead to the world.
She couldn’t picture him being dead to the world, though. In fact, she couldn’t imagine him sleeping. More lying still with his eyes closed but primed to leap into action at the sound of a pin dropping.
‘Don’t wait up. There’s linen in the cupboard on the landing for the chaise longue.’
‘Sure.’ He didn’t bother turning around to look at her but left the kitchen, shutting the door behind him, leaving her to take as long as she possibly could filling the dishwasher, wiping the counters and in the end going through the contents of the fridge and binning everything that no longer had any lifespan left whatsoever.
It was after midnight by the time she finally headed up to the bedroom and she was dead on her feet.
So he was going to be in her bedroom. That meant nothing. She was going to be cool and composed because he was right—she wasn’t a kid and she was going to stop behaving like one. She was the only one who could determine the direction of her life and her choices and she was going to remember that.
This felt like a crucial moment for her. She was at a crossroads. She either carried on in no particular direction, escaping her family’s well-intentioned guidance by drifting from one job to another, or else she buckled down and asserted herself. It was odd that a perfect stranger had been the one to bring her to this point.
He told her things that she didn’t want to hear but it was thanks to him that she had actually stood up to Candice instead of backing away. She had always been treated like the baby of the family and she had followed through, fulfilling their expectations, becoming the family member happy to drift through life while other people got on with responsible living and grown-up decision making.
When she stood back and looked at it through objective eyes, she was mortified.
From now on, things were going to change. They already had.
Filled with the rosy glow of assertiveness, Rosie pushed open the bedroom door and there he was on the chaise longue, semi-reclining, and it looked painful. His laptop was open and his legs looked as though they weren’t quite sure where they should go. Over the end of the sofa? Uncomfortable. On the ground? Likewise. He was way too tall and too big for the piece of furniture to which he had been consigned but the fact that he had obeyed orders touched her.
He shifted his big, muscular bulk as she walked in, drawing attention… Forget about the inadequacies of his makeshift bed, the guy was semi-naked.
Low-slung, loose-fitting jogging bottoms. That was it. He was half-naked and she stood by the door, shamelessly gaping for a few seconds, before walking in and shutting the door behind her.
Thank God he hadn’t switched on the overhead light. Instead, he had swivelled the angle-poise lamp by the bed in the direction of the chaise longue. Rosie hoped that in a half-dark room the beetroot red of her cheeks wouldn’t immediately be visible.
‘You took your time,’ Matteo said, now standing up and stretching before dumping the laptop on her dressing table.
Rosie’s vocal cords had dried up. She cleared her throat and stared straight past his spectacular, burnished bronze body to the window just behind him. Seemed a safer option. That said, he still managed to intrude into the entire periphery of her vision. He was so tall, muscles densely packed, the flat lines of his stomach tapering to a narrow waist and spirals of dark hair arrowing down…
‘There was a lot of tidying to do in the kitchen,’ she croaked. ‘You… I see you’ve made yourself comfortable on the chaise longue.’
Matteo glanced over his shoulder and grimaced. ‘I’m not sure that comfortable would be the appropriate word.’
Rosie had expected complaints. Maybe a show of resentful acceptance of the boundaries she had laid down, possibly even fully fledged refusal to accommodate her wishes. But his voice was remarkably even and she felt something…quite different from those waves of taboo attraction. She felt the stirrings of affection.
She glanced at her lovely king-sized bed and Matteo followed the direction of her gaze.
‘I’m in your house,’ he said, walking to the window and back to the sofa, exercising his long limbs. ‘The bed is yours.’
‘I’m half your size.’
‘Rules of the house apply here,’ Matteo drawled drily, flexing his muscles again and then sinking back down onto the chaise longue, his dark eyes pinned to her face as she remained hovering like a visitor in her own bedroom. He grinned. ‘Relax. There’s no need to start thinking about playing the self-sacrificing martyr by giving up your bed for me, Rosie. If the shoe was on the other foot and you were in my house, I’d be sprawled out on the bed and you’d be trying to squeeze into the clothes hamper in the bathroom. It’s late. Forget I’m here and go to sleep.’
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