Page 36 of Husband for the Holidays

“My assistant.” It had seemed perfectly reasonable until he saw her appalled expression. “Now I’ll have you.” It was another point in the pro column for marriage. “Why? Where do you stand on children?”

“I’ve always wanted at least two.” She hitched her shoulder self-consciously. “So they would be friends the way Ilias and I were.”

A pang struck inside him, similar to nostalgia, but different. It was a glimpse of a future that he suddenly wanted. Which wasn’t like him. He didn’tyearn. Especially for something so nascent and fanciful. He brushed the vision aside.

“We can start on that whenever it suits you.”

She had found the jeans and paused in shaking them out. She looked to the bed with consternation. The tension around her eyes denoted genuine apprehension.

His mind flooded with those things she’d said about overbearing men and spiked drinks. His gut knotted up.

“If you have concerns about having sex with me, tell me so we can address it,” he said quietly.

“Oh, why do you need to know everything about me?” she asked plaintively, shaking the jeans again.

He ran his tongue over his teeth, aware he needed to proceed delicately, but that wasn’t his strong suit.

“The irony isn’t lost on me that I’ve told you flat out I don’t like to talk about myself so I can’t expect you to be an open book.” He did, though. He had a ravenous need to know everything about her, which was strange. “For what it’s worth, I’ve shared more with you in the last few days than I’ve told anyone in years.”

A little choking snort noise came out of her.

He lifted a self-deprecating shoulder. “I don’t like the memories that are in my head. Why would I put them in yours?”

Her brow crinkled with concern, which made the inside of his chest itch. He looked to the window so she wouldn’t see more than he could stand to reveal.

“If we’re going to be married, we’ll have to share more with each other than we would with anyone else.” That combination of intimacy and intensity already wasn’t comfortable. It made his nostrils sting with a sense of threat, which was ridiculous. What was she going to do? Waterboard him into revealing his favorite color? He knew how to set boundaries and would. “But I won’t force you to tell me anything you don’t want to.”

“You’ll find out eventually, anyway,” she mumbled toward the floor. “So I’ll just say it.” She was blushing bright red. “I’m a virgin. Okay?”

He had one of those discordant moments where his grasp of English seemed to fail him. Was there a different meaning to that word? Because it didn’t compute with his assumptions about her.

“Howold are you?”

“It’s your fault,” she threw at him before turning her back on him to sit on the bed and work off her boots.

That took him aback. “How?”

“By being all mysterious and good-looking! You know I had the worst case of puppy love.” She kept her back to him as she stood and skimmed her legwear down from beneath her skirt. “You think boys my age held any interest for me when I hadyouon the brain?”

“I wasn’t trying to encourage that.”

“Yes, I know that,” she said in a supremely maddened voice. She stepped into the jeans and gave a little hop. “You rejected me enough times—”

“Because—”

“Iknow.” The bunched skirt was whisked away and she finished closing her fly. “It doesn’t mean I didn’t keep thinking about you. It’s not like I wanted to have sex with anyone after Ilias, anyway,” she allowed sullenly, turning to face him. “But even when I was at university...” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “When I was just this awful mess and couldn’t seem to function, I thought, Konstantin would never want someone like this, and it got me out of bed.”

Her words were a punch in the chest. He winced, breathing her name, but maybe it was a plea for her to stop because this hurt. It hurt to think of her struggling and thinking of him andhe hadn’t been there.

“I know that sounds stupid, but I needed something to shoot for. I needed to believe that if I got myself together, then I would see you one day and we’d be on equal footing. You’d finally see me and want a relationship with me. Something real. I wanted you to fall in love with me. Instead, it’sthis.” Her hand waved aimlessly, voice cracking. “A convenient marriage for sex because Idon’thave my act together. And that sucks.”

Oh, hell. Those weren’t tears in her eyes. His stomach dropped.

She moved to the night table and blew her nose, taking a shaken breath.

“I’m realizing that I’ve been nursing a crush on a man I invented. It wasn’tyou. I don’t even know you. Not really. But I do want to have sex with you. Obviously.” Her expression flexed with deep vulnerability. “And I’ve never wanted to have sex with anyone else so...”

So she would accept his terms.

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