Page 10 of Husband for the Holidays

Oh, why was she like this? She’d had years to find a man who interested her as much as Konstantin, but he had set an impossible bar. She kept looking for someone with his same balance of intellect, confidence, sophistication and wit coupled with raw, masculine sex appeal.

Me and every other woman on the planet, she thought dourly.

Konstantin didn’t even see her as a woman, only as his friend’sbabysister.

We’ve been alone before. Nothing happened.

She closed her eyes, trying to block out the memory of finding him in the garden of her mother’s villa in Athens. The rest of the guests had gone home. She’d been tired, so tired, but the service was over, the house was empty and her mother had gone to bed.

“Thank you for everything you’ve done,” she had said, hovering on the final step of the stairs to the lower terrace. “It means a lot.”

Silently, she had begged him to open up in some way, to reveal he was as gutted as she was or hold her maybe, so she didn’t have to be the strong one.

He turned and came toward her, but stopped in front of her without touching her.

“You’ll call me if you need anything.” His voice was raspy, but that was the sum total of emotion he revealed.

She didn’t doubt that he was affected, though. He had to be. He had been in America when Ilias’s small plane had gone down. He’d offered to identify him and had then made all the arrangements for Ilias to come back to Athens.

“I will,” she agreed and hugged herself.

“You shouldn’t be out here without a coat.” He touched her arm. It was only protected by the sheer black sleeve of her dress.

“I don’t feel it,” she said in a dull voice. “I’m so numb I can’t even cry.”

“Don’t cry,” he commanded gruffly and stepped closer, enfolding her.

She was still on the step so the top of her head was right under his chin. She leaned into him and the sweetness of being held by this man, whom she had been alternately yearning for and cursing since last Christmas, began to break through her shell.

He was warm and strong and seemed to care, really care.

Without any conscious thought to it, she let her folded arm slide upward to curl around his neck. She stood on her tiptoes on that step and turned her face into his neck, tilting her mouth up to brush his jaw.

There was a sharp inhale as he stiffened. He looked down at her and their mouths brushed. His hands hardened on her and his mouth opened across hers in a rough claim that dragged her from a yearning for comfort into a cyclone of twisted emotions: anger and sorrow, pain and assuagement. A spike of pure, carnal hunger that jolted like lightning into her belly.

Then he wrenched his head up with a curse and pressed her away from him.

“That’s not—get inside. I’ll see myself out.” He had left her there, swaying and stunned.

The tears had finally come. She had collapsed on the concrete stairs and cried so hard she couldn’t walk or speak. It had been pure hell, leaving her with a bruised heart and a terrible cold, but at least she’d been able to resent him and blame him after that. Her crush had been crushed. She hadn’t seen him again until today.

But he insisted nothing had happened.

She cringed, hating that he still had this effect on her! And how was he supposed to see her as a grown-up if she was dressed in his giant-ass clothes? She held the track pants against herself, thinking they’d look as ludicrous as the elf costume.

She left the humid bathroom and brought the clothes back to the bedroom, planning to enter his walk-in closet to find something else, but she lost her nerve.

At least the robe was more of a one-size-fits-all. It probably only fell to his shins while hitting the floor on her. Same for the cuffs. They fell past her wrists, but the thick velour was warm and snuggly and very comforting.

She dropped his clothes on the foot of the bed and belted the robe tighter. Then she found a comb and worked on her hair. She hadn’t had it cut in ages so the tangles fell past her shoulders, taking forever to work out.

Konstantin had left the bedside lamp burning. Otherwise, the room was quiet and dark, allowing her to move to the window where she admired the sparkle of city lights and the few boats moving across the iced waterways.

She sank onto the sofa, letting her arms take a rest in her lap, thinking...

She was too tired to think. Too tired to talk. What would she even say? Everything had become very difficult and grim. Unbearable.

She blocked it out by closing her eyes. She resented that he wanted her to face him and find the words to defend her choices. To explain...

---