Cinderella's Christmas Secret - Sharon Kendrick Page 0,58

I could get back to the way I normally felt, I could deal with it. I was stupid enough and arrogant enough to believe I could just slot you into your own little compartment in my life and you would be content with that. But instead, I drove you away—’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You did.’

‘I shouldn’t have done that,’ he ground out.

‘No, you shouldn’t.’ She hesitated. ‘But we all say and do things we shouldn’t, often because we’re scared. You’re not the only one, Maximo.’

‘Hollie—’

‘No, wait.’ Her firm tone belied the sudden trembling of her lips and, suddenly, her voice was trembling too. ‘Let me confess something to you. Something I’m only just starting to realise—which is that I felt almost relieved when Cristina told me about the will.’

‘Relieved?’ he verified incredulously.

She swallowed and nodded. ‘Maybe it suited me to believe that all men were fundamentally liars and you could never trust any of them because that way...’ Her eyes had suddenly become very bright and her words tailed off as she looked at him.

‘That way you’d never get hurt?’

‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Yes. I didn’t want to get hurt and I didn’t want my baby—’

‘Our baby.’

She bit her lip as if she was about to cry. ‘I didn’t want our baby to grow up the way I did,’ she said huskily. ‘In a world of broken promises and no real love. Or one-sided love. I thought it would be easier to go it alone than to do that. Because I want a real family, Maximo—not something which just looks like it from the outside—and I’m not going to accept anything less than that.’

This still sounded like bargaining to him and was not the instant capitulation Maximo had expected to hear. It still felt as if someone were squeezing his heart with their fist—and it hurt. It really hurt. He’d spent his whole life avoiding emotional pain and maybe that was why he had built up no resistance against it. Because suddenly he realised that if he wanted Hollie, he needed to really put his feelings on the line. To say things he’d never expected to hear himself say and make sure she knew he meant them.

‘I’ve never told you that I love you, have I, Hollie?’ he questioned unevenly. ‘I’ve never told you that first time I lay with you, it felt as if you were touching me with flame? As if you’d unleashed the lick of a potent fire which threatened to melt the coldness deep inside me, which I’d lived with for so long? I’d never felt that way before and it made me feel vulnerable. That’s what made me want to push you away.’

‘Maximo—’

But he silenced her with a shake of his head because he couldn’t allow her forgiving nature to let him off the hook. Not this time. ‘You withstood my appalling attitude when I discovered you were pregnant—as if I had nothing to do with it!’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘And then you created the kind of Christmas I’d never had and never thought I’d wanted, but it seems I did. For the first time in my life, I discovered what people meant when they talked about coming home. You are my home and I love you, Hollie, and I want to share my life with you and our baby.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s as complicated and as simple as that.’

‘Oh, Maximo,’ she said, so quietly he could hardly hear her.

He opened his arms to her and she went straight into them, like a bird arriving back on the nest after a long flight away. She buried her head against his shoulder and he held her until she had stopped crying and then he turned her face up towards him, tracing his fingertip over the tracks of her tears. ‘But I’ve been thinking about my bachelor apartment in Madrid and I’ve recognised it isn’t really suitable for a baby,’ he mused.

‘But it’s right next to that beautiful park.’

‘Sí, it is, but I got the distinct feeling that you’re not much of a city girl, which was one of the reasons you left London, wasn’t it?’

She shrugged. ‘I guess.’

‘When I took you there, I felt as if I had plucked a wildflower from a country meadow and transplanted it into a hothouse. Which is why I’m planning to fit into your world from now on.’

Her brow creased into a frown. ‘Now who’s talking in riddles?’

‘There’s something else you need to know,’ he said suddenly. ‘Something I should