Cinderella's Christmas Secret - Sharon Kendrick Page 0,54

knew something you didn’t.

‘I like you, Hollie,’ she said slowly. ‘And I have learned something which is difficult for me to tell you, but which I feel you ought to know.’

‘You’re scaring me now,’ said Hollie, only half joking. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s about Maximo.’ There was a pause. ‘About the real reason he’s marrying you.’

It was an extraordinary thing for someone to say out of the blue like that—especially someone who didn’t know you—and for a moment Hollie’s only response was silence. Her fingers tightened around the handset and she could feel her throat constrict. She felt faintly disappointed. As if she had misjudged Cristina, who perhaps didn’t want to be her friend at all. If she were a different kind of person she might have frostily retorted that it wasn’t any of the other woman’s business. But she wasn’t going to hide from the truth, and if Cristina was expressing what everyone else was thinking, then maybe the subject would be better addressed head-on. ‘I’m not naïve enough to believe the wedding would be happening if I weren’t pregnant,’ she said quietly.

‘I’m sure you’re not. But he’s not just marrying you in order to maintain respectability,’ Cristina said, and then the words came out in a rush, as if she was embarrassed to repeat them. ‘He’s marrying you because he stands to inherit the family business, which will be put in trust for your child. Only the will stipulates that the child must be born within wedlock.’

Hollie froze.

But Maximo had been estranged from his father since the age of fourteen. He’d told her that.

With her free hand, she gripped the back of a nearby chair. ‘I don’t believe you,’ she whispered.

‘I’m afraid it’s true, my dear,’ said Cristina. ‘I heard this through Beatriz, one of his stepsisters. It was a hotly contested clause in the will, although the lawyers assured them it was watertight. They are obviously angry that their father’s illegitimate son stands to inherit one of the most profitable companies in Spain. I’m sorry, Hollie. I felt it best you should know, but this is not news I would ever wish to be the bearer of.’

‘No. Thank you.’ Hollie’s voice was brisk now. Polite, even. ‘I appreciate it, Cristina.’

With a few more robotic words she cut the call, though all the time she was berating herself. How stupid she had been. Sorrow clamped its way around her heart like a vice and then she gave a bitter laugh. She might have lost her virginity but that didn’t mean she wasn’t still laughably naïve, did it? She had stupidly imagined she had no illusions about the opposite sex, but it seemed she was still capable of being blinded by the stars which had temporarily danced in front of her eyes. She had wanted love so badly that she had been prepared to overlook what was blazingly obvious. Because she didn’t know Maximo at all, not really. The man she saw was the man she had wanted to see, not the one with hidden depths which he kept concealed from her. He was marrying her to gain control of one of Spain’s most successful companies. Of course he was. Although he certainly didn’t need the money, maybe he felt it was a justified legacy—to make up for his father’s rejection. Payback time. But it didn’t alter one key and painful fact...

That he had betrayed her, just as her father had betrayed her mother.

Her knees felt weak and she gripped the back of the chair even harder, afraid they might buckle. But the weirdest thing was that after that moment of dizziness had passed, Hollie felt calm. Icy calm. Almost as if she had been expecting this. As if things had always been too good to be true.

Because they were, weren’t they?

Plenty of women got pregnant without getting married. Did she really think that someone like Maximo Diaz would ask someone like her to be his wife if he didn’t stand to gain something from it, especially when he’d told her right from the start he didn’t want a baby? Or had she walked into the self-deceptive trap of thinking they had something special between them, just because she’d fallen in love with him?

She had fallen in love with him.

Well, more fool her.

He stands to inherit the family business. Cristina’s words were branded on Hollie’s brain like fire.

If he’d told her himself, she might have understood. If he’d said Look, this baby means that I can get something I’ve always