Page 11 of Greek’s Christmas Heir

Then she waited. But Constance did not do the expected thing. She did not stare harder at Anax until the light dawned, and then start issuing effusive apologies. That wasn’t to say she wasn’t staring at him, but if she recognized him, she was hiding it masterfully.

He allowed as how it was difficult for him to imagine that a nursery school teacherherecould have even encountered Delphine and her machinations.

“My brother only learned of you two weeks ago,” Vasiliki said, in a tone that suggested that while she wasn’t issuing accusationsyet,she could start at any moment.

Constance shook her head, her cheeks still as flushed as they had been in the much hotter main part of the church. And her hands were at her rounded sides, as if holding her belly aloft. “But I’m trying to understand how anyone has heard of me at all. My understanding was that everything was kept private. That’s the whole point of going through a clinic, isn’t it?”

“The doctor you worked with has lost his medical license,” Anax said abruptly. “He allowed a vindictive woman to blackmail him into letting her dispense material that was never donated to that clinic.”

He watched Constance take that in. She only blinked, yet he thought he saw a different sort of trembling as she slid her hands up and folded them over the top of her big belly. In this room, the cloak fell back and he could see that she was wearing a very prosaic shirt and trousers beneath. There was nothing supernatural about her. No choirs. No light.

She was not mesmerizing at all, he told himself, and yet he could not look away.

“Are you saying that this woman...stolethat material?”

That iron deep inside him seemed heavier. Colder. “That is exactly what she did.”

“Why would she do that? Why would anyone do that?”

“That is a much longer conversation, and it is an unpleasant one.” Anax ran a hand through his hair, then wondered at himself. He was considered one of the greatest poker players of all time, though he did not gamble. Not with cards. But he did not have the tells that other, lesser men did. He did notfidget.He dropped his hand. “The fact remains that she did this thing. And it looks as if the result of this is about to be born. Unless I am misreading how far along you are.”

Surely, he thought, no woman could bethatpregnant and have much farther to go.

“No,” Constance agreed. “You’re not misreading it. In fact I think—” But she shook her head. “Let me make sure I’m following all of this. I’m guessing that you didn’t come here to congratulate me on this happy accident.”

“I had no intention of ever having children,” Anax said, very distinctly, very solemnly. He held her gaze. He did not look away. “I have never had any interest in it. I do not feel my genetics are well suited to continuing on.”

Constance blew out a breath. “Oh, well. Oh, dear. I guess we’ll find out, hey?”

And in any other situation, Anax would have assumed that she was being sardonic. Provoking, at the very least. That this was some hayseed act she was putting on.

But this woman looked nothing but wide-eyed and innocent, and more than a little overawed by him. That in itself was nothing out of the ordinary, but the way she looked at him was more like he was some far-off constellation she’d never noticed in the sky before. As if she found him magnificent, but it wasn’tpersonal.It was simply a fact, and not an important one.

Frankly, it was distracting. He didn’t like it. Or it was more that he didn’t quite know what to make of it. He was used to women making fools of themselves for a scrap of his attention. He was not used to women having the full force of his attention and behaving as if they were just waiting for him to...put it somewhere else.

It took him a long, awkward moment to understand that the bizarre sensation inside his person was him feeling...disconcerted.

Anax was not certain he had ever experienced such a thing before.

“You do not seem to have heard of my brother,” Vasiliki said then. She was leaning against the door, looking entirely languid. Yet Anax had no doubt that if someone tried to enter, she would deal with them, and swiftly. “Nor do you seem to recognize him.”

It shouldn’t have been possible, yet Constance’s eyes widened even further as she looked at him. “Should I have?”

They had discussed the possibility that Delphine had not chosen this seemingly random woman out of the ether. That she might very well have chosen some patsy or other. Some grasping sort of girl she knew somehow. It seemed as possible as anything else, and frankly, more likely.

Later, Anax knew that he and Vasiliki would debate this moment, but he felt that same gut feeling of certainty that he often did in business. He knew Constance wasn’t putting on an act.

He knew this as well as he knew himself.

She had never heard of him. She had no idea who he was. She had gone to that clinic in good faith, and this was the result.

And somehow, there was relief in that. It brought his fury down several notches immediately, and he preferred that. Indulging his fury was too close to a lack of control, and Anax was scrupulously careful about maintaining control of himself. He wasn’t uptight like his sister. He simply had boundaries he maintained, always.

It was another deep relief that he could ratchet back that dark, simmering thing inside him that had driven him here. Constance hadn’t done anything to deserve it. That mattered.

“Are you someone I’m supposed to recognize?” she asked, and peered at him as if he was a puzzle that needed immediate solving.

“I am a man of some renown,” he told her, ignoring the sound his sister made at that. “Any child of mine will have to be protected. Do you understand?”

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