SNOWED IN WITH THE BILLIONAIRE by Caroline Anderson Page A

side and eyed him in disbelief,
trying not to laugh. ‘The Christmas pudding?’
    ‘Absolutely. You have to have a bit of holly on fire in the
middle of the Christmas pudding when it’s brought to the table. It’s the
law.’
    She suppressed a splutter of laughter. ‘Is that the same law
that says that lights must be white? My, aren’t we traditional?’ she teased, but
he just folded his arms and quirked a brow.
    ‘Absolutely. Christmas is Christmas. It has to be done
properly. Have you got a problem with that?’
    She smiled slowly. ‘Do you know what? You’ve got a good heart,
Sebastian Corder, for all you’re as prickly as a hedgehog. And no, I don’t have
a problem with that. Not at all.’
    He cleared his throat. ‘Good. Right. So, what’s next?’ he
asked, avoiding her eyes and fluffing up his prickles.
    Still smiling, she handed him the boxes of stock cubes and a
few other little things she’d found that could be wrapped, and they sat down at
the table, gave Josh a piece of paper and a pencil to do a drawing, and made
little parcels for the tree.
    She’d snapped off some twigs from a shrub outside the sitting
room window, and once the other parcels were done they made them into little
bundles to dangle on the tree.
    ‘Finger,’ he demanded, and she put her finger on the knot and
he tugged the gold ribbon tight, and made a loop to hang it by.
    ‘You’re good at this. You might have found your vocation.’
    ‘I have a vocation.’
    ‘What, making money?’
    He sighed and put the little bundle of sticks down on the
growing pile.
    ‘George—’
    She raised her hands. ‘It’s OK, I’m sorry, cheap shot.’
    ‘Yes, it was. And I don’t just spend it all on myself. I employ
a lot of people, and I support various charities and organisations—and I really
don’t need to explain myself to you.’
    She searched his eyes. ‘Maybe you do,’ she said softly. ‘Maybe
you always did, instead of just rushing off and doing.’
    ‘Yeah, well, there’s been a lot of water under the bridge since
then, and as you were kind enough to point out to me when I was asking about
David, it’s actually none of your business. Now, are we going to finish this
tree or not?’
    He got to his feet, scooping the little parcels up in his big
hands and heading out of the door. She grabbed the fir cones, ribbon and
scissors and stood up. He was never going to change, never going to compromise.
The word wasn’t even in his vocabulary.
    ‘Josh, come on, we’re going to decorate the tree,’ she told her
son, and he wriggled down off the chair and followed her into the sitting
room.

CHAPTER SIX
    ‘I T LOOKS GOOD .’
    She put the baby monitor on the coffee table, sat down at the other end of the sofa and studied the tree with satisfaction.
    Not exactly elegant, with its slightly squiffy little parcels and random bunches of twigs and soggy fir cones—well, the top half wasn’t so bad, although there were a few odd bits up there just to link it in so it didn’t look like a game of Consequences—but it looked like a proper, family Christmas tree.
    And that brought a huge lump to her throat.
    Josh had had so much fun putting all their home-made bits and pieces on there, and Sebastian hadn’t turned a hair when he’d pulled too hard and the whole tree had wobbled. He’d just got a bit of string and tied it to a hook on the beam above so it couldn’t fall.
    ‘It does look good,’ she said softly. ‘It looks lovely. Thank you.’
    Sebastian turned his head and frowned slightly at her. ‘Why are you thanking me? You’ve helped me decorate my tree.’
    ‘And we’ve done it for my son, which has meant not being able to use all your lovely decorations and smothering the bottom of it in all sorts of weird home-made bits and pieces, which I’m perfectly sure wasn’t your intention, so—yes, thank you .’
    The frown deepened for a moment, then cleared as he shook his head and looked back at the tree.
    ‘Actually,