Page 23 of A Billion-Dollar Heir For Christmas

“I don’t know...” Lillie murmured, because that fluttering sensation she’d felt off and on all day was back. But now it was more intense. And it didn’t feel like ajitter, whatever that was.

Then it happened again, and she knew.

She looked up at him and did nothing at all to stop the delighted smile that moved over her face. She even laughed a little as the strangest feeling washed over her. A kind of relief, but far stronger than that, a kind ofmarvel.

That this was real, too. She was well and truly going to be a mother. She had made a baby who would grow up to be aperson.

With this man beside her, who looked at her now as if he would tear apart the sky itself to keep her safe, if she only said the word.

It was like a different storm, brighter by far than any she’d known.

Lillie felt her smile becoming sappy at the edges, but she couldn’t mind. She reached over and took his free hand and pulled it to her belly, holding it beneath hers so his palm was flush against her roundness.

And it came again, that fluttering.

“Is that...?” His voice sounded like she felt. The disbelief. The delight.

The wonder.

“It’s the baby,” she whispered, her eyes welling up a little. “The baby’s kicking.”

When he looked up at her again, she could see the emotion in those green-and-blue eyes, making them gleam like silver and gold besides.

“Our baby,” he said thickly.

They were married. They were having this baby, together.Ours,he’d said.

Ours,she thought, like another vow.

“Yes,” she said out loud, though her throat was tight. “Ours.”

And Lillie understood for the first time just how much trouble she was in here. With Tiago, who looked at her in amazed wonder, his hands warm against the mound of her belly.

Because he would keep her safe, that she knew beyond any doubt.

But she wasn’t sure she could say the same about her heart.

CHAPTER SIX

BYTHETIMEthe last month of this strange year began, Tiago felt certain he had everything in place. He had married Lillie and made certain she signed enough documents to keep his lawyers happy. He had secured his heir.

He had fixed the mistake he had made that heedless night in Spain, and he had made certain that kind of irresponsible recklessness would not be repeated.

“This is all irregular,” the head of his legal team had tutted at him. “Normally we would never—”

“The Villela heir cannot be born out of wedlock,” Tiago had replied, simply enough. “It simply is not done.”

But he had carried that word like an indictment.

Because the man was not wrong. This was all highly irregular. And Tiago was not used to the sensation of finding himself in such a position. He had always done his duty. He had always made certain to handle each and every one of his responsibilities.

He did not make mistakes.

Lillie had been an anomaly from the start.

“I assume you roamed about Europe, hither and yon, conducting mad, passionate affairs wherever you went,” she said one night at dinner.

Tiago had insisted on the same nightly meal that his parents had engaged in every single night of his childhood. When he had told them that his friends from boarding school did not spend their time eating with their families, his mother had scoffed.

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