Page 19 of Greek’s Christmas Heir

“Anax,” she said when he stopped before her, all that force and mastery of his beating back the night.

She could tell that something had changed. There was something about the way he was looking at her, something...but it couldn’t be possessive, could it? Why wouldhelook atherlike that?

“Koritsi,”he said, as if that was her name, and there was no mistaking the thread in his voice then, that dark current of victory. Triumph. It was lighting up his eyes. There was something dark in it, something compelling. “I have come to take you home.”

CHAPTER FIVE

“I’MALREADYHOME,” Constance told him, though her voice was a bit faint and her eyes were wide. Always sowideandwonderingin that mesmerizing shade, and Anax had waited long enough for this. Too long.

He took full advantage of her surprise. Of herwide-eyed stare. He nudged her aside as she did not quite gape at him, taking hold of the stroller with a curt nod to what he assumed was her friend. Though the other woman, mouth actually ajar, melted off almost immediately as if even she could sense the truth.

That this was a trap that he had set a long time ago and though he had let it run its course, it had done so. Now he was finished playing.

Though that, perhaps, was a little much to imagine was being transmitted to this parade, or whatever it was, that had brought out so many children and adults in various forms of questionable fancy dress.

Constance was the wife of one of the wealthiest men alive. Yet she appeared to be dressed as a barnyard animal.

He did not ask why. Nor what possessed her. He started walking back toward her house, pushing the stroller as he went. And he did not mind that she had to hurry—feathers aquiver—to keep up with his long strides.

“I don’t understand what’s happening,” she said as she went, frowning up at him as if she couldn’t decide whether to be annoyed or anxious.

“Yes,” Anax agreed, with a dark sort of laugh. “That has been quite apparent for some time.”

“Excuse me?”

But he didn’t answer.

Maria, the spy he’d installed from the start because he was good at the games he played, had told him all about Constance’s plans for the night and he’d decided that it would be the perfect opportunity to put an end—at last—to these trips all the way out into this hinterland. He had married her, securing his heir and locking her down in ways he doubted she could even imagine. Then he had spent ten months making certain that there was no possible legal loophole for her to wiggle out of, assuming she ever comprehended the danger she was in.

He had managed to secure both her and his daughter against any attempts to separate them.

Forever.

Though everyone agreed it would be far easier all around if Constance and the baby were not off in the abyss of America. Anax had agreed—but he had not achieved the success he had in life by failing to use the best weapons he had to hand.

Like, for example, lulling an opponent into a false sense of security to make sure that when he made his move, he could do so with surgical precision.

Maria was taking care of packing up the house. Vasiliki was overseeing the arrangements. All he had to do was get Constance onto his plane.

Anax had no doubt that he could. And once he did, once she washandled, he could put an end to the unacceptablefascinationhe could not seem to shake when it came to this woman.

He had it all planned out. He would install them on an island he owned in the Aegean, having bought it purely because it was the sort of unimaginable thing he’d never have believed was possible back when he was a boy. But now it was the perfect place to install a wife and a child.

If he took them to Athens, he would need to announce their existence to the world, sooner or later. And he was not certain that was something he wished to do. Not now. Notyet.It didn’t matter if her neighbors here had been told she was married. It wasn’t as if that Brandt Goss character could alter world events with a single phone call, or at all.

Anax’s world was very different from what passed for life in Halburg, Iowa.

Until he decided how best to hard launch the fact of his marriage and the existence of his daughter, he needed Constance to stay out of view.

His view, specifically.

Particularly while dressed like achicken,he thought as he pushed the stroller down the dark street. But there was no need to engage with that. With a patently absurd costume that cast aspersions on the Ignatios name by virtue of a member of his family parading around in it in full view of whoever cared to look—

Once she was in his grasp, he reminded himself, and settled in on an island that she could not leave without his permission, she could dress however she liked. With his compliments.

He could see his child as often as he wished, the lack of which had eaten him alive in all these months of carefully spaced-out visits so as not to alarm Constance or alert her to his ultimate goals. He could live his life as he always had, in accordance withhiswishes andhisschedule, not Constance’s.

“Are those my things?” she asked from his heels as he reached her house. Even Constance, who he had noticed seemed perfectly capable of not noticing the obvious things before her, could recognize her own suitcases as they were loaded into one of the cars. “What on earth is going on?”

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