Page 30 of Greek’s Christmas Heir

Truth was, he found it heartwarming. No one else treated him in exactly the same way she always had. There was nothing on this earth that affected his sister or her responses to things—except, perhaps, how discomfited she looked in the presence of Stavros, the security head. Anax assumed that was because she also disliked having her movements curtailed. No matter what good reasons there might be for it.

“Not one word,” he agreed now, as close tocheerfulas he got, because he knew it annoyed her. “And had I known you were here, I would have ignored you even longer. To make a point.”

She only rolled her eyes at that as she consulted the tablet she held. “All the holiday invitations are rolling in again. It’s all the usual suspects, as expected.” And then she rattled off a list of charities, holiday balls, events, and the like. “Your company is graciously requested and eagerly anticipated at all of the above, of course.”

“Don’t you normally answer for me without consultation?” He stood up from his desk and allowed himself to stretch, looking out at the bustling streets of Athens far below, gleaming in the December dusk. Something about the lights prodded at him, and he didn’t like it. It reminded him of a firelit night, and a whispered question in a darkened hallway—in the promise he made himself that he had nearly broken. He turned back to his sister. “You are the one who tracks my contributions and packs my calendar with these obligations, are you not? Why is this discussion necessary?”

“This year is different.” Vasiliki lifted her gaze to his with an air of surprise when he did not reply to that. “This year you have a wife, Anax, or have you forgotten that?”

“Am I known for being forgetful?” He was aware that she would not find that an adequate response, and sure enough, she frowned at him.

“Stavros says you haven’t been out to the island in two weeks.” Vasiliki lifted a brow in that way she had that suggested others found it precisely this irritating when he did the same thing. “Trouble in paradise, my brother?”

“What I cannot imagine is what you imagine you are doing with this bizarre conversational gambit.” He considered her for the sort of long, thoughtful moment that would have anyone else at this company quaking. His sister stared back at him, immune. “Have you suffered a head injury?”

Vasiliki laughed. “Sometimes I wish I had, but then I remember, I am an Ignatios. It is a genetic injury.” She tucked the tablet under one arm. “The fact remains, you have a wife. And that changes the conversation.”

“Apparently so, and in astonishing ways. I’d like to change it back.”

“Every year, you attend these balls and it is nothing short of mayhem,” Vasiliki reminded him. “It doesn’t matter how dire or sad the charity, the women are all over you. Old women, young women. You can’t walk three steps without being propositioned. Perhaps you’ve forgotten that it was so bad last year they had to close down that one gala so you could be evacuated.”

Anax rubbed at his temples with only slightly exaggerated impatience. “I was notevacuated. I chose to leave out the side entrance. It had nothing to do with me that the organizers chose to make a scene.”

“This year,” Vasiliki said, very brightly and very slowly, as if he was deeply stupid, “there is another option. You could present your wife to the world, which I feel quite certain would not stopeveryone, but might put a damper on the usual stampede.”

“Ókhi.”He belted that out so abruptly, so succinctly, that he wasn’t sure who was more surprised. Him or his sister. “No.”

They stared at each other as the light continued to fade from the sky outside his office. The ancient city sprawled there before them, ribbons of lights leading to Syntagma Square, looking festive this time of year. Vasiliki, not one for atmosphere, reached behind her and slapped on the overhead lights.

“And am I to know why you refuse to take the life preserver that has been offered to you?” she asked. “It makes no sense. You have complained for years about these cattle calls.”

“Think about what you’re asking,” Anax retorted.

And as he spoke he became more convinced that his gut reaction had been based on facts. On reason and rationality, having nothing at all to do with how close he had come to kissing Constance after watching her sing to their baby.

He didn’t like to think of it. He thought of little else.

“How is it fair to throw Constance headfirst into a sea full of sharks? She cannot swim.”

Vasiliki stared at him. “Is that a metaphor? Are you speaking inmetaphors, brother? Has a Christmas miracle finally occurred before my very eyes?”

Anax thrust his hands into the pockets of his trousers and reminded himself that shetriedto get under his skin as a matter of course. That she had been doing that since birth. Allowing her to succeed was on him. “The fact of the matter is, Delphine picked Constance for a reason. She knows nothing of this world and why should she? The American cornfields that created her are not simply far away from here, they might as well be on a different planet.”

Vasiliki blinked. “The same could be said for your own trajectory, Anax, or have you forgotten what neighborhood we come from?”

He ordered himself to unclench his jaw. “Not to mention, she is my wife. I owe her my protection. I cannot in good conscience allow her to appear in front of the kind of people that run in these circles. They would eat her alive. Her wardrobe alone would make her little more than chum in the water.”

“Again with the sharks.”

“It is unthinkable,” Anax said, warming to the topic, or perhaps he was simply letting his temper out to play here, with his perpetually unimpressed sister, where it could do no harm. “I cannot think why you would suggest such a thing. What has Constance ever done to you?”

His sister had eyed him for a long, uncomfortable moment. He thought that she would say something and braced himself, but instead she pulled her tablet back out, swiped at the screen, and moved on to other topics.

That night, though he had not intended on going out to the island, Anax landed there anyway. And found his wife, not in the dining room where they ate when he was expected, but in a small sitting room near her bedchamber that he could see, at a glance, she had taken over as her own.

And he could not account for the little pop of warmth in him at the sight. At the notion she was actually...settling in here.

“Maria did not tell me you were coming,” Constance said in something like alarm when he opened the door and found her there. She stood up from the small table where she’d been sitting, and she looked...guilty.

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