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“What... What is this?” she stammered.
He found himself scowling.
“Christmas.” His voice was gruff. “Obviously.”
Timoney moved past him, farther into the room. And he turned to look, too, wondering what she saw when she looked at his handiwork. This work of the few hours he’d had.
Because she had talked of Christmas, so he had ordered one up, paid dearly for it, and had transformed this room she’d had always hated.
Now it bristled with evergreen trees, all of them festooned with lights. So many lights it made the cavernous room feel warm and enchanted. It made this prison of his look the way he felt when he gazed at her.
The way he felt right now.
And it didn’t feel at all natural to simply...let himself feel. Not to hide. Not to divert. Not to pretend it wasn’t happening.
“Crete.”
But the way she said his name was barely more than a whisper, laced through with wonder. Or what he hoped was wonder.
And he was ready when she turned around.
He stood there before her and though he had dressed at some point during his Christmas morning rush, he felt as if he had never been more naked.
“I do not want you to think that I am trying to impress you with what I can buy,Timonitsa mou,” he said stiffly. “That is not what this is.”
She looked almost stricken. Her hands moved as if she was reaching toward him, but she dropped them back to her sides. “Crete. I...”
But she trailed off when he shook his head. And he had the distinct impression that he looked more severe than necessary... Then again, he didn’t have it in him to make this easy.
He didn’t do easy.
There were some who had been born with that sort of charm, but he was not one of them. Everything he’d ever gotten in this life had come from hard work. Day after day, year after year, when it yielded great results and, more important, when it didn’t. He wasn’t afraid of work.
In many ways it was the only love he had ever known.
But it was a cold love. A harsh love. It could give him a splendid prison and a life filled with only the finest things, but it couldn’t make him as happy as a splash of yellow across a wall. It couldn’t look at him with eyes brighter than the sky.
And it wasn’t what he wanted any longer.
Crete had never faced a harder task—or a steeper mountain to climb, in his life of bounding over them like they weren’t there—than this one.
“Your wedding was due to begin five minutes ago,” he said, sounding darker than necessary. “I am surprised that no one has rung you, demanding to know your whereabouts.”
She seemed to consider that. “Happy Christmas to you, too.” And she didn’t precisely smile then. But there was the hint of that wickedness he’d known about her. “And I imagine they have rung me repeatedly and searched the whole of the estate by now. What will all the abducting, I didn’t have time to leave a note. Or fetch my mobile.”
He studied her, telling himself to do this correctly. “Do you wish to contact them now and explain?”
Her chest rose and fell, hard, as if she was having trouble keeping her breath even. “I...do not.” When he only waited, she sighed. “I suspect my absence will speak for itself. I imagine that Julian will think it’s because I saw him in the middle of a dalliance last night, but that can’t be helped.”
“I can return you to your uncle’s house, if you wish it,” Crete made himself say. No matter how bitter the words tasted on his tongue.
She stood a little straighter then. “I do not wish it.”
“Are you certain?”
“This is the first day of the rest of my life, Crete,” she said softly. “There are a great many things I wanted to do with my life before I loved, then lost, then allowed myself to get talked into a wedding I never wanted. Before my parents died. Maybe I want to do some of them. All of them.”
He nodded at Timoney’s hands, and the ring she wore.
