Page 81 of 2 Books in One Bundle

‘They’re still gifts.’ He held her gaze. ‘Everything about you is a gift.’

The pink in her cheeks deepened. ‘You’re a shameless flatterer.’

‘Come on.’ He tugged insistently on her curl again. ‘Tell me something about you that I don’t know.’

‘Well, okay.’ She bit her lip, clearly thinking. Then she said, ‘I actually hate Christmas.’

He couldn’t help smiling at that. ‘The Christmas CEO who hates Christmas? Sounds like the beginnings of a romantic comedy.’

‘It’s true,’ she protested, smiling too. ‘I hate it. But not because it’s David’s business. It’s more because I don’t think I’ve ever had a proper Christmas the way other people have it.’

He hadn’t ever had a proper Christmas either. He’d never known his parents and the foster parents he’d been placed with had all been various shades of uninterested, distracted and/or outright abusive. There had never been Christmas trees in his childhood. Never been presents either. Not for Christmas and none at all for his birthday, if anyone bothered to remember it. In fact, his childhood had been nothing but a hard slog.

Until he’d met Cleo. He’d been working in a garage helping out as a mechanic’s assistant when her father had brought his expensive Porsche in for repair. Cleo had been with him and she’d been beautiful, so soft and delicate; he’d never seen anything like her. They’d got talking and she’d been as taken with him as he with her and they’d swapped numbers. Then they’d meet up in secret, since Cleo wasn’t allowed out at night. It had turned physical very quickly and then, because they were sixteen and hadn’t been careful, she’d fallen pregnant. Then everything had gone to hell.

In her and their child he’d seen the family he’d never had and so he was desperate to hold on to them both. He was earning money in the garage. He was sure he could support them. But Cleo’s parents had found out about the pregnancy and had forbidden him to see her, though that hadn’t stopped him from trying. He’d turned up on their doorstep one night, insisting on seeing her and generally making a pest of himself. Even threats to call the police hadn’t worked. So Cleo herself had at last come to the door and she’d looked him in the eye, telling him that he needed to leave. That there was no future for them. She didn’t love him, she didn’t want him and frankly it was best for their baby if he wasn’t in their lives.

Back then he’d thought her father had turned her against him, so full of uncontrollable teenaged fury, he’d returned with a baseball bat and had taken it to her father’s Porsche, smashing the headlights and the front panels, and the windscreen.

He’d been stupid. Her father had called the police, he’d been charged, and a non-molestation order had been issued, forbidding him from contacting Cleo or her family. And he’d lost his son. He probably would have lost him anyway, but that one moment of rage had guaranteed it.

So he’d decided to fight, to work hard, accumulate as much money and power as he could, since if you were rich and powerful you could do whatever you wanted. And then he’d get his son back.

It hadn’t worked out that way, but he’d never regretted the decision he’d made to leave Luke where he was. He couldn’t find happiness for himself, but he could give it to his son and so he had.

That had been the last time he’d ever given anyone anything. Until Isla.

‘What made it different?’ he asked, watching her pretty face.

‘We didn’t have a Christmas tree,’ she said. ‘Or presents. Instead we’d donate our time to various charities, so I did a lot of volunteering in homeless shelters or children’s charities. I didn’t mind that, and I didn’t mind not receiving presents. It wasn’t about getting “things”. It was just... Christmas is about spending time with your family, but David never spent any time with me.’ Her finger drew another small circle on his chest, her attention on it. ‘That’s what I always wanted for Christmas. Just some time with him where we felt like a family. But he never gave it. I kept thinking that maybe if I’d been different somehow, he might have treated me like a daughter, but...he never did.’ She gave a faintly bitter laugh. ‘I was never allowed to call him Dad, for example. He adopted me legally, but we weren’t a family.’

Orion could hear the hurt in her voice and it made him want to growl. And in fact, the more he heard about David the more he wanted to fly all the way to the UK and give the man the sharp edge of his tongue. Or perhaps a punch in the face. He didn’t know what David had been thinking to adopt a young girl and then deprive her of the one thing she wanted most. It was cruel and thoughtless.

He dropped her curl and touched her cheek instead, stroking her silky skin. ‘Is that what you wanted?’ he asked softly. ‘A family?’

She leaned into his touch, the unconscious movement making his chest tighten. ‘Yes. That’s why I was going to marry Gianni. David said that it was important that the future CEO have a family since Kendricks’ is a family company, and that it was time I started mine. He wanted me to marry someone within the company too, and he thought Gianni and I would be a good fit.’

The subject of Gianni made Orion want to growl yet again. ‘You didn’t want him,’ he said, unable to keep the possessive note from his voice.

Isla’s blue gaze looked up and met his. ‘No. You were right, I didn’t. I didn’t love him either. But I...hoped that maybe one day I would.’

He could see the truth in her eyes. Shehadwanted that.

‘A family is important to you?’ He didn’t know why the words felt as if they were echoing hollowly inside him.

She nodded. ‘I never had one of my own, Orion. I was given the taste of one. In fact, I had the taste of one twice, but... The first one didn’t work out and with David... Well, that wasn’t even a family. I was an employee, not a daughter.’

She deserves one, too, especially after David essentially sold her to you. And you can’t give it to her.

His chest felt unaccountably tight. He could see that now, how little Kendrick had cared for the daughter he’d adopted, for the person that she was. How he wanted an ideal to head his company, someone exactly like himself, not a living breathing woman with thoughts and feelings and desires of her own.

And you were complicit in that.

He didn’t like that thought. He didn’t like how regretful and vaguely ashamed of himself it made him feel. It didn’t help knowing he’d never give anyone a family let alone her either. And not because he couldn’t, but because he didn’t want to. He’d had a partner and a child once, and he’d wanted to keep both of them more than he’d wanted his next breath.

But Cleo and his child had been taken from him. Cleo by her parents and then by her own choice, and his child along with her.

He’d had his taste of a family and when he’d lost it, it had nearly broken him. He didn’t want to do it again, not for anyone.

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