The Bride He Stole For Christmas by Caitlin Crews
CHAPTER TEN
WHEN TIMONEYWOKE, she knew exactly where she was.
She had dreamed that she was back here so many times in the past two months, curled up happily just like this. The heft of his pillows. The astounding softness of his sheets. The lightweight clasp and warmth of the duvet. The scent of him surrounding her, sinking into her, making her feel soft and molten and ready before she was even fully awake.
At first she didn’t open her eyes. She simply let herself drift in the particular embrace of this bed she knew so well.
When she did open her eyes, it was to find that she wasn’t dreaming, this time. She really was in Crete’s wide platform bed, the way she had been so many times before. The way she’d been so certain she never would be again. It made her shake a little to find herself here. It made her feel a bit too raw.
She pulled in a steadying breath as she sat up, shoving her hair back. On the other side of the three walls of glass around her, it was still dark. Timoney pulled one of the almost scandalously luxurious blankets with her as she went, more so she could keep feeling it against her bare skin than any particular sense of modesty.
The room itself was as she remembered it. Profoundly stark, featuring only the imposing, masculine bed in deep gray linens against the single gray interior wall. There was concrete everywhere with steel beams above and London on three sides, right there on the other side of the private terrace.
When she had lived here, she had liked to tell herself that it was a kind of urban tree house, that was all. Made of concrete and steel instead of wood, but the same, really. It had helped her feel less dizzy, perched so high above the Thames and the streets below.
But that had only helped so much. It was still too far off the ground, too cold and impersonal, for her liking. She’d made the best of things, because what else was there to do? This was where Crete lived, so she had made her home here, too, however uneasily. She would have camped out in an actual tree house in a field if it had meant that she got to live with him, sleep with him, make love with him at will. She would have put up with any indignity.
Timoney told herself she ought to be embarrassed by how easily she’d surrendered herself to this dour concrete world of his. But even as she thought it, she was shaking her head. Because she hadn’t really surrendered, had she? She had lived here, but she hadn’t paid the slightest bit of attention to his rules, stated and unstated alike.
Because she had been so sure that she would win him over. That she would introduce a little color into his life, not by actually coloring over his dark grays and steels and concretes, but by virtue of becoming that color herself. Timoney had danced naked on his excruciatingly hard sofas until he smiled, however unwillingly. She had painted the wall in his study and him, too, when he’d glared, affronted, at her makeshift mural. She had cooked elaborate, messy meals in his pristine kitchen, using up every pot and getting the ingredients everywhere. She had laughed when he’d scowled. She had imagined that she was the antidote to the rest of his hard, busy life.
In truth, she had taken pride in that role.
It had never occurred to her that it could ever end between them. That he would end it.
The overconfidence of virgins, he had said once. In a manner that had made it clear that it was not a compliment,
But Timoney had only laughed at him, then had crawled onto his lap in the back of the car they’d been in. Entirely too overconfident, she had agreed. Shall I show you?
She swung her legs over the side of the bed now, still too raw. And remembering everything too keenly. Even the height of the platform the wide bed sat on seemed to poke at her, casting her back into far too many memories.
It’s like a throne for sleep, she had said once.
A throne for something, Crete had replied. But not sleep, I think.
And then he had demonstrated what it was for. Repeatedly.
Even thinking about the kinds of demonstrations he liked best made her shiver a little. She saw the strips of fabric he’d used earlier in a heap on the floor beside the bed and smiled. That was the thing about Crete. Whatever he dedicated himself to, he gave it his all.
Always.
She padded around the bare, imposing wall that served as a headboard, but Crete was nowhere to be found in the rest of the expansive suite. Something in her shifted uneasily as she looked into one room, then the next, but didn’t find him.
Though she stood a moment in his study, staring at the mural she’d made him that she’d been sure he would have had repainted within twenty-four hours of her departure. It shocked her that it was still there, all the bright and garish colors she’d slapped all over the wall opposite his steel-and-glass desk.
Timoney didn’t know how to feel about the fact the mural was still there. But it was nothing short of alarming that he wasn’t at his desk. As far as she knew, the study was the only place he went in this sprawling flat of his when he wasn’t making use of his bed.
And she found that she was...apprehensive as she went out into the rest of the penthouse. Had it already happened? Had he already changed his mind?
Just because she’d known he would, that didn’t make her prepared for it now that it had happened. And so soon.
Was he even now readying his vehicle to whisk her back to Oxfordshire and hand her off to Julian?
Funny, wasn’t it, that she found that prospect nothing short of unbearable now.
Crete was nowhere to be found in the flat. But as she stood naked in the center of the great room, Timoney discovered that the relief she felt had only intensified after a very few hours of sleep. And it brought with it some clarity.
She did not want to marry Julian.
She did not want to experiment with his brand of marriage, much less what he would expect of her physically. Even if he tired of her in six months, that was too long. As she already knew from her time with Crete, six months could be a lifetime.
And imagining a lifetime with Julian made her stomach hurt.
She almost laughed at herself then, though it really wasn’t funny. Even while she and Crete had still been in the conservatory, she’d been telling herself all kinds of stories. First and foremost, that it had been possible to imagine she could suffer through Julian’s attentions when she’d still felt so dead inside. And then she’d tried to convince herself that she would somehow carry the much fresher memory of Crete with her, perhaps so she could retreat into her head while giving Julian what he wanted.
But now, only a few hours later, she couldn’t understand how she’d managed to convince herself that such suffering was possible.
Maybe, something in her suggested, there in the unlit penthouse with only the relentless London gleam outside to light her way, all you really wanted was to punish yourself.
For giving so much of herself to man of steel and concrete, thinking that a few bright colors on a wall could make him love her. For falling in love with him when he was only having sex with her.
For letting down her lost parents by failing at happiness, and love, and hope. Again.
For that overconfidence when she should have known better. Shouldn’t she have known better?
Because surely she should have learned something from losing them so suddenly. From everything that had changed afterward, irrevocably. How had she managed to throw herself at Crete the way she had, so appallingly certain that she could make the both of them happy, when she knew better? Happiness could be snatched away at any time. At any moment, like it or not. Life was all about the lie that it might last, but she knew better.
Timoney had known better—but her grief hadn’t been enough to save her.
Not from Crete, but from herself and her own overweening confidence. Her abominable belief that her own feelings, her own heart, could make things end well.
When she knew they didn’t.
She turned back around and headed for the bedroom again, thinking vaguely that she might as well shower, then get dressed again. Then she could wait for whatever next bombshell Crete would reappear to drop on her.
There would certainly be time enough for considering the ways she’d been punishing herself then. In the great stretch of after that would follow this one, last night. Where she could find a way to deal with how raw she felt that did not involve upsetting weddings, surely.
She vowed that she would make a point of it.
But when she made it back into the bedroom that was never truly any kind of a tree house no matter how dearly she’d wanted to convince herself, because it was really much more of a prison cell, she saw what she hadn’t before.
Crete, who had not left her. At least not yet.
He stood outside at the railing at the edge of his terrace, wearing only a pair of low-slung black trousers, as if it wasn’t December.
Then again, this wasn’t just any grubby old flat and he wasn’t risking hypothermia for the sake of showing off his sculpted torso to the uncaring night. The section of the terrace just outside the master bedroom was fitted with heated floors, making it far more inviting to make use of the sauna and hot tub nestled there, high enough above the city that there was no possibility anyone could be spying on what any resident here got up to.
Timoney dragged the soft blanket off the bed and wrapped it around herself, then pushed her way out through the glass doors.
And she knew the precise moment Crete became aware that she had come outside to join him. She saw him tense, ever so slightly, and got to watch the muscles play all up and down the chiseled length of his back as she drew closer, the heated concrete warm enough beneath her feet to make the cold air feel like a caress against her exposed face.
It still moved in her like wonder that she had touched every part of what surely was the finest back in England. Worthy of being cast in bronze, at the very least. She felt that same old heat that never left her bloom hot within, making her thighs seem to whisper sensually as she moved. And the core of her pulse with need, as if it was new.
She came up beside him, but he did not glance at her. He kept that brooding gaze of his focused out on the city at his feet.
“You’re really not good at this kidnapping thing, are you?” she asked lightly as the night air made her ears cold and her hair fly about. “I was left to my own devices entirely. I could have made a break for it while you stood out here, none the wiser.”
She didn’t expect uproarious laughter. Not from Crete. But he seemed extra grim, she thought, especially after everything that had come before this night.
“Do you wish to escape?” he asked, far too darkly for her tastes. “Have you woken with second thoughts? And a renewed determination to sacrifice yourself at the altar of two old men’s greed?”
That was a little too close to what she’d been thinking on her own. “And if I have?”
He pushed back from the rail but still gripped it. And when she glanced down at his hands, she saw that his knuckles had gone nearly white.
“Then I will be forced to disappoint you, Timoney. You will not be marrying Julian today. Or any day.”
She could have told him how much her thinking on that had changed, but she didn’t. She could have explained, talked about punishing herself, or even asked him why he hadn’t erased the evidence of her terrible mural, but she didn’t do any of that, either. Because he was straightening, then turning to face her, and the look on his face was...terrible.
It looked almost like passion, drawing him tight and taut.
But passion she could handle. Or she knew she would survive it, in one form or another, anyway.
Somehow, she knew it would not be as simple as that.
Timoney braced herself, for surely the look on his face meant that a cutting verbal blow was to follow. From a distance, she almost felt philosophical. How would he make it worse? He would have to, she assumed, to really make this hurt. He had devastated her last time. How would he—how could he—make that seem like child’s play?
She had been so unprepared before. She’d been so in love that it had never occurred to her that anything could come between them. It was almost cringeworthy now to look back at how naive she’d been. She’d fallen so deeply and surpassingly in love with him. She had cheerfully offered up every part of her, heart and body and soul, with no hesitation and no catch.
The fact that it could end—that he could end it—had never crossed her mind.
Luckily, she was far more worldly and prepared now. He had seen to it personally.
So Timoney lifted her head proudly, tipped up her chin to take whatever he might toss her way, and told herself that come what may, she would be fine.
One way or another, she would be fine.
Eventually, something in her whispered.
“We should get married,” Crete said, as if there was glass in his mouth.
As if the words shattered as he said them and were cutting into him as he spoke.
Timoney only gazed back at him while the December night slapped at her exposed face, certain she hadn’t heard that correctly. “What did you say?”
If anything, he looked more in pain. Anguished, even.
“We will marry,” he said, his voice like gravel. “That will put an end to all of this, I hope. If you must be trapped, Timoney, you might as well be trapped with me, don’t you think?”
She was glad that she had thought to bring the blanket, not only to save herself from the chill of this Christmas predawn morning, since it seemed her feet had gone numb beneath her and she might never be warm again. But because it gave her something to grip as she tried to process what he was saying to her. Tried to make it make some kind of sense.
And came up with nothing, though her hands began to ache from the force of her clenched fists.
“Crete...” she began, though she hardly knew what to say.
Especially because, as reluctant and grim as he sounded—as clearly unwilling as he was—there was a part of her that didn’t care about any of that.
Because she remembered that girl, only two months ago, who had loved him so wildly and so deeply that she had simply assumed it would end in marriage. Sooner or later. Because how else could it end? She had known, with a bone-deep conviction, that forever was the only possible destination for them.
And there was still some part of that girl inside her tonight, because she wanted to simply throw herself at him. To ignore all the warning signs and the red flags, his grimness and the things she’d learned these last months, and simply...say yes.
Because no small part of her wanted nothing more, ever, than to take this man however he came to her.
Just so long as he came to her.
But while it had been only two months since her last, awful night in this flat, it had been an instructive two months.
“This is what you want, is it not?” And he sounded even bleaker than before. “I will marry you. Then there will be no more concerns about appeasing your uncle. Whether he disowns you or does not will be a matter of little practical import if we are wed. Whatever olive branches you wish to extend to the rest of his family you can do without having to worry about his approval.”
It seemed to her as if London was spinning all around them, but she focused on him.
“Why would you do this?” Her voice sounded far rougher than she wanted it to. It gave too much away.
“It is only a few years until you come into your own fortune,” he muttered, seemingly to himself.
“It is five years, in fact.” She tried to swallow, but her throat was dry. “Five years is a very long time, Crete.”
He seemed to turn to stone before her. “Nonetheless, marrying me will solve all your problems.”
“I must still be asleep,” Timoney said after a moment, searching his face and seeing nothing but granite and reluctance. “And I don’t mind telling you, I’ve had this dream before. Many times. So I can tell you what I’ve often told myself when I’ve woken up to find your proposals little more than wishful thinking.” She had to clear her throat then. “You don’t actually want to marry me. And martyrdom doesn’t suit you at all.”
He let out a bark of laughter. “I am many things, but I have never been a martyr.”
“Then why pretend you want to marry me?” The words felt wrenched from her.
Because she still wished she could...just say yes. Come what may.
His gaze grew darker than the night around them. “If that is what it will take, then that is what I will do.”
Timoney gazed at him for a long while, until it seemed to her that she was only hurting herself that way. She turned her head then, taking in the sweet stretch of sleepy London, here in the dark before dawn on this Christmas Day that she had expected to go very, very differently.
And later, maybe, she would explore all the ways that this moment, in many ways, had hurt her more than anything that had gone before. But she needed to make it through, first.
Somehow, she had to survive this, too.
She sighed, though she wanted to sob. She stood straighter, when she wanted nothing more than to collapse into a ball on the ground.
“I appreciate the offer,” Timoney made herself say, though everything in her was a riot of a sharp, bright anguish. She wanted nothing more than to snatch her words back. Then answer differently. Just jump straight in, because surely, whatever happened, it would be worth it—she would have him in some way and that had to be better than not having him. But instead, she made herself keep going. She made herself do the hard thing. “But no.”
He gazed down at her, a thunderous expression taking over from the bleakness. And that was better. More familiar, anyway. Because at least she recognized his arrogance.
“No?” he repeated, incredulous.
“No,” Timoney said, more firmly. “I am not going to marry you, Crete.”
The incredulity on his face became a scowl. “Why the hell not?”
And she couldn’t keep track of the things she felt any longer. Because she felt too many things at once. Still the urge to sob, holding all the smashed broken pieces of her heart in her hands. But also, possibly, she felt the urge to laugh, too.
Because someday, surely, she would find all of this funny. This man, who no one said no to, clearly. The look of imperious astonishment on his face, as if he’d never heard the word before.
She supposed it was possible he hadn’t. Not really. Not since he was a child.
“We’ve never talked about Christmas,” she said quietly, her gaze still on the city streets far, far below. But she made herself turn then, to look at him. “I’m going to guess by the singular lack of anything even remotely festive in this apartment of yours that you don’t care for the holiday.”
“I don’t like holidays.” His scowl deepened. “Particularly Christmas. The only thing worse than festivities are forced festivities. Perhaps you haven’t noticed, Timoney, but the whole of England appears to slide into a minced pie stupor come fall, and little sense can be had from anyone until the new year. It is tiresome.”
She found herself smiling again. Not happily, perhaps, but still. It was a smile. “It’s very easy to get caught up in all the trappings. Minced pies, for example. Festive decorations, the race for perfect gifts, carols and fizzy drinks.”
“Do you require that I present you with gifts?” he demanded. “Perhaps you have forgotten who I am. Have an island. A fortune or two, if you wish it. It means nothing to me.”
Timoney shook her head and held the blanket closer. “It’s not about the trappings. I know you don’t understand Christmas, and maybe you never will. When my parents were alive it was my favorite day of the year. And not because we exchanged gifts, but because we were all together and everything was as it should be. A fire in the grate. Happy songs in the air. Terrible jumpers and a proper home-cooked meal. Just us. Just love, Crete. All the rest we could take or leave, as long as there was love.”
His jaw seemed more like steel than the railing he gripped. “Simply name the meal you wish to be served and I will make it happen.”
As she supposed she should have known he would. He could buy her anything she claimed she wanted. He could send a text and buy out restaurants all over this city, even forcing them to open for him today. If he wished, he could do almost anything.
Almost. “I thought that with Julian it wouldn’t matter, because I already felt so numb, so what was little more self-harm? But you saved me from that. And I’m grateful, I am. But now I understand far better than I ever could have before that Christmas, marriage, it’s all the same, really.” She shook her head, trying to keep her emotions at bay, because she couldn’t quite believe that she was doing this. “It’s not about what you can buy, Crete. It’s about what you feel.”
“Timoney—” he began, looking thunderous again.
“It’s light and it’s hope, Crete.” Her voice cracked. That was how urgent this felt to her. “And you think those things are the enemy.”
“I do not. Necessarily.”
“You do.” She didn’t address the necessarily. She didn’t have to. She could see it written all over his face, all his rationalizations and qualifications, and none of that mattered as much as what she was about to say. “You do, Crete. And because you do, that means eventually—inevitably—you’ll think I’m the enemy, too.”
And Timoney realized that some part of her was waiting for him to refute what she’d said...when he didn’t.
It was amazing, truly, how much an already broken heart could still continue to break.
“You will say yes,” he thundered at her. “You will, Timoney.”
And she knew what he would do even as he did it. He swept her into his arms again, and carried her inside.
It was only back in the heat of his flat that she noticed how cold she’d become. When he laid her out on the bed and followed her down, and the passion she knew she would hold close to her heart for the rest of her life exploded anew.
He warmed her the way he always did.
“You will,” he promised her as he drove deep inside her, making them both groan.
“I won’t,” she replied, wrapping herself around him, putting her mouth to his ear. “But I will tell you goodbye, Crete. Every way I can.”
And that was what she did.
With every part of her body, her heart, her soul. Again and again, in all the dark before dawn they had left. Because she knew that once the sun rose, reality would reassert itself, as little as she might want it to.
But first it was this. First there was them.
First there was a small taste of forever that would have to last her in place of the real thing.