Page 17 of Greek’s Christmas Heir

And longer still if she’d taken Anax’s offer of a hefty bank account to use as she pleased...but she’d declined. He could create all the bank accounts he liked for Natalia, butshewasn’t a charity case. Dorothy Jones would haunt her personally if she’d decided otherwise just because a gorgeous man was offering.

She’d be tempted to haunt herself.

“Lovely day,” Brandt Goss said to her one day in June.

The weather had gone too quickly into the summer heat for Constance’s peace of mind, though that might have been because she had a six-month-old strapped to her wherever she went. Today she had decided that she could pick up a few things at the Goss grocery, and get a walk in while she was doing it.

As ever, she had not been thinking about Brandt. Until it was too late.

“It’s been a very pretty spring,” Constance said, the way she would have replied to anyone.

But she should have known better, because Brandt shook his head, almost sorrowfully. “I’m sorry to hear this decision, Constance. Though it is only to be expected.”

Natalia was singing nonsense words to herself. Constance smiled, and didn’t ask Brandt to just ring up her three items already. “I’m sorry. I have no idea what you mean.”

“The church.” When she only stared back at him, he made a clucking sound that she found...deeply insincere. “Why, the nursery school. There was a vote, Constance. No one feels that it’s appropriate to let you continue teaching nursery school. They’re so impressionable at that age, you know. We wouldn’t want to give them the wrong message.”

“You mean, messages about loving people for who they are, Christian charity, that sort of thing?” Constance shot back.

“You’re an unwed mother.” He didn’t bother smiling then.

And Constance felt something almost alien take her over, it was so unlike her. She leaned in rather than smiling and walking away. As if she was Dorothy Jones’s granddaughter after all. “I don’t know how to tell you this, because I’m sure that it will spoil the glee you’ve been taking in what you think is my downfall, but I’m not an unwed mother. Natalia has a father. And I married him before she was born.”

And to underscore it, she pulled on the chain she’d taken to wearing around her neck, so that the rings stayed close to her. Because they seemed so fancy, she’d thought. And she couldn’twearthem. Just think of all the mundane things she did with her decidedly country hands. Like changing diapers. Or cooking. Or simply existing in the world, in Halburg, Iowa.

“See?” She shook the rings so that the diamond gleamed. “I’m sorry to disappoint you. Perhaps you need to return to the nursery school yourself, Brandt. We can talk about things like casting the first stone.”

And that was so satisfying that it fueled her all the way home, where she immediately regretted the rashness of her actions. Because once her phone started ringing, it didn’t stop. Everyone wanted to know if it was true, and why hadn’t she told anyone, and was that why those big black SUVs were sometimes seen around town. Rumor had it that old Charlie Hannon had just been having those fits of his again.

Constance didn’t know how to answer them. Because Anax had taken to dropping in with some regularity over the past six months, though he never did it unexpectedly again. He always gave Maria notice. He came, he saw the baby. He usually exchanged a few words with Constance, it was always strange and intense, and then he left again.

This time, she knew, she was going to have to confess to him that she’d let their secret out of the bag.

“What secret?” he asked when he arrived a few days later.

“The marriage,” she said, and she wouldn’t say it wascomfortable, now, to stand in her house and feel the immensity of him and thatforceof his that filled every room. But she’d grown more accustomed to him even so.

Today he’d arrived as usual and Natalia had been awake and in one of her smiley happy moods, clapping her hands and blowing raspberries. Her dark hair was getting longer. She looked more and more like her father by the moment.

Constance had picked her up, gone over, and thrust her into her father’s arms.

Natalia went to him with such delight that Constance lost the thread of the conversation entirely for a moment or so.

What was it about watching him care for their daughter? Why did it seem to wrap around her like that—so tightly she sometimes lay awake at night, unwinding those strings?

When she remembered herself again, she didn’t tell him that her friends had been none-too-pleased to hear that she’d been keeping secrets. That was her business. But the rest... “It’s just that Brandt Goss is everything that people imagine a small town is, and I hate it. Small-minded, moralistic, and always telling everyone else how to live. I shouldn’t have said anything about you. I’m sorry.”

“Why?” Anax asked. He looked over at her, and the open expression he wore for Natalia...shifted.

He was dressed in a more summery version of his usual sleek outfit. Jeans. A lighter shirt. Shoes that looked rugged and yet sophisticated at once.

But he looked at her the way he had in church last Christmas Eve.

“Why?” she echoed.

Anax returned to studying Natalia. The baby was studying him back. They both looked solemn, but his grip on her seemed firm. He settled her on his knee and she smiled at him, and then they were both smiling, and something in Constance seemed to...roll hard, and then keep on rolling.

“Why are you sorry? We are married. It is fact.” His dark gaze found hers again, a quiet storm. “I have found that it is a deep waste of time, Constance, to trouble myself with apologies. You should not bother with them either.”

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