Page 20 of Greek’s Christmas Heir

“I’ll tell you,” he said, with a swift look in her direction. “But we must hurry.”

And Anax was no liar. He prided himself on that. Lies had always been his father’s department.

But that didn’t mean he was required to guide Constance away from jumping to the wrong conclusion. He saw the way she frowned at his security team. He watched her swallow, hard. If he had to guess, she was recalling the great many things his sister had said about his massive wealth and creating a narrative out of that. A whole story about why he would have to use his security team to pack them up in a hurry.

Then again, maybe she was simply that obedient. Either way, she did not put up any kind of fight. She settled Natalia into the car seat that was waiting in the SUV, crawled in after her, and didn’t ask him another thing until they had boarded his plane.

Something that took her longer than it should have, as she’d had to wrestle her great chicken-feathered crest up the jetway and in through the door.

“Are we actuallyflyingsomewhere?” she asked with an odd note in her voice when the plane began to bump along the tarmac.

“But of course.” Anax settled into his comfortable seat across from her. Maria had taken Natalia off to one of the staterooms to see if she would go down for a nap. Constance, he noticed, was sitting in a rigid sort of posture in her seat, her hands clamped down hard on her armrests. “Why else would we go to the trouble of boarding a plane?”

“I don’t know. I thought it was some...rich person thing. Maybe it’s bulletproof. Maybe it’s a bomb shelter. How would I know?”

“I think you’re describing one of those loud and overbright superhero movies. I do not wear a costume.” It was possible he overemphasized theIin that sentence. “My plane is a plane, nothing more.”

“That’s a pity. I thought that’s why we were getting on it. To keep us safe?”

“After a fashion.” He studied her as the plane gained speed on the runway. More specifically, the way the color drained from her face. “Constance. Tell me. Have you never flown before?”

“Certainly not,” she belted out in something of a high-pitched voice. “If human beings were meant to fly they would have wings themselves. That’s what my grandma Dorothy always said and it always seemed like reasonable advice to me.” The plane leaped from the ground into its initial ascent, and she yelped. Actuallyyelped.“Besides, where would I fly to?”

Anax almost allowed himself a smile. “Right now we are flying to Greece.”

He had built himself up to this moment, he could admit that. He had decided it was a victory worth seeking. That he must win at all costs. And so he had.

But now that it happened just the way he’d planned it, it didn’t change the fact that he was still fascinated by this woman. These months that he had told himself he needed simply toget throughhad made him...moreawareof her. He knew things about her now that only someone who had shared space with her could. The way she looked when she woke, dreamy-eyed and a little bit wild. The little songs she sang to Natalia to lull her to sleep. The way she laughed in sheer delight when the baby squealed out her excitement. The way she looked when she curled up on the sofa and slept, still glowing the way she had in that church when he’d first set eyes on her.

His fascination with her only grew.

And it seemed even more extreme just now.

She was dressed like a pale, rigid chicken. And yet thatyelpgot to him. It made him...

He didn’t know what it was, that softening in his chest. That worrisomewarmth.

“That’s ridiculous,” she shot back at him. He watched her whip her head around to look out the window, then whip it back so quickly that the chicken beak that poked out from her forehead didn’t quite make it all the way back with her. And sat there, forlornly askew, as she frowned at him. “Why would we go to Greece? And more importantly, I don’t have a passport. They’re only going to send me back.”

The warmth inside him intensified at this indication that even now, while scared and quite literally out of her depth, she was still concerned with the practicalities.

The fascination was bad enough, he lectured himself. Surely he did not need toadmireher.

“I think you do not understand what it means to be a man in my position,” he said, quietly enough. Because he could afford to be magnanimous in victory. No matter what strange sensations were battling it out in his chest, sending the strangest sensations deep into the center of his rib cage. “Your passport has been taken care of, obviously.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and he watched her chest move rapidly, beneath what looked like a pillowcase with feathers stuck on. It occurred to him that he had seen this woman in a full-on, committed sort of costume more than he’d ever seen...anyone else in costume, ever. Even at the various masquerades and fancy-dress events he’d attended, it was always with the sort of people who expected that a gesture toward the idea of a costume would do the work for them.

That wasn’t what Constance was doing at all. She wasn’t dressed like a sexy devil, or any of the similar not-quite costumes that he’d seen in his time at the sort of parties he’d attended, where women tended to use the fancy dress requirement as an excuse to expose themselves as much as possible.

Constance wasn’t vamping it up. She didn’t look like a sex pot, which wasn’t to say she wasn’t sexy in her way. Mostly, however, he was forced to admit that she looked...cute.

As she sat across from him, pulling in breaths and letting them out, hard, Anax had no choice but to ask himself when he’d ever before considered a womancute.

He hadn’t. It didn’t require any deep consideration.

Cutewas the sort of word that applied to puppies and kittens, and possibly his own daughter when she smiled at him or simplyexisted. But not awoman.

Or not any other woman.

---