Page 49 of Greek’s Christmas Heir

He was the one. She had been waiting for him her whole life. And she wanted more than this.

“You are Anax Ignatios,” she said quietly. “You can figure anything out, and have. As a business proposition, you’ve done such things a hundred times or more.”

“Constance,” he began.

But she lifted a hand. “You have until Christmas,” she told him, her eyes steady on his. Not an order, but a statement of fact. “Until Natalia’s birthday. Figure it out, Anax. We’re both counting on you.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“IDONOTcare for ultimatums,” Anax growled at her, down there in that basement that was only half below ground. Right then he felt as if they were stuck in a pit that got deeper by the moment.

Or perhaps he was the only one stuck—and it was quicksand.

Because Constance was changing, right there before his eyes.Shelooked as bright as that smile of hers. As if the sun poured in and lit up only her and near enough to blinding.

She aimed that smile at him, though there was still that challenge in her fascinating gaze. “How fascinating, when you so enjoy delivering ultimatums to others.”

The man he usually was would have responded to that at once, and in a manner calculated to end the conversation in his favor, but he...couldn’t. It was the quicksand. Or it was her, and the faith she put in him to become...something other than who he was.

He wanted to tell her that was impossible. That he knew who he was and that was trouble—

But Constance did not seem inclined to stand about, watching a man go to war with himself. Her smile never slipped as she turned away and glided back up the stairs toward the rest of the house.

Leaving him there beneath her house in Iowa, of all places. To figure out what his next move should be.

To figure out who he really was, once and for all.

His mother had cast less light on the subject than he might have wished.

Who among us cannot find a monster deep within?she had asked, with an expression as close to sad as he’d seen it in years. She had leaned a bit closer, there in that tiny church.This is the real trouble. You choose, Anax. We all choose. So if you look in your mirror and see a monster looking back, it is not your father. It is you.

Thank you for this pep talk,he had replied dryly.

Evgenia had laughed.I have never been that kind of mother,she’d said.But you should know that it is a gift, that the thing you fear most is in you. That you have chosen it, in one way or another. Because what you choose you can change.

He thought about that now, in this lonely basement with discarded bits of furniture and windows blocked in by drifts of snow. He thought about the particular despair of having choices and all of them bad. Or with unknowable outcomes.

Anax had not taken a leap of faith in a long, long time.

He thought about other things, too. About indulging his temper, his fury at her dictates. About how he could do that and claim it was justified. About storming away from this place, but what would he gain from such a display?

It would not give him more time with his daughter.

And it most certainly would not give him his wife.

Anax stood there in this quicksand of his own making, aware that he was breathing too heavily. That his blood was rushing too hard, too fast, too intensely through his body. And he understood that the truth of the matter was that he wanted the same things that Constance did.

The only difference was, he was the one who needed to provide those things, and he was not certain he could. He was not sure he wasable.

He wasn’t sure that she truly thought they could happen either, those rose-colored dreams of the life they could live together. The difference between them was that Constance chose to hope that the things she wanted were possible.

Anax had somehow lost his ability to do the same.

It was that thought that animated him, washing away all that quicksand.

Because once, when he’d had far less than he did now and no reason at all to believe he could change his life in the slightest, he hadhopedhe could. He haddecided he would, and thrown himself into it. He had not been afraid of failure—and that was a good thing, because he had failed again and again.

The difference was that younger, hungrier version of Anax had taken each failure as a lesson. As an opportunity to shoot even higher the next time.

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