Page 15 of Greek’s Christmas Heir

Constance laid the baby down for her midmorning nap. She considered whether or not she’d like to take a nap herself, and sat on the couch in a heap of indecision when there was a smart knock on her front door.

Peremptory. Intense.

And she knew before she went to open the front door that it was him.

She knew she hadn’t made anything up.

But still, she was unprepared.

Because Anax Ignatios stood there, in all his glory, in a way that made her want to shift and fidget like one of the little kids she tried to teach how to stand still.

“Oh,” Constance said, though that felt inadequate. She tried again, but all she came up with was, “Hello.”

He continued to gaze at her, then inclined his head in the direction of the house behind her. The house she was unconsciously blocking him from entering, despite the February weather.

“Perhaps you haven’t noticed,” he said in that rough, intensely dark and stirring voice of his that she understood had been echoing around inside her all this time, especially when she slept and dreamed, “but it is extremely cold out here.”

“Of course it is. I’m sorry.” She still couldn’t seem to move for a moment, and that dark brow of his inched up higher, drawing even more attention to those smoky gray eyes of his. She had to force herself to step back, because her body did not seem to want to pay the slightest bit of attention to the order she gave it and she did not know what to make of that.

Just like she didn’t know what to do with...herself. She was wearing what she considered a perfectly reasonable outfit for a brand-new mother with a six-week-old baby. Sweats. A T-shirt too faded and soft to read. Her hair piled on top of her head. And now, she couldn’t think of anything else but how wretched she must look—

Except, of course, the last time he’d seen her she’d been wearing the cloak of the Virgin Mary, covered in hay.

Constance reminded herself that there was absolutely no reason to assume this man even noticed what she looked like, then or now. She took solace in that.

He moved past her, very nearly nudging her as he went to take off his magnificently sleek coat and hang it next to her puffy parka on the pegs in the hall. Their coats, together like that, struck her as an almost unbearable intimacy. Though how on earth she thought there was somethingintimatebetween her and this man while she had baby sick on one shoulder and undefined stains everywhere else, was a delusion all its own.

“How is our daughter?” Anax asked, in that way of his that sent sensation spinning through her and around her—but was also clarifying.

The baby.

He was here about the baby,obviously.

There was no other reason that a man like this would be anywhere near her, or Halburg, or possibly the entirety of the Midwest. She beckoned for him to follow her and then she was entirely too aware of him, prowling there behind her. Somehow silent on the old wood floors even though the faintest hint of the scent of him danced all around, teasing her senses. It made her think of cloves. And something else, something decadent and haunting, like a dark liqueur.

She led him into the little sitting room where Maria had set up a bassinet and Constance was known to nap, occasionally. Or lie there the whole time with her eyes squeezed shut, ordering herself tosleep when the baby sleepslike everyone else did.

Then she was standing next to Anax as he looked down at his daughter—their daughter—and found herself flooded with a kind of emotion she wasn’t sure she’d ever felt before.

Constance snuck a look at him while her poor heart pounded hard in her chest.

He gripped the edge of the bassinet and gazed down at tiny little Natalia, who slept on her back with her little fists by her head and that sprinkling of dark hair on her head. She looked so much like her father it hurt, and as strange as all this was—this delusion that wasn’t a delusion at all—Constance found she couldn’t hate it. Maybe as time went on she would regret the circumstances that had brought her here, who knew, but right now she felt a fierce, primal sort of joy that she could look at the daughter she’d brought into the world and look beside her to see the man who had stamped her with his own dark beauty.

“She is beautiful,” he whispered, the words sounding like an oath.

“She is,” Constance agreed. “And more beautiful every day.”

And when there came the sound of someone approaching behind them, they both started slightly. As if they’d been caught doing something...indiscreet.

Though Constance forgot about that strange moment almost at once, and the lingering heat it left behind inside her, because cheerful, bright Maria was bustling into the room holding a tray aloft.

“I took the liberty of making a light lunch,” she said, because of course she had. “I’m sure you’re both hungry. And this will make it easier to concentrate on the things you have to talk about.”

And before she knew it, really, Constance found herself sitting on her own sofa, eating little sandwiches and trying not to stare too much at the man who took the chair across from her. It was her grandfather’s chair. Grandpa Abe had not been precious about it and it wasn’t as if Constance had kept it empty in some kind of vigil for him, but still. It made her feel prickly inside to see another man sitting there.

But not the sort of prickly that led to anger, she understood in the next moment. She was still feeling that heat. As if merely being in this man’s presence left her...flushed.

“How are you holding up?” Anax asked her, the very soul of courtesy.

---