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* * *
Oh, God, he’d forgotten how good this felt, even in the few days since he’d last kissed her. It was as if his mind couldn’t believe the memory was as sensational as it truly was.
Seb cursed the counter between them, blocking his ability to sweep Maria into his arms and hold her close. But then, as they broke the kiss, coming apart just enough to breathe and stare at each other, Seb decided it might be for the best.
He’d wanted to romance her tonight. To show her how ready he was to be the kind of husband she needed—in every way. To focus on her completely.
If he took her to bed before they even got to dinner, he would kind of be missing the point.
So he pulled back, smiling at the sight of her flushed skin, bright eyes, and her chest heaving with too-fast breaths under that gorgeously slinky dress. He was just about to think of something wonderfully suave and seductive to say when the pasta boiled over behind him.
‘Hold that thought,’ he said, and turned to deal with the culinary crisis.
Ten minutes later, dinner was served.
‘Is it like you remember?’ he asked, as Maria tucked in. He was pretty sure he’d recalled his mother’s recipe correctly, but not having her there to ask had brought him down for a few minutes, the way it always did when he remembered that they were gone.
But his parents would approve of his attempts to win Maria back, he was sure. Well, his father would be worrying about him neglecting the business, but Mamma would understand, and she’d talk his papà round. She always did.
‘It’s perfect,’ Maria replied, smiling. ‘Just as I remember. Your mother always made this for me the first night of my visits. Do you remember?’
‘I do. In fact, I took it as evidence that you were always her secret favourite, long before you actually married into the family.’
Maria laughed. ‘I think she just liked cooking for an appreciate audience. You and Noemi were too used to her incredible meals. My mother liked us to pretend we could exist on air and water alone. I used to long to escape her steamed chicken and salads and come to your place for proper food.’
‘I knew there had to be something that kept you hanging around us,’ Seb replied. ‘I was just hoping it had a little bit more to do with my charm and good looks.’
‘Oh, there was definitely that appeal, too,’ Maria said, with another flirtatious smile. ‘But mostly...mostly I just liked the way your family felt like, well, a real family. Mine was always more like three people stuck together because they had nowhere else to go.’
Seb remembered how she’d spoken about escaping her parents’ home by marrying him. Which led to the memory of the first Christmas they were married, and how they’d spent it in the chilly atmosphere of the Rossi mansion. He knew exactly what she meant. There was a reason they’d agreed to always spend Christmas with Sebastian’s family after that.
‘Do they mind you being here for Christmas with Frankie this year?’ he asked, aware that it was rather late to be asking that question. If they did, it wouldn’t have stopped him asking her to come to Mont Coeur anyway. But Maria had been living with them for a full year...
‘I didn’t tell them,’ Maria admitted, topping up her wine glass.
Seb blinked. ‘You don’t think they might notice you’re gone? I mean, Frankie kind of fills a place with sound. If nothing else, they might remark on the sudden quiet.’
‘They’re away visiting with friends for the holidays. Besides, I wasn’t exactly staying with them,’ Maria said. ‘I mean, the idea was to find somewhere Frankie and I could be happier. And that place was never going to be with my parents.’
That stung a little, but Seb acknowledged the truth of it. Though he felt slightly reassured that even being married to him was, in fact, better than staying with her parents. ‘So where have you been living?’
‘Do you remember the little cottage on the edge of their estate? Down by the lake?’
‘The one we ice-skated on? Of course. I remember escaping to that cottage the first Christmas Eve we were married, and spending the evening together away from them. It was...very cosy.’ It had been tiny, even by normal house standards, and Maria was used to mansions and luxury chalets. Beyond its size, the only thing Seb could really remember about it was how he’d made love to Maria in front of the fire...
‘I love it there,’ Maria said, breaking into his memories. ‘And Frankie does, too. He spent time with my parents—well, mostly my mother—but I think we both liked having somewhere that was just ours to go home to.’
‘You liked it being just the two of you?’ Seb asked, his heart sinking a little. That was something he definitely couldn’t give her.
‘It made Frankie and me closer than we might have been otherwise,’ Maria said. ‘But in lots of ways it didn’t feel all that much different from living with you.’ She gave him a tiny apologetic smile as she spoke, but it did nothing to ease the guilt and pain eating him up inside.
Seb laid his fork on his almost empty bowl, his appetite gone. ‘And now? Have you felt that this week?’ It’s getting better, she’d told him. He had to hope that was enough.
Because if she said yes, it was game over, nowhere else to go. He’d done his best—within realistic boundaries. He couldn’t give up his business completely. That would never work long term. But he’d thrown himself into finding a balance that kept everyone happy.
Had it been enough?
Maria placed her fork down, too, pushing her bowl away and meeting his gaze as the candles guttered and flickered, down to the end of their wicks. ‘This week...this week has felt like something completely new between us. Something I like very much.’
‘I’m glad.’ Relief flooded through him at her words. ‘And I feel the same. In fact, I’m hoping it might continue for a very long time.’
‘I hope so, too.’ Maria held his gaze so long that Seb could feel heat rising in him just from the way she looked at him. Like she was seeing him anew. Like she wanted what she saw.
In which case...
‘How do you feel about taking dessert upstairs?’ he suggested, the final part of his plan for the evening falling nicely into place.
‘To the living room?’ Maria asked.
Seb shook his head. ‘I was thinking the hot tub.’
* * *
The hot tub wasn’t exactly the ideal place to eat tiramisu, but Maria was past caring. This wasn’t about pudding anyway. This was about them.
Being husband and wife again.
While Seb transferred their dessert into something easier to eat from than the large dish he’d bought it in, Maria slipped into the bedroom she shared with Frankie and tried to dig out her swimming costume quietly. She really, really didn’t want to wake her little boy up right now. She wanted to get changed quickly and get back out there to her husband.
Unless she didn’t bother with the swimming costume part. If Seb showed up to find her naked in the hot tub, he’d definitely know he’d been good enough to make the nice list, right? No need to check it twice or anything.
After a week and a half of both of them trying to live up to the other’s expectations, Maria was more than ready to say enough and just jump back into bed with her husband. Or hot tub. Wherever, to be honest. She just wanted her marriage back—new and improved, but still her marriage. The one she’d thought she could never have again.
With her husband. The one she loved.
That thought stopped her cold, and she held her swimming costume to her chest as she realised. She’d got so carried away with how well things were going, she hadn’t even noticed that the word ‘love’ still wasn’t on Sebastian’s lips. He’d embraced the whole business partnership marriage idea—even if he had his own ideas about how much romance that might entail—and he’d been living up to the goals and objectives she’d set for him, just like he would at work.
What if she was just another job? What if he just wanted to tick ‘Win back wife’ off his goals-for-the-year list?
What if that was still all she was to him—another acquisition? One he had fun with, slept with, even talked and worked with—but still just another part of the Cattaneo treasury, at the end of the day.
She bit her lip, and scrunched the costume up in her hands. Did it really matter, anyway? If he never said I love you—if he never even felt it. As long as he kept behaving the way she wanted him to—with respect and affection for her and their family—wasn’t that enough?
She could live with that. Especially if it meant she got to have sex with the most gorgeous man she’d ever met in a hot tub tonight.
Before she could change her mind, she changed quickly out of her dress and into her swimming costume, wrapping her dressing gown around her for added warmth. The chalet itself might have superb central heating, but the hot tub...the hot tub was out on the balcony. In the snow.
At least the water would be warm. And maybe the chill in the air would help her cool her overheated mind. And libido, come to that.
She stepped out of the room to find Seb already out on the balcony, two pots of tiramisu balanced on the edge of the hot tub as he finished running the water. She frowned. She knew from past experience that the tub took at least a couple of hours to fill and heat properly. Which meant he had to have been planning this from the start.
