Cinderella's Christmas Secret - Sharon Kendrick Page 0,19

inside her sweet, tight body for most of the night, over and over again. And when they’d eventually run out of condoms—something which had never happened to him before—he had pleasured her in other ways. He had used his tongue and his fingers and, at one point, an ice cube from the freezer downstairs, he recalled—so that the memory of her shuddered cries of fulfilment had stubbornly lodged themselves in his brain for days afterwards. He’d had difficulty forgetting the way she’d cried out his name and the way her soft thighs had wrapped themselves around his thrusting back. He’d had difficulty concentrating on work too, drifting off into sensual daydreams at the slightest provocation, until he had forced himself to stop thinking about her.

But none of those things addressed his immediate concerns and now a feeling of wariness crept over him as he looked into Hollie Walker’s face. Because, why had she asked to see him? Deliberately pushing away the brief cloud of darkness which hovered on the edge of his mind, he met her gaze with a look of polite enquiry.

‘So. What can I do for you, Hollie? I meant it when I told you I was busy. There are things I need to get finished before Christmas, which is in a few days’ time, as you clearly know.’ He forced himself to give a curt nod of acknowledgement in the direction of the smallest tree he had ever seen.

Her mouth was working and her previously glowing complexion had paled. ‘There’s no easy way to say this. I wish there was.’ She clenched her hands into two fists and squeezed them tight until the knuckles grew white. ‘I’m pregnant, Maximo,’ she husked. ‘I’m going to have your baby.’

The world spun and a dull sound inside his head threatened to deafen him. For a minute Maximo thought he must be dreaming, but her trembling body and white face were real enough and told their own story.

For this was no dream. The nightmare had become real.

‘You can’t be.’ His words were icy but the anger growing inside him felt hot and vital and all-consuming. ‘We took precautions.’

‘Well, obviously those precautions didn’t work,’ she said. ‘Look, I realise this has come as a complete shock to you—’

‘But clearly not to you.’ He frowned as he did some rapid mental calculations. ‘We had sex in—’

‘October,’ she supplied swiftly, her cheeks flaming. ‘Just in case you’re muddling me with someone else.’

‘There hasn’t been anyone else,’ he snapped before wondering why on earth he had told her that. Because wouldn’t it give her more power than she already had if she realised that every other woman had left him cold since he’d exited her bed, that wet dawn morning? Would she mistakenly start thinking she was special, or different?

‘Oh. Right,’ she said, looking startled.

His gaze skated over her as it had done with so many women in the past, but for once there was only one place it was focussed on. Not on her hair or lips or the curve of her breasts, but on her abdomen. ‘Pregnant,’ he repeated, as if affirming what his naked eye could not see.

‘Eleven weeks.’

He felt as if he were speaking in a language he didn’t really understand. As if he had entered a world which was now defined by dates. ‘You certainly took your time telling me.’

She nodded. ‘I know. I didn’t realise for a while. At first I couldn’t believe it, because I thought we were so careful. I made myself do three tests, until eventually I had to accept the evidence of what I found. And you weren’t around to tell, Maximo. You were supposed to be coming back to Trescombe. Everyone thought work was going to start on the castle before Christmas—’

‘What work?’ he demanded.

‘Well, you’re turning it back into a hotel, aren’t you? It’s been the talk of the town for months. But you just...disappeared.’

‘I have a global business,’ he informed her coldly. ‘Which seems to have gone into overdrive lately.’

‘And was that...?’ Her face was screwed up and she seemed to be forcing herself to ask the question. ‘Was that the only reason?’

Maximo’s mouth hardened. Wasn’t it better she knew? Better to trample on her foolish dreams rather than to allow them to flourish unchecked? ‘Not the only reason, no. If you must know I thought that creating space between us would ensure you didn’t get the wrong idea about what had happened. I didn’t want you building castles in the air.’

‘You’re