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The suspicion deepened, widening like a crack in a windowpane. Eighteen and in love with her, naive, too, and no doubt as beautiful then as he was now, and Neve had…what? Wanted him?

‘Kai,’ Libby said slowly. ‘Did she…take advantage of you in any way?’

‘Take advantage of me?’ Kai turned sharply from the windows, his expression as cold as she’d ever seen it, his gaze like chips of ice. ‘Did she abuse me? Is that what you’re asking?’

You are way out of your depth here and you should stop.

Libby swallowed, her mouth dry. There had been kids at the home who’d suffered sexual abuse, and their issues were always difficult and complicated, and had to be handled with sensitivity and care by people who knew what they were doing.

She did not know what she was doing, but she couldn’t get what he’d said out of her head. Had Neve abused him? She’d been much older, a parental figure, and Kai had loved her. And no matter what he said, it was clear that he had not got over it. He was also very defensive and didn’t seem to think their relationship had been wrong. Then again, he was the one who’d brought up abuse, so maybe there was a part of him that doubted. A part of him that knew it hadn’t been right.

Libby wanted to know more, but she also didn’t want to push. He shouldn’t have to give her explanations or answers if he didn’t want to. Still, she suspected she had one answer to the question of what Neve had done to the warm-hearted boy Kai had once been.

She’d touched him and frozen him solid.

‘No,’ Libby said quietly. ‘I’m not asking that.’ She put her mug down and changed the subject. ‘You know, we have a tree, but no decorations. Which means we’ll have to make some.’

The tension in his handsome face eased. ‘Make some?’

‘Unless you have a box full of tinsel and baubles somewhere?’ She lifted a brow at him, but he only looked back blankly, which was better than the icy look he’d given her before, so she continued, ‘I take it that’s a no. In that case we’ll need some paper, scissors, glue… I don’t suppose you have any glitter, do you?’

He frowned. ‘Glitter?’

‘Unsurprising. You’ve got everything else, though, yes?’

‘Yes,’ he agreed slowly. ‘But how can you make decorations out of my office supplies?’

She smiled. ‘Come on. I’ll show you.’

Half an hour later, Libby did so as they sat at a dining table strewn with paper, scissors and sticky tape, plus various pens and pencils. They were making paper chains and paper snowflakes, which he’d been mystified by, and she was relieved that the warm, easy atmosphere they’d had upstairs before her ill-advised question was back. Unfortunately, though, she kept being assailed by memories that really, she should have expected. Of the time she’d sat with him, when he’d been the one showing her how to make exactly these same things, back when they were children.

That he didn’t remember was obvious, and though she knew it shouldn’t hurt that he didn’t, it did hurt all the same. Still, she had to give him credit for actually sitting down with her and patiently cutting out pieces of paper to make snowflakes. Not many billionaire CEOs would do that.

‘Do you do this every year?’ he asked, frowning as he cut a corner out of the piece of paper he was holding.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I show the kids how to do it. We have a special day, actually, where we sit down with lots of glue and felt tips and glitter, and we make stars and snowflakes and paper chains, and all sorts of other things.’

‘Why don’t you just buy some decorations?’

‘We often don’t have the money for it.’

‘Well, you know the answer to that, don’t you?’ He glanced up from his snowflake and met her gaze. ‘If you married me, you’d have all the money in the world to buy as many Christmas decorations as you like.’

Oh, yes, his marriage proposal. She’d forgotten about that.

‘This is true,’ she said, looking back down at her own snowflake. ‘But I like teaching the kids to make their own. It encourages their creativity and gives them something to be proud of when we hang it on the tree.’

He was silent, but she could feel his gaze on her. ‘You’re very caring, Liberty,’ he said. ‘Those kids are lucky to have you.’

The compliment was so out of the blue that she looked up at him at him in surprise. His icy gaze was direct and so very genuine that she blushed like a fool. ‘It’s nothing,’ she said, trying to minimise it. ‘Anyone would do the same.’

‘No, they wouldn’t,’ he disagreed. ‘It takes a special person to put the needs of others ahead of their own.’

‘Like I said, it’s nothing.’

‘Why does it bother you?’

The question sent a little jolt of shock through her, and she found herself glancing at him across the table yet again. ‘What makes you think it bothers me?’