Her eyes widened. ‘What...what are you talking about?’
‘I lied about the way you made me feel. I refused to acknowledge that you touched something deep inside me right from the start. And as that feeling grew, it scared me. It made me feel...powerless—and I had vowed that nobody was ever going to make me feel that way again.’ He expelled a long and ragged breath. ‘I thought when I took you to Spain—that if I could get back to the way I normally felt, I could deal with it. I was stupid enough and arrogant enough to believe I could just slot you into your own little compartment in my life and you would be content with that. But instead, I drove you away—’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You did.’
‘I shouldn’t have done that,’ he ground out.
‘No, you shouldn’t.’ She hesitated. ‘But we all say and do things we shouldn’t, often because we’re scared. You’re not the only one, Maximo.’
‘Hollie—’
‘No, wait.’ Her firm tone belied the sudden trembling of her lips and, suddenly, her voice was trembling too. ‘Let me confess something to you. Something I’m only just starting to realise—which is that I felt almost relieved when Cristina told me about the will.’
‘Relieved?’ he verified incredulously.
She swallowed and nodded. ‘Maybe it suited me to believe that all men were fundamentally liars and you could never trust any of them because that way...’ Her eyes had suddenly become very bright and her words tailed off as she looked at him.
‘That way you’d never get hurt?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Yes. I didn’t want to get hurt and I didn’t want my baby—’
‘Our baby.’
She bit her lip as if she was about to cry. ‘I didn’t want our baby to grow up the way I did,’ she said huskily. ‘In a world of broken promises and no real love. Or one-sided love. I thought it would be easier to go it alone than to do that. Because I want a real family, Maximo—not something which just looks like it from the outside—and I’m not going to accept anything less than that.’
This still sounded like bargaining to him and was not the instant capitulation Maximo had expected to hear. It still felt as if someone were squeezing his heart with their fist—and it hurt. It really hurt. He’d spent his whole life avoiding emotional pain and maybe that was why he had built up no resistance against it. Because suddenly he realised that if he wanted Hollie, he needed to really put his feelings on the line. To say things he’d never expected to hear himself say and make sure she knew he meant them.
‘I’ve never told you that I love you, have I, Hollie?’ he questioned unevenly. ‘I’ve never told you that first time I lay with you, it felt as if you were touching me with flame? As if you’d unleashed the lick of a potent fire which threatened to melt the coldness deep inside me, which I’d lived with for so long? I’d never felt that way before and it made me feel vulnerable. That’s what made me want to push you away.’
‘Maximo—’
But he silenced her with a shake of his head because he couldn’t allow her forgiving nature to let him off the hook. Not this time. ‘You withstood my appalling attitude when I discovered you were pregnant—as if I had nothing to do with it!’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘And then you created the kind of Christmas I’d never had and never thought I’d wanted, but it seems I did. For the first time in my life, I discovered what people meant when they talked about coming home. You are my home and I love you, Hollie, and I want to share my life with you and our baby.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s as complicated and as simple as that.’
‘Oh, Maximo,’ she said, so quietly he could hardly hear her.
He opened his arms to her and she went straight into them, like a bird arriving back on the nest after a long flight away. She buried her head against his shoulder and he held her until she had stopped crying and then he turned her face up towards him, tracing his fingertip over the tracks of her tears. ‘But I’ve been thinking about my bachelor apartment in Madrid and I’ve recognised it isn’t really suitable for a baby,’ he mused.
‘But it’s right next to that beautiful park.’
‘Sí, it is, but I got the distinct feeling that you’re not much of a city girl, which was one of the reasons you left London, wasn’t it?’
She shrugged. ‘I guess.’
‘When I took you there, I felt as if I had plucked a wildflower from a country meadow and transplanted it into a hothouse. Which is why I’m planning to fit into your world from now on.’
Her brow creased into a frown. ‘Now who’s talking in riddles?’
‘There’s something else you need to know,’ he said suddenly. ‘Something I should have told you a whole lot sooner. I was never planning to turn the castle into a luxury hotel. That was just an assumption local people made and I didn’t bother to correct them. I had planned to demolish it and turn it into a quarry—to use the valuable stone it was built on to build a railway track.’
‘You...you were planning to destroy hundreds of years of history just to build a railway?’
‘Don’t knock railways, Hollie, because we need them—now more than ever.’
‘Why didn’t you say something before? Why didn’t you tell anyone?’
‘Because I knew if that fact got out, it would drive up the purchase price.’
She punched a half-hearted fist against his chest. ‘That is the most hard-hearted thing I’ve—’
‘I’m a businessman, Hollie,’ he interrupted gently. ‘And that’s what businessmen do. I’d planned to stay there over Christmas because I knew it would provide the solitude I was seeking, and then to sell it in the new year. I wasn’t expecting to meet a woman in this one-horse town, and have my life turned upside down by her. You were the reason I couldn’t go through with the sale, not when I saw how much the place meant to you. I realised I couldn’t take a wrecking ball to the heart of this little community in order to steamroller another money-making scheme.’
‘Oh, Maximo,’ she said, lifting her left hand to her heart, making him notice she wasn’t wearing her engagement ring.
‘I have been thinking that we could keep the castle and turn it into our family home, if that’s what you wanted. Or maybe turn it into a hotel and buy a big house and garden for our family instead, if that’s what you’d prefer. I was waiting for the perfect moment to tell you, only perfect moments have a habit of being elusive. But those things could only happen...’ His words tailed off and somehow he was finding it impossible to keep the sudden break from his voice. ‘They could only happen if you still wanted me. If you still wanted to be my wife.’
Hollie put her arms around his neck and pressed her face very close to his as a powerful shaft of joy and gratitude shot through her. ‘Of course I still want to be your wife. Because I love you,’ she whispered. ‘I love you in a way I never thought possible, but I never believed you might feel the same way about me.’
‘Believe it now.’
‘I do.’ She looked into his black eyes and saw a look of true understanding, but she knew there was more to tell him. ‘When I thought you’d lied to me, I took the coward’s way out. I was trying to protect myself against hurt and pain. That’s why I sent you that text instead of waiting until you got here and talking it out with you, face to face.’
‘Querida—’
‘No, let me finish.’ That was easier said than done when tears were starting to stream down her cheeks—big and wet and salty and dripping on her sweater. ‘But the worst hurt and pain I’ve ever experienced was imaging a life without you...’ Once again her words tailed off and it took a couple of moments before she could catch her breath to speak. To articulate the emotion which Maximo had never been shown as a child and convince him that she meant every single word. They had both been damaged in the past, yes, but love was the true healer. Some might say the only healer. ‘I love you with all my heart, Maximo Diaz,’
she whispered. ‘And I’ll never stop loving you. Believe me when I tell you that, my darling.’
His slow smile was like the sun coming out and the glint in his eyes warmed Hollie’s heart. And when he caught hold of her she felt as if she’d been reborn. As if he were breathing new life in her, to join the life which grew beneath her heart. Blindly, her lips sought his and as they kissed, the salt water of their mingled tears slowly began to dry.
EPILOGUE
‘SLEEP IN HEAVENLY PEACE...’
The poignant last notes of the carol seemed to hover on the still night air as, fortified by a pitcher of mulled wine and a platter of home-made mince pies, the group of singers began to make their way down the hill towards the town. Hollie glanced up at the sky as several large, feathery icicles drifted against her cheek. The bright moon of last night was obscured by cloud as the first fat flakes of snow started falling. There should be a thick covering tomorrow, she thought with a glow of satisfaction, as she closed the door of her castle home.
In the wood-panelled hallway stood a tall fir tree, decked with plain white lights and tartan ribbons and topped with an organza-robed angel. There was another tree in the library, where tomorrow they would eat a late lunch, illuminated by as many candles as she could lay her hands on, as had now become a yearly festive tradition. Mistletoe dangled in the hallway and there were bunches of holly and fragrant green garlands strewn everywhere. In the kitchen, a large pot of Cantabrian mountain stew was quietly bubbling away—also a tradition. It was Christmas Eve and it was perfect.
‘Will Father Christmas come tonight, Papi?’ asked a little voice from behind her and Hollie turned around to see her sleepy son nestled snugly in his father’s arms.
‘Sí, he will come to visit every child in the world tonight,’ murmured Maximo, meeting her gaze over Mateo’s tousled black head. The smile he slanted her was full of promise and Hollie felt a delicious shiver of anticipation. ‘But only when you’re asleep. So I’m going to take you up to bed right now, which means morning will come faster.’
‘Oh!’
‘Would you like Mamá to come, as well?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘Come on, then. Vamos!’
Mateo giggled as, going past stone walls now covered with artwork, they mounted the beautiful curving stone staircase to his room, which was just along the corridor from their own. Silk rugs lay scattered over the floors, the draughty windows had been fixed and hung with sumptuous drapes and the building was gloriously warm. In fact, Hollie never stopped marvelling how cosy the place felt after its costly refurbishment, which had started just over three years ago.
Work had begun on the neglected castle soon after she and Maximo had vowed their love and commitment to each other, when they’d married in Trescombe’s small church, with its sweeping views of the sea. It had been a small and simple ceremony. Hollie had worn a long dress of fine white wool, with a hooded and feather-trimmed cape, to keep out the bitter winter winds. And although they had been well into January, and it hadn’t been Christmastime, her bouquet had nonetheless contained sprays of mistletoe, holly and ivy. Maximo’s friend Javier had been best man and the ancient church had been filled with the competing sounds of Spanish and English chatter—though the Spanish had undoubtedly been the louder of the two. It had been, everyone said, the most beautiful wedding.
And they had made their life here, in Devon. Maximo continued to run his empire from this rural base—though they kept apartments in New York and Madrid. But he hadn’t forgotten his vow to serve the community of his newly adopted home. He had completely refurbished the rather tatty hotel where first they’d met and the resulting five-star establishment now came under the umbrella of the Diaz group and brought many tourists flocking to the small town which nestled between moorland and sea. It had put Trescombe firmly on the map, although the narrow and winding access roads ensured that it was never going to be too much on the map, as Maximo drily commented.
Once their son had reached a year, Hollie had opened her tea shop—though someone else ran it for her. She’d fished out her best recipes and helped with batch cooking whenever she got the opportunity. She’d had the jaunty café painted in ice-cream colours of pink and lemon and spearmint, there was mismatched bone china on the tables, the waitresses wore old-fashioned frilly aprons and people came from miles around to taste her featherlight scones.
Her thoughts dissolving, Hollie sighed with pleasure as she watched her husband tuck his lookalike son into bed before going through the various night-time rituals they had evolved, including a very special one tonight, which involved the reading of Clement Clarke Moore’s famous Christmas Eve poem. And when the story had finished, and Mateo had fallen sound asleep, Hollie and Maximo crept from the room and into the corridor outside.
There she turned to him, looping her arms around his neck—unable to resist the temptation to plant a kiss on his lips and then to linger there. A feeling of excitement was bubbling up inside her and it was making her heart beat fast. There was something she needed to tell him and she wanted to find the right time, but for now she just kissed him.
‘Everything’s almost ready, I think,’ she whispered, drawing her mouth away from his. ‘The stockings have been hung—and Javier’s room is prepared. I’m sure he’s going to cause something of a stir when he arrives in Trescombe tomorrow morning.’
‘Like I did, you mean?’ he teased.
‘I doubt it. Javier’s not quite as arrogant as you,’ she advised primly.
He laughed as he curved the palm of his hand over her buttock. ‘And don’t you just hate that arrogance, mia belleza?’
‘Maximo.’ Her throat dried as his fingers continued on their inexorable journey. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
‘What does it look like I’m doing?’ His voice was careless, his arms strong. ‘I am picking up my beautiful wife to carry her into the bedroom, because I know that kind of macho thing turns her on, and once we get there I am taking her to bed, where I intend to ravish her.’
‘But it’s Christmas Eve! And we haven’t—’
‘Haven’t what?’ he questioned as he kicked open their bedroom door.
‘Finished wrapping all the presents, or—’
‘Shut up,’ he said gently, laying her down on the luxurious red velvet cover she’d bought in homage to their first night there. ‘And come here.’
He undressed her, slowly and reverently, and just before he entered her Hollie almost told him. But passion was a strange and beautiful thing. It stopped you having coherent thoughts. It blotted out the world so that all you could see and feel was that person in your arms, and all you could hear were soft moans which gradually became more frantic. And then it was happening, just as it always happened, and she was pulsing around him and his powerful body tensed for one exquisite moment before, finally, he collapsed into her arms.
Her heart was thumping heavily, her head was lying on his shoulder and all Hollie wanted was to go to sleep, but there wasn’t time. ‘Maximo...’ she murmured lazily.
‘Mmm...?’
‘I’ve got something to tell you.’
‘I know you have.’
‘It has nothing to do with wrapping presents.’
‘I know that, too.’
She rolled over to look at him and his black eyes were crystalline, hard and very bright. ‘What do you know?’
‘That you’re having my baby again.’
‘Yes, I am,’ she breathed, slumping back against the pillow. ‘But how did you guess?’
Maximo smiled, for this was the easiest question he’d ever had to answer. He didn’t even have to think about it. ‘Because I love you and because I know you. I know the look in your eyes and the smile on your lips when you have a new life growing inside you. And both of them are there now. Or at least, they were until a couple of minutes ago. Hollie, querida—what�
�s the matter?’ He frowned and smoothed his finger along the line of her quivering lip. ‘Why are you crying?’
‘You obviously don’t know me that well at all! I’m crying because I’m happy, of course!’
And Maximo laughed softly, a feeling of pure joy wrapping around his heart as he brought her soft body closer to his and kissed the top of her silken head.
He had once thought there was no such thing as a perfect moment, but he had been wrong. Because this—this—was the perfect moment. These days his life was filled with them.
‘And you spread happiness wherever you go, mia belleza,’ he said softly. ‘Happy Christmas, my beautiful wife.’
Coming next month
THE COST OF CLAIMING HIS HEIR
Michelle Smart
‘How was the party?’
Becky had to untie her tongue to speak. ‘Okay. Everyone looked like they were having fun.’
‘But not you?’
‘No.’ She sank down onto the wooden step to take the weight off her weary legs and rested her back against a pillar.
‘Why not?’
‘Because I’m a day late.’
She heard him suck an intake of breath. ‘Is that normal for you?’
‘No.’ Panic and excitement swelled sharply in equal measure as they did every time she allowed herself to read the signs that were all there. Tender breasts. Fatigue. The ripple of nausea she’d experienced that morning when she’d passed Paula’s husband outside and caught a whiff of his cigarette smoke. Excitement that she could have a child growing inside her. Panic at what this meant.
Scared she was going to cry, she scrambled back to her feet. ‘Let’s give it another couple of days. If I haven’t come on by then, I’ll take a test.’
She would have gone inside if Emiliano hadn’t leaned forward and gently taken hold of her wrist. ‘Sit with me.’
Opening her mouth to tell him she needed sleep, she stared into his eyes and found herself temporarily mute.
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