The Billionaire's Christmas Cinderella

And of course, there were friends she had made along life’s way, but there was no family.

None.

Zip.

‘My mother gave me up for adoption,’ Naomi said, ‘but it never happened.’

She tensed as she awaited the inevitable ‘Why?’ that even virtual strangers felt compelled to ask.

It just made her feel worse.

There were millions of families who wanted babies, surely?

Or, ‘What about your grandparents, didn’t they want you?’

It was hell having to explain that, no, her mother hadn’t fully relinquished her rights for a few years, which had held Naomi in the foster system. And, no, her grandparents hadn’t wanted to clear up their daughter’s mess.

And that, no, there would be no tender reunion between mother and daughter.

At the age of eighteen Naomi had tried.

But her mother had remarried and wanted no reminder of her rebellious past.

Thankfully, though, Abe didn’t ask.

Instead, he watched her pinched face and two lines deepen between her dark blue eyes like a castle gate drawing up in defence. He thought of his own loud, brash family and the dramas and fights at times. He even thought back to his mother, and while there were no warm memories there, still there was history.

He couldn’t fathom having no one.

Yet he did not pry.

And she seemed incredibly grateful for that.

He watched as she visibly shook off dark thoughts and pushed out a smile.

‘So what sort of an uncle do you want to be?’ Naomi asked.

Given what she’d just told him, he didn’t dust off the notion, instead he told her the truth. ‘I really haven’t given it much thought.’ Now he did. ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘I can’t imagine that she’d want for anything...’ He’d made very sure of that. But as he’d combed through the contract and ensured decent chunks of access for his brother, there had been no thought of where he himself might fit in.

‘I’d like to be...’ Who examined it? Abe wondered. Who actually gave consideration to the type of uncle they wanted to be?

She had made him do just that.

He could hear the spit and crackle of the fire as he gazed into it. Maybe he was feeling maudlin. It would be his father’s funeral soon after all, but on this cold December night, the most guarded and closed off of all the Devereuxes paused a while and thought of the uncle he would like to be.

‘I could take her for pizza now and then,’ he said.

‘And show her how to eat it?’

‘Yes,’ he agreed, but then shook his head. ‘I can’t think of anything else.’

‘That’s plenty to be going on with.’ Naomi smiled and when he tore off another slice, it seemed easier, rather than have him hand it to her, to join him on the floor. It simply did. And they sat side by side and spoke, not a lot but enough.

‘So,’ he asked, ‘you’re going to be looking after Ava?’

‘For a little while.’ She saw his frown. ‘I’m a maternity nanny.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘I generally stay between six and eight weeks with a new family before the permanent nanny takes over. I try to allocate four weeks between jobs, but it never really works out. Babies come early, as we saw today.’

‘Do you go home between jobs?’

‘No, I generally have a holiday. Sometimes if there’s a decent gap I might house-sit.’

‘Where’s home?’

‘The next job.’

‘So you’re a nomadic nanny.’

‘I guess.’ That made her laugh, she’d never really thought of describing it like that. ‘Yes.’

‘And you only look after newborns?’

She nodded.

‘That sounds like constant hard work.’

‘Oh, it is,’ Naomi agreed. ‘But I completely love it.’

Or she had.

Naomi didn’t share that with him, of course. She didn’t tell him that she was tired in a way she’d never been before. Not just from lack of sleep but from the constant motion of her lifestyle.

There was one slice of pizza left and both their hands reached for it at the same time.

‘Go ahead,’ Abe said.

‘No, we’ll share it.’

And when he tore it and there was one half a bit bigger, instead of not noticing, she looked at him until he tore a piece off the bigger half. ‘That’s fair now,’ Abe said.

‘Hmm.’

She was so full it shouldn’t matter, but she had never, ever tasted something so delicious, Naomi thought. Or was it the open fire keeping them warm as the snow fluttered outside the window, or was it adult company in the middle of the night that made it all so nice?

‘Do you ever have,’ Abe asked, ‘er, issues with the fathers?’

‘Gosh no.’ Naomi laughed. ‘I dress like this for work. I don’t think the mothers have anything to worry about.’

He begged to differ.

Scantily dressed Naomi wasn’t, but for Ethan there was no doubting her sensuality. It wasn’t just her curves or the very full mouth or ripple of dark hair and how it fell in her eyes, it was more subtle than that. Little things, like the way she covered herself when her robe gaped, and how she closed her eyes after each and every sip of cognac as she held it on her tongue for a moment, and the lick of her lips when she’d first glimpsed the pizza.

Yet, he mused, the mothers wouldn’t have anything to worry about.

She was nice.

Moral.

The sort you would trust your baby to.

And for Abe she had made this hellish night so much better.

‘Do you ever get asked to stay on?’ Abe asked.

‘All the time.’ Naomi nodded and then took the last bit of her pizza and he waited, watching the column of her pale throat as she swallowed, before asking another question.

‘And do you ever consider it?’

‘Never.’

‘Ever?’ he checked, for she sounded so adamant.

‘Never, ever.’

‘Why not?’

She looked into the fire and wondered how to answer him. Naomi never told her employers her real reason for declining.

She would never even consider staying on. In fact, it was stipulated in the terms of her employment that a permanent nanny be signed to take over before Naomi commenced her role. And should that fall through, it was specified that an agency be used, for she would not be extending her contract.

No matter how wonderful the terms or the family.

Actually, because of just that.

‘Why don’t you stay in one place?’ he asked again, and now he did probe, because suddenly Abe really wanted to know some more about her.

‘I guess because I’ve never stayed in one place for very long. We do what we’re used to, I suppose. Revert to type...’

But he shook his head at her excuses.

Abe wasn’t buying it.

‘Why?’ he asked again.

He was brilliant at maths, but she didn’t add up.

Abe wasn’t one for sitting talking by a fire, but she’d made him feel at ease, she made the place feel like a home, yet she chose not to have one for herself.

‘You want to know why?’ She looked at him then, blue eyes on black as they held the other’s gaze.

‘Yes.’

‘Because I’d fall in love with the family,’ Naomi said. ‘And then one day it would be time for me to leave.’

Her blue eyes were serious, and there was no trace of tears, which told him this was no revelation, she had known this about herself for a very long while.

Naomi twisted his heart in a way no one else could, and a hell of a lot had tried.

She twisted a heart that Abe hadn’t even known he had.

He wanted to reach for her.

It was as instinctive as that.

And he wanted to chase her loneliness away in the only way he knew how.

Abe looked down at her full lips, all shiny from the food they had shared, and he wondered about her pepperoni kisses and just laying her down and taking her by the fire.

He wouldn’t.

Not just because he had a conscience.

Abe had long thought his conscience had been severed along with the umbilical cord.

No, he wouldn’t make a move because there was something so rare about tonight.

Something he didn’t want to jeopardise.

And there was nothing he wanted her to regret.

Naomi felt the burn of his gaze and she felt the shift in the atmosphere.

The way he first held her eyes and then the lowering of them as they took in her mouth had her body prickling with sudden awareness.

Naomi had never encountered a moment such as this.

Just for a second, when rational thought was suspended, she wanted to know the feel of his mouth, and there was a sense of certainty that if he leant forward a fraction, then so too would she.

There was silence, save for the hiss and occasional spit from the fire and the tick of a clock on the mantel, yet she could hear the roar of blood in her ears and she almost closed her eyes in anticipation of bliss.

But Abe did not move forward. Instead, she watched as he looked away and reached for his drink, and so inexperienced was she that Naomi was certain she’d misread things.

Jet lag, cognac, and an absolute dearth of knowledge about men told Naomi that she’d been imagining things, and had come very close to looking a fool. She blushed as she pictured herself sitting, eyes closed, and waiting for a kiss that would never come. Embarrassed, she told herself that if she was having fantasies about a playboy wanting her, then it really was time for bed.

‘I ought to get some sleep,’ Naomi said. ‘I’ve got a load of sightseeing planned for tomorrow.’

She stood and re-fastened the tie on her robe then reached for the box. ‘Leave it,’ he said, because if she bent down to retrieve it, he might just pull her in.

‘’Night, Abe.’

‘’Night.’

She made her way up the staircase and found her door, holding it together until in she was in the bedroom. But once there she sat on the bed and, head in hands, Naomi moaned.

Not because she’d foolishly thought he’d been about to kiss her. She could easily talk herself down from that—he was surely one of New York’s most eligible bachelors, and there was no way he’d be interested in her.

No, it was because of how she felt.

In the space of an hour Naomi knew she had developed a king-sized crush on Abe and that was something she didn’t want or need. Not just because she was here to work and nothing must get in the way of that, but because she was scared of being hurt.

Naomi guarded her heart with the same ferocity that she guarded her tiny charges.

There had been no dates, no romance in her life.

Her career took care of that, and she was grateful for it, especially on a night such as this.

She simply refused to open herself up to potential hurt.

CHAPTER THREE

ABE.

Naomi knew exactly where she was the very second that she awoke, and her first thought was about last night.

It was as if, in the hours since they had said goodnight, Abe Devereux had not left her mind.

Of course, she had surely left his.

She had overslept and it was after nine. No doubt he was at work now and not even thinking of their lazy fireside conversation on her very first night in New York.

Naomi was, though.

She’d heard of the Devereuxes before Merida had met Ethan. She had worked with a prominent family in London who’d had dealings with them. Now that she thought on it, Abe’s name had been bandied about at the time. And not fondly. He was the gatekeeper to the Devereuxes. The one you had to get past if you wanted a deal to go through.

And when it came to women, his reputation had been equally formidable.

That was all she knew.

When she’d been trying to work out the dynamics of family, in order to best help her friend, Naomi had tended to skim past the articles on Abe.

Still, she recalled enough to know that that it wasn’t just a case of lock up your daughters when Abe Devereux was around.

Lock up your wife too.

And possibly the nanny!

He had no scruples, that much she knew.

Determined not to dwell on him, Naomi reached for her phone and looked at the weather forecast.

Snow, with more snow to come.

It would have been so much easier to lie under the covers for a while longer but Naomi was very used to forcing herself out of bed and did so today. Her hair she left down and didn’t worry about make-up. She rarely did. There wasn’t much point when working with babies. She decided on black jeans and a huge silver-grey jumper as well as black boots, which she pulled on while sitting on her bed. Naomi topped it all off with her less-than-substantial jacket. Before heading out she would add a woolly hat along with her scarf, but for now she carried them down the stairs and headed into the kitchen.

And then nearly dropped them when she saw Abe sitting on a breakfast stool, drinking coffee and reading on his tablet.

‘Morning.’ Barb smiled. ‘How did you sleep?’

‘Very well,’ Naomi said. ‘In fact, I overslept.’

‘You’re not the only one,’ Barb said, and she glanced over at Abe, who didn’t look up. ‘You got a pizza in the night, I see. You could have called me for something to eat if you were hungry. Come and sit down and have some breakfast...’ And then she must have remembered that Naomi was actually a guest. ‘Or take a seat in the dining room and—’

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