Page 5 of Cinderella's Christmas Secret

There was silence for a moment.

‘I’ve never owned a car.’

‘You’re kidding?’

‘No.’ She shook her head and a few raindrops sprayed over in his direction. ‘There’s never really been any reason to have one. I used to live in London, where it’s impossible to park, and I don’t need one here. We need to turn left, please. Just there, past the lamp post.’

Maximo met his driver’s eyes in the rear-view mirror and the man gave a barely perceptible nod of comprehension as he started to negotiate the turn. ‘So how do you manage without one?’

‘Oh, it’s easy enough. I walk—when the weather’s fine. Or I use my bike. These country roads around here are glorious in the springtime.’

Inadvertently, an image strayed into his mind of a woman on a bicycle, her long shiny hair flowing behind her, while pale flowers sprang in drifts along the hedgerows. He had just allowed this uncharacteristically romantic fantasy to incorporate an element of birdsong, when he heard her teeth begin to chatter.

‘You’re still cold,’ he observed.

‘Yes. But we’re here now. It’s the last house—just before the road turns into a mud track,’ she was saying, pointing towards a small, darkened house in the distance. ‘That’s right. Stop just here.’

The car drew to a halt and Maximo saw the chauffeur unclip his seat belt, obviously intending to open the car door, but something compelled him to halt his action with a terse command.

‘Permitame...’ Maximo murmured, getting out and going to Hollie’s side of the car. And even while he was opening the door for her, he was telling himself there was no need to behave like some old-fashioned doorman—not when he’d already played the Good Samaritan and given her a lift home. But somehow he wasn’t interested in listening to reason and indeed, he seemed impervious to the hard lash of rain on his face.

‘You’re getting wet!’ she protested.

‘I’ll survive.’

That look of hesitation was back on her face again. ‘Would you...?’ She glanced up at the darkened cottage and then back at him as if summoning up a courage she didn’t normally call on. ‘Would you like to come in, for a cup of coffee? Just as my way of saying thank you? No, that’s an absolutely stupid suggestion. I don’t know why I made it. Forget it. Forget I said anything.’ She shook her head as if embarrassed. ‘I’m sure you have somewhere else you need to be.’

He saw the doubt which crossed her face, echoing the ones which were proliferating inside his own head, because this wasn’t his style. Not at all. He didn’t frequent houses like this and he didn’t know women like her. Not any more. He’d left the world of mediocrity behind him a long time ago and had never looked back.

‘Actually, there’s nowhere I need to be right now and I’d love a cup of coffee. But quickly,’ he amended. ‘Before both of us get any wetter.’

As he followed her up the narrow path Maximo told himself it wasn’t too late to change his mind. He could get his driver to speed out of town, return to his luxury hotel and lose himself in some work—maybe even call that model who’d been texting him for months. The Christmas elf would let herself into her little home, take off her dripping coat—and that would be that. She would be a little disappointed, yes, and even he might experience the briefest of pangs himself, but it would soon pass. He’d never met a woman he would miss if he never saw her again.

Dipping his head to enter the tiny house, he felt the icy temperature hit him. Did she notice his shoulders bunch against the chilly blast as he closed the door behind him?

‘I know. It’s freezing. I keep the heating off when I’m not here,’ she explained, giving a slightly nervous laugh as she switched on a tall lamp.

He didn’t need to ask why. She might claim to be nobly conserving energy as everyone was supposed to be doing these days, but he suspected the real reason was a lack of cash. Why else would she be doing more than one job and living in such humble surroundings? He looked around the room, observing the faded rug on the hearth and noticing that the thin curtains she drew across the window didn’t quite meet in the middle. Yet the cushions on the sofa looked home-made and a dark red lily in a pot on the table looked almost startling in its simple beauty. And something about the limitations of the room suddenly seemed achingly familiar to him, even though he had grown up in the north-west of Spain and this was England.

He felt the twist of his heart, for it was a long time since he had been anywhere which wasn’t five-star. He had embraced luxury for so long that he’d thought those impoverished memories had vanished into the dark abyss of time. Forgotten. For a long time he’d wanted to forget them—no, had needed to forget them—but now they came rushing back in an acrid stream.

He remembered the cold and the hunger. The proud need to survive without letting people know your sweater wasn’t thick enough, or that your boots had holes in them. He remembered the slow seep of water making his feet wet and cold. And wasn’t that the craziest thing of all—that you sometimes found yourself hungering for the things you no longer had, even if they were bad things? So that when he’d been poor he had craved nothing but wealth and now he had all the money he could ever use, wasn’t he guilty of sentimentalising the hardships of the past?

‘I’ll make you some coffee.’

Her soft words broke into his reverie, her expression criss-crossed with anxiety. Perhaps she’d seen the tension on his face and had interpreted it as disapproval. Maybe that was why she was looking as if she regretted her decision to invite him here. Had he appeared to be judging her, when he had no right to judge anyone?

Except maybe himself.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Get yourself dry first. The coffee can wait.’

‘But—’

‘Just do it,’ he reaffirmed harshly.

Unable—or unwilling—to ignore the deep mastery in the Spaniard’s voice, Hollie nodded and ran upstairs, her heart pounding with excitement, and started stripping off her sodden clothes, bundling her damp tights into the laundry basket and searching around for something suitable to wear. As her fingertips halted on her best woollen dress, she thought how weird it was to think of Maximo Diaz downstairs, because the only men who ever stepped over the threshold were tradespeople commissioned by her landlord to repair the aging and rather dodgy appliances.

She knew her self-contained behaviour meant she was often regarded as something of an oddity and there were a million reasons she gave to herself and others when asked why she didn’t socialise much. She didn’t have a lot of spare cash, because she was saving up to start her own business. She hadn’t lived here very long, so she didn’t know many people. These things were true, but weren’t the whole story. The real reason was that her solitary life made her feel safe and protected. It didn’t leave her open to pain or deception, or having her life messed up by somebody else.

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