Husband for the Holidays

Chapter Five

CHAPTER FIVE

B Y THE TIME they were buckled into Konstantin’s private jet, Eloise’s roommate was sending her every Christmas emoji and a text.

Why did he send so much? Aren’t you coming back?

Eloise had run into their apartment to grab her passport and a quick bag to travel, but her roommate hadn’t been home. She’d been called to the trattoria to cover the shift Eloise was missing. Now she was fired from that job, too.

“How much did you send her?” Eloise asked Konstantin, looking up from her phone.

“A year’s worth.”

“Because it’s Christmas?”

“Because you’re not going back there. Even before I saw the building, I knew by the rent that those are squalid living conditions. Tell her to use it to find a better address along with a new roommate.”

If they weren’t already taxiing along the runway, Eloise might have staged more of a rebellion. As it was, she could only relay exactly what he had said, mostly because she didn’t know how she would get back to New York, let alone pay rent again when she did.

She didn’t know what would happen when she arrived in Nice. If it were up to her mother, Eloise would be invited to move back into the house, but Lilja had bought it with Antoine. He wasn’t likely to allow Eloise to stay overnight, let alone through Christmas.

She glanced at Konstantin, so effortlessly sophisticated and compelling. He’d shaved and changed into a black turtleneck with a casual fawn-colored jacket. His dark brown trousers were tailored to graze perfectly across his polished ankle boots.

He looked up from his phone and caught her staring at him.

“Where...um...?” She cleared her throat. “Last night you said you were leaving town today. Where were you supposed to go?”

“The Maldives.”

“Oh? Do you have property there?”

“No.”

“Just vacation, then?”

“Yes.”

“With...um...” She adjusted her blind as though there were something to see outside the window beyond a wall of white clouds.

“Yes,” he said before she finished asking if he’d been planning to take Gemma.

Maybe it was better that he wasn’t a talkative person.

“Have you told your mother that we’re coming?” he asked.

“Not yet.” She picked up her phone again.

“Don’t mention me. I’d like the element of surprise.”

She was still uneasy about all of this, worried about what he might say or do when he saw her mother again. She chewed her lip as she considered what to say, then spoke as she typed out her text.

“I’m arriving in Nice late tonight.” She tried to go down a line and accidentally hit Send. “Argh, this phone. Let me know... Tsk... Give me a sec.”

While she cleared the garbled letters, her mother’s response came through.

“Where are you staying? With friends or at a hotel?” she read aloud. “That has to be Antoine replying.”

“He takes her phone?”

“I think he must. And I think he deletes anything he doesn’t want her to see. When I talk to her, she always asks when I’m coming to visit. Then one time I said why don’t you come see me in New York and suddenly Antoine wanted to take her to Australia.” She tried to keep the pain of rejection off her face, but Konstantin had to see it.

“Just say both,” he instructed.

That she was staying with a friend at a hotel? She didn’t want to be even more indebted to him, but had no choice. She stifled her protest and texted.

Both. Let me know when it would be convenient to drop in.

“I’m invited to lunch tomorrow,” she conveyed a moment later, mollified as her mother’s invitation came through.

See you then.

She typed her reply and touched it to Send. It didn’t go, making her sigh. She rubbed the screen on her thigh before trying again. Finally, it whooshed.

“Honestly, half the reason I can’t stay in touch with her is this stupid phone.”

“What’s wrong with it?” He frowned.

“It’s just old. And the screen is cracked. I swapped my good one with my roommate for rent the first month. It works well enough for texting, which is really all I need. Definitely no photos, though. The poor thing goes into a sulk and I have to put it down for a nap before it will work again.”

“Do you even have my number? Is that why you never called me?”

“I’m sure I do somewhere, but I wouldn’t have called it.” She tucked her phone away and turned her eyes to the window.

“Why not?” he asked in a dangerous growl.

“Because...” She winced, hating to offer up the last of her dignity, but his tone demanded an answer. “In those first weeks after arriving in New York, when I realized Antoine was playing hard ball, I reached out to some people I knew, friends who had apartments. One let me stay with her for a few days, but Antoine wasn’t coming around and I was very broke. That stinks worse than old fish. I quickly got the message that if I wasn’t able to drop everything to fly to Turks and Caicos, if I needed a job, then I didn’t belong in their world. That stung enough that I didn’t want to risk getting the same treatment from anyone else.” Especially him.

“You presumed I’m as shallow as they are?”

“I didn’t know how you would react. I barely know you.” How were they still in the clouds and not above them?

“You keep saying that.” He sounded aggravated.

“Because it’s true,” she said with an ironic quirk of her mouth. “You’re a private person. Remember?” She was sorry she’d brought it up as soon as she said it. She hurried to add, “The fact is, Antoine had a point. I needed to grow up and quit expecting other people to take care of me.” She made herself meet his gaze, even though it was hard to hold his flinty look. “I miss Mom and I really appreciate you taking me home to see her, but you honestly don’t owe me anything. Carry on to your vacation tomorrow.”

He narrowed his eyes and looked as though he were ready to say something, but the flight attendant came to ask if they wanted breakfast. They’d only eaten two hours ago so Eloise declined, but she asked the woman how she could watch a movie, purely to put an end to this charged conversation.

Konstantin spent the rest of the flight working while Eloise moved to the sofa and put on noise-canceling headphones to watch movies.

He shouldn’t have been distracted by her. She sat quietly with a blanket across her lap, absorbed in Christmas-themed storylines with heavily decorated sets, women in garishly bedecked pullovers and handymen who held hammers but never swung them. Every time he looked up, there seemed to be an impromptu kiss in front of a glowing tree.

He rarely watched movies. Work relaxed him. There was something about making decisions and taking action that powered him up. A dopamine rush, he supposed. And the triumph in arriving at a peak that put him that much further from the rock bottom he’d been born into.

After a while, Eloise drifted off again. He wasn’t surprised. The low stakes and cozy fires on the screen were enough to put him into a coma, but it reminded him how rundown she was.

He almost sent another email to his assistant, asking for a doctor to give her a medical checkup, but he had already overloaded the young man with research requests on Antoine.

He was actually leaning on his executive assistant’s assistant. His EA was on vacation because Konstantin had expected to be on vacation himself. Everything slowed down at this time of year, forcing him to do the same, but Konstantin found vacation very boring. He usually continued working and the junior assistant stuck around the office to remotely pull reports or pass along messages.

It didn’t take a psychologist to work out that Konstantin preferred to keep his brain busy so he could avoid his emotions, and that he was leaping on Eloise as a project so he could sidestep the more volatile guilt of letting down his friend and the shame of seeing his friend’s sister through a carnal lens.

You don’t owe me anything , she had claimed, but he damned well did.

He owed Ilias, but it went deeper than that. When Eloise had said that she hadn’t wanted to risk Konstantin rejecting her request for help, he’d suffered a deep sting of culpability, as though he had rejected her.

Hadn’t he, though? It was far too similar to the way his grandfather had stayed deliberately ignorant to what was happening to Konstantin and his mother. He could remember her pleading with the old man on the phone, after they’d walked all the way into the village.

Please, Baba. Please let me come home.

The old man had been unmoved by her regret in her marriage. She’d gone against his wishes and gotten herself pregnant, hadn’t she? She would have to lie in the bed she’d made.

Konstantin couldn’t help feeling he’d been just as heartless in not staying in touch. That infernal, misplaced kiss had stopped him. If he saw her again, he’d feared, he would pursue her. She’d been too young. Too vulnerable. But his excuses didn’t matter.

He shouldn’t have waited for her to ask. He should have seen . He should have been like Ilias and simply stepped in.

He was doing that now. And he wouldn’t allow her pride get in his way.