Page 27 of Greek’s Christmas Heir

“Is that why you think that all of this, all this excess, is better than everything else?” She ran her finger along the edge of the pastry, and then put it to her lips, not thinking twice about it.

Until she looked at Anax again and found him watching the movement with a certain hooded intensity.

Constance felt...stunned.

She felt it rebound through her, sharp and hot and unmistakable.

She felt herself flush from head to toe, and couldn’t pretend for one moment it was hormones. Or a sudden fever.

And she curled up the finger she’d licked into a fist and hid it in her lap.

“Do I think that I am better than a monster?” Anax laughed, though the sound was...raw. A rough touch that did not help the heat swamping her. “I celebrate this difference. Every day.”

“I suppose it makes sense that you think that what your daughter really needs are all thesethings.” Constance waved her free hand around at theimmensityof it all. The house that went on and on and on. The high ceilings. The art, the chic décor that she was afraid to sit on, the staff and their nearly unseen hospitality. “You do know, don’t you, that it’s not thetrappingsof things that matter?”

Anax stared at her for a long moment and she thought she saw his nostrils flare, just slightly. She became aware of the tension in his jaw and the muscle that flexed there, making him even more attractive. He picked up the small coffee before him, and tossed it back. And then it was his turn to stand up from the table with what looked to her a lot like his own dollop of melodrama.

“How would you know?” he asked in a certain silkentonethat felt like an insult no matter how smooth it was. Or maybe it was how he looked down at her, as if pointing out their difference in station.

“How would I...?” Constance blinked and ordered herself to concentrate. “How would I know what matters?”

“How would you know whether trappings such as these make a difference or not? As you have been at such pains to tell me, your life has been happy, yet humble. I believe I am meant to take from this that you grew up in some idyllic state of being, merrily suspended in cornfields, taught the true meaning of things by the very earth below you and the sky above. Is that not so?”

His laugh was darker now, and she thought he knew full well that it danced all the way down her spine, then wrapped around to send heat spooling into the most fascinating places in front.

And he wasn’t done. “This is nonsense. A farm is a farm,koritsi. A village is a village. There is no moral value assigned to either, there are only the banal home and hearth fantasies of those who live in them. And that is the difference, you see.”

She had to tilt her head back to stare all the way up the length of him, and was aware that he wanted that. He wanted her to have to gaze so far above herself, at all his offhanded elegance and manicured perfection that should have made him look soft—but he was too masculine for that. There was too much belligerence stamped raw and unmistakable into all the rangy lines of his body.

And she still couldn’t manage a decent breath. “The difference between what?” she dared to ask.

Anax’s mouth curved in that way he had that was not a smile. It was nothing so soft or yielding. “The difference between your farmland, your cornfields, your microscopic village that no one has ever heard of, and the kind of neighborhoods that I called home. We did not fantasize, Constance. That was dangerous. And futile. We focused on making it through one day, then the next. No future, no past, no convenient virtue.” He leaned in, and Constance felt her heart thump in her chest. Like a sledgehammer. She could feel the reverberations in her ears. “And yes, I think my daughter is safer here, away from all of that.”

Then he left her there, and it was between Constance and the stars, how long it took to remember how to breathe again.

She thought about that conversation a lot more than she liked as the days slipped by. She found she truly loved the freedom of no longer breastfeeding, but also mourned the loss of that connection to Natalia. And despite her intention to freeze Maria out, it was impossible to stay furious in the face of all that relentless cheer.

Besides, she had no one else.

“I want to learn how to swim,” she told the other woman one morning. “It seems prudent to learn how. Since we’re on an island.”

“And, of course,” Maria said placidly, though there was a gleam in her gaze, “who knows? You might have to swim away from here one day.”

“You never know,” Constance agreed merrily.

But Maria began to give her lessons, every morning. They moved from one pool to another. Some were saltwater, some fresh. Some were heated, some cold. In every one of them, she learned to put her face in the water. To blow bubbles. To float.

Slowly, slowly, she learned to swim.

As November chugged along, Constance decided that the most diabolical part of this imprisonment was how easy it was to acclimate to it. It was sunny and warm during the day and there was a chill in the air at night, and it felt heavenly. Nothing at all like Iowa’s slide into the dark season. And maybe, if she had been a different sort of person—even the person she’d been right after she’d had Natalia—she might have simply soaked it all in.

But she’d already had a break from her usual routine. She hadn’t managed to restore her position at the nursery school, but she’d been making headway, and she’d started working at a day care in town in the meantime because she didn’t like staying home.

She didn’t like this idle life. It made her feel depressed.

“There are extensive libraries,” Anax told her in repressive tones at dinner one night when she dared say so. They had moved inside to a room with art on the walls and a glass ceiling that brought the weather in. It was a stormy night outside, nearly December, and the staff had gone all around lighting fireplaces and candles so that everything glowed and very nearly felt festive. “There is no limit to how you might improve yourself.”

Constance looked at him narrowly. She had taken it as a particular badge of honor to wear only the same Walmart sweatshirt and cargo pants when she saw him. No matter what else she might wear during the day when he was not around, the moment she heard that helicopter coming in for its landing, she changed back into the most trailer-park version of herself she could manage.

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