Page 16 of Cinderella's Christmas Secret

The landscape had been utterly transformed. Trees, grass and bushes were coated with a mantle of white, which sparkled like diamonds in the fading violet light. The thick fall had turned the place into a winter fairy tale—but one with an underlying threat because, outwardly, everything had changed. No footsteps up the lane. It was as if she’d never been there.

Hollie had only ever thought of snow as a positive thing—as pretty, white and fluffy—but now she saw it as an obstacle, barring her way out of there. And there was no sign of it stopping. She stared up into the darkening sky and uttered a soft curse beneath her breath. All she wanted was to get back to her little cottage because, although it might not amount to very much, at least it was home.

‘Where’s your taxi?’ he demanded.

She shrugged. ‘I got a lift here and I was planning to walk back.’

He made a soft curse beneath his breath. ‘I would take you myself except that I’ve dismissed the chauffeur for the holidays and he’s taken the car.’

‘It’s fine,’ she said, between gritted teeth, thinking that she’d rather walk home barefoot than be driven home by him. ‘I’ve been cooped up in the office all morning, and a bit of snow won’t kill me.’ With a grimace of stark realisation, Hollie stared down at her feet. ‘These boots weren’t exactly made for walking, but I guess they’ll have to do.’

‘Are you out of your mind?’ he snapped. ‘You can’t possibly walk home in this.’

‘Watch me.’

‘I don’t think so. You’re pregnant, remember?’

‘I’m hardly likely to forget, am I?’

‘Do you make a habit of being rescued from bad weather, Hollie?’ he demanded. ‘Don’t you think it’s time you invested in one of those clever phone apps?’

‘Oh, go to hell!’ she snapped back, taking a defiant step forward and immediately sinking into a deep white drift which came almost to the top of her boots. And suddenly Maximo’s hands were on her waist and he was lifting her clean out of the snow, and she was staring up into the hard glitter of his black eyes. And wasn’t it crazy that, in the midst of all her complicated emotions, her overriding feeling was the hungry throb of her blood in response to his touch? ‘Go to hell,’ she repeated weakly.

His velvety voice filtered over her skin. ‘Even hell would reject a man like me.’

‘Please put me down,’ she said. ‘I want to go home.’

‘Well, you can’t. You’re not going anywhere right now. Not when it’s like this. You’re going to have to stay here for the time being.’ He lowered her to her feet. ‘Unless that’s what you had in mind all along?’

She moved even further away from him, though that did little to ease the furious punch of her heart. ‘Are you serious? Are you arrogant enough to think I’d deliberately get myself stranded here like this?’

He shrugged. ‘Only you know the answer to that, Hollie. But if you’re asking whether I think a woman is capable of such manipulation, then I’m afraid the answer has to be yes.’

‘Why, you...cynic,’ she breathed.

‘You think so? I prefer to call it realism. But that’s irrelevant.’ He moved towards the door, his muscular body all honed and rippling strength. ‘And rather than standing here debating my perceived defects of character, you’d better come inside, out of the cold.’

CHAPTER SIX

MAXIMO SHUT THE door with more force than he intended, his heart racing with...what? Anger at being stuck with an uninvited guest at the worst time of the year? Yes, there was that. But Hollie was not just any uninvited guest. He stared down at the mutinous tremble of her lips and felt the shimmer of something indef

inable spearing at his heart. She was the mother of his child, he reminded himself grimly. A child he had never wanted. Because why would he wish to pass on his cold and emotionless genes to an innocent baby?

Yet his feelings of claustrophobia were complicated by a sensation which threatened to derail his intention to keep his distance from the woman he had seduced, and no matter how firmly he spoke to himself, it was having precisely no effect on him. Because every time he looked at Hollie Walker, he felt that same powerful kick of desire. In spite of everything, he still wanted her. He wanted her badly and yet he still couldn’t work out why. He liked his women hard-edged. Tough and sexy. Women who knew the score—not wide-eyed innocents, with lips which trembled when you kissed them.

He preferred considered sex—a careful coupling rather than wild passion which ran the risk of taking a man hostage. He drew his boundaries from the outset. He preferred to be in the driving seat when it came to relationships and women were so eager for his body and his company that they invariably acceded to his demands. Yet with Hollie Walker, hadn’t he already broken one of his self-imposed rules? They said a woman was a mystery until you bedded her and once that happened, she inevitably lost some of that allure. That had always been the case before, so why wasn’t it happening now?

Why did he want to discover more about her? And why the hell was he experiencing an overwhelming need to tumble her down and cover her soft body with the hot, hard heat of his own until she cried out his name? She might currently be glaring at him as if he were the devil incarnate, but her anger didn’t quite mask her own desire. No. Not at all. The faint flush of her cheeks and the darkening of her spectacular grey eyes was a pretty reliable indicator that she was far from immune to him. And since they were stuck with each other until the snow melted, perhaps it might be a good idea to capitalise on that potent sexual chemistry.

They had to do something to occupy themselves during the long hours ahead and tomorrow was Christmas Day—a holiday which up until now had always been something he just needed to survive, but now he could see the possibility of transforming it into something else.

Something erotic.

The clench in his gut was sweetly pervasive until the split second when he noticed the flash of vulnerability which had crossed her pale face and silently he remonstrated with himself, forcing himself to listen to reason.

You don’t have to have sex with her. You just have to provide shelter until the weather breaks and get through the next few hours.

‘I’ll show you where you can sleep,’ he said tightly.

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