The Billionaire's Christmas Cinderella

by Carol Marinelli

  ‘No, I’m very glad that you did. Leave that with me.’

  She nodded, rather hoping that their little talk was over. ‘Thanks,’ she said, and stupidly went to stand.

  To see him out.

  To say goodbye.

  But he took he wrist and pulled her back down onto the couch. ‘Why were you crying?’

  ‘I already told you,’ she said, and pulled back her arm.

  ‘No...’ He dismissed her excuse. ‘I think it was a bit more than Bernard and Barb, and you’ve made it very clear your tears have nothing to do with me. So why were you crying?’

  ‘Why do you care?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he admitted. ‘But I do.’

  And so she answered in part. ‘Because I’ll never be on Broadway.’

  ‘Not you as well,’ he groaned. ‘I thought that was Merida’s beef.’

  ‘No.’ Even in the midst of her tears he still made her smile. ‘It’s more that I could never be. The only real talent that I’ve got is putting babies to sleep.’

  ‘There are an awful lot of new mothers who would kill for your skills, although, for what it’s worth, I think there’s an awful lot more to you than that.’

  ‘There really isn’t.’

  ‘How about that you go into people’s homes at presumably a tumultuous time and make everyone’s lives that much better? You certainly have here.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She didn’t know what to say now. ‘I think I’m just tired.’

  ‘Of course you are,’ Abe said. ‘Getting up to other people’s babies every damn night.’

  ‘It’s my job to do so, and I happen to love my work, though it has been a busy year,’ Naomi admitted. ‘I took on an extra client in the summer when I should have taken time off, but it was her second child and I’d been there for the first. And then there were twins before Ava, but the mother delivered early. I just haven’t had a break. I’m sure that I’ll be fine in a few weeks. I’m taking a decent slice of time off after this,’ Naomi said.

  ‘How long?’

  ‘I actually haven’t lined up another job. Deliberately.’ She had told no one her plans. In fact, ‘plans’ sounded a rather too grand a word for the tentative ideas that had been taking shape, but he was such bliss to speak to. He just topped up her glass and it felt as if he stopped the clocks too, for time ceased to matter when Abe was around. ‘I think it’s time to find somewhere more permanent to live. And, when I do, maybe work more locally...’ She shook her head. ‘I’m not sure. I just want...’ She didn’t finish or she’d start crying again, but both knew she just wanted a home. ‘I don’t know where to start looking, though,’ Naomi admitted. ‘I’ve lived in so many places.’

  ‘You’ll know it when you see it,’ Abe said. ‘I had an apartment, not far from here. In fact...’ He hesitated. It was actually the apartment Candice was in now, but they had never lived there together and it truly wasn’t relevant here. ‘I still have it, it’s on Madison.’

  ‘Nice,’ Merida said.

  ‘Perhaps, but it also happens to be ten minutes from my father’s and about five minutes from work...’ He didn’t know how best to explain how confined he’d felt by the exclusive address and the old money vibe of the Upper East Side. ‘I just wanted away. I came across this old brownstone in Greenwich Village and I knew straight away that it was where I wanted to live, though when Jobe got wind of it you’d have thought I was moving out to the slums.’

  Naomi laughed.

  ‘I just needed a space that wasn’t linked to the Devereux name. And a place that was mine. It’s more laid back compared to here,’ he explained. ‘Jobe said I was buying a pile of trouble and admittedly the renovations took a while...’

  ‘You did them?’

  ‘Hell, no, but when I walk in that door I know I’m home. You need that.’

  She nodded.

  And they weren’t talking about fancy addresses, there was no need to clarify that.

  ‘I go to buy something,’ Naomi said, ‘and I have to think if it will fit in my case, or if I’ll have to put it in storage.’

  ‘No more,’ he said, and she nodded, relieved to have voiced it, and relieved that she had finally voiced her other thoughts.

  ‘How did you meet Merida?’ Abe asked. ‘Was it when you shared a flat?’

  ‘No, we were at the same school for a year,’ Naomi said. ‘I was moved on, but we kept in touch. She wanted to be an actress and I wanted to be a paediatric nurse but the teacher said we were both dreaming.’

  ‘Why?’ He frowned. ‘I get they might say that about acting...’

  ‘I was very behind at school,’ Naomi said. ‘I was never going to make the grades to get into nursing.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound as if you had the most stable schooling.’

  ‘You make me sound like a horse.’ She aimed for a smile but he refused to allow her to joke her way out of it.

  ‘Listen.’ He took her face in his hands and his thumbs brushed at the tears but they kept spilling again. It felt to her as if he had tapped a river, it felt as if all the hurt she held inside he allowed to come out. And where most ran from raw emotion, he fostered it. ‘I’m sure that if a nurse is what you want to be then you could do it.’

  Still held by his hands, she shook her head, because she didn’t want to be a nurse any more.

  ‘I don’t know what I want,’ Naomi admitted.

  Except that wasn’t quite true, because right here, right now she wanted his kiss.

  Was it him she wanted, Naomi briefly wondered, or just contact?

  And when she met his eyes the answer was simple.

  Him.

  Yet even when it was held by his hands she shook her head and he knew that she was thinking about Candice.

  ‘We broke up.’

  ‘Abe?’ Naomi wanted to believe him, and to her shame she was so hollowed out with want that she almost didn’t care, yet she needed more if she was to believe him.

  ‘It’s over,’ he said. ‘I told her yesterday and my father tonight.’

  And it was enough clarification, enough that she bent her own rules.

  He first kissed her cheek and she closed her eyes at the bliss of contact. His mouth was soft and the room felt very still as he held her so steady. Then she tasted her own tears on his lips as his mouth softly brushed them. It was a kiss that made things better, even if in the morning it might just have made things a whole lot worse.

  His tongue slipped in and was met by hers as they toyed with each other. It was a kiss that made her burn and a kiss that somehow soothed. She felt a connection like she never could have envisaged. His scent was faint-inducing, and there was the bergamot, and the wood sage, and now she inhaled a juniper note, and she felt she knew him more now.

  His hands left her face but the contact remained as his mouth dizzied her. She felt the cool of the air on her back and it registered that he had pulled down her zip, then she felt the warmth of his palm on her back.

  Abe wanted her in bed, yet he made no move to stand because he wanted to kiss her some more.

  For Abe, nights necking on a sofa had never happened, let alone were long gone, but he was pulling her dress down over her arms, desperate just to feel her.

  ‘Abe...’ She wasn’t protesting, but before his kiss toppled her she wanted access to skin and she was pleasingly un-shy and unabashed as he undid her bra, for she was too busy working on the buttons of his shirt.

  The crush of him against her chest was delicious. The force of his kiss was denied to her mouth and Naomi closed her eyes as his mouth tasted her breast, wetting and teasing one nipple and then blowing it cold, and when she ached for more of this pleasure he came back to her mouth.

  She never let herself get out of hand, but she let him take her to that place now. His kiss pressed her back onto the sofa and the w
eight of him atop her was sublime.

  He looked down at her, and he wanted her stripped beneath him, but he could not resist one more taste so he kissed her again, a deep, sexy kiss as his hips pressed in.

  Her hand pushed at his shirt, and finally he shrugged it off, and he felt the dig of her fingers in his back then the flat of her palms exploring him.

  It was their second kiss, yet their mouths were adoring each other’s and they were locked in the same urgent tune. He could feel the passion beneath and he pressed in hard. They were a tangle of legs and hot, dirty kisses, and what she lacked in experience was made up for by the instinct that pressed them on.

  She felt his hand on her legs, pushing the skirt of her dress up, and she didn’t care—in fact, she wanted the same.

  Then that same hand moved between them, slipping between their melded bodies, and he lifted his hips and unbuckled his belt.

  ‘Abe...’

  That word reminded him she was a virgin for, God knew, his body had forgotten. And then he felt her hand there, at first to halt him, but then she just felt him for a moment, hot and hard beneath her palm.

  ‘Oh...’ Her word came out in a shudder and she held him some more, feeling the velvety smooth skin and the strength beneath.

  She was on the edge of somewhere she had never been, so Abe got back to kissing her, deep, urgent kisses, so that she did not lose her pace.

  And he wasn’t taking her, she was half-dressed and panties on, but he was pressing into her and she was lifting into him.

  He’d never so urgently pursued another’s pleasure, but he demanded it now.

  Abe took her hands and held them over her head and he kissed her hard and felt her resisting almost the pleasure she was on the very edge of. And she rued being a virgin for a second, only because had she not been, she knew he would have taken her then.

  Abe would have taken her hard and fast on the sofa and she would have let him, and with that thought, with Abe pressing into her, she shattered. He felt her tense and the heat of her face on his cheek and the exquisite moan, and he held on for dear life not to join her, just kissing her red face and smoothing her damp hair, now plastered to her cheeks, and telling himself the wait would be worth it.

  ‘Come on,’ he told her, and she heard his voice breathless, and he stood, tucking himself in. ‘Come to my—’

  ‘Abe...’

  She was a little stunned as she sat up to find that the lights were on, for locked with him it had felt as if the world had gone the most decadent shade of black.

  It was supposed to have been a kiss, except she’d been lost in the moment and drunk in the heat that they’d made together. It surprised her how normal the room looked. The glasses on the table were upright, the lights were on, and everything was in place, except a thoroughly rumpled Naomi, who he now wanted in his bed.

  Except she wasn’t ready for that and in truth wasn’t sure that she’d ever be.

  Naomi came with a heart attached.

  She pulled her dress up over her breasts, just a little embarrassed to be half-naked now.

  His shirt was on the floor, and though his trousers were done up again, she could see how aroused he was; more, she could feel that energy still in the room. She wanted to take his hand, she wanted to be led to his bed, but she did not want the pain that would surely follow in the days or weeks to come.

  ‘I can’t, Abe,’ Naomi said. ‘I can’t just be a distraction.’

  ‘Where did that come from?’

  ‘Because I am one,’ Naomi hotly responded. Abe was hurting tonight, she knew. He was raw about his father and breaking up with Candice and she was a safe bet because in a few weeks she’d be gone.

  And when she had, Abe Devereux would be someone she’d hear about in passing through her friend, or maybe see on the rare occasion that she was here.

  And he’d forget her, of course he would.

  Whereas she’d be left with a broken heart.

  ‘Abe, I’ve never been a relationship. Until you I hadn’t kissed anyone, let alone slept with anyone.’

  Clearly it didn’t daunt him. ‘Isn’t it time to change that?’

  Ah, but though she might be innocent Naomi wasn’t a fool so she pressed him a little. ‘I doubt we’re talking relationships.’

  He gave a half-laugh. ‘Naomi, I’m terrible at them.’

  ‘So you mean sex?’

  It sounded clinical and it might even have felt it, except he didn’t answer from a distance. Instead, he came and sat down beside her and did the nicest thing. He helped as she wrangled her arms back into her dress.

  ‘How about,’ Abe said, and for her he raised his game, ‘when you’re done here, I take you away?’

  ‘Away?’

  ‘To Cabo.’

  She frowned, never having heard of it.

  ‘Cabo San Lucas,’ he said, and he told her about his Mexican hideaway and private stretch of white beach, and it was everything, he decided, that she deserved. ‘The weather will be beautiful,’ he told her, ‘the sea like glass...’ He was persuading her yet warming to the idea himself, and so used was he to getting his own way with women that it took a moment to realise she was shaking her head.

  ‘And we’ll sleep together?’ Naomi checked.

  ‘No,’ he said immediately, his voice dripping with sarcasm. ‘We’ll have separate rooms and play charades at night. Of course we’ll sleep together.’

  There was a part of her that wanted to shoot her hand up, and shout, Me, please, but there was a deep scar that ran through her heart, a birth trauma almost, except it hadn’t faded with time.

  And it ached its warning now.

  It throbbed in her chest and it reminded her of the hurt she’d endured and warned her there could be so much more to come.

  ‘Then the answer’s no.’

  He didn’t get it, he just didn’t. ‘I’ve told you, I’m no good at relationships.’

  ‘Then you’re no good for me.’

  It was the hardest thing she had ever said. The hardest thing, but sex to Abe was as easy as flicking on the light on the way in.

  She, on the other hand, would be left carrying that light—a torch named Abe.

  And, no, Abe didn’t get it. One minute she’d been hot in his arms, the next he was practically offering her a honeymoon vacation, yet still she’d pulled back. ‘You’ll be telling me soon that you’re saving yourself for marriage.’

  She’d never really thought of it like that, but that was what Abe did—he made her explore who she was. ‘I suppose I am.’

  He looked suitably aghast.

  ‘I don’t know if it will ever happen for me, Abe, but, yes, I guess I am waiting for that. The simple fact is that I can’t just loan out my heart in return for a fortnight in Cabo San... Cabo San Wherever.’

  Even if she’d love to.

  Even if every inch of her body felt as if it were screaming in silent protest as her decision was made. ‘I don’t expect you to understand.’

  He didn’t.

  Because the worst part of no was that both their bodies screamed yes.

  There was the scent of sex in the air and her nipples were thick beneath her dress and her eyes were still glassy from her climax.

  His weren’t!

  ‘I’m sorry if I...’ she attempted as she saw him to the door.

  ‘Stop apologising,’ he snapped.

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘’Night, Naomi,’ Abe said for the second time in her quarters, but he wouldn’t be leaving with his tail between his legs.

  This time he kissed her goodnight.

  It would seem that that was allowed in her virgin world.

  A deep, hot, passionate kiss and he prised her mouth open with his tongue, and when her hands shot to his head as she kissed him back, he removed one and
moved it, unresisting, down and held it over his thick length.

  Now he pulled his mouth away.

  And, yes, he left her wanting.

  As was his intention.

  And by the time he’d made it to his bedroom for the first time Abe did have a wish list—Naomi Hamilton in his bed by Christmas.

  Pleading!

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  BERGAMOT, WOOD SAGE, juniper and vanilla.

  His delectable scent was in the hall and still on the stairs as she made her way downstairs the next morning.

  Naomi had deliberately come down late in the hope of avoiding him.

  It would seem that she hadn’t.

  Naomi felt like a sniffer dog picking up scent as she headed to the kitchen. She wanted to scuttle back up the stairs but pressed on, determined to keep to her usual routine and not appear to be avoiding him, but when she got there, unusually, thankfully, Naomi found that the door was closed.

  She could hear Abe’s low voice coming from behind it, and she quickly realised it was closed for a reason.

  Abe must be speaking to Barb about Jobe.

  She headed back upstairs, made coffee in her little kitchen and found a muesli bar lurking at the bottom of her bag, and decided that would just have to do.

  It didn’t.

  And she couldn’t hide in this room, avoiding him.

  Merida wasn’t due back for ages and would hardly demand that she be here, waiting for her, so Naomi decided to head out.

  She walked over to the park and once there she replayed last night over and over in her mind.

  It had been breath-taking.

  Literally.

  Even now, she stopped walking, simply recalling last night.

  Naomi had always just pushed down that side of her. She had shied away from boys and later men, yet she was herself with Abe. Despite his fierce reputation, despite his bad name. Not once, for even a second, did she feel anything other than safe around him.

  Safe enough to be herself around him. To discover herself even.

  She was quite sure she should be feeling embarrassed and awkward, but she wasn’t. She felt sad, about the conversation taking place in the house, and sad for herself that she had gone and fallen for a man who would give her more than she had ever had, and who would leave her with nothing.