Page 22 of Contractually Wed

Jia smiled, running her hands over the dark wood banister. “I thought it had an old-world charm to it. You know, I’ve looked at some of his plans for the eco-cabins they were designing back then. I found them in the archive’s office...” She slowed down when he didn’t respond. “My mother used to talk about him sometimes. I was curious enough that I went to the archives.”

Shock suffused him enough that he simply stared. When a regretful look came into her eyes, he hurried on. “I didn’t realize they were still there.”

“She hadn’t been exaggerating. Your father was...had a very unique touch.”

He gave her a nod, unable to speak past the sudden lump in his throat.

“So this home...you modified the initial plan?”

Apollo told her, at length, as they walked up the second set of stairs. With each word he said, and each step they took toward their suite, and each memory he unlocked, some hard, petrified thing in his chest cracked wide-open. And he found himself breathing deep and long, as if he’d been only half-alive until now.

It was easy, and a strange kind of wonderful, to talk to Apollo about the design of the house.

Jia had never fallen in love faster or deeper in her entire life. It was as if the house was a physical culmination of all the dreams she hadn’t even allowed herself to feel.

The high ceilings, the exposed wood beams and pillars, the open expansiveness of the plan...even the hand-stained hardwood floors and the lighting fixtures, every inch of it spoke of the attention and love he’d poured into the house. More than anything else, it spoke of the man and the beat of his heart.

Which had then made her feel foolish because Apollo Galanis had no heart and what was more proof than the fact that he’d not only kept her identity secret for three weeks among his staff, but then dumped her with his family, while he did God knows what for two days.

And now here he was, demanding attention, dangling a gift in front of her face just when she was determined to hate him all over again. Or better, become indifferent to him.

She walked into the vast bedroom suite, which had glass for ceiling and three walls, enchanted by it all over again when she realized he’d fallen silent behind her.

“You like the house, then?” he said so softly that for a second Jia wondered if she was imagining the sliver of vulnerability in it. But his eyes remained hard and inscrutable. There she was again, projecting her own feelings into his words.

“I do,” she said, wanting desperately to find that sliver again when she shouldn’t. “Is there a reason you haven’t let anyone photograph it?”

Leaning against the closed door, he shrugged.

Jia didn’t miss that he did that when he didn’t want to answer a particular question.

When he lifted the small bag in his hand, excitement beat a thousand wings in her belly. The unnerving intensity of his gaze as it swept over her, up and down, sent a shiver through her. “Is it a guilt gift or pity gift?” she said, brazening it out.

He cocked a brow, arrogance dripping from the very gesture.

“Guilt because you did something you shouldn’t have in the last two days. Pity because you ignored me and feel sorry for me.”

He threw his head back and laughed with such abandon that she felt helpless against the sensuality of it. A river of longing ripped through her. She stared at the corded column of his throat, the deep grooves around his mouth, the way his thick, rigidly cut curly hair flopped onto his forehead.

He looked...heart-meltingly gorgeous and he was hers, that foolish voice whispered. When his laughter died down, it still colored his eyes, making them warm and deep.

“Well, which is it?”

“I want no one but you, Jia. I’m committed to this marriage.”

“So pity, then,” she said, some unknown thing fluttering in her chest at the resolve in his eyes. “Not needed because, honestly, I like your family. I’d even say the appeal of this marriage increased tenfold when I count them all in the package.”

He placed his palm on his chest, mock-flinching. “You don’t like being ignored.”

“I don’t like that you control everything in this relationship.”

“And yet, I wasn’t the one who executed the Three-Week Frost,” he quipped with a mock shiver.

“You made up a name for it?” she said, laughing despite her intention to stay strong.

“It was the coldest I’ve ever been in my life.”

And now, she was the one melting...

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