Husband for the Holidays

Chapter Fifteen

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

A FTER A NIGHT where Eloise and her mother both spent hours crying out their broken hearts, Nemo turned up.

“I know the wedding is off,” he said when Eloise started to cry. “No, kyría , I’m here with a press release. Can you review it, please?”

Konstantin had drafted a statement that the wedding had been postponed due to a family concern. Since that was followed almost immediately by a statement that Lilja was divorcing Antoine, the gossip around the canceled nuptials was minimal.

Nemo then stuck around to speak with Cyrus and assist with revoking Antoine’s rights to the trust. He made phone calls and canceled bank accounts and issued notices to expel Antoine from all of Lilja’s properties—including the house in Nice. Technically, they both owned that one, but it was now a contested asset in their divorce proceedings. Nemo also found her mother a good lawyer for that.

“We’re monopolizing you,” Eloise said when he continued to turn up even after they’d rung in the New Year. “Doesn’t Konstantin need you?”

“One of my colleagues has taken over my position. Since I was familiar with your situation, I’m to assist you until you no longer need assistance. Also, because your accounts have been frozen until the audits can be conducted, Kyrie Galanis will cover your legal fees and any other expenses while you wait for access to your funds to be granted.”

Of course, he would. She stifled a sigh of despair, angry with him for looking after them so well, but from a distance. Was he afraid to accept her love? Was that it? Had she smothered him? Or not given enough?

After so many years of fantasy, then having marriage to him within her grasp, she struggled to let go of the dream. She lay awake at night wishing she’d done this or that differently, but the reality was he didn’t want to marry her. She had to accept that.

She only wished it didn’t hurt so much .

“Did your tea go cold while you were speaking to your friend?” Nemo asked her mother. Lilja was making a face over the cup she’d just picked up. “Let me ask the kitchen to make you a fresh one.”

“Thank you, Nemo.” She handed over cup and saucer. “I have no idea how we would manage if you weren’t here with us. I think poor Konstantin has lost himself an assistant.”

Eloise choked on a small astonished laugh, her first shred of humor in a week. How had she and Ilias never realized their mother needed a male assistant?

Thankfully, Eloise was kept busy meeting with all the lawyers and accountants, hiring a cotrustee who would teach her the ropes of managing so much money, and realizing that she actually had a crap ton of allowance owed to her that needed investing. It was daunting, but she was glad to be distracted.

She was so distracted, in fact, that she didn’t realize her period was late until she was two weeks overdue.

A visit to the doctor confirmed her pregnancy. She sat in the exam room for a good thirty minutes afterward, crying happy-sad tears. Her first instinct was to go directly to Konstantin and tell him, but she knew what would happen. He would feel obligated to marry her and she didn’t want to put him in that position. She didn’t want him to propose to her again for any reason except that he had fallen in love with her.

Ugh. She was still doing it: hoping.

She would have to tell him about the baby at some point, though. The prevailing advice was to wait twelve weeks before sharing this news. She didn’t want him to get attached to this pregnancy, then suffer the loss if something happened—which was a very convenient rationalization for being a coward, she knew. But she didn’t know if she could face him yet without falling apart. She missed him to the point that she ached from the moment she woke to the moment she slipped into unconsciousness. Then she cried in her sleep, missing him in her dreams.

She would never resist seeing him if she stayed in Athens. She’d only lasted this long because she remembered he’d had business in Singapore in January. Once he returned, the temptation to go to him would be overpowering.

“Mom, what do you think of a change in scenery?” she asked when she returned from the doctor. “I was thinking of applying to that music therapy program again.”

“In New York? Well, yes, I’ve always wanted to spend more than a week or two there. What about Nemo? Can he accompany us?”

Nemo was delighted by the opportunity to spend an indefinite time in the Big Apple. His boyfriend was equally excited and planned to follow as soon as he worked out some wrinkles in his own professional life.

Within a week, they were in a leased Gramercy apartment with four bedrooms, a private terrace, daily housekeeping and an attached studio apartment for Nemo.

Eloise was accepted into the program, thanks to her previous audition, but more because money talked and she now had an abundance of it. Along with starting school, she quietly took her prenatal vitamins and found a midwife, still keeping her pregnancy to herself. She was dying to tell her mother, but she wanted to tell Konstantin first.

The longer she left it, the more daunting that prospect became. She wanted a full plan in place when she told him, one that allowed her to raise the baby alone, but still provided him as much access as he wanted. It would be pure torture to see him on what she suspected would be a daily basis, but somehow they would have to make it work.

The churn of anticipation and dread drove her to the piano every day where she poured out her turmoil of joy and longing, her anguish and all the love that refused to be doused.

In fact, her feelings for him grew a little more each day, just like their baby.

Konstantin tried to retreat into the skin of numbness he’d worn most of his life, but it was shredded beyond repair. His feelings for Eloise were too sharp. Too jagged and hot and extreme.

God, he missed her. How had she become such an integral part of his life in such a short time? It wasn’t just the sex. That had been mind-altering, setting a bar that he doubted would ever be reached with anyone else, but he wasn’t plagued by unmet carnal need. He was instead struck repeatedly by the emptiness of his days. Absence and meaninglessness hit him like an echo in a cavern, leaving him feeling as though he was lost in the dark, bouncing into rough granite walls.

He woke to a cold empty bed. He ate his meals alone, finding no enjoyment in whatever went into his mouth. The silence was worst of all. The cruel lack of music, the absence of laughter. He even missed her innocuous questions about whether he wanted chicken for lunch.

His meetings in Asia should have been a welcome distraction, but he resented them. He hated every minute of being so far from her, but on his return to Athens, he learned she’d gone to New York. That somehow tore a fresh hole in the fabric of his existence.

He hated this feeling. It was the one he’d been trying to avoid, this sense of something having been taken from him. Of having a great hole within him that couldn’t be filled.

Work had always been a useful panacea, but it did little for him these day except provide him with a small satisfaction that he was creating an additional layer of security for Eloise and her mother. When he advised his lawyers the wedding was off, he told them to continue updating his will to make Eloise his beneficiary.

He left her number in his phone as his emergency contact because, if he wound up on death’s doorstep, he wanted her face to be the last thing he saw. Her voice to be the last thing he heard.

Would she even turn up?

I’ve always known my love was unrequited. I won’t keep fooling myself that you’ll come around.

Had he killed whatever she might have felt for him? Was he creating the very reality he feared so he could face it and move past it, rather than have it hang over his head? Because he didn’t think he’d ever get over her absence from his life.

He desperately wanted the reassurance he hadn’t hurt her too badly, but Nemo refused to be much of a spy, saying only a circumspect, “Legal hiccups have been minimal. Things are progressing.”

“But how are Eloise and Lilja coping?”

“As well as could be expected, under the circumstances. Kyrie ? I’m not sure how to broach this. Lilja—she asked me to call her that. She’s made me an offer of employment. It’s been such an honor to work for you. I wouldn’t want you to think I’m ungrateful...”

Konstantin tuned out the rest, letting the young man say his piece before saying, “The door remains open if things change.”

They ended the call and Konstantin felt as though one more thread that joined him to Eloise had been snipped. It stung like hell.

Which was why he was so surprised when Nemo contacted him a few weeks later, asking when he might be visiting New York next. Lilja wanted to have lunch with him.

Konstantin hadn’t been planning anything, but booked a trip immediately, concerned.

It was a sunny February day when he met his almost mother-in-law at a restaurant located one hundred stories in the air, overlooking the city and the Hudson River.

“Lilja.” He was startled to feel such an intense rush of warmth when he saw her, as though he’d missed her when, much as he liked and respected her, he didn’t know her well. He didn’t have any reason to feel attached to her, except through her children. “How are you?”

“I’m well. You?” Her eyes, so much like Eloise’s, searched his, making him feel transparent.

“Fine,” he insisted briskly. “How is Eloise?” he asked once they were seated. “I was concerned that you wanted to see me.”

“She’s not ill or injured, if that’s what you’re asking, but she is the reason I wanted to see you.”

“You’re worried about her?” he guessed, suffering a stab of guilt. He had hurt her. He knew he had.

“Only insofar as any mother would be worried when she realizes her daughter has stopped drinking and turns green at the smell of bacon. I couldn’t stand the stuff myself when I was carrying her.”

“She’s pregnant?” He nearly fell out of his chair.

“I’m assuming so. Thank you.” She accepted her mimosa as it was delivered.

He drained the scotch that was set in front of him. The alcohol burned all the way into the back of his skull and down into his chest.

“Why hasn’t she told me?” It was the most intense rejection, the worst kick in the teeth, he could have imagined.

I’ll be able to move on now , she’d said.

Apparently, she’d meant it.

“You tell me.” She looked to the diamond on her hand. It was the one from the bank, now worn in place of the rings that Antoine had given her. “I thought she had with you what I had with Petros. He was the love of my life.” She sighed wistfully.

Konstantin signaled for another drink, then looked out the window, wondering if she had requested this meeting specifically to torture him.

“I’m deeply sorry that Antoine brought up your parents, Konstantin. When I realized afterward that that was what he was referring to, when he threatened you at the bank, I was sickened.”

His stomach heaved and a clammy sweat rose on his skin. “Eloise told you?”

“No. She only said Antoine had threatened to expose something private that you don’t like to talk about, but I was living in Greece with a son your age when it happened,” she reminded him gently. “Word got around and for me, it struck close to home. I came from a troubled family, too. One I don’t like to revisit, either.”

His second drink arrived and he ignored it in favor of reaching out to squeeze Lilja’s hand, hating to think of this delicate, infinitely kind, beautiful woman being at the hands of someone cruel.

She held onto his fingers tightly while a smile touched her mouth. Then she released him to sip her mimosa, blinking and drawing a slow breath, as though gathering her composure.

“I don’t know if you ever told Ilias about any of it. I never said anything to him about you, but he said to me early in your friendship that you were the only boy at school who knew what it felt like to lose a parent and not have a father. It gave me some comfort that you had each other.” Her brow flexed with poignancy. “I didn’t know what to do with him back then. Losing Petros was devastating for both of us, but Ilias was so determined to grow up and take his father’s place. I know I leaned on him too heavily, but when I didn’t ask his advice, he was annoyed. There was no winning.”

“He did insist on looking after people, whether they asked for help or not,” Konstantin recalled with rueful affection.

“Didn’t he?” She brightened, then grew misty. “That was Petros coming out in him. I used to wish Petros had lived to meet Eloise, so he could see what a protector Ilias turned into around her. Silly, right? If Petros had lived, I wouldn’t have had her. That would be a crime because she’s been such a bright light in my life. Effervescent and cuddly, spilling her love and life and music all over the place. I spoiled her. I know I did. I wanted so badly to keep her...” she cupped her hands into a tiny sheltering dome “...protected. Unstruck by life. But that’s not possible.”

Her elbow went onto the table and she tucked her chin into her hand, looking out the window.

“It’s not,” he agreed gravely. “And God, Lilja. You’ve had so many blows yourself. How do you carry on and remain so hopeful, knowing you could lose everything at any time? When you have lost so much?”

“Do you refuse to listen to a song because you know it will come to an end?” she asked with a wry smile and sad eyes. “Even the Parthenon will eventually be nothing but dust. You have to enjoy something while you’re able because it’s temporary. And yes, sometimes you might make a mistake and fall for the wrong person.” Her mouth pursed with heartbreak and consternation. “I’ve done more than my share of that. I want to believe the best in people. I want to feel loved . Eloise has borne the brunt of my poor judgment too many times. It doesn’t occur to me that anyone would hurt her, though. Why would they want to?” Her brow pleated with incomprehension. “She’s so easy to love.”

“She is.” The words vibrated from behind his sternum, more a feeling than actual words, but they refused to be kept inside him any longer.

“Then why are you hurting her, Konstantin?” she asked with distress. “Why aren’t you loving her while you have the chance?”

The whole building disappeared from beneath him and he felt himself plummeting to the ground.

He didn’t have an answer. In fact, he didn’t know why he was hurting himself.

Eloise’s assignment was to learn and perform a song for her class that expressed an emotional conflict in her life.

She didn’t know whether she would go through with playing this. Her classmates seemed nice, but they were still strangers. Did she really want to bare her soul to them? It was the point to feel vulnerable, she knew, but this was still so raw.

At least for the moment, this was only for her. She was alone in Music Room Two, begging the piano keys to tell her how to mend a broken heart.

She hummed through the lyrics about stopping the sun from shining and the rain from falling, then let herself be swept into the sweet, poignant, “La, la, la, la, la, la...”

The next lyrics were too painful to sing. She slipped back into humming for the final plea for help mending her heart and learning to live again.

She ended on a wistful fade into the last soft notes.

And heard a shaken sigh behind her.

She twisted on the bench, startled yet not, because she’d conjured him, hadn’t she? He was the only thing that would heal this fractured heart of hers.

He looked beautiful. He always did. Even jet-lagged, with dark circles under his eyes and that shadow coming in on his jaw, he was sexy and mesmerizing. If he’d been wearing a tie, it had since been discarded. His collar was open, his hair tousled by the wind.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked in a voice thickened by emotion.

“That I got into this program? I thought Nemo would. Or that it would be obvious that that’s why we were here in New York.” She rose and nervously gathered her sheet music into its folder, using the moment with her back to him to pull her emotions back into their compartment. Or at least try, not that it was really possible around him.

“Your mom told me you were here.” He was closer.

She slid out from behind the bench and turned to face him.

He was taking her in with a gaze that ate her up from ponytail to sneakers, snagging on the sleeves of her flannel top tied around her waist, over the denim skirt and ribbed long-sleeved top.

She hugged her folder in front of her. She was only eight weeks, not showing yet, but she felt as though her belly were round and obvious.

“When did you talk to her?” she asked in a voice strained by the joy of seeing him and the panic accosting her as she tried to figure out whether she ought to tell him or—

“She invited me to lunch. She thinks you’re pregnant.”

“Oh.” She slumped onto the keys—pretty much a capital offence—and popped off before the keys had finished resounding. Her body went hot. Her mind scattered.

The only thing she could think was, I’m not ready for this .

“Are you?”

“I wanted to tell you myself,” she said into the folder she was still clutching.

“Then why haven’t you?”

“Because you’ll say we should get married.”

His breath choked out as though she’d kicked him in the stomach.

“Not because...” She lifted her head and stepped forward, holding out a hand in plea. “I was planning to tell you after I’ve had my twelve-week scan. It’s a lot less likely anything might go wrong after that so... I was trying to keep you from having to go through something painful if...” She trailed off and shrugged.

“So you would have gone through that alone ?” He swore and ran his hand down his face. “I told you to call me if you needed anything.”

“I didn’t. I’m fine.”

“Are you?” He raked his gaze over her again, then waved at the piano. “Because your song made me feel like my heart was being carved out with a rusty spoon.”

“It’s supposed to,” she mumbled, not entirely displeased to hear that.

Beyond the door, laughing voices walked by.

“Let’s go to my apartment so we can talk properly,” he said.

She pushed her folder into her shoulder bag, but when he reached to take it, he caught her wrist and stared at the ring.

“If you don’t want to marry me, why do you still wear it?”

“To keep men from hitting on me.” That was true, but the least of the reasons she kept wearing it. She liked feeling connected to him.

Yes, she was still harboring those old dreams, even though he had pushed her away. She handed him the bag and pushed her hand into her pocket.

His car was outside, but they didn’t talk on the short ride.

Walking into the penthouse was surreal. She’d been here for less than twenty-four hours two months ago, but it felt as though it had been years since she was here. At the same time, it was homey and familiar, as though she was returning to where she ought to be, maybe because it was stamped with his personality and everything about him felt like home.

Then she spotted the piano that hadn’t been there before.

Oh, Konstantin .

“Look.” She turned to face him. “I have no intention of keeping this baby from you—”

“Only yourself?” he bit out.

“That’s not fair. You didn’t want me,” she reminded him. “And now you do because I’m pregnant? Listen to how insulting that is. I have loved you my whole life, Konstantin. I deserve to be loved back.”

“You do,” he agreed. “I do love you, Eloise.”

“Oh, don’t !” she cried, hurt beyond measure that he would lie to her after everything else.

“I also deserve that skepticism,” he said gravely. “Refusing to say it and walking away when we could have been together all this time wasn’t fair to you. It wasn’t fair to us.” He ran his hand over his face and took a few restless steps across the room. “It felt too good, Eloise. Hope is not something that ever worked out for me. Things would get better with my father and I would hope. He’d get a job and I’d get a gift and I would hope. My mother would pack our things and we would try to leave and I hoped .”

She bit her lip, wanting to rush toward him, but his tension held her off. She stayed still and quiet and let him spill out what he needed to say.

“I went to live with my grandfather and there was food and peace and I thought that would be my life, but I was sent to a bloody boarding school where it was a different kind of chaos. I mastered my schoolwork and thought I’d be an architect like my friend, but my grandfather had a stroke and...” His shaken sigh spoke of untold pain. “I honestly thought I was headed back to square one at that point. That all was lost. Again. But Ilias stepped in. He made me believe there were people in this life who cared about me. That I could have good things. Then he died .”

Oh, Konstantin . She swallowed his name and hurried to brush away her tears, stifling her sobs, not wanting to distress him, but he was ripping out her heart.

“And you. All you did was look at me with hope. As though I could make you happy. I don’t know what happiness is . I’ve had a fleeting glimpse of it here and there, but it was always gone as quickly as it arrived. I don’t know how to be happy. I don’t trust it. I didn’t trust us.” He turned to face her, expression creased with remorse. “So I threw us away.”

“I never meant for you to think I expect to be happy all the time. I know life is messy and painful. Look at this baby.” She waved at her middle. “I’m ecstatic about it, but the best-case scenario is that it’s going to hurt like hell when it arrives. I don’t expect you to make me happy, Konstantin. I just want you to be with me when I am. To share it with me.”

He closed his eyes, seeming to take a minute to absorb that.

“Do you really want that?” he asked solemnly. “Because I want that, too. I want to be with you even when you’re not happy. I can’t stand to think of you hurting and alone. I want to be there to hold you and help you and somehow find our way back to the good times because I’ve realized that even if those happy times only last a minute, it’s a minute worth fighting for. I want those minutes, Eloise. If I miss another one, I think it might actually kill me.”

“Oh, Konstantin.” Her mouth wouldn’t form the smile that wanted to bloom. Her lips were quivering because she was too moved. “You realize this is one of those minutes right now? That I’m really, really happy just because you’re here ?”

He swept forward and gathered her up so she was eye to eye with him. She looped her arms behind his neck and their noses grazed and her legs were draped against his. He started to kiss her, then drew back. “Is this okay—?”

“It’s perfect. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

The press of his mouth against hers was so sweet it was painful. They held it to just that, a press, waiting for the agony to pass before the joy of reunion tangled with need and combusted into deprivation. In mutual attunement, they moaned and began to kiss hungrily. Passionately.

As he walked up the stairs with her in his arms, she peppered kisses against his throat.

She smiled when he set her on her feet in his massive bedroom. “Are you going to throw these away while I’m asleep?” she asked as she began to undress.

“Whatever it takes to keep you here for the rest of our lives.” He paused in stripping his own clothes to throw back the covers.

Seconds later, they were under the sheets, naked bodies brushing and hands moving with familiarity over each other. She paused to trace his ear and study his rugged features, savoring this moment.

“I’ll be gentle,” he promised.

“I’m not worried, just letting myself feel it. This is my dream come true. I really, really love you, Konstantin. Don’t break my heart again.”

“I won’t. I swear.” His expression flexed with emotion. “I really love you, too. I’ll spend the rest of my life proving it.”

They kissed again and this time, the need to be reunited in the most basic way overtook them. They shifted and caressed. She opened her legs and he slid between them. His flesh prodded hers and found a warm, sleek welcome. They both sighed.

When he was deep inside her, he rolled, bringing her atop him and they lay like that a long time, kissing and caressing and simply reveling in the joy of being intimately connected.

All good things come to an end, though. And when they rolled apart a few minutes later, still panting and breathless, they smiled at each other because, really, it was only the beginning.