Husband for the Holidays

Chapter Thirteen

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

N EMO WENT TO Athens to spend Christmas with his family, but Eloise and Konstantin weren’t alone on Christmas Eve. Filomena asked if her children could come caroling. She had two boys and a girl and the older two each brought a friend.

Eloise eagerly welcomed them into the house and accompanied them on the piano, singing along with great enjoyment. She had prepared little bags of sweets that she handed out when they finished up. Then Konstantin made their eyes nearly pop out of their heads by giving them envelopes stuffed with a hundred euros each.

“ Kyrie ,” Filomena protested, but Eloise assured her she was wasting her breath. If she had learned nothing else about Konstantin, she now knew him to be a ridiculously generous man behind that facade of stony aloofness.

Later, they attended a casual neighborhood party and came home to make love and sleep late.

On Christmas morning, Eloise woke and stretched against her fiancé’s solid heat. She reveled in waking naked against him, thinking that in this moment, her life was as perfect as it could get.

Except for that tiny thread of doubt that continued to run through her, the one that said this was too perfect. Too easy.

She wanted to believe that time would prove her wrong. Eventually, she would trust in this union, but in these early days, she couldn’t seem to keep from feeling quietly anxious that she was kidding herself. That this would all disappear in a blink of an eye.

Which meant she ought to embrace what she had while she had it, literally.

The brush of their skin was pure decadence, as was the right to reach across and caress his back and buttocks. She gave in to the urge to ease atop him and drape herself over his back.

“I feel the weight of expectation,” he said into his pillow. “You want to go downstairs to see what’s under the tree, don’t you?”

“I want to see if you like my gift.”

His back rose and fell beneath her in a sigh.

Why was he so resistant to gifts?

She turned her lips against his satiny skin and kissed his spine, then moved in a whole-body caress. The plane between his shoulder blades felt each side of her face as she stropped like a cat leaving its scent. She shifted higher to kiss the back of his neck. Her breasts swayed against the plane of his back and the hard curve of his backside was caressed by her stomach and the graze of her mound. She bracketed his hip with her knee and slid her arms beneath the pillow alongside his.

“If you’d rather stay in bed a few more minutes, I could be persuaded,” she said.

He rolled so he was on his back and she could straddle his hips.

Afterward, they showered, then bumped their way downstairs, drunk on sex and each other.

Filomena was spending the day with her family so Eloise started the coffee and put the casserole that Filomena had prepared into the oven. It was loaded with peppers and artichoke, herbs and sun-dried tomatoes, then topped with feta cheese.

When the coffee was ready, she brought the cups into the lounge, finding Konstantin at the windows. The pile of gifts under the tree had grown by at least a half dozen.

“What have you done?” She sifted through them, able to tell from some of the wrapping that there was at least one bottle of perfume and a designer scarf.

“Open this one first.” He plucked an envelope from the tree. It was tickets to a symphony performance in New York in the spring.

She pressed the envelope to her chest. “You’ll come with me?”

“Unless you want to take your mother. Or someone else?”

“Mom would enjoy it, but I’ll only ask her if something comes up and you can’t make it. I’d rather take you. Thank you.” She kissed him. “Okay, now mine.” She plucked the small flat gift from beneath the tree and curled into the corner of the sofa, holding it out to him.

His expression stiffened as he came to sit beside her.

“Does it really bother you?” She held the flat shape between her pressed palms, distressed that she was causing him more discomfort than pleasure.

His cheek ticked. “It’s a childish reaction,” he said, mouth curling with dismay. “I was given something when I was young. It meant a lot to me and it was destroyed deliberately, to hurt me. It ruined my pleasure in receiving gifts.”

“That happened at school? Sometimes girls were spiteful that way, too.”

“No.” His brow flexed briefly. “Things like that happened at school, yes, but I didn’t care about that. I had stopped letting myself feel any sort of sentiment by then. Things are things. I can buy them for myself if I want them. I don’t...” He set his hands on his knees and looked straight ahead as though searching for the words. “I don’t like the sensation of someone knowing me well enough to give me something I’ll like. It feels like a weakness. Like I’m painting a target on my chest.”

She looked at the gift she held and chewed the corner of her mouth. “Now I’m worried this could hurt you. I was excited when I thought of it, certain you would like it, but...” She drew a breath that made her lungs ache and winced as she offered it. “If you don’t want to open it, that’s okay. Put it in a drawer and we never have to talk about this again.”

“Well, now I’m curious. Is it anthrax?” He picked at the paper, in no hurry, but it became obvious very quickly that it was a framed photo.

He tore away the last scrap of paper and stilled with surprised recognition.

She watched his profile as he studied the photo of himself with Ilias. For a long moment, he said nothing, gave away nothing.

“Are you upset?” She set a concerned hand on his shoulder.

“No. You’re right. I like it very much.” His hand came up to cover hers while he tilted the frame as though looking for some hidden detail. “Did you use AI?”

“What? No! I took it.”

“When?” He turned his head, expression astonished.

“The day you came to Ilias’s apartment, when you were supposed to spend Christmas with us. See? That’s the tree behind you, before I started to decorate it. You helped him carry it up. I made you two pose in front of it. It was my sly way of getting a photo of my secret platonic boyfriend. Secret because you didn’t know,” she explained. “And platonic because...”

“I knew,” he said out of the side of his mouth, but the corners were tilting up as he studied it again.

In the photo, Konstantin still had his arm outstretched to hold the tree upright. Ilias had looped his arm beneath Konstantin’s and set his hand on Konstantin’s opposite shoulder. Her brother wore his most carefree grin, always up for a photo while Konstantin had a look of patient tolerance on his face.

“He would have beheaded me if he knew what I was thinking that day. I would have deserved it,” he added with dark humor. “But thank you for this. I don’t let myself think of him too often. It makes me feel robbed. And I’ll forever be sorry I didn’t stay longer that day. Didn’t spend more time with him when I had the chance.”

“I feel like that, too.” She looped her arms around his neck, leaning her head against his as she also looked at the photo. “But I try to remember the laughs and be grateful he was in my life at all. Without him, I wouldn’t have met you so he’s still bringing good things into my life, isn’t he?” It was the closest she dared get to admitting how much she was growing to love him.

Konstantin set the photo on the end table and drew her into his lap. “You’re like him in that way. You always see the bright side. To me, everything ends in pain and loss.”

“Because you lost your mother so young? Did you lose your father at the same time?”

His expression turned stony and she felt him withdraw so completely, it was as though his body temperature dropped several degrees. “I did.”

She felt the pain he was trying to stem in the tension that had invaded his embrace.

“You don’t have to tell me about it if you don’t want to,” she assured him, cuddling into him, trying to radiate warmth and comfort through his skin, into his heart and bones. Into his soul. “But you can.”

“Not today,” he said after a brief hesitation. His hand roamed over her hair and down her back, as though trying to soften his refusal. “I don’t want to ruin Christmas. Get the blue one.” He nudged her knee.

It was a pendant to match the earrings he’d given her in Nice, dangling from an ornate Byzantine chain.

“This is too much,” she scolded. “I’m going to absolutely smother you in gifts next year to make up for it. Actually, when is your birthday?”

“I’ll never tell.”

“Nemo will.”

“Not if he wants to keep his job.”

“Then I’ll pick a random day and call it your birthday,” she warned as she straddled his lap, pleased that her frothy skirt allowed it.

The confection of white feathers piled around her like a snowdrift and he dug his hands into the folds to bracket her hips while she affixed the chain beneath her loose hair. She centered the stone against the wine red of the top that hugged her torso.

“Thank you,” she said sincerely. “It’s very pretty.”

“So are you.”

She loved seeing his expression relaxed like this. His gaze leisurely caressed her braless breasts—yes, she had forgone a bra for him. It meant her nipples were constantly stimulated by the soft knit, standing at subtle attention and now prickling and tightening that little bit more as he admired her.

It was such a perfect moment that she almost said it. Almost admitted she loved him. It wasn’t the immature crush of her teen years or infatuation with an idea of a man. It wasn’t the beguilement of being showered with gifts, either.

She was beginning to know him, truly know him. He was withdrawn, yes, but beneath that hardened veneer was a man who had a chewy caramel center. He was outrageously generous—in bed and elsewhere. He kept his promises and he made her feel special and sexy and cherished. If he hadn’t been able to afford a sapphire, he would have found another way to make her feel as though she was incredibly important to him, of that she had no doubt.

He was important to her. Did he know that?

Sliding her fingers into his hair, she leaned forward and set her mouth to his, trying to make him feel the love that was brimming out of her. She didn’t know what the hidden sadness in him was, or what made him cynical or who had deliberately hurt him, but she wanted to heal all of that. The only way she knew to do it was to love him. To pour her feelings over him and dispel all his inner shadows with the golden light that glowed from the depths of her heart.

His breath hissed in and his fingertips bit through the downy skirt. She thought for a moment that he was going to move her off him, as though she was touching some part of him that was too raw.

Then a groan rattled deep in his chest. His hands found her breasts through the cashmere and his thumbs stroked against her nipples.

It was good, so good, but also a tiny bit painful. Not physically. It was painful to love him this much and not know how he felt about her. She wanted to tell him how she felt, but feared he would push her away if she did.

So she showed him. She burrowed her hand beneath her skirt and found his fly.

He bunched her skirt up and out of the way, then ran his finger beneath the placket of the tanga she wore. When she was stroking his steely erection, he moved the silk aside and helped her guide his tip to her entrance.

With a small shudder, she sank upon him. The anxiety of not being able to fully reach him dissipated when they were like this—not just joined physically, but connected on a deeper level. When he caressed her, he seemed to know where and how she needed it. When she pressed her mouth to his, their kiss ebbed and flowed between sweet and passionate, inciting and easing, then inflaming again.

They had made love only a couple of hours ago, much like this, so it shouldn’t have felt this urgent. At first, it was simply pleasure and desire building at its own pace. They barely moved as they sought skin and ran their mouths into each other’s necks and exchanged wordless praise and appreciation.

But for some reason his talk of things ending in pain and loss played in her ears like a ticking clock. She didn’t want him to be right. She wanted them fused indelibly for the rest of their lives. She began to move with more purpose, as though she could forge a more permanent connection through force of will.

Her clamor seemed to ignite something similar in him. His kiss grew harder. Hungrier. His hands clamped onto her hips, urging her to take him deeper. Her breathing grew erratic and she clung to the back of the sofa as she rode him, feeling as though she raced toward a paradise that could turn out to be a mirage.

It was real, though. It had to be, because orgasm was slamming into her and his arms were folding around her, crushing her as he threw back his head and lifted his hips and shouted out her name.

Joyous pleasure cascaded through her, but so did something else. Fear.

She folded onto him and closed her eyes, suffused with bliss, but also a sense of being stalked. Of the future being uncertain and clouded and dark.

When she turned her mouth against the side of his face, his profile was grave, making her wonder if he felt that same lack of permanence, too.

They flew to Athens on the morning of the twenty-seventh.

Eloise’s mother had invited them to marry in her villa on the morning of the twenty-eighth. Since it was the home Eloise had grown up in, she thought it would feel as though Ilias were with them in spirit. Konstantin said he was happy to indulge her and her mother.

Lilja had been texting a lot more than normal, seeming to have reclaimed her phone for wedding plans. She was determined to make Eloise’s day as special as possible and was fussing over every decision from flowers to music, from wedding breakfast to photo sitting. She even wanted Eloise’s approval on her mother-of-the-bride dress.

Antoine was still managing to be a pain, though, now putting all his energy into stonewalling Konstantin.

“I haven’t even asked him for the audit I want,” Konstantin said with disgust. “He refuses to give my team contact info for his lawyers and accountants. Their request for a list of assets that belong to you, to include in our prenup, is being ignored altogether.”

“Because there aren’t any,” Eloise pointed out.

“Then he should say that, shouldn’t he?” Konstantin was no longer the lover she’d been pre-honeymooning with on Crete. He was crisp-voiced and hardened as he changed into a suit of charcoal armor.

“I was thinking of booking a massage after my fitting.” She’d had a limited selection for wedding outfits since she was marrying so quickly, but Ghaliya had found her an elegant skirt suit that only needed a tuck and hemming. The seamstress would be here soon. “I could ask for a his-and-hers session this afternoon?”

“No. I hate people touching me.”

She blinked, shocked as much by his blunt, vehement tone as the words.

He checked himself and a curl of irony arrived on the line of his stern mouth.

“I mean strangers, obviously. I’m addicted to your touch.” He came across to set a hand on her hip and drop a tender kiss on her mouth. “I have meetings with Nemo all day, anyway. Book something for yourself if you want to.”

“Maybe I can talk Mom into joining me at a spa for a few hours. I don’t know how else to pry Antoine away from her.” He was like a lamprey.

“I’ll send the car back so it’s here for you if you decide to go out.”

“Thank you.”

Konstantin left and Eloise sighed in loss, finding this return to reality very jarring. Life was so much simpler when they made love, then made coffee. He worked off his laptop while she played piano. Maybe they walked after lunch or drove around the island before returning home to make love again. It had been bliss.

It had been impossible to have doubts about their future when she was with him all the time, drinking in his attention and affection.

She called her mother and wasn’t surprised when the call was not picked up. She texted her an invitation to the spa and received a reply that had to be from Antoine.

Going to the bank today.

To get the ring from Petros? Eloise wondered. She could only imagine how that was sitting with Antoine.

Purely to let him know she wasn’t fooled, she texted back.

Are you taking her or are you meeting with Konstantin?

He left her on Read, the jerk. He probably deleted it on that end, too, so her mother wouldn’t see it. Eloise had lost her ability to give him the benefit of the doubt and was starting to think she would have to have a more serious chat with her mother.

What a dreadful thought. She’d wait until the wedding was out of the way, she decided. Not only would her mother have that happy memory, but Eloise would feel more secure in her own position and ability to support her.

The seamstress arrived and Eloise was tied up for the next hour. She was about to settle in for a relaxing hour of playing piano when Konstantin called to snap, “The car is waiting downstairs for you. I need you to meet me at your mother’s.”

“Is she okay? I thought Antoine was taking her to the bank.”

“They’re going to the bank ? When? Which one?” He swore and told someone to, “Get that notice to all of those institutions. Immediately. I’m sure your mother is fine,” he told Eloise, but his voice was steely and cold. “I’ll find out where they’re going and have the car bring you to me there. Leave as soon as you can.”

“O—” he’d already hung up “—kay.”

What on earth had he found out?