Cinderella's Christmas Secret (Mills & Boon Modern)

by Sharon Kendrick

  And then fate had conspired to put her directly in his path—quite literally. No longer a red-and-white-stockinged elf, but a wet and bedraggled woman standing by the roadside. Shivering.

  ‘You’re cold,’ he observed.

  ‘A bit.’

  Commanding his driver in Spanish to increase the heat, he turned to her.

  ‘How’s that? Any better?’

  ‘Much better.’ She wriggled around in the seat a little. ‘It’s weird but even the seat feels warm.’

  ‘That’s because it’s heated.’

  ‘Your car seat has a heater?’

  ‘It’s hardly at the cutting edge of invention,’ he said drily. ‘Most new cars do.’

  There was silence for a moment.

  ‘I’ve never owned a car.’

  ‘You’re kidding?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head and a few raindrops sprayed over in his direction. ‘There’s never really been any reason to have one. I used to live in London, where it’s impossible to park, and I don’t need one here. We need to turn left, please. Just there, past the lamp post.’

  Maximo met his driver’s eyes in the rear-view mirror and the man gave a barely perceptible nod of comprehension as he started to negotiate the turn. ‘So how do you manage without one?’

  ‘Oh, it’s easy enough. I walk—when the weather’s fine. Or I use my bike. These country roads around here are glorious in the springtime.’

  Inadvertently, an image strayed into his mind of a woman on a bicycle, her long shiny hair flowing behind her, while pale flowers sprang in drifts along the hedgerows. He had just allowed this uncharacteristically romantic fantasy to incorporate an element of birdsong, when he heard her teeth begin to chatter.

  ‘You’re still cold,’ he observed.

  ‘Yes. But we’re here now. It’s the last house—just before the road turns into a mud track,’ she was saying, pointing towards a small, darkened house in the distance. ‘That’s right. Stop just here.’

  The car drew to a halt and Maximo saw the chauffeur unclip his seat belt, obviously intending to open the car door, but something compelled him to halt his action with a terse command.

  ‘Permitame...’ Maximo murmured, getting out and going to Hollie’s side of the car. And even while he was opening the door for her, he was telling himself there was no need to behave like some old-fashioned doorman—not when he’d already played the Good Samaritan and given her a lift home. But somehow he wasn’t interested in listening to reason and indeed, he seemed impervious to the hard lash of rain on his face.

  ‘You’re getting wet!’ she protested.

  ‘I’ll survive.’

  That look of hesitation was back on her face again. ‘Would you...?’ She glanced up at the darkened cottage and then back at him as if summoning up a courage she didn’t normally call on. ‘Would you like to come in, for a cup of coffee? Just as my way of saying thank you? No, that’s an absolutely stupid suggestion. I don’t know why I made it. Forget it. Forget I said anything.’ She shook her head as if embarrassed. ‘I’m sure you have somewhere else you need to be.’

  He saw the doubt which crossed her face, echoing the ones which were proliferating inside his own head, because this wasn’t his style. Not at all. He didn’t frequent houses like this and he didn’t know women like her. Not any more. He’d left the world of mediocrity behind him a long time ago and had never looked back.

  ‘Actually, there’s nowhere I need to be right now and I’d love a cup of coffee. But quickly,’ he amended. ‘Before both of us get any wetter.’

  As he followed her up the narrow path Maximo told himself it wasn’t too late to change his mind. He could get his driver to speed out of town, return to his luxury hotel and lose himself in some work—maybe even call that model who’d been texting him for months. The Christmas elf would let herself into her little home, take off her dripping coat—and that would be that. She would be a little disappointed, yes, and even he might experience the briefest of pangs himself, but it would soon pass. He’d never met a woman he would miss if he never saw her again.

  Dipping his head to enter the tiny house, he felt the icy temperature hit him. Did she notice his shoulders bunch against the chilly blast as he closed the door behind him?

  ‘I know. It’s freezing. I keep the heating off when I’m not here,’ she explained, giving a slightly nervous laugh as she switched on a tall lamp.

  He didn’t need to ask why. She might claim to be nobly conserving energy as everyone was supposed to be doing these days, but he suspected the real reason was a lack of cash. Why else would she be doing more than one job and living in such humble surroundings? He looked around the room, observing the faded rug on the hearth and noticing that the thin curtains she drew across the window didn’t quite meet in the middle. Yet the cushions on the sofa looked home-made and a dark red lily in a pot on the table looked almost startling in its simple beauty. And something about the limitations of the room suddenly seemed achingly familiar to him, even though he had grown up in the north-west of Spain and this was England.

  He felt the twist of his heart, for it was a long time since he had been anywhere which wasn’t five-star. He had embraced luxury for so long that he’d thought those impoverished memories had vanished into the dark abyss of time. Forgotten. For a long time he’d wanted to forget them—no, had needed to forget them—but now they came rushing back in an acrid stream.

  He remembered the cold and the hunger. The proud need to survive without letting people know your sweater wasn’t thick enough, or that your boots had holes in them. He remembered the slow seep of water making his feet wet and cold. And wasn’t that the craziest thing of all—that you sometimes found yourself hungering for the things you no longer had, even if they were bad things? So that when he’d been poor he had craved nothing but wealth and now he had all the money he could ever use, wasn’t he guilty of sentimentalising the hardships of the past?

  ‘I’ll make you some coffee.’

  Her soft words broke into his reverie, her expression criss-crossed with anxiety. Perhaps she’d seen the tension on his face and had interpreted it as disapproval. Maybe that was why she was looking as if she regretted her decision to invite him here. Had he appeared to be judging her, when he had no right to judge anyone?

  Except maybe himself.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Get yourself dry first. The coffee can wait.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Just do it,’ he reaffirmed harshly.

  Unable—or unwilling—to ignore the deep mastery in the Spaniard’s voice, Hollie nodded and ran upstairs, her heart pounding with excitement, and started stripping off her sodden clothes, bundling her damp tights into the laundry basket and searching around for something suitable to wear. As her fingertips halted on her best woollen dress, she thought how weird it was to think of Maximo Diaz downstairs, because the only men who ever stepped over the threshold were tradespeople commissioned by her landlord to repair the aging and rather dodgy appliances.

  She knew her self-contained behaviour meant she was often regarded as something of an oddity and there were a million reasons she gave to herself and others when asked why she didn’t socialise much. She didn’t have a lot of spare cash, because she was saving up to start her own business. She hadn’t lived here very long, so she didn’t know many people. These things were true, but weren’t the whole story. The real reason was that her solitary life made her feel safe and protected. It didn’t leave her open to pain or deception, or having her life messed up by somebody else.

  Yet she had broken the habit of a lifetime and invited Maximo Diaz into her home, hadn’t she? A world-famous billionaire financier. She was surprised she’d had the nerve and even more surprised when he’d accepted. And now she had to go down and face him and say...what? What on earth did she have in common with the Spanish billionaire?
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br />   Yet even though part of her was regretting her impulsiveness, she couldn’t deny the slow curl of excitement which was unfurling somewhere low in her stomach. Was it wrong to feel this way about someone she barely knew? She stared in the mirror, her hand automatically reaching for something to tie her hair up, but at the last minute her hand fell back and she left it loose and streaming down her back as she closed her bedroom door behind her.

  The creak of the stairs should have warned him she was on her way back down but Maximo didn’t appear to have heard her and for a moment Hollie stood immobile on the foot of the stairs. And suddenly it was as though someone had waved a magic wand and filled her ordinary little sitting room with unexpected life and colour, and Maximo Diaz was at the blazing heart of it.

  He had lit the fire. Removed his smart suit jacket and put it on the sofa to coax a blaze from the sometimes stubborn little wood-burning stove. Behind the small glass doors, orange flames were licking upwards from the applewood logs and already a blanket of heat was beginning to seep out into the room. Had she thought that a man so rich and so privileged would be unwilling to get his hands dirty? Yes, she had. But it was his stance which surprised her most, for he was sitting back on his heels on the old hearthrug as if he were perfectly comfortable to find himself there. He seemed lost in thought as the flames flickered shadows over his aristocratic profile.

  Hollie felt another ripple of excitement whispering over her skin—a sensation as unsettling as that low clench of heat unfurling inside her. She knew she ought to say something but she didn’t want to break the spell. At least, not yet. Because surely any minute now he would come to his senses. He would suddenly realise that his driver was waiting in the car outside and it was time to excuse himself.

  Silently, she went into the kitchen and made a pot of coffee, which she carried back into the sitting room, and when he glanced up and saw her, something unrecognisable gleamed in the ebony abyss of his eyes. Something which made her feel as shivery as before, as if she were standing outside in the rain again.

  Was she imagining it?

  Was she imagining the glint of approval as he ran his narrow-eyed gaze over her?

  ‘Come and sit by the fire,’ he said.

  His rich voice washed over her like dark silk, as Hollie acknowledged what sounded like a direct order. Did he always assume such an air of rightful dominance, she wondered—and was it wrong to find that more than a little exciting? She put the tray down and sank onto the floor beside him and wondered if she was getting herself into something outside her experience, which a sensible person should steer clear of. But she was cold, the fire was hot and the coffee smelt unbearably good. And surely she wasn’t misguided enough to think that Maximo Diaz was actually going to make a pass at her!

  ‘Maybe I should have offered you wine,’ she ventured.

  ‘Is that what you want?’

  She shook her head. She was already distracted by his proximity—wine was the last thing she needed. ‘Good heavens, no,’ she said briskly. ‘This will be fine. Just so long as it doesn’t keep you awake.’

  His lips curved into a mocking smile. He looked as if he was about to make a comment, then seemed to change his mind, leaning back against the old armchair behind him and spreading his long legs out in front of him.

  For a moment everything in the room became very still—like the preternatural calm which sometimes comes before a storm. The crackle of the fire and the pounding of her heart were the only sounds Hollie could hear and, in the soft light, his eyes looked ebony-dark as he turned his head to study her.

  ‘Have you lived here long?’ he questioned.

  ‘Just over a year now. I lived in London before that.’

  ‘Where you didn’t have a car.’

  She beamed, pleased he’d remembered. ‘That’s right.’

  ‘So what was the lure of a place like Trescombe?’

  Hollie wondered how to answer him. No need to tell him she’d been ripped off. Or that a supposed good friendship had hit the skids as a result. Nobody wanted to hear that kind of downbeat detail and she certainly didn’t want to start re-evaluating whether she’d been a hopeless judge of character. And wasn’t her new-found motto that she was going to look forward, not back?

  ‘My dream has always been to run a traditional English tea shop,’ she told him. ‘And when London didn’t work out, I heard about an opportunity opening up down here. There’s a great site in the town but it won’t be available until springtime and until that happens I need regular work so I can save up as much as possible. That’s why I’m working for Janette. I’m sorry, I should have asked you before—would you like anything to eat to go with that?’

  Reluctantly, Maximo smiled in response to her question. He could sense her eagerness to keep him entertained and knew he ought to cut the visit short rather than get her hopes up, yet he stayed exactly where he was. For the first time in a long time, he felt comfortable. Uncharacteristically comfortable. The simply furnished room and warm fire were strangely seductive and so too was her undemanding company. In fact, for someone who was notoriously restless, he might have been able to relax completely—were it not for the undeniable tension which had begun to build in the air between them.

  His senses seemed heightened. He could see the thrust of her breasts against the soft jersey of her dress and the pebbled outline of her nipples. He swallowed. It might have been a while since he’d been intimate with a woman but the subliminal message of desire which Little Miss Christmas was sending his way was unmistakable.

  And it was driving him crazy.

  Was she aware that her eyes grew dark whenever she looked his way, or that she kept trailing the tip of her tongue over her mouth, like an unobserved cat contemplating where its next meal was coming from? And didn’t he want to pull her into his arms, to test if those lips tasted as sweet as they looked?

  ‘Why don’t you wear your hair down more often?’ he said suddenly.

  His question seemed to startle her, for she touched her fingers to the silky waves which rippled almost to her waist. ‘Because it isn’t...’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Practical, I guess.’

  ‘And do you always have to be practical?’

  ‘As much as possible, yes. Life is easier that way,’ she asserted, when he continued to look at her. ‘You know, more dependable.’

  ‘Really?’ he pondered reflectively, the pad of his thumb brushing over the beard-shadowed jut of his jaw—a movement which seemed to fascinate her. ‘But surely dependability can get a little boring sometimes. How old are you?’

  ‘Twenty-six,’ she said, a little defiantly.

  ‘Don’t you ever want to throw caution to the wind and do something unpredictable?’

  ‘I’ve never really thought about it much, to be honest.’

  He noticed that her fingers were trembling, making her coffee cup rattle against the saucer as she quickly put it down on the hearth.

  ‘Well, think about it now,’ he said. ‘What would you do, for example, if I were to acknowledge the unspoken desire in your eyes and touch you? If I were to brush my fingers against your hair, to discover whether it feels as soft as it looks in the firelight?’

  ‘I can’t...’ Her words sounded husky and he could see the swallowing movement of her throat. ‘I can’t imagine you doing something like that.’

  ‘No?’ He heard the note of repressed hope in her voice and silently, he answered it, reaching out to imprison a single lock of hair and stroking it between his thumb and forefinger, like a merchant examining a piece of valuable cloth. ‘The funny thing is neither can I. But I am. And it does. Like silk, I mean. Rich, dark golden silk.’

  ‘Mr Diaz.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about touching you all night long,’ he husked unsteadily, skating his palm down over the abundant waves. ‘And you like it, don’t you? You like me stroking your h
air.’

  Her shuddered word was barely audible. ‘Y-yes.’

  For a while he listened to her uneven breathing and felt his own corresponding leap of desire. ‘And you know what comes next, don’t you?’

  She shook her head and gazed at him in silence.

  ‘Yes, you do.’

  ‘Tell me,’ she whispered, like a child asking to be told a story.

  ‘I kiss you,’ he said, a note of urgency deepening his voice to a growl.

  Their eyes met. ‘Yes,’ she whispered, nodding her head with eager assent. ‘Yes, please.’

  It was the most innocent yet the most provocative thing he’d ever heard.

  And suddenly her hair was a rope and Maximo was using it to guide him towards her waiting lips and he felt his body tense with a sweet and tantalising hunger.

  CHAPTER THREE

  MAXIMO WAS KISSING HER until she had started to make mewling little sounds of hunger. Until she was moving her body restlessly against him in a gesture of unspoken need.

  She should have been nervous about what was about to happen, but fear was the last thing on Hollie’s mind as the Spaniard drew away from her, his black eyes blazing with passion in the glow of the firelight.

  He laced his fingers through the fall of her hair, and his breath was warm against her lips as he spoke. ‘I think it’s time we found ourselves somewhere more comfortable, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ she whispered again, and then wondered if she should at least have gone through the motions of pretending to give it more than a moment’s consideration.

  But that flicker of apprehension fled as soon as he picked her up and carried her upstairs, like the masterful embodiment of all her forbidden dreams. She could hear the powerful beat of her heart and the creak of the wood as he negotiated the narrow staircase.