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Leo leaned back and sighed. He dropped his forehead to hers. His hands stilled. ‘You know what I think, Juno?’
‘No, what?’ she said.
‘Your sister is a grown woman and an extremely competent queen. If there’s anything she needs to tell you, she will, because she loves you and she knows you love her. I adore your compassion but sometimes you just have to give people space.’
‘Are you telling me to back off and stop being so nosey?’ she asked, the guilt releasing its grip on her throat. Leo was right. Jade was smart and sensible and she knew Juno had her back. If Jade needed her, she’d let her know.
He smiled. ‘That too.’ He lifted her into his arms as the giddy laugh popped out after all. ‘Now let’s start celebrating the new year early.’
She held on to his shoulders and found his lips with hers.
Ready to celebrate this new year, and the next, and all the years to come as soon as humanly possible.
Coming next month
AN HEIR CLAIMED BY CHRISTMAS
Clare Connelly
‘I will never understand how you could choose to keep me out of his life.’
Annie’s eyes swept shut. ‘It wasn’t an easy decision.’
‘Yet you made it, every day. Even when you were struggling, and I could have made your life so much easier.’
That drew her attention. ‘You think this is going to make my life easier?’ A furrow developed between her brows. ‘Moving to another country, marrying you?’
His eyes roamed her face, as though he could read things in her expression that she didn’t know were there. As though her words had a secret meaning.
‘Yes.’
For some reason, the confidence of his reply gave her courage. One of them, at least, seemed certain they were doing the right thing.
‘What if we can’t make this work, Dimitrios?’
His eyes narrowed a little. ‘We will.’
It was so blithely self-assured, coming from a man who had always achieved anything he set out to, that Annie’s lips curled upwards in a small smile. ‘Marriage is difficult and Max is young—only six. Presuming you intend for our marriage to last until he’s eighteen, that’s twelve years of living together, pretending we’re something we’re not. I don’t know about you, but the strain of that feels unbearable.’
‘You’re wrong on several counts, Annabelle.” He leaned forward, the noise of his movement drawing her attention, the proximity of his body making her pulse spark to life with renewed fervour. “I intend for our marriage to be real in every way—meaning for as long as we both shall live. As for pretending we’re something we’re not, we don’t need to do that.’
Her heart had started to beat faster. Her breath was thin. “What exactly does a ‘real’ marriage mean?”
‘That we become a family. We live together. we share a bedroom, a bed, we raise our son as parents. It means you have my full support in every way.’
It was too much. Too much kindness and too much expectation. She’d thought he would be angry with her when he learned the truth, and that she could have handled. If he’d wanted to fight, she could have fought, but this was impossible to combat. The idea of sharing his bed…
‘Sharing a home is one thing, but as for the rest—
‘You object to being a family?’
He was being deliberately obtuse.
She forced herself to be brave and say what was on her mind. ‘You think I’m going to fall back into bed with you after this many years, just because we have a son together?’
His smile was mocking, his eyes teasing. ‘No, Annabelle. I think you’re going to fall back into bed with me because you still want me as much as you did then. You don’t need to pretend sleeping with me will be a hardship.’
Her jaw dropped and she sucked in a harsh gulp of air. ‘You are so arrogant.’
