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

  Gleaming silver discs and squares hung from the ceiling, suspended by almost invisible pieces of thread. More dangled from a large branch of conifer, which somehow managed to resemble a miniature Christmas tree. And there were sprigs of holly just about everywhere—lying on empty bookshelves and decorously placed on the mantelpiece—plus an enormous bunch which had been stuck into a pottery jug as a centrepiece for the table.

  As for the table...

  Maximo been entertained many times during his life with no expense spared, because when a woman made you dinner, she seemed to think she was auditioning for a permanent role in your life.

  But this was different.

  He narrowed his eyes. Echoing the bright holly berries, the table was spread with what looked like the scarlet velvet throw which had adorned her naked body that very morning. Matching red ribbons were tied in festive bows around two snowy linen napkins and everywhere there were candles. Tall candles and squat candles. Some which were near the end of their natural life and others which were clearly brand-new. Their flames flickered upwards and wove intricate shadows against the walls, while more flames came from the fire which was burning brightly in the grate. His gaze moved to the window where outside dusk was falling on the pristine snowy scene, and the contrast with the illuminated interior of the ancient room made the place look almost...magical.

  ‘What have you done?’ he husked.

  She shrugged. ‘I played around with what we had. The candles I found in the scullery. The shiny things hanging from the ceiling are cardboard, covered with silver foil which I discovered in a drawer in the kitchen—and the cotton comes from a sewing kit in my handbag. The napkins were in those hampers you ordered, as were the ribbons—and I found the rest of the stuff in the garden.’ She chewed on her lip, anxiety suddenly creasing her brow. ‘You do like it?’

  ‘It’s...it’s a surprise,’ he admitted at last. ‘It’s...well, it’s remarkable.’

  She looked at him a little uncertainly, as if unsure whether or not that was a compliment. ‘Why don’t you sit down?’ she suggested. ‘And I’ll bring the food in.’

  ‘I’ll help.’

  ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘You won’t. Humour me, Maximo. You waited on me at dinner last night and now it’s my turn. I’m perfectly capable of carrying a dish or two. You can open the wine if you like and pour yourself a glass. I’m just having water—obviously. So let me go and fetch the food.’

  Maximo uncorked the bottle and walked across to the fire to hurl an applewood log onto the already crackling blaze, more to distract himself from the spiky carousel of his thoughts than for any other reason. This was the reason he always turned down every damn Christmas invitation which ever came his way, because this kind of homely festivity mocked him. Every single time. It reminded him of the lives of others and all the things he’d never had. It made him think of families who cooked and ate together, laughing and talking as they sat around the table. And his discomfort was amplified by Hollie’s presence, by her newly discovered sexuality coupled with the fact that she was pregnant with his child.

  She returned to the room, carrying a large tray which he took from her, waving away her protests, and he watched while she left for a final journey to the kitchen. Her hips were swaying in unconscious invitation, and she looked almost unbearably sexy in a borrowed sweater of his, which came down to mid-thigh. When he had finally released her from his bed that morning she had bemoaned aloud the fact that she didn’t have a change of knickers.

  ‘Then don’t wear any.’

  ‘I can’t do that!’

  ‘Why not?’ His query had been casual, but his heart had been racing like a schoolboy’s. And she had looked at him, and he at her, and somehow their getting up had been delayed even further. She had straddled him with abandon and afterwards they had shared a bath and stayed there until their fingertips were wrinkled, and she had squealed with delight when he’d wrapped her in a bathrobe and carried her back into the bedroom.

  He couldn’t remember ever feeling quite so turned on by a woman and if she hadn’t gone to so much trouble with the meal, he might have suggested they postpone it in favour of a far more sensual feast.

  But Maximo couldn’t shake off a lingering sense of disconnect as he sat down at the table. Because for some reason it felt as if ghosts were joining them and sitting at those empty chairs. The ghost of his mother, so recently dead. His father, too—though he’d only discovered his demise by reading about it in one of the national Spanish newspapers last year. He thought of Christmases past. He stared at Hollie’s belly. Of Christmases future.

  ‘There’s some of your Cantabrian mountain stew, which I’ve reheated,’ she was saying, shattering his troubled thoughts with her soft English chatter. ‘And lots of lovely cheeses and meats from those fancy hampers. Shall I cut you a slice of this Iberico ham, Maximo?’

  His tongue felt as if it wouldn’t work, as if it were too big for his mouth. He shook his head, taking a sip of wine. Rich, red wine which warmed the blood like soup. He always drank this particular vintage during his preferred solitary Christmases, but tonight, he might as well have been drinking vinegar. Why was he so beset with the past tonight? he wondered with irritation—as if it were a heavy mantle around his shoulders which he couldn’t shake off?

  ‘Is something wrong?’ she said as he put the barely touched glass down.

  He shook his head. ‘No, nothing’s wrong.’

  ‘Forgive me for contradicting you, Maximo, but something clearly is.’

  ‘Let’s eat,’ he growled. Remembering that they’d missed breakfast, he forced himself to work his way through some of the food, though he noticed that Hollie was tucking into her own meal with a healthy appetite and, on some level, that pleased him. Eventually, she looked up from her plate of cheese and crackers, putting her knife down with a thoughtful expression on her face.

  ‘You know, something has been puzzling me,’ she observed slowly.

  ‘Really?’ he questioned, injecting a deliberate note of boredom into his voice because her analytical tone suggested she was intending to take the conversation somewhere he didn’t want it to go.

  ‘Any ideas?’ she ventured.

  ‘I have many attributes, Hollie,’ he drawled, ‘but mind-reading has never been one of them.’

  But his sarcasm didn’t deter her. She simply dabbed at the corners of her mouth with her napkin.

  ‘When you told me about how you started in business, about breaking up big rocks in the road, there was something you failed to mention.’

  ‘There were probably plenty of things I didn’t mention.’

  ‘Your parents, for one,’ she said.

  ‘Maybe that was a deliberate omission.’

  ‘I mean, how did that happen?’ she mused, as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘Because fourteen is very young, no matter how old you looked. You haven’t explained what your parents had to say about you joining a construction team and working the roads.’

  There was a pause. A pause which seemed to last for ever, giving him time to fall back on his familiar strategies for avoiding scrutiny. But something stopped him and he didn’t know what. Was it the clearness of her grey eyes—or an expression of something like compassion which had softened her lovely face, rather than judgement? Almost as if she had guessed at the truth. He thought about what she’d told him about her own father—about his failure to be there for her. Maybe he and Hollie Walker had a lot more in common than he’d previously thought, and was it really such a big deal for the mother of his baby to discover a few truths about him?

  ‘They didn’t know,’ he said.

  ‘But they must have known. How could they not?’

  ‘By that time in my life, my mother and I were estranged—’

  ‘At fourteen?’

  ‘Yes, Hollie. At fourteen. It happens.’

  ‘And you
r father?’

  He shrugged. ‘He did not really deserve that title, for I only ever had the briefest of relationships with him.’

  ‘Why?’ she questioned quietly. ‘What happened?’

  His mouth tightened because this was the part which was definitely off-limits. The part he had taken extra care to filter from his life and online presence—confident in the knowledge that nobody else in the picture would disclose it, because it didn’t reflect well on them. Very few people knew who his father had been, and that had always suited him just fine.

  Yet suddenly he remembered the nurses who had looked at him so contemptuously when he had stood by his mother’s deathbed all those weeks ago. Was it that which made him want to break the habit of a lifetime and unburden himself to Hollie? Those nuns who had judged him and found him wanting for his seeming neglect. His mouth hardened. As if anyone who was old and a mother was automatically some kind of saint who deserved unconditional love from her child—a child she had shunned and rejected.

  ‘My mother was never married to my father,’ he said baldly. ‘I was illegitimate. Not such a big deal now, but pretty big at the time, particularly in the part of the world where I grew up.’ He saw her flinch and wondered if she was thinking about her own situation, wondering whether she too would be judged in this small part of Devon which was now her home. ‘My father was one of Spain’s wealthiest men. Have you heard of the clothes chain Estilo?’ he questioned suddenly.

  ‘Yes, of course I have. Practically every woman on the planet has an Estilo piece in her wardrobe.’

  ‘He owned it,’ he said and saw her eyes widen in shock. ‘He was married, of course. He had any number of lovers—my mother being just one of them.’

  ‘And was she...content with that?’

  His narrowed his eyes. ‘No woman is ever truly content with being a mistress, Hollie. Maybe that’s why she became pregnant.’

  ‘With you?’

  He nodded. ‘Sí. With me. He had told her from the very start that he wanted no children, for he already had two daughters—and although he desperately wanted a son, he planned to conceive one with his similarly aristocratic wife. Outwardly, his life was a model of respectability and he had no intention of altering that state. When my mother went to him with news I was on the way, I think she was expecting him to change his mind and divorce his wife, but he didn’t. He didn’t want the scandal or the damage to his reputation as a family man. So he ordered her from the house and gave her nothing, not even after I was born.’ His mouth thinned. ‘There was no acknowledgement that I was his child and certainly no maintenance.’

  ‘But...if he was so rich—’

  ‘To have compensated her would have been an admission of liability and that was something he wasn’t prepared to do.’

  ‘She didn’t go to the papers?’

  ‘Like I said, it was a different world back then and he had most of the media in his pocket anyway.’ His mouth hardened. ‘So I lived from hand to mouth with a mother who was increasingly resentful that I had ruined her chances of having a “normal” life. Because where we lived, a woman who had a child out of wedlock was shunned.’

  Her grey gaze was steady as she flicked her tongue over her lips. ‘What happened?’ she whispered.

  He shrugged. ‘My father had no other son and then his wife died and, behind the scenes, my mother was concocting a plan. I only learned afterwards that she had gone to his home and confronted him. Told him I looked exactly like him—which was true—and that I had his mannerisms. In the extremely macho world in which he operated, she appealed to both his ego and his pride. She asked would he not prefer his only son to inherit his valuable business, rather than his daughters—two women who would be bound to go off and have families of their own. So he agreed to give me a home in his enormous mansion in the centre of Madrid.’ He smiled bitterly. ‘I guess you might describe it as a trial run. Like taking on an apprentice on a temporary basis, to see whether or not they fit in. To see if I was suitable to be recognised as his son.’

  ‘And what did you do?’ she questioned, when the silence which followed his disclosure became elongated. ‘Did you go?’

  ‘Life at home wasn’t exactly wonderful and I can’t pretend that the thought of inheriting one of Spain’s most profitable companies didn’t appeal to a boy who had known nothing but hardship. So I went to my father’s house...’ He shrugged as his voice tailed off. ‘And quickly realised that the situation I found myself in was untenable.’

  ‘How so?’ she whispered.

  He was lost now. Lost in the dark memories of the past. He remembered being bemused by the amount of cutlery beside his plate, and cramming food in his mouth as if he were a street urchin. Which was exactly how he had felt. Like a poor boy who had wandered into a parallel universe. He remembered being amazed at marble-decked bathrooms the size of ballrooms and lavish dinners which could have fed a whole village. His stepsisters laughing because he didn’t know which knife to use. The servants looking at him with a scorn they hadn’t bothered to hide, as if recognising that he was an outsider. Un bastardo. And that was never going to change—he’d recognised that instantly. He’d stuck it out for as long as he could but it had felt as if he were trapped inside his own private hell.

  ‘I wasn’t made to feel welcome,’ he summarised acidly and although she looked as if she wanted him to elaborate, he was damned if he was going to do that, for any frailties he possessed, he showed to no one. Nobody would ever see him vulnerable—not even the mother of his child. ‘As dawn broke on Christmas Eve, I left to return to my mother and managed to hitch rides from Madrid to A Coruña. I arrived not long before midnight when the night was bitterly cold and the snow was falling. I remember seeing the Belen in the town square...the traditional nativity scene,’ he elaborated, when he saw her frown. ‘I thought my mother might be out—although I certainly didn’t think she’d be on her way to Mass. She was more likely to be drinking in a bar.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘But she’d gone.’

  ‘Gone?’ she echoed. ‘Gone where?’

  ‘I never found out. She had cleared out all her stuff the month before and left no word or forwarding address.’ It shouldn’t have come as a shock, but it did. Because deep down he had always believed that she loved him, because she was his mother. But she did not love him. She never had. He had fallen to his knees in the icy snow and wept and that was the last time he had ever wept. At least he’d had food in his rucksack—the only thing he had taken from his father’s house. And then he had begun to walk, though he didn’t know where. He had walked on through the night and on Christmas morning he had stumbled across the construction site and waited there for workers to return after the Christmas break. And he had vowed there and then that he would never let anyone close enough to hurt him again.

  ‘She wiped me from her life as if I had never existed,’ he continued, the words falling from his mouth like stones. ‘It was only much later, when I had started to make money, that she contacted me again.’

  ‘And were you ever...reconciled?’

  ‘We met,’ he said tersely, staring down at his fingernails. ‘But her main focus was on what I could buy for her, rather than making up for all those lost years. I provided for her throughout the rest of her life but I never saw her again until a couple of months ago.’

  ‘She...died?’

  He looked up at her, feeling himself tense up. ‘How the hell did you know that?’ he demanded.

  ‘Something in your face as you said it. I could see your pain.’ Her voice was soft again. How did she make it so damned soft? ‘I’m sorry for your loss, Maximo. I know she was cruel to you, but she was still your mother.’

  He wanted to deny that he felt anything but she was getting up from the table and walking round to where he sat, sliding onto his lap to face him, one bare leg on either side of his. She looked at him for a long moment before resting he
r head on his in an age-old gesture which had never come his way before. Maybe he’d never needed it before. It had nothing to do with sex—and everything to do with comfort. And it was powerful, he realised. Unbelievably...powerful.

  He wanted to shrug her off, to tell her he didn’t need any clumsy attempts at sympathy—but the words remained unspoken, the gesture never made. He could smell her clean, soapy scent and right then she seemed to embody all the virtues he’d never really associated with the women in his life.

  Innocence.

  Decency.

  Kindness.

  Suddenly a tension which had been coiled so tightly inside him started unravelling, like a line spinning wildly from the fisherman’s rod. Something he hadn’t even realised had been stretched to breaking point now snapped and he held her tightly, losing himself in an embrace so close that you couldn’t have fitted a hair between them.

  He told himself it was desire.

  Because it was desire. What else could it be? The powerful beat of his heart and the low clench of heat were familiar enough, but his urgent need to possess her was off the scale. With one hand he hooked the back of her neck and brought her face down to his, revelling in that first sweet taste of her lips as her satiny hair spilled over his hands. He deepened the kiss and deepened it still more, until she was writhing around on his lap—her lack of panties instantly apparent from the syrupy wetness which was seeping into his jeans.

  ‘Unzip me,’ he urged throatily.

  Instantly, she complied, although her fingers were trembling and it took some careful manoeuvring before he was free, and then at last he lowered her down onto his aching shaft, a ragged groan escaping from his lips as he filled her.