The Mills & Boon Christmas Wishes Collection. Maisey Yates

while she was still safely submerged in the wool.

      ‘It is a big deal!’ Vito grated, springing upright to zip his trousers again and reach for his shirt.

      Flushed and uncomfortable, Holly glanced at him unwillingly. ‘Maybe to me but I don’t see why it should bother you!’

      ‘Don’t you indeed?’ Vito riposted.

      ‘No, I don’t,’ Holly countered on a rising note of anger because his reaction was the very last thing she had expected from him and the topic mortified her.

      Dark eyes flashing gold, Vito studied her. ‘You should’ve warned me. Why didn’t you?’

      Holly stood her ground, her vexation stifling her embarrassment. ‘Because it was a private matter and none of your business.’

      ‘Nothing of that nature stays private when you’re having sex with someone!’

      In discomfited retreat, Holly headed towards the shower room she had used earlier. ‘Well, I’ll take your word for that since it was my first experience.’

      Vito was inflamed by her refusal to understand and chose to be blunt. ‘I feel like I took advantage of you!’ he admitted harshly.

      Holly whirled back at the door. ‘That’s nonsense. I’m not a kid. My body, my choice.’

      Vito snatched in a ragged breath, still reeling from the shock of her innocence. He hadn’t told her who he was or indeed anything important about himself. She didn’t, couldn’t understand that in his position he was innately suspicious of anything as unexpected as their encounter and on top of it the very tardy revelation that she was a virgin. With his experience, that revelation had smacked of a possible sting of some kind and he had immediately wondered if she had some kind of hidden agenda. Now gazing into her troubled face, belatedly recognising the hurt and sadness there, he wanted to kick himself for treating her like some sort of scam artist.

      ‘I’m sorry...’ Vito breathed abruptly. ‘I let my surprise push me into an overreaction, Holly. Of course, it’s your choice...’

      Some of her tension evaporated but her eyes remained guarded. ‘I didn’t even think of warning you. And if I had thought of it, I probably would’ve been too embarrassed to mention it.’

      ‘I wrecked the moment,’ Vito groaned in acknowledgement. He moved forward to close his arms round her and somehow, even after that uneasy exchange, it felt like the best thing in the world to Holly. Her stiffness slowly ebbing, she rested against him, drinking in the heat and the comfortingly hard, masculine contours of his lean, muscular body against hers. ‘I also neglected to tell you that what we shared...it was amazing.’

      ‘You’re just saying that,’ she mumbled.

      ‘No. It was amazing, cara mia. Now let’s go upstairs and shower,’ Vito urged, easing her in a different direction, inexplicably keen to keep her close even though something in his brain was urging him to step back.

      Amazing? Was that a polite lie? Just something a man said for the sake of it? He had flipped the situation on its head again and she didn’t know how he had achieved that. She blinked in surprise as the lights illuminated a much bigger bedroom than she had expected, airily furnished in stylish tones of grey.

      Vito pushed open the door of a very spacious en-suite. ‘You first...unless you’d like company in the shower?’

      Holly gave him a startled look. ‘I don’t think I’m ready for that yet.’

      Vito laughed in appreciation and bent down to claim her swollen pink mouth with his own in a searing kiss that made every skin cell in her body sit up and take notice. ‘I’ll ask you again in the morning,’ he warned her.

      Holly’s attention skated to the giant bed. ‘We’re going to share the bed?’

      ‘There is only one bedroom here. I was planning to take the sofa.’

      ‘No, I won’t banish you to the sofa,’ Holly breathed with a sudden grin as she slid past him into the en-suite while barely recognising her own thoughts or feelings. She only knew she didn’t want him to sleep downstairs on the sofa and away from her. That felt wrong.

      She stood in the shower feeling astonishingly light-hearted for a woman who had strayed from values that were as ingrained in her as her usual honesty. But making love with Vito had felt right and it was hard to credit that anything that had felt so natural and right could possibly be wrong. After all, they were both single and nobody was being hurt by their being together. What harm could it possibly do for her to go with the flow for a change in a relationship instead of trying to plan everything or wait for some extraordinary special sign? And why on earth was she feeling guilty about Ritchie when he had cheated on her?

      It wasn’t as though she had ever imagined that she was in love with Ritchie. She had only been seeing him for a few weeks and, even though he had been full of himself, he had been good company. Was what she felt with Vito a rebound attraction?

      But how could it be? Ritchie couldn’t be compared to Vito on any level. Vito utterly overshadowed his predecessor in every way. And just like her secret fantasy, Vito had swept Holly away in the tide of passion she had always dreamt of experiencing. Of course, it wasn’t going anywhere, she reminded herself staunchly, suppressing a pang of sorrow at that acknowledgement. There would be no ongoing relationship with Vito. She didn’t need Vito to spell that out. What they had now was time out of time, separate from their normal lives and associations. Attraction had sparked purely because they were stuck together in a snowbound cottage, and she wasn’t foolish enough to try and make more of it, was she?

      She wrapped a towel round herself rather than put on his sweater again and crept out of the bathroom. Clad only in his jeans, which were unbuttoned at the waistband, Vito was towelling his hair dry. He tossed aside the towel, finger-combing his black hair carelessly off his brow. ‘I used the shower downstairs.’

      Holly hovered, suddenly awkward. ‘I could have done that. This is your room, after all.’

      Vito saw the wary uncertainty in her blue eyes and knew he had put it there. Holly was nothing at all like the women he was accustomed to meeting. Nevertheless he had initially judged her by the cynical standards formed by years of experience with such women. Yet he sensed that she would have been very shocked by the scandal that he had been forced to leave behind him. He had wounded her by questioning her innocence yet that same innocence of hers ironically drew him like a beacon. He crossed the room and closed both arms round her, responding to the inbuilt drive to bridge the gap between them. ‘Tonight it’s our room. Let’s go to bed...’ he urged.

      And Holly thought about saying no and heading down to the sofa. After all, she had broken her own rules and just because she had done that once didn’t mean she had an automatic excuse to keep on doing it. Indeed, if having sex with Vito had been a mistake, she was honour-bound to choose the sofa over him.

      But sleeping alone wasn’t what she wanted and needed right then. She wanted to be with Vito. She wanted to make the most of the time they had together. She was even feeling sensible enough to know that it was fortunate that she wouldn’t be with Vito for much longer, for she reckoned that given the opportunity she would fall for him like a ton of bricks. That, of course, would be totally, unforgivably stupid. And she might be a little sentimental, but stupid she was not.

      She looked at Vito, even though she knew she really shouldn’t, but there he was, etched in her head in an image that would burn for all time, she thought dizzily. He was beautiful, drop-dead beautiful and tonight...tonight he was all hers...

       CHAPTER FOUR

      AT DAWN, HOLLY sneaked out of bed and crept into the bathroom to freshen up. She grimaced at her reflection. Her hair was a mess. Her face reddened in places by Vito’s stubble. Her mouth was very swollen and pink. And when she stepped into the shower she swallowed a groan because every muscle she possessed