Christmas with a Billionaire: Billionaire under the Mistletoe / Snowed in with Her Boss / A Diamond for Christmas. Maisey Yates
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Although the sudden burst of happy laughter in the hallway, and raised excited voices, finally spurred her into action. She hastily got down from the table and refastened her blouse with fingers that shook slightly.
There was nothing she could do about her flushed cheeks, over-bright eyes or her slightly swollen and sensitive lips, but she picked up the black velvet band from the floor before pulling the wildness of her loosened curls back up into the confines of a ponytail.
Only just in time too, as a woman appeared in the doorway. A tall and beautiful woman with silky dark hair, shoulder-length, and eyes that sparkled a deep, warm green. Her patrician features more than a little familiar.
A woman who could only be Max’s sister, Janice.
The woman and her daughter, who weren’t expected to arrive until tomorrow.
Janice gave a warm smile. ‘I’m sure my brother will introduce the two of us once he’s managed to extricate himself from my husband and overenthusiastic daughter,’ she drawled affectionately.
Sophie frowned at the mention of Janice’s husband.
Wasn’t it because his sister and her husband were having marital problems that Janice and Amy were joining Max in England for Christmas?
‘Is that …?’ Janice stepped further into the kitchen, very slender and elegant in a thick cream cable-knit sweater and black fitted jeans. ‘My goodness, it is gingerbread,’ she murmured wonderingly as she looked down at the biscuits on the cooling tray on top of the kitchen table.
‘Janice …’
‘Max, there are gingerbread angels and snowmen!’ She turned excitedly to her brother as he spoke to her from the kitchen doorway, a little girl held securely in his arms. A beautiful little girl, who bore such a likeness to her uncle she could only be Amy. ‘I’d forgotten just how evocative smells can be.’ Janice gave a shake of her head as tears now glistened in her eyes. ‘Max, do you remember—?’
‘Yes,’ he grated harshly.
Warningly, it seemed to Sophie.
Not that she had dared look at him again after that first glance, his expression grimly unapproachable, the green of his eyes as chilling as an Arctic wind.
‘I haven’t smelt gingerbread like this in years,’ Janice continued softly, completely undaunted—or simply unaware?—of her brother’s lack of warmth. ‘Not since the Christmas Mum and Dad died. Can you believe it’s been sixteen years, Max?’ she added sadly.
‘Yes,’ he rasped harshly.
Sophie looked sharply across the room at Max. She had thought the loss of her mother six months ago was bad enough, but his parents had both died at Christmas sixteen years ago? At the same time? Which surely must mean that their deaths couldn’t have been due to illness or natural causes?
Which also explained why Max had said he hadn’t smelt gingerbread baking ‘in a long time’? And the reason he had looked so grim when he’d arrived home earlier and smelt it in his apartment.
Could his parents’ deaths also be the reason that Max usually chose not to celebrate Christmas?
It would certainly explain his aversion to anything to do with the festive season.
As it explained why he chose to go skiing every year rather than join in any of the Christmas festivities.
And why he didn’t possess so much as a single Christmas decoration, let alone a tree.
And the fact that he’d had to ask Sally to have ‘Christmas delivered’ to his apartment.
Perhaps Max wasn’t such a bah humbug, after all, and it was more the case of the festive season holding such sad memories for him that he preferred to avoid everything to do with it?
Sophie felt slightly guilty now for judging him without knowing all the facts. If he had just explained—
But of course Max wouldn’t explain himself to her. Why should he? She had been employed by him, and was being paid by him, to ‘deliver Christmas’ to his apartment, and then only because of the expected arrival of his sister and niece. Of course Max wouldn’t feel a need to explain himself to someone whom he considered merely an employee.
Although quite where their earlier intimacies now put them in regard to maintaining that distance, Sophie had no idea!
She glanced across at Max from beneath lowered lashes, her heart giving a leap in her chest as she recalled the feel of his lips against hers, along the column of her throat and across the bared tops of her breasts. Breasts he had also cupped and held, caressed. Her nipples tingled now, tightening inside her red satin and lace bra, just thinking of the intimacy of those caresses.
She had also told him she was wearing a matching red satin thong, for goodness’ sake.
Her cheeks flushed just thinking about that part of their conversation …
In the circumstances, it really was just as well that she had persuaded Sally into not revealing that Sophie was her cousin!
Max gave her a hard and mocking grin, as if he were fully aware of some of her thoughts before he turned his attention back to his sister. ‘Perhaps we should just make the introductions, Janice?’
‘Oh. Of course.’ His sister dragged her gaze away from the gingerbread to turn and look at Sophie with curious eyes. ‘I’m Janice Hilton, Max’s sister.’ She smiled warmly at Sophie. ‘And that’s my daughter, Amy, in Max’s arms. And this—’ she turned to smile at the tall, blond-haired man who had just entered the kitchen and moved to stand beside her before draping his arm about her shoulders ‘—is my husband, Tom.’
‘I think Sophie has already guessed that much,’ Max drawled ruefully.
‘Sophie?’ Janice echoed lightly, Max knowing by the sharpness of the curiosity in his sister’s avid green gaze that she was more than a little interested in knowing who—or what—Sophie was to him.
Which was a question Max would also like an answer to.
Until tonight he would have said that Sophie was a temporary—intrusive!—and paid addition to his household. An irritating necessity if he was going to give Janice and Amy a family Christmas with all the trimmings.
Until tonight?
Be honest with yourself, at least, Hamilton, he inwardly berated himself; he had found Sophie intriguing from the beginning. Had found her conversation amusing as well as interesting. And although she bore absolutely no resemblance to those model-beautiful women he usually dated, Sophie undoubtedly had her own attractions.
Her eyes were such a deep and dark brown a man could drown in them, for one.
Those freckles across her nose and cheeks were a temptation to kiss them, for another.
Her lips were full and pouting, and extremely kissable.
As for the creaminess of her breasts …!
Max hadn’t been able to resist kissing them either. Or touching them. As for caressing them? Sophie’s breasts were extremely responsive, the nipples plump and full. As delicious and succulent, in fact, as two ripe berries, and Max had wanted to gorge himself on them.
The fact that Sophie’s lips were red and slightly puffy from the heat of their kisses, with a slight redness on her chin and down her neck, thanks to the five o’clock shadow on his own jaw, was evidence of how close he had come to doing exactly that.
Lord knew how far things would have gone between the two of them if Janice and family hadn’t arrived so unexpectedly.
Which raised the question—what was Tom doing here with his wife and daughter?
Not that Max wasn’t pleased to see his brother-in-law, or that Janice and Tom were so obviously back together, because he couldn’t have been happier on both those counts. He had always liked Tom, and it had to be