Cinderella's Christmas Secret (Mills & Boon Modern) Read online

  SHARON KENDRICK once won a national writing competition by describing her ideal date: being flown to an exotic island by a gorgeous and powerful man. Little did she realise that she’d just wandered into her dream job! Today she writes for Mills & Boon, and her books feature often stubborn but always to-die-for heroes and the women who bring them to their knees. She believes that the best books are those you never want to end. Just like life…

  Also by Sharon Kendrick

  The Greek’s Bought Bride

  The Italian’s Christmas Housekeeper

  The Sheikh’s Secret Baby

  His Contract Christmas Bride

  Cinderella in the Sicilian’s World

  The Sheikh’s Royal Announcement

  The Legendary Argentinian Billionaires miniseries

  Bought Bride for the Argentinian

  The Argentinian’s Baby of Scandal

  Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

  Cinderella’s Christmas Secret

  Sharon Kendrick

  www.millsandboon.co.uk

  ISBN: 978-1-474-09870-0

  CINDERELLA’S CHRISTMAS SECRET

  © 2020 Sharon Kendrick

  Published in Great Britain 2020

  by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

  All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

  By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

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  www.millsandboon.co.uk

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  In memory of my dearest friend

  Mandy ‘Gregoire’ Morris, who was clever, cultured,

  kind, and possessed a wicked sense of humour—

  qualities which live on in her four amazing children,

  Simon, Katy, Robin and Guy.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Booklist

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Note to Readers

  Dedication

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  EPILOGUE

  Extract

  About the Publisher

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘I CAN’T...’ HOLLIE’S words came out as a strangled squeak as she held the dress up.

  It was very Christmassy. In fact, it screamed Christmas—and not in a good way. Short, bright and very green, it gleamed beneath the garish lights of the hotel where the party was being held. She tried again. ‘I can’t possibly wear this, Janette.’

  Her boss’s perfectly plucked brows were elevated. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it’s...’ Hollie hesitated. Normally, she was the most accommodating of employees. She was a peacemaker. A facilitator. She worked very hard and did what was asked of her, but surely there was a limit. ‘A little on the small side...’

  But her boss wasn’t interested in her objections. In fact, she was even more self-absorbed than usual and had been in a particularly vile mood since her fingernail had chipped that morning and subsequently snagged one of her super-fine stockings.

  ‘Someone of your age can get away with wearing something as daring as that,’ Janette clipped out as she adjusted a low-hanging bunch of mistletoe. ‘You might find it suits you, Hollie—it’ll certainly make a change from your usual wardrobe choices.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘No buts,’ continued her boss smoothly. ‘We’re sponsoring this party, just in case you’d forgotten. And since one of the waitresses is a no-show and with so many VIPs coming, we can’t possibly be short-staffed. All you have to do is to turn up dressed as an elf for a couple of hours and hand out a few canapés. Why, if I were a few years younger I would have worn the outfit myself! Especially as Maximo Diaz has agreed to come.’ She flashed a veneer-capped smile. ‘Potentially the most valuable client we’ve ever had. Mr Big. Mr Limitless Bank Account. And if his hotel purchase goes through before Christmas, you’re looking at a big fat bonus. Surely you haven’t forgotten that, have you?’

  Hollie shook her head. No, of course she hadn’t. How could she have forgotten Maximo Diaz and all the fuss which surrounded him whenever he made an appearance in the small Devon town where she’d moved after her life’s savings had become someone else’s pocket money? How could anyone ever forget a man who resembled a dark, avenging angel who had tumbled to earth in a custom-made suit? A man who made her heart race with uncomfortable excitement whenever he caught her in the hard, black spotlight of his gaze so that she felt like a butterfly pinned to a piece of card.

  She swallowed. She guessed every woman felt that way about him. She’d seen the way he was watched by every female who happened to be in the vicinity, whenever he walked into the estate agency where Hollie worked. She’d noticed the way their eyes were drawn—reluctantly or otherwise—to the powerful muscularity of his body and the glow of his olive-dark skin. He was a man who seemed to have taken up stubborn residence in her imagination. A man who symbolised a simmering sexuality and virility which scared her and excited her in equal measure—and no matter how hard she tried, she found it impossible to remain neutral to him.

  Not that she would have made very much of a mark on his radar. Powerful Spanish billionaires tended not to take much notice of nondescript women who beavered away quietly in the background of large offices. Occasionally she’d made him a cup of coffee, accompanied by one of the home-made biscuits she sometimes brought to the office, if her boss wasn�
��t on one of her rigid diets. She remembered him absently taking a bite from a piece of featherlight shortbread and then looking at it in surprise, as if the taste of something sweet was something he wasn’t used to. He probably wasn’t. Because ‘sweet’ wasn’t really a word you associated with the rugged tycoon. Hard and dark were words which sprang more readily to mind.

  But she shouldn’t be thinking about Maximo Diaz—not when Janette was still fixing her with that expectant stare, and automatically Hollie smiled back.

  ‘Of course I haven’t forgotten Señor Diaz,’ she said. ‘He’s a very important client.’

  ‘Yes, he is. Which is why all the local bigwigs and politicians are so eager to meet him,’ Janette said eagerly. ‘He’s going to have a big impact on this area, Hollie. Especially if he turns the old castle into a hotel like it was before, back in the day. It means we won’t have to use this eyesore of a place any more for our official functions—and not before time.’

  ‘Yes, I do realise that.’

  ‘So you’ll do it?’

  Hollie nodded. It seemed she didn’t have a choice and therefore she would accept the situation gracefully. Wasn’t that one of life’s most important lessons? ‘Yes, Janette, I’ll do it.’

  ‘Excellent. Run along and get changed. I’ve popped in a pair of my own shoes—I think we’re the same size. You’ll never fit into the other ones. Oh, and wear your hair down for once, will you? I don’t know why you always insist on hiding away your best feature!’

  Tucking the outfit under her arm, Hollie slipped from the room, dodging gaudy streamers along the way, trying to concentrate on the evening ahead rather than her boss’s rather overbearing manner. Despite being a whole two months until the holidays, the hotel was decked out with yuletide sparkle, which didn’t quite manage to disguise the ugly fittings which had seen better days. Yet she wasn’t going to complain about the fact that the festival seemed to come earlier every year, because Christmas was a welcome break in the normal routine. A time for candles and carols and twinkling lights. For pine-scented trees and bells and snow. She might not have any family of her own to celebrate with but somehow that didn’t matter. It was a time when strangers talked to one another and it brought with it the indefinable sense of hope that, somehow, things were going to get better—and Hollie loved that feeling.

  Fluorescent lights lit the way to a gloomy subterranean cloakroom, which was a bit like descending into hell, but Hollie remained determinedly positive as she shook out the fur-trimmed green dress, the red and white striped tights and Janette’s scarlet stilettos, which were scarily high.

  Peeling off her shirt dress, flesh-coloured tights and sensible court shoes, she stood shivering in her underwear as she struggled into her elf costume. But by the time she had managed to zip it up, she realised her reservations had been well founded because the person who stared back at her from the mirror was...

  Unrecognisable.

  She blinked, finding it hard to reconcile this new image of herself—and not just because she was wearing what amounted to fancy dress. The no-show waitress must have been much shorter, because the hem of fake white fur swung to barely mid-thigh—a super-short length, which was exaggerated by Janette’s skyscraper heels. The other waitress must have been slimmer too, because the green velvet was clinging to every pore of Hollie’s body, like honey on the back of a teaspoon. The rich material moulded itself to her breasts and hugged her waist in a style which was as far from her usual choice of outfit as it was possible to imagine.

  She looked...

  She cleared her throat, hating the sudden nerves and fear which slammed through her body and made her heart race like a train. She looked like a stranger, that was for sure. The way her mother used to look when she was expecting a visit from her father. As if tight clothes could mask a basic incompatibility—as if adornment were the only thing a woman needed to make a man love her. And it hadn’t worked, had it? She remembered the bitterness which used to distort her mother’s features after she had slammed the door in his wake.

  ‘You can never make a man love you, Hollie, because men aren’t capable of love!’

  It was a lesson she’d never forgotten—her mum had made sure of that—but not one she particularly wanted to remember, especially now. She wished she could strip off these stupid clothes and the too-high heels. Skip the party and go home to her rented cottage. She could study that new cake recipe she was planning to try out on the weekend and dream about the time when she could finally open her own business and be independent at last. One more year of frugality and she should have amassed the funds she needed. Only this time she would be sure to go it alone, in a part of the world which she found manageable. A picturesque little Devon town called Trescombe—not some big, anonymous city like London, where it was all too easy for a person like her to slip off the radar and become invisible.

  Was it that erosion of her confidence which had led to her not paying attention to what was going on around her—until one day Hollie had discovered that nearly all the money had gone and her supposedly best friend had ripped her off? It had been a harsh and hurtful lesson, but she had learnt from it. Never again would she put herself in the position of being conned by someone she’d thought of as a friend, and have her trust in human nature eroded yet again.

  And wasn’t that another reason for making sure this party was a success? Because Maximo Diaz’s purchase of the old castle on top of the big hill outside town had the potential to herald a new golden age in local tourism and Hollie wanted to be part of it. It hadn’t been a hotel for years but was crying out for some love and attention. And if the enigmatic Spaniard was an unlikely candidate to play the part of neighbourhood saviour—well, that was what life was like. Sometimes it threw up surprises and you discovered that people didn’t always fit into the little boxes you tried to squeeze them into. Just because a man was an impossibly wealthy global superstar, didn’t mean he couldn’t also be a good man, did it?

  Remembering Janette’s parting words, Hollie pulled the scrunchy from her hair and shook her head to let her hair tumble down around her shoulders. It was a colour best described as light brown, though some of the bitchier girls at school used to call it ‘mousy’. But it was clean and shiny and it streamed abundantly over her breasts, effectively hiding that rather scary glimpse of cleavage.

  The final touch was a red and green hat with a bell on the end and the sound of it jangling like a cash register as she crammed it over her head made Hollie smile. One day soon she would open her very own tea shop and, although she wasn’t planning on wearing quite such a revealing uniform, tonight’s event would be perfect practice for her future career of serving the public. Wobbling a little in her spindly heels, she headed for the door.

  Christmas elf?

  How hard could it be?

  He didn’t want to be here.

  Despite the fact that he was poised on the brink of a venture guaranteed to net him even more millions, Maximo Diaz was feeling even more detached than usual.

  He looked around at a room which, bizarrely, was decorated with thick streamers of glittering tinsel—even though it was still only October. A giant fir dominated one wall and tiny golden and silver lights twinkled in every available corner of the room. Christmas had, it seemed, come ridiculously early to this one-horse town, with its distant glimpses of the sea and the bleak sweeping moorland which lay to the east.

  His mouth hardened.

  The truth was, he didn’t want to be anywhere right now. Not at either of his homes in Madrid or New York and certainly not here in Devon. Because everywhere he went he took himself with him and ‘here’ was inside his head, listening to clamouring thoughts which would not be silenced. For the first time in his life, he was finding it difficult to switch off and that disturbed him.

  In his past there had been troubles. Of course there had. Everyone had troubles and sometimes he felt as i
f he’d netted more than his fair share. Bleak, dark events which had come out of nowhere and threatened to blindside him, although in the end they had bounced off him like hailstones on a pavement because he had willed them to. He had schooled himself to cultivate a steely self-control and had always prided himself on his ability to shrug off hardship. To step away from chaos, resilient and untouched, like a phoenix rising from the ashes. But back then youth, hunger and ambition had been on his side, shielding him against hurt and shielding him against pain. He had come to the conclusion that he was one of those lucky few who were immune to hurt. And if that meant people—usually women—were prone to describe him as cold and unfeeling. Well, he could live with that.

  Yet who would have thought the death of someone he’d despised could have pierced his heart so ragged? How was that even possible? He hadn’t seen her in years. Hadn’t wanted to—and with good reason. He should have felt anger or injustice or resentment—maybe all three—as he’d said goodbye to the woman who had given birth to him, summoned to her bedside by the nuns who had cared for her during her final days. Yet it hadn’t been like that. He shook his head. His reaction had surprised him. And angered him too, because he hadn’t wanted to feel that way. As he’d held her papery hand with its dark tracery of veins, he had felt a deep sorrow welling up inside him. He had been overwhelmed by a sense of something lost, which now eluded him for ever.

  And he didn’t do that kind of emotion. Not now and not ever.

  But he had to carry on. To brush off pointless grief and make like it had never happened. What other choice was there for someone who had turned indifference into an art form? He would get over it because he always did. And he would forgive himself for that rare foray into the saccharine world of sentimentality, because that was a place which held no allure for him.

  He would continue with his inexorable rise to the top. He would keep on making a fortune from fundamentally changing the infrastructure of different countries. Building roads and building railways and creating a turnover which caused his competitors to shake their heads with frustration and awe. He had added a luxury hotel chain to his portfolio now and was surrounded by the kind of wealth which, strangely and rather disturbingly, had not brought him the satisfaction he’d sought. But it certainly made women’s eyes grow wide whenever they stepped over the threshold of one of his homes or slid into the leather-bound luxury of his private jet. And just because he had more money than he would ever need in several lifetimes, didn’t mean he wanted to slow down. Because he liked success. He liked it a lot. Not because of the material rewards it reaped, but for the glow of achievement it provided, no matter how fleeting that feeling proved to be. It was as if he was intent on proving himself over and over again, if not to the father and mother who had rejected him, then maybe to himself.