‘Actually, there’s nowhere I need to be right now and I’d love a cup of coffee. But quickly,’ he amended. ‘Before both of us get any wetter.’
As he followed her up the narrow path Maximo told himself it wasn’t too late to change his mind. He could get his driver to speed out of town, return to his luxury hotel and lose himself in some work—maybe even call that model who’d been texting him for months. The Christmas elf would let herself into her little home, take off her dripping coat—and that would be that. She would be a little disappointed, yes, and even he might experience the briefest of pangs himself, but it would soon pass. He’d never met a woman he would miss if he never saw her again.
Dipping his head to enter the tiny house, he felt the icy temperature hit him. Did she notice his shoulders bunch against the chilly blast as he closed the door behind him?
‘I know. It’s freezing. I keep the heating off when I’m not here,’ she explained, giving a slightly nervous laugh as she switched on a tall lamp.
He didn’t need to ask why. She might claim to be nobly conserving energy as everyone was supposed to be doing these days, but he suspected the real reason was a lack of cash. Why else would she be doing more than one job and living in such humble surroundings? He looked around the room, observing the faded rug on the hearth and noticing that the thin curtains she drew across the window didn’t quite meet in the middle. Yet the cushions on the sofa looked home-made and a dark red lily in a pot on the table looked almost startling in its simple beauty. And something about the limitations of the room suddenly seemed achingly familiar to him, even though he had grown up in the north-west of Spain and this was England.
He felt the twist of his heart, for it was a long time since he had been anywhere which wasn’t five-star. He had embraced luxury for so long that he’d thought those impoverished memories had vanished into the dark abyss of time. Forgotten. For a long time he’d wanted to forget them—no, had needed to forget them—but now they came rushing back in an acrid stream.
He remembered the cold and the hunger. The proud need to survive without letting people know your sweater wasn’t thick enough, or that your boots had holes in them. He remembered the slow seep of water making his feet wet and cold. And wasn’t that the craziest thing of all—that you sometimes found yourself hungering for the things you no longer had, even if they were bad things? So that when he’d been poor he had craved nothing but wealth and now he had all the money he could ever use, wasn’t he guilty of sentimentalising the hardships of the past?
‘I’ll make you some coffee.’
Her soft words broke into his reverie, her expression criss-crossed with anxiety. Perhaps she’d seen the tension on his face and had interpreted it as disapproval. Maybe that was why she was looking as if she regretted her decision to invite him here. Had he appeared to be judging her, when he had no right to judge anyone?
Except maybe himself.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Get yourself dry first. The coffee can wait.’
‘But—’
‘Just do it,’ he reaffirmed harshly.
Unable—or unwilling—to ignore the deep mastery in the Spaniard’s voice, Hollie nodded and ran upstairs, her heart pounding with excitement, and started stripping off her sodden clothes, bundling her damp tights into the laundry basket and searching around for something suitable to wear. As her fingertips halted on her best woollen dress, she thought how weird it was to think of Maximo Diaz downstairs, because the only men who ever stepped over the threshold were tradespeople commissioned by her landlord to repair the aging and rather dodgy appliances.
She knew her self-contained behaviour meant she was often regarded as something of an oddity and there were a million reasons she gave to herself and others when asked why she didn’t socialise much. She didn’t have a lot of spare cash, because she was saving up to start her own business. She hadn’t lived here very long, so she didn’t know many people. These things were true, but weren’t the whole story. The real reason was that her solitary life made her feel safe and protected. It didn’t leave her open to pain or deception, or having her life messed up by somebody else.
Yet she had broken the habit of a lifetime and invited Maximo Diaz into her home, hadn’t she? A world-famous billionaire financier. She was surprised she’d had the nerve and even more surprised when he’d accepted. And now she had to go down and face him and say...what? What on earth did she have in common with the Spanish billionaire?
Yet even though part of her was regretting her impulsiveness, she couldn’t deny the slow curl of excitement which was unfurling somewhere low in her stomach. Was it wrong to feel this way about someone she barely knew? She stared in the mirror, her hand automatically reaching for something to tie her hair up, but at the last minute her hand fell back and she left it loose and streaming down her back as she closed her bedroom door behind her.
The creak of the stairs should have warned him she was on her way back down but Maximo didn’t appear to have heard her and for a moment Hollie stood immobile on the foot of the stairs. And suddenly it was as though someone had waved a magic wand and filled her ordinary little sitting room with unexpected life and colour, and Maximo Diaz was at the blazing heart of it.
He had lit the fire. Removed his smart suit jacket and put it on the sofa to coax a blaze from the sometimes stubborn little wood-burning stove. Behind the small glass doors, orange flames were licking upwards from the applewood logs and already a blanket of heat was beginning to seep out into the room. Had she thought that a man so rich and so privileged would be unwilling to get his hands dirty? Yes, she had. But it was his stance which surprised her most, for he was sitting back on his heels on the old hearthrug as if he were perfectly comfortable to find himself there. He seemed lost in thought as the flames flickered shadows over his aristocratic profile.
Hollie felt another ripple of excitement whispering over her skin—a sensation as unsettling as that low clench of heat unfurling inside her. She knew she ought to say something but she didn’t want to break the spell. At least, not yet. Because surely any minute now he would come to his senses. He would suddenly realise that his driver was waiting in the car outside and it was time to excuse himself.
Silently, she went into the kitchen and made a pot of coffee, which she carried back into the sitting room, and when he glanced up and saw her, something unrecognisable gleamed in the ebony abyss of his eyes. Something which made her feel as shivery as before, as if she were standing outside in the rain again.
Was she imagining it?
Was she imagining the glint of approval as he ran his narrow-eyed gaze over her?
‘Come and sit by the fire,’ he said.
His rich voice washed over her like dark silk, as Hollie acknowledged what sounded like a direct order. Did he always assume such an air of rightful dominance, she wondered—and was it wrong to find that more than a little exciting? She put the tray down and sank onto the floor beside him and wondered if she was getting herself into something outside her experience, which a sensible person should steer clear of. But she was cold, the fire was hot and the coffee smelt unbearably good. And surely she wasn’t misguided enough to think that Maximo Diaz was actually going to make a pass at her!