Page 12 of Cinderella's Christmas Secret 1
‘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 herthat. 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 the one with the interest in castles, Maximo,’ she said coldly. ‘I told you at the time I was okay with it.’
‘Women say all kinds of things they don’t mean, Hollie. They say them to save face, or sometimes to convince themselves that they actually believe them.’
She glared at him. ‘And you were so certain I’d be a thorn in your side with my unwanted devotion that you didn’t want to risk a return visit, is that it? Were you worried I’d believe I was hopelessly in love with you?’
‘That was always a possibility.’
‘Even though you’re proving to be so arrogant and unlikeable?’
He shrugged. ‘You were an innocent. A virgin. Sometimes a woman’s first experience of sex can warp her judgement, particularly if it was as good as yours was. I’d warned you what kind of man I was but I wasn’t sure whether you wanted to believe it. But all that is irrelevant now.’
He realised she was looking at him and the reproach on her flushed face suggested she had been hurt by his condemnatory assessment of their night together. But he wasn’t going to tell lies in order to spare her feelings. She needed to know the truth, because surely that would limit the painful repercussions of a situation he had been so determined not to create during his own lifetime. The legacy of his upbringing was bitter enough to taint him for ever and he didn’t want to feel trapped. Not ever again.
‘I’ve never wanted marriage or children,’ he bit out. ‘And while the first is within my power to control, the second is clearly not.’
‘But I’m not asking you for anything!’ she declared furiously, her fists still clenched and looking as if she would like to use them to punch him. ‘I can manage perfectly well on my own.’
He glanced around the small room. At the hand-knitted blanket on the battered sofa. At tired-looking walls, which even the rainbow glow from the fairy lights on the Christmas tree couldn’t quite disguise. He remembered the narrow bed in the cold bedroom upstairs, where he had torn the clothes from his body with the eagerness of a boy who had never had sex before. And the speed with which he had made his escape the following morning, issuing a terse directive to his chauffeur to get him the hell out of there when the car had arrived.
And all he could think was—what had hedone?
‘What, here?’ he demanded. ‘You think you can bring up this baby here, in a place like this?’
‘Of course I can! It may not be grand and I may not have a lot of spare cash, but I will manage. I don’t know how, but I will. I’m not deluding myself that it’s going to be easy, but I’m not afraid of hard work. It won’t hurt me to scrimp and save and go without—but there’s one thing my baby will never go short of, and that’s love!’
An expression of such fierce protectiveness came over her face, that Maximo found himself unexpectedly humbled by her fervour, until he reminded himself that words were cheap. ‘Very admirable,’ he drawled.
‘I’m not seeking your approval.’ Angrily, she shook her head. ‘In fact, I don’t want anything from you, Maximo Diaz. Because I don’t need you! Do you understand?’
