Page 51 of Husband for the Holidays

She pressed the envelope to her chest. “You’ll come with me?”

“Unless you want to take your mother. Or someone else?”

“Mom would enjoy it, but I’ll only ask her if something comes up and you can’t make it. I’d rather take you. Thank you.” She kissed him. “Okay, now mine.” She plucked the small flat gift from beneath the tree and curled into the corner of the sofa, holding it out to him.

His expression stiffened as he came to sit beside her.

“Does it really bother you?” She held the flat shape between her pressed palms, distressed that she was causing him more discomfort than pleasure.

His cheek ticked. “It’s a childish reaction,” he said, mouth curling with dismay. “I was given something when I was young. It meant a lot to me and it was destroyed deliberately, to hurt me. It ruined my pleasure in receiving gifts.”

“That happened at school? Sometimes girls were spiteful that way, too.”

“No.” His brow flexed briefly. “Things like that happened at school, yes, but I didn’t care about that. I had stopped letting myself feel any sort of sentiment by then. Things are things. I can buy them for myself if I want them. I don’t...” He set his hands on his knees and looked straight ahead as though searching for the words. “I don’t like the sensation of someone knowing me well enough to give me something I’ll like. It feels like a weakness. Like I’m painting a target on my chest.”

She looked at the gift she held and chewed the corner of her mouth. “Now I’m worried this could hurt you. I was excited when I thought of it, certain you would like it, but...” She drew a breath that made her lungs ache and winced as she offered it. “If you don’t want to open it, that’s okay. Put it in a drawer and we never have to talk about this again.”

“Well, now I’m curious. Is it anthrax?” He picked at the paper, in no hurry, but it became obvious very quickly that it was a framed photo.

He tore away the last scrap of paper and stilled with surprised recognition.

She watched his profile as he studied the photo of himself with Ilias. For a long moment, he said nothing, gave away nothing.

“Are you upset?” She set a concerned hand on his shoulder.

“No. You’re right. I like it very much.” His hand came up to cover hers while he tilted the frame as though looking for some hidden detail. “Did you use AI?”

“What? No! I took it.”

“When?” He turned his head, expression astonished.

“The day you came to Ilias’s apartment, when you were supposed to spend Christmas with us. See? That’s the tree behind you, before I started to decorate it. You helped him carry it up. I made you two pose in front of it. It was my sly way of getting a photo of my secret platonic boyfriend. Secret because you didn’t know,” she explained. “And platonic because...”

“I knew,” he said out of the side of his mouth, but the corners were tilting up as he studied it again.

In the photo, Konstantin still had his arm outstretched to hold the tree upright. Ilias had looped his arm beneath Konstantin’s and set his hand on Konstantin’s opposite shoulder. Her brother wore his most carefree grin, always up for a photo while Konstantin had a look of patient tolerance on his face.

“He would have beheaded me if he knew what I was thinking that day. I would have deserved it,” he added with dark humor. “But thank you for this. I don’t let myself think of him too often. It makes me feel robbed. And I’ll forever be sorry I didn’t stay longer that day. Didn’t spend more time with him when I had the chance.”

“I feel like that, too.” She looped her arms around his neck, leaning her head against his as she also looked at the photo. “But I try to remember the laughs and be grateful he was in my life at all. Without him, I wouldn’t have met you so he’s still bringing good things into my life, isn’t he?” It was the closest she dared get to admitting how much she was growing to love him.

Konstantin set the photo on the end table and drew her into his lap. “You’re like him in that way. You always see the bright side. To me, everything ends in pain and loss.”

“Because you lost your mother so young? Did you lose your father at the same time?”

His expression turned stony and she felt him withdraw so completely, it was as though his body temperature dropped several degrees. “I did.”

She felt the pain he was trying to stem in the tension that had invaded his embrace.

“You don’t have to tell me about it if you don’t want to,” she assured him, cuddling into him, trying to radiate warmth and comfort through his skin, into his heart and bones. Into his soul. “But you can.”

“Not today,” he said after a brief hesitation. His hand roamed over her hair and down her back, as though trying to soften his refusal. “I don’t want to ruin Christmas. Get the blue one.” He nudged her knee.

It was a pendant to match the earrings he’d given her in Nice, dangling from an ornate Byzantine chain.

“This is too much,” she scolded. “I’m going to absolutely smother you in gifts next year to make up for it. Actually, when is your birthday?”

“I’ll never tell.”

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