Page 16 of Cinderella's Christmas Secret 1
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
MAXIMOSHUTTHEdoor 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 indefinable 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 tohim. 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 dosomethingto 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.
‘I’m sure that won’t be necessary,’ she said, equally tightly. ‘I’m not planning on staying any longer than I need to.’
‘You’ll stay until it’s safe to return and that certainly won’t be before nightfall.’
Their eyes met in a silent clash of wills, until eventually she backed down and nodded.
‘Then it seems I have no choice.’
‘That’s right,’ he agreed softly. ‘You don’t. Now come with me.’
Hollie felt chewed up as she trailed behind Maximo up the curving stone staircase which led to the upstairs floor of the chilly castle. She was scared. Scared of the way he made her feel. Scared of wanting to touch him instead of needing to push him away. Because he didn’t want her.He didn’t want her.And that was something she shouldn’t forget. His dismay on discovering she was trapped here might have been almost comical to observe, if it hadn’t been so hurtful. But she guessed that nobody could ever accuse Maximo Diaz of being duplicitous. He was honest to a fault, which had to be a good thing. And since she was here—maybe she just needed to make the best of it. To look on the bright side. She pressed her lips together.
For both their sakes.
He was pushing open the door of one of the bedrooms and as Hollie stepped inside she was aware of a further drop in temperature. The bed was bare and the room largely empty—there was nothing in the way of decorative furnishing to make it seem inviting or attractive. It certainly wasn’t going to be a fairy-tale Christmas Eve, not by any stretch of the imagination.
‘You’ll find linen in the big wooden cupboard just along the corridor,’ he advised, his dark brows knitting together, as if he had just noticed her shiver. ‘You’re cold?’
‘A bit.’
‘Let me see what I can do. I’ve never seen anything quite so archaic as what passes for a heating system here.’
‘Don’t you have any staff with you?’ she questioned curiously.
Black eyebrows were elevated in mocking query. ‘You think I travel around with a retinue of servants?’
