Husband for the Holidays

Chapter Six

CHAPTER SIX

R ATHER THAN EAT dinner on the plane, Konstantin said they’d eat at the hotel, but it was already midnight, local time, when they landed.

“We’re staying at Le Negresco?” Eloise blinked at the hundred-year-old icon of a building.

“Problem? I’ve never stayed in Nice, but my staff knows to get me the best,” Konstantin said.

“They have. I’ve dined here with Mom. I doubt the kitchen will still be open, though.”

“It’s all arranged,” Konstantin assured her.

It was. The concierge met them curbside with a bellman who took their luggage. As they were escorted to their room, they were treated to a brief history of the building, which had been designed to bring artists and royalty to the French Riviera. It was filled with authentic period furniture and an abundance of fine art.

The concierge then showed them into a sea-view suite decorated in shades of rose pink and sage green. The bed had an ornate headboard of brass and quilted silk. Sheer drapes framed the doors to the balcony and a sitting area held mahogany furniture upholstered in striped silk. A welcome basket of fruit and chocolate sat on the coffee table. An ice bucket held a bottle of wine.

“Room service will be up shortly with the meal that your assistant requested,” the concierge informed them with an obsequious smile.

“My room is through here?” Konstantin opened a door.

Eloise stepped forward to see through it, but it was only a bathroom.

They both looked for another door, but there was only the one from the hall, where the bellman was setting both of their bags.

“Pardon?” the concierge asked.

“ Où est l’autre chambre ?” Eloise tried in French.

“Ah.” Understanding and apology flickered across the man’s face. “There has been a misunderstanding. We were told two adults, not two rooms. At this time of year, we are fully booked. Tomorrow, perhaps, we could accommodate you in one of our larger suites. This is all we have for the moment.”

“I thought this only happened to pregnant women on Christmas Eve,” Eloise said out the side of her mouth.

Konstantin shot her a look of disbelief, then grimaced. “I didn’t make clear to my assistant that I was no longer traveling with Gemma.”

Lovely. He would have been perfectly happy to share a room with Ms. Tall, Blonde and Buxom, but not with her.

A quiet knock announced the arrival of the room service trolley.

“It’s fine. We’ll manage for tonight.” Konstantin impatiently waved everyone from the room.

Once they were alone, he shrugged out of his jacket and threw it over the arm of the settee, letting out an exhale of frustration.

“It’s late to call my mother, but I could try her?” Eloise offered.

“No. I don’t want you going there alone. We managed to share a room last night without assault charges. I’m sure we can do it again tonight.”

“I’ll sleep on the sofa.” Even though it was a relic with ornate wooden arms and—were these cushions actually stuffed with horsehair? She poked at one, thinking it had about as much give as a saddle.

“We can share the bed. You’re so small I won’t even notice you’re there.”

“Don’t—” She clacked her teeth shut.

“Don’t what?”

She crossed her arms, defensive, but always frustrated by this.

“I know I’m small, all right? People dismiss me as a child all the time . Mom does it.” She waved her hand in exasperation. “Ilias was a big strong man so he was someone she could lean on, but I’m her little doll who she wants to dress up and gossip with and marry off so I’ll have my own big strong man to protect me. I’m actually a grown-up, okay? I’d appreciate it if you’d treated me like one.”

If he had been a panther, his tail would have twitched as he took in her outburst.

Her stomach knotted. She had an overwhelming sense that she’d made a horrible mistake in declaring herself an adult.

“I don’t see you as a child, Eloise,” he said in a quiet growl that nearly knocked her over. “I haven’t for a long time.”

Her heart seemed to fall right out of her body and the floor shifted beneath her. She didn’t know what to do with that information. She grew so hot, so self-aware, it was painful. The room seemed to shrink and the air thinned so she couldn’t draw enough of it into her lungs.

“Shall we eat?” He lifted the lid off a plate and the aroma of savory crepes under a drizzle of Dijon sauce wafted toward her.

Shakily, she joined him at the table, but it was so tiny their knees brushed when she tried to cross her legs.

“I...um... I think I’ll run a bath after dinner, if that’s okay? I slept so much on the flight I’m not tired yet.” And she really needed some distance from him, even if it was only into the bathroom.

“You were really just overtired? I can book you to see a doctor if it’s more serious.”

“Are you still accusing me of using drugs? If I was into them, I’d take something to help me sleep, wouldn’t I? No, I barely touch alcohol since someone spiked my drink.” She waved at the wine she’d only sipped. “Drugs are the last thing I’d put in my body voluntarily.”

“Who did that to you?” His ability to go from bored to deadly was really something. “What happened?”

“Nothing. Thankfully.” She shrank into herself, though, still bothered by the incident. “I was at a house party. Not even a wild one. I thought I knew everyone there, so I wasn’t vigilant about watching my glass. All of a sudden, I felt really dopey and sluggish. My girlfriend realized I’d been dosed and helped me get home.”

“When was this?”

“After Ilias, when I was trying to at least pretend I was getting on with my life. But that’s another reason I wanted a fresh start in New York. I didn’t trust any of the people I thought I could.”

“You do need a man to look after you,” he muttered, stabbing his fork into his meal.

“You need to bite me,” she muttered back.

His brows shot up. “Do you want to repeat that?”

“I may not be living my life to your standards, but I’ve been keeping myself alive.”

“Barely.”

“Losing Ilias was hard , Konstantin. Maybe not for you, but it was for me.” She hung onto her composure, but her eyes grew hot and her throat tightened.

She poked and poked at her food, but couldn’t bring any to her mouth.

“It was hard. Is.” His admission was so quiet she almost didn’t hear it, but the words seemed to catch at her heart and draw it out of her chest, pulling it out of shape in the process.

She wanted to reach out to him, to hang onto this small link they shared, even though that grief was so acidic it hurt to touch.

“Would you—?” She sipped to clear her throat. “I know you don’t like to talk about yourself, but would you tell me a memory you have of him? Something I wouldn’t know?” she asked tentatively.

His brows flinched together. He attacked his plate a moment, stabbing like he needed to kill it before he could eat it. “I’m not nostalgic, Eloise. I don’t look back unless I have to.”

She nodded mutely. “Okay,” she murmured, even though his refusal made her ache with disappointment.

The silence between them grew weighted. The sound of their cutlery was overloud in the small room.

Then he spoke abruptly, sounding aggrieved that she had demanded this of him.

“I was far behind all my classmates when I arrived at boarding school. I didn’t speak English. He was the only boy I could talk to.”

She lifted her gaze in surprise and found his dark eyes roiling with contained emotions that stalled her glass halfway to her mouth. She felt picked up and thrown around by those turbulent emotions. She slowly finished her sip, dampening her mouth with the cool tang of the wine, saying nothing so he could continue if he was willing to.

“Ilias was always in the top three while my grades were dead last. He tutored me for years.” He jabbed at his food again. “He’s the only reason I didn’t flunk out within weeks of arriving. It was like that for years. Then one day in year nine, I earned a higher mark than his. It wasn’t even top of the class, just one point higher than his. The culture was very competitive. Another boy would have accused me of cheating, but Ilias shook my hand and congratulated me. He was so happy for me it was embarrassing.”

“Oh.” She couldn’t help her happy-sad chuckle, able to see her brother so clearly in that split second. He would have been grinning widely, admiring the paper, throwing his arm around his friend, building him up.

Her eyes welled and her chest ballooned with acute emotion. She sniffed.

“Don’t cry .” Konstantin’s eyes widened in alarm. “I thought you would like it. You asked me to tell you that.”

“I do like it. But I miss him so much sometimes.” Her voice cracked. “And I can’t talk to Mom about him because—that’s another reason I haven’t tried to see her. And why I didn’t mind at first when Antoine was there. It’s so stressful when we’re together. We both want Ilias to be there, but he’s not. And when we talk about h-him—” Her breaths grew jagged as she tried to push words around the sobs that were elbowing the inside of her rib cage, fighting to be released. “It’s such a raw nerve, even after all this time.” She used her napkin to wipe at her cheeks, but the tears kept rolling down them.

“Stop. Eloise, stop.” He rose to drag her into his arms. “ I’ll be there,” he said gruffly, practically smothering her face against his chest as he squeezed her in his strong arms. “It will be fine. Stop crying.”

This embrace was what she had wanted from him for so long that her tears sharpened. Her stomach cramped with her effort to hold back, but she was shuddering with pent-up anxiety and despair.

“Shush,” he insisted as he petted her hair. “It’s going to be okay, Eloise. I’m going to make it okay. Please stop crying.”

How was she supposed to stop when he was being so nice ?

She gave in to impulse and wrapped her arms around his waist, clinging while trying, really trying, to stem the flow, but she was shaking and...

Wait. Was he also shaking?

She was so surprised she tilted her head back to see he was about to drop a kiss on her hair.

They both froze for several pulse beats. It was the garden after the funeral all over again. Their noses were almost touching, their lips an inch from meeting.

He drew in a sharp breath and his hand slid down her back, ironing her into him while making every cell in her body come alive.

Her toes pushed into the floor on instinct. She arched, feeling him hardening against her abdomen. As tingles of excitement raced through her blood, she offered her mouth, gaze on his parted lips, wanting—

He jerked his head up and set her back a step, exactly as he had those other times.

“Go have your bath,” he said grittily. He picked up his wine and stepped onto the balcony, allowing a damp December wind to gust in.

What the hell was wrong with him? Pressing a weeping woman to his growing erection was just wrong.

He’d pushed her away and was letting the fine mist off the Mediterranean cool his ardor, but it wasn’t doing a very good job. He could still feel the press of her modest breast and the curve of her lower back. He could smell her hair and—most erotic of all—had seen the way she reacted to him.

It had all percolated a rush of arousal into his groin and he shouldn’t have even touched her. He wouldn’t have, if she hadn’t started crying. He didn’t even know why he’d shared that corny memory. Absolutely everything about the past turned like knives inside him, but she had looked so entreating when she asked him to share something about Ilias. He had wanted her to know why her brother had meant so much to him and that he missed Ilias, too.

Maybe he had even thought talking about her brother would defuse the sexual tension between them and remind him why he needed to act honorably with Eloise.

He was doing a stellar job at that, wasn’t he?

She had started to cry, though. He couldn’t bear a woman’s tears. It put him into a fight-or-flight response from childhood, when he had heard his mother crying. He’d felt so helpless then, trying to console her, listening to her promise she would find them a way to escape, to be safe.

It had ended in despair for both of them, every time.

Thankfully, as an adult, he rarely heard a woman cry. Once he’d come across an employee in a stairwell and once a lover had lost her dog. He’d distracted the first with a year of paid leave and the other with a generous donation to an animal rescue center.

Eloise was different. Her sorrow had gone straight under his skin, stirring up his own grief, layers and layers of it. It was disturbing enough that his first thought was to fire up his jet and head to the Maldives.

But he couldn’t. He’d not only promised her that he would be with her tomorrow, but he was still furious she was living, as she called it, so far below his standards. He took it as a personal failure on his part.

He should have been looking out for her all this time. When he thought of the number of men who had tried to take advantage of her, he could hardly contain his fury. And the idea of her holing up in a dorm room, unable to get herself to class, ground like a heel against his conscience. Of course, she would have been too devastated to get on with life. He should have known that. He should have done something far sooner than this.

He shouldn’t have left it until she was living his worst nightmare: struggling and going hungry, unable to think of the future because today was so uncertain.

She did need someone looking out for her.

At the same time, he understood why she would rather struggle on her own terms than be beholden to a man like Antoine. If Konstantin had been older when his grandfather had come into his life, he might have rejected him and made his own way, too. He’d resented needing to rely on the old man, especially because his grandfather’s “generosity” had come with its own costs and obligations.

He didn’t want Eloise to think she owed him anything for his help so he had resisted the urge to crush her mouth with his, even though the plump, soft pout of her lips had been nearly irresistible.

When his grip on the iron rail of the balcony began radiating ice up his forearms, he stepped back inside the room. He was immediately assaulted by the fragrance of whatever beads she’d poured into the tub. As he topped up his glass of wine, the water shut off. He heard the ripple of water and the squeak of her naked body against the porcelain.

His lizard brain exploded with the image of her nude form all shiny and soapy, eyelids heavy with relaxation, mouth curved into a smile of invita—

No.

He yanked the leash on his libido.

She’s Ilias’s little sister. She’s vulnerable.

She trusted him. And he’d already lied to her. He’d told her he wouldn’t notice she was in the bed beside him, but he doubted he would sleep a wink.