Page 29 of Greek’s Christmas Heir

As if she’d been fooling herself all this time, pretending she couldn’t see it—

But the door opened then, and Maria came in. She was carrying Natalia, who wailed when she saw her mother and held out her small, chubby arms.

“She had a bad dream,” Maria said, apologetically, looking up at the glass ceiling to suggest the storm was the culprit. “And she would not settle. I’m sorry to interrupt your evening.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Constance said, taking the sweet weight of her daughter in her arms. “Natalia is never an interruption.”

She glanced at her husband while she said that and saw that odd, arrested expression on his face.

But it wasn’t until later, after she carried Natalia back to the nursery, aware that he followed her. After she put the little girl down and sang to her, with a hand on her belly to keep her warm. After she kept going until the baby fell asleep.

It wasn’t until then that she found herself standing in a dark hallway with Anax, as if they were still in that same, stark moment.

“You never answered the question,” she said, and in her head, she wanted that to sound businesslike. Brusque and to the point.

But they were standing outside their daughter’s nursery. It was later now, and this part of the house was not so gleaming or bright. There was only the two of them and too many shadows.

And that heat embroidered into everything.

Her eyes adjusted just enough so that she could see that gray gleam of his gaze.

“What question?” Anax asked and his voice, too, was altered. Lower. Like a rough scrape along the surface of her skin.

She told herself that was the cold outside, the storm that was still rolling over the island. “How would you improve yourself if you could?”

Somewhere in the distance, she could hear the wind outside. But deep inside her, she could hear her own heartbeat, loud and insistent and drowning out almost everything else.

He leaned forward, and his hand moved, and she had the most absurd notion—

As if the purpose of it all was to lower his face so they were at eye level—

Once again, she couldn’t breathe. Her heart stopped, then slammed back into her ribs. Because she thought, she knew, shewanted—

That gaze of his dropped to her mouth, and everything in her went still. Then burst into flame once more when he dragged that gaze back up to hers.

“What I need to remember,” he said, very quietly, almost achingly, “is that I’m going to need to stop fighting monsters who aren’t in the room.”

She thought he leaned forward.

He did, she was sure of it. Her eyes felt weighted and heavy, and against her will, they fluttered shut.

When she opened them again, he was gone.

But Constance was not the same.

Because she’d made the very perilous mistake of desperately wanting her husband—the man who’d only wanted their daughter, never her.

And, worse,showinghim.

CHAPTER SEVEN

ANAXLOOKEDUPfrom a long, satisfyingly brutal stretch of hours at his desk to find his sister haunting his doorway.

He sat back, glancing at his watch to determine how long he’d been poring over the documents on his desk, looking for the sorts of secrets that he knew too well his opponents and their legal teams liked to hide in contracts where they thought no one would look. Throw enough clauses into the mix and people assumed they’d gotten the gist of all of them without actually reading them all.

Anax knew different. From experience on both sides of said clauses.

“You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you?” demanded Vasiliki in her usual half-scornful, three-quarters disrespectful manner.

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