Page 38 of Cinderella's Christmas Secret

But there was no guilt or resignation on his face. No sense of having been found out. In fact, there was nothing on his sculpted features but a look of growing comprehension.

‘This is all news to me, Hollie,’ he said slowly. ‘If there is such a bequest then it has never been on my radar, because I have been estranged from my family for many years and in all that time I haven’t spoken to my stepsisters—not since they decided that cruelty towards an impressionable young boy was a sport they relished.’ His voice harshened. ‘Do you really think I would conceal something like that from you?’

‘Yes! If you want the truth, yes, I do!’

Maximo flinched as if she had hit him, but through the slow burn of injustice came a powerful rush of feelings. Uncomfortable feelings he had buried for years an

d if it had been anyone else, he would have slammed his way out of there and taken his outraged pride with him.

But this wasn’t just anyone. This was Hollie. Hollie who knew more about him than anyone else did. He remembered when he’d told her about working on the roads as a teenager and she’d asked him if he had lied about his age, as if it was important. As if it had meant something. Because it did mean something. She was used to men lying to her. Her father, for one. Did she think he was cast out of the same mould and that he would deceive her about something as big as this?

And then he wondered how he dared be such a hypocrite. Why wouldn’t she believe that, when he had done nothing but push her away since she’d arrived in Spain, and maybe even before that? He had been so damned keen to create barriers between them and to ensure she knew never to dare cross them, that he had succeeded in destroying all the ease and the intimacy which had once existed between them. And now she was looking at him warily, with sadness and mistrust written all over her lovely face, and although he knew he deserved all of that—and more—suddenly he couldn’t bear the thought that he might have sabotaged, not just his own future, but that of his family. His family with her.

‘I repeat, I knew nothing about this legacy, and even if I did, do you really think I’d want his damned business? If I had, I might have stayed on in that heartless mansion—enduring the taunts of my stepsisters and the sniggers of the servants who surrounded him. Do you really think that even if I were poor—even if I were poor—I would accept the charity of someone who had never wanted me during his lifetime? Do you, Hollie?’

The fierceness of his tone must have convinced her, for she gave a brief and reluctant shrug. ‘I guess not.’

But the wariness was still there and Maximo knew he had a long way to go. He could feel his jaw hardening—locking so tight he could scarcely grit the next words out, but then he’d had a whole lifetime of suppressing stuff instead of articulating it.

‘I didn’t lie to you about the will,’ he said slowly. ‘But in a way, I was lying to myself.’

Her eyes widened. ‘What...what are you talking about?’

‘I lied about the way you made me feel. I refused to acknowledge that you touched something deep inside me right from the start. And as that feeling grew, it scared me. It made me feel...powerless—and I had vowed that nobody was ever going to make me feel that way again.’ He expelled a long and ragged breath. ‘I thought when I took you to Spain—that if 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.

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