Page 21 of Greek’s Christmas Heir

Just this one.

He was frowning back at her when she finally opened her eyes again, fixing him with that grave, smoky quartz gaze.

An upgrade fromcute, he thought, though it seemed that when it came to Constance, it was all tangled up into one. Intoher.

“This is not a security situation, is it?” Her voice sounded calm. As if she’d never made that high-pitched noise. Though he noticed she did not look out the windows again. “You wanted me to think it was.”

“My darling wife,” he said, leaning back in his seat the way he did when the negotiations finally opened and the thrill of his imminent win moved over him like sweet, Greek sunshine, “I cannot possibly control what it is you think or do not think.”

She did not so much as blink. “I don’t understand.”

“Natalia is just starting to walk,” he said, very calmly. “You have had these ten months with her. I have hadvisits. I was happy to let this continue for a time, to encourage the bond that any mother and child must have, but that time has now passed. You are my wife and she is my child. Both of you therefore belong with me, in Greece.”

To her credit, she did not break down.

Though...maybe he wanted her to. Maybe his pulse picked up the way it did because she didn’t respond the way he’d expected she would. He was forced to remember that this was the woman who had gone into labor while standing quietly in a nursery school classroom in the back of a church, and had married him in between contractions. Why had he imagined anything he did could affect her when those things had not seemed to?

Her gaze was grave, and not so wide. “You said our marriage was a legality, nothing more.”

“You have a choice, of course.” Anax inclined his head. “I am a reasonable man. You are welcome to remain in your quiet little town forevermore, with my blessing. All you need do to achieve this is, naturally, sign over your parental rights.”

At that, she cracked. But she didn’t burst into tears or scream, as he’d half expected. Constance actually laughed instead, throwing back her head as if the hilarity was so great that she could not contain it.

“You must have lost your grip on reality entirely,” she said after a moment, wiping at her eyes beneath the chicken beak, that seemed to point his way now in some kind of condemnation. “I assume these strong-arm tactics work in whatever it is that you do for a living, but I’m a real person. Not a billionaire. Not someone who has planes to fly around in, and whatever it was your sister was talking about that night.” She laughed again. “Yourreal estate portfolio,wasn’t it? I don’t have a portfolio. I have one very old house that’s been paid off for years. I have an ancient car that doesn’t much like the winters anymore, but I keep it going just the same. I have friends and neighbors I’ve known all my life.” She’d sounded as if she was warming to the topic but she seemed to slow a bit then, though her chin lifted. “Things might have changed a bit over the last year or so, but things are always going to change. What will never change is that I have a home, and my daughter will live there. With me.”

He held her gaze. He waited until her chin sank down a notch.

“That time in your life is over,” he said. Softly, but matter-of-factly. “I am sorry if this distresses you, but that is not a factor in what must happen now.”

There was a different sort of color in her cheeks now, a flush to match the red chicken comb on the hooded thing she wore. “I never agreed to this.”

“I have not asked for your agreement,” he replied with a shrug. “You married a very wealthy and powerful man, Constance. It was made very clear to you that you were giving birth to my heir. There was only one way this was ever going to end. Are you so naïve that you thought otherwise? I can’t believe it.”

“I don’t think it’s naïve to believe that a person’s word matters,” she shot back. “Apparently you don’t share that belief.”

“I am a man of honor,” he told her darkly, not at all sure why he should bristle at the notion she thought otherwise. “But I did not pledge my word to you. My pledge was to our daughter, who will be raised as the heiress she is. She will not spend her days wasting away as a nonentity in the back of beyond.”

“The back of beyond is a fantastic place to raise a child,” Constance shot back, a flash in her eyes and a new lift to that chin. “I should know. That’s where I was raised. That’s why I went to all the trouble of going to a clinic for IVF treatments so I could have a baby there myself. You have absolutely no right—”

“But that is where you are wrong,” he told her with a certain satisfaction. “I have all the rights. I have seen to it. Natalia bears my name. She already has dual citizenship. You cannot say the same. I believe you can submit an application for permanent residence in two years’ time. And then attempt to become a naturalized citizen some five years later. As long as you are my wife, that is.”

He didn’t have to issue the threat. It sat there, between them.

She looked down at her hands for a moment. A long moment, where all he could see was that red comb trembling slightly to indicate that she was, too. And when she looked up at him again, that gaze of hers was troubled.

He might have felt a sense of shame. If he had anything to be ashamed about.

“Ten months is a long time to pretend to be someone you’re not,” she said, very quietly, that gaze unwavering. “To pretend to be kind. To pretend you intended to work things out with me. Why would you bother if this was always going to be the end result? Are you truly that cruel?”

There was something about her that got under his skin and he didn’t like it. It was the way she looked at him, he thought, but dismissed it instantly.

Because he knew it was more than that.

It was the night she’d given birth. The way she’d worked and struggled to bring Natalia into the world and the truth was, he didn’t like to think of it. It was...too much.

Too raw. Too real. Too starkly emotional.

It was all the days he’d spent with her since. The accumulation of hours here and there. The night or two he’d stayed over in that odd little house, in a bare little room close enough to the attic that should have offended his every sensibility and yet had been...cozy.A word he had little experience with in his life.

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