Cinderella's Christmas Secret - Sharon Kendrick Page 0,42

coloured icing at a critical moment? Yesterday she might have concocted some flimsy excuse and told him that she’d been trying to create a star, but not today. Because he had told her stuff. He’d confided in her. Hard, painful stuff. He’d let his guard down, presumably because he’d felt as if, on some level, he could trust her. So maybe she should trust him, too. And besides, it wasn’t as if they had any shared illusions about the future which could be tarnished by the truth, was it?

‘It was a tear,’ she admitted, meeting the seeking expression in his black eyes with a shrug. ‘I was feeling a bit sorry for myself.’

‘But you’re not now?’

‘No, I’m not. There’s no point. If life gives you lemons, you just have to make lemonade.’

Maximo took the slice she offered him, breaking off a fragment and putting it in his mouth so that it melted in a sugary rush against his tongue. He thought about the days which had led up to this moment, and the days which would follow. His mind began to compose an agenda, just like when he took on a new business deal and had to deal with facts methodically. Whatever happened he would support his child financially—in a way in which his own father had never supported him.

Just financially?

He stared across the table at Hollie, who was studiously picking frosting off her own piece of cake, though not actually eating any. And suddenly he realised that, despite all her outward simplicity, the package she presented was way more complex than he’d first imagined.

He had been the first man to have had sex with her. The only man. That shouldn’t have meant anything but the truth was, it did. It made a primitive satisfaction pulse through his body. And although that realisation should have unsettled him, somehow it didn’t because it had shone a light onto something else he’d only just realised.

Going forward, he didn’t want her sleeping with other men. Just as he didn’t want his child calling another man Papi. Maybe his attitude could be described as possession but could also be described as pragmatism. Because if the lack of a father had cast dark clouds over his life, hadn’t she experienced something similar? And if that were the case, then wasn’t it comparatively easy for them to do something about it, to spare their own child a similar kind of heartache?

‘Marry me, Hollie.’

She looked up from her crumbled cake, her expression one of shock then confusion, as if she hadn’t heard him properly. She knitted her brows together. ‘What did you say?’

‘I said, marry me, Hollie.’

‘Is that an...order?’

‘Does my method of asking offend you? Do you want me to pretend?’ he demanded huskily. ‘To go down on one knee with a ring-pull from a cola can and tell you I’ll buy you a thirty-carat diamond ring when we hit the shops?’

‘No, Maximo, I don’t want you to pretend anything. I want you to tell me why you’ve suddenly come out with this extraordinary proposal.’

There was a pause. She’d told him she didn’t want him to pretend, so he wouldn’t. ‘Because I think it’s the only sensible solution to our dilemma.’

‘Dilemma? Is that what you call it?’

‘Don’t try to gilt-edge a situation which neither of us ever intended to happen,’ he said roughly. ‘But instead, let’s try to make the best of what we have. To make the lemonade, as you said. I don’t want this child to grow up thinking his father didn’t want him.’

‘But you don’t, do you?’ she questioned baldly. ‘Want him. Or her, for that matter.’

He shook his head. ‘Now that the shock has worn off, I find that I do.’

‘But that isn’t enough to justify marriage, Maximo.’

‘No lo es—I agree. And if it were someone else, I suspect I would not be having this conversation. But I find you easy company, Hollie, and that is rare—for my past relationships with women have not been easy. And believe me, our sexual chemistry is even more rare.’

‘But...marriage,’ she said. ‘Isn’t that a rather extreme solution?’

Her continued opposition rather than the instant capitulation he’d been anticipating only spurred Maximo on—because never did he feel quite so alive as when he was having to fight for something. ‘I don’t think I’ll have a problem living with you. Plus my work takes me away a lot, which would give us both space. You will never have to worry about money. Ever. And that will still apply even