It was unlikely to be Maximo.
She turned to find him studying her, his black gaze fixed on her intently, as if he had never really seen her before. Hollie’s heart missed a beat, because wasn’t she feeling a bit like that herself? As if this were the first time they’d ever been alone. She felt awkward in his presence, which was slightly ridiculous, when you considered all the things they’d done together.
Or maybe it wasn’t ridiculous at all. What did she know? She’d thought that what they’d shared had been intimacy, but she had been wrong. In her innocence she had confused sex with real closeness. But you could be naked in a man’s arms and it counted for nothing, because right now Maximo Diaz seemed like a stranger. A stranger whose child she carried.
‘What exactly do you want me to sign?’ he questioned, putting the unopened box down on the table.
‘It’s right here.’ Her hands were trembling as she scrabbled around inside her briefcase and she wondered if he’d noticed as she walked across the room towards him. ‘It’s the release form concerning the fixtures and fittings. It’s just a formality.’
He was reading it. Of course he was. He wasn’t the kind of man who would put his signature to something he hadn’t studied first. And because he was reading it, it was taking much longer than she had anticipated.
The silence in the room seemed immense and Hollie pulled out her phone and began to look at it, as if there were loads of missed calls she needed to attend to, though in truth the screen was just a blur of mangled words. As a distraction technique it was pretty useless because she couldn’t escape the troubled whirl of her thoughts as the minutes ticked slowly by. His dark head was bent and when eventually she heard the scratch of his pen, he looked up, his smile brief and perfunctory.
‘I think that’s everything you need.’
He can’t wait to get rid of you.
He was rising from the chair and Hollie couldn’t hold back her shiver as he handed her the document.
‘If there’s nothing more, I’ll see you out.’
‘There’s really no need. I know my way around.’
‘I insist.’ He shot her a brief look and something like pain filtered through his black eyes. ‘How are you feeling?’
It might have been funny if it hadn’t been so sad and Hollie only just managed to keep a burst of hysterical laughter from her lips. To say there was an elephant in the room didn’t come close to it. Was that to be his only reference to the fact that she was pregnant? Because if so she was just going to have to deal with it. From somewhere she managed to produce a smile. ‘I’m fine, thanks,’ she said. ‘The doctor seems very pleased with my progress so far.’
There was a pause. ‘Look, I’m aware that my reaction to your news wasn’t great and I apologise for that.’
His words were grudging rather than heartfelt, but Hollie told herself she must be generous in her response. ‘No, it was hardly the stuff of dreams,’ she said drily. ‘But that’s okay. It must have come as a terrible shock and at least you were being honest. And I’m over it now.’
‘My lawyers tell me you haven’t made contact yet.’
‘No. I thought I’d wait until after Christmas now.’
He inclined his head. ‘As you wish.’
As you wish?
Hollie had a whole catalogue of wishes, most of which were never going to come true. She wished he had a heart instead of a lump of cold steel lodged somewhere deep in his chest. She wished...
No. Only a fool would ever wish for love from such an unsuitable candidate.
They had reached the hall and he was opening the door and all Hollie wanted was to get away from him and the way he was making her feel, when his terse exclamation startled her.
‘Es imposible!’
Hollie followed his gaze and looked outside. Her Spanish was limited to about three words which involved asking for a beer, but even she understood that what he’d just said wasn’t true, because it wasn’t impossible at all. She felt the jump of her heart. She’d been so busy with her thoughts that she’d barely noticed the time passing, or the increased snowfall. But from here she was aware of how quickly the weather had closed in, and now they seemed to be in a complete white-out.
The landscape had been utterly transformed. Trees, grass and bushes were coated with a mantle of white, which sparkled like diamonds in the fading violet light. The thick fall had turned the place into a winter fairy tale—but one with an underlying threat because, outwardly, everything had changed. No footsteps up the lane. It was as if she’d never been there.
Hollie had only ever thought of snow as a positive thing—as pretty, white and fluffy—but now she saw it as an obstacle, barring her way out of there. And there was no sign of it stopping. She stared up into the darkening sky and uttered a soft curse beneath her breath. All she wanted was to get back to her little cottage because, although it might not amount to very much, at least it was home.
‘Where’s your taxi?’ he demanded.
She shrugged. ‘I got a lift here and I was planning to walk back.’
He made a soft curse beneath his breath. ‘I would take you myself except that I’ve dismissed the chauffeur for the holidays and he’s taken the car.’
‘It’s fine,’ she said, between gritted teeth, thinking that she’d rather walk home barefoot than be driven home by him. ‘I’ve been cooped up in the office all morning, and a bit of snow won’t kill me.’ With a grimace of stark realisation, Hollie stared down at her feet. ‘These boots weren’t exactly made for walking, but I guess they’ll have to do.’
‘Are you out of your mind?’ he snapped. ‘You can’t possibly walk home in this.’
‘Watch me.’
‘I don’t think so. You’re pregnant, remember?’
‘I’m hardly likely to forget, am I?’
‘Do you make a habit of being rescued from bad weather, Hollie?’ he demanded. ‘Don’t you think it’s time you invested in one of those clever phone apps?’
‘Oh, go to hell!’ she snapped back, taking a defiant step forward and immediately sinking into a deep white drift which came almost to the top of her boots. And suddenly Maximo’s hands were on her waist and he was lifting her clean out of the snow, and she was staring up into the hard glitter of his black eyes. And wasn’t it crazy that, in the midst of all her complicated emotions, her overriding feeling was the hungry throb of her blood in response to his touch? ‘Go to hell,’ she repeated weakly.
His velvety voice filtered over her skin. ‘Even hell would reject a man like me.’
‘Please put me down,’ she said. ‘I want to go home.’
‘Well, you can’t. You’re not going anywhere right now. Not when it’s like this. You’re going to have to stay here for the time being.’ He lowered her to her feet. ‘Unless that’s what you had in mind all along?’
She moved even further away from him, though that did little to ease the furious punch of her heart. ‘Are you serious? Are you arrogant enough to think I’d deliberately get myself stranded here like this?’
He shrugged. ‘Only you know the answer to that, Hollie. But if you’re asking whether I think a woman is capable of such manipulation, then I’m afraid the answer has to be yes.’
‘Why, you...cynic,’ she breathed.
‘You think so? I prefer to call it realism. But that’s irrelevant.’ He moved towards the door, his muscular body all honed and rippling strength. ‘And rather than standing here debating my perceived defects of character, you’d better come inside, out of the cold.’
CHAPTER SIX
MAXIMO SHUT THE door with more force than he intended, his heart racing with...what? Anger at being stuck with an uninvited guest at the worst time of the year? Yes, there was that. But Hollie was not just any uninvited guest. He stared down at the mutinous tremble of her lips and felt the shimmer of something indef
inable spearing at his heart. She was the mother of his child, he reminded himself grimly. A child he had never wanted. Because why would he wish to pass on his cold and emotionless genes to an innocent baby?
Yet his feelings of claustrophobia were complicated by a sensation which threatened to derail his intention to keep his distance from the woman he had seduced, and no matter how firmly he spoke to himself, it was having precisely no effect on him. Because every time he looked at Hollie Walker, he felt that same powerful kick of desire. In spite of everything, he still wanted her. He wanted her badly and yet he still couldn’t work out why. He liked his women hard-edged. Tough and sexy. Women who knew the score—not wide-eyed innocents, with lips which trembled when you kissed them.
He preferred considered sex—a careful coupling rather than wild passion which ran the risk of taking a man hostage. He drew his boundaries from the outset. He preferred to be in the driving seat when it came to relationships and women were so eager for his body and his company that they invariably acceded to his demands. Yet with Hollie Walker, hadn’t he already broken one of his self-imposed rules? They said a woman was a mystery until you bedded her and once that happened, she inevitably lost some of that allure. That had always been the case before, so why wasn’t it happening now?
Why did he want to discover more about her? And why the hell was he experiencing an overwhelming need to tumble her down and cover her soft body with the hot, hard heat of his own until she cried out his name? She might currently be glaring at him as if he were the devil incarnate, but her anger didn’t quite mask her own desire. No. Not at all. The faint flush of her cheeks and the darkening of her spectacular grey eyes was a pretty reliable indicator that she was far from immune to him. And since they were stuck with each other until the snow melted, perhaps it might be a good idea to capitalise on that potent sexual chemistry.
They had to do something to occupy themselves during the long hours ahead and tomorrow was Christmas Day—a holiday which up until now had always been something he just needed to survive, but now he could see the possibility of transforming it into something else.
Something erotic.
The clench in his gut was sweetly pervasive until the split second when he noticed the flash of vulnerability which had crossed her pale face and silently he remonstrated with himself, forcing himself to listen to reason.
You don’t have to have sex with her. You just have to provide shelter until the weather breaks and get through the next few hours.
‘I’ll show you where you can sleep,’ he said tightly.
‘I’m sure that won’t be necessary,’ she said, equally tightly. ‘I’m not planning on staying any longer than I need to.’
‘You’ll stay until it’s safe to return and that certainly won’t be before nightfall.’
Their eyes met in a silent clash of wills, until eventually she backed down and nodded.
‘Then it seems I have no choice.’
‘That’s right,’ he agreed softly. ‘You don’t. Now come with me.’
Hollie felt chewed up as she trailed behind Maximo up the curving stone staircase which led to the upstairs floor of the chilly castle. She was scared. Scared of the way he made her feel. Scared of wanting to touch him instead of needing to push him away. Because he didn’t want her. He didn’t want her. And that was something she shouldn’t forget. His dismay on discovering she was trapped here might have been almost comical to observe, if it hadn’t been so hurtful. But she guessed that nobody could ever accuse Maximo Diaz of being duplicitous. He was honest to a fault, which had to be a good thing. And since she was here—maybe she just needed to make the best of it. To look on the bright side. She pressed her lips together.
For both their sakes.
He was pushing open the door of one of the bedrooms and as Hollie stepped inside she was aware of a further drop in temperature. The bed was bare and the room largely empty—there was nothing in the way of decorative furnishing to make it seem inviting or attractive. It certainly wasn’t going to be a fairy-tale Christmas Eve, not by any stretch of the imagination.
‘You’ll find linen in the big wooden cupboard just along the corridor,’ he advised, his dark brows knitting together, as if he had just noticed her shiver. ‘You’re cold?’
‘A bit.’
‘Let me see what I can do. I’ve never seen anything quite so archaic as what passes for a heating system here.’
‘Don’t you have any staff with you?’ she questioned curiously.
Black eyebrows were elevated in mocking query. ‘You think I travel around with a retinue of servants?’
She shrugged. ‘You’re a rich man. Apparently, that’s what rich men do. And you do have a chauffeur.’
‘Sí. I do. But the answer is no, I am completely on my own. Because surely a man is not a true man if he cannot fend for himself. If he cannot live independently of his staff.’
‘Christmas is not a time for independence,’ she said firmly. ‘It’s a time for family.’
‘And will your family be missing you, Hollie?’ he questioned suddenly. ‘Is that why you are so eager to get back?’
‘I have no family,’ she said, deciding it wouldn’t be diplomatic or wise to tell him that her desire to get away had been all about his effect on her. Baldly, she gave him the bare facts, the way she always did, just so they could get the inevitable mechanical sympathy out of the way. ‘Both my parents are dead.’
‘Snap,’ he said softly.
It wasn’t what she’d been expecting and Hollie almost wished he hadn’t told her that, because that was the stupid thing about the mind—it took you down false paths, based on very flimsy evidence. If she wasn’t careful it would be easy to start imagining they had something in common, because they were both orphans. When she knew and he knew that they had absolutely nothing in common, other than an inconvenient sexual chemistry and a baby neither of them had planned.
‘At least nobody’s going to miss us!’ she observed brightly, wishing it didn’t please her so much to see him smile in response. But the curve of his lips lasted only a second, as though this man was not comfortable with smiling.
‘I’ll leave you to get settled in,’ he said abruptly. ‘I’ll be downstairs. Come and find me when you’ve finished. Take as long as you like.’
Settling in seemed a rather over-ambitious term for getting used to such spartan accommodation, but after Maximo had left, Hollie tried to make the bedroom as comfortable as possible. There were no sheets, but she hunted down several mismatched velvet throws and a thick eiderdown, which provided a colourful display against the quiet grey hues of the faded walls. And thankfully she was used to sleeping in a chilly bedroom.
The nearby bathroom was ancient, with a noisy cistern and a vast, old-fashioned bath—but the water was piping hot. She washed her hands with a bar of rock-hard soap then stared into the rather mottled mirror above the sink. She was expecting her appearance to come as a shock, but to her surprise her eyes were shining and her cheeks were pink and glowing. She brushed her hair, tempted to leave it loose because wouldn’t that provide some essential warmth around her neck and shoulders? But something stopped her and it was the memory of Maximo using a single strand of it as a rope, just before he’d kissed her. Because those kinds of memories weren’t helpful. Not helpful at all. Carefully, she wound it into a tight chignon and pinned it into place, before heading downstairs to find Maximo.
He wasn’t in the library, but she could smell the aroma of food cooking and Hollie made her way through a series of maze-like corridors towards the kitchen. She could hear movement but when she walked in, the sight which greeted her was the last thing she had expected. What had she expected? She wasn’t sure—but it certainly wasn’t to see the Spanish tycoon with his back to her, his black sweater rolled up to his elbows as he stirred something.
Did she make a sound? Was that why he
turned around, his olive skin gleaming from the heat of the hob? And Hollie could do nothing about the instant wrench of her heart, as if she were registering his gorgeousness for the very first time. Because Maximo, holding up a wooden spoon as the conductor of an orchestra might hold a baton, looked insanely sexy. Maybe her hormones were making her respond to him this way. Because right then he looked like the carer and provider. The alpha man. The hunter. The father of her baby. Beneath her sweater she felt her breasts tighten and wondered if he’d noticed. Would that account for the almost imperceptible narrowing of his eyes and the sudden tension which stilled his magnificent body so that he looked almost poised to strike?
‘Gosh,’ she said.
‘Gosh?’ he echoed, his sardonic tone easing a little of the tension in the air. ‘Am I to take that as a very English word of surprise?’
‘I suppose I am a bit surprised,’ she admitted. ‘I didn’t have you down as a budding chef.’
‘Less of the budding, more of the accomplished.’
‘Of course. Silly of me to forget that you probably excel in everything you turn your hand to.’
‘You’re getting the hang of me, Hollie.’
‘Who taught you to cook?’
‘I’m self-taught.’
‘Wow.’ She blew a silent whistle. ‘Now I’m even more impressed.’
‘Why wouldn’t I teach myself how to cook?’ he questioned. ‘As I told you, my independence is important to me.’ His black eyes glittered a challenge at her. ‘And isn’t your assumption that I’m breaking some sort of mould rather sexist?’
Was it? Hollie wasn’t sure. As he turned back to the hob, the only thing she was certain of was a stupid sense of yearning as she feasted her eyes on the black tendrils of hair which brushed against his neck. She didn’t want to feel wistful but it was difficult not to. Because if they’d been a real couple they might have done stuff like this—cooked meals and flirted a little. They might have gone out on a few dates, instead of letting passion lead them to a one-night stand with massive consequences. But she wasn’t the type of woman Maximo dated, she reminded herself fiercely. She’d seen photos of his girlfriends on the Internet and she was nothing like any of them. She just happened to be a warm and willing body who had made herself available on a night when he’d obviously wanted company.
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