The Bride He Stole For Christmas by Caitlin Crews
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CRETEDIDNOTSLEEP.
He could not.
He stayed wide awake long after Timoney finally drifted off. She lay beside him, curled into him, her breathing deep and even. Sometimes she murmured wordless chants in her sleep, as if she was dreaming of giving long speeches. But all it took to settle her was to hold her close again.
Sometimes when he held her, she smiled with such pure, sleepy happiness that it pierced him straight through.
But no matter how he tried, he couldn’t seem to sleep himself.
He left her reluctantly and swung out of the bed, noticing the first stirring of dawn in the sky outside his windows. As good a time as any to remind himself who he was, he told himself sternly as he moved back into the flat. He took a quick shower—cold—to reset. Then he threw on a pair of trousers and retraced the steps he’d taken a seeming lifetime ago when he’d decided to take that drive.
It had started in his study. He’d been catching up on the never-ending fire hose of work projects that required his input or a critical decision to proceed. And privately, he could admit that he was no longer quite as driven as he’d been once.
Though that felt like a betrayal of the determined eighteen-year-old he’d been long ago, who had thrown himself so completely into his work that he hadn’t known where one ended and the other began. It was all him. It was only him.
Until Timoney.
He took his usual seat at his desk but didn’t turn his attention to the stacks of papers before him, the blinking light on his answerphone, or the many messages he’d been ignoring all night long. He didn’t even crack open his laptop.
Instead, Crete found himself staring at the wall opposite him and the ridiculous mural that Timoney had painted there. It had been blank for years. Deliberately empty space before him to keep him from being distracted.
He’d flown home from a conference in Berlin that day and hadn’t gone into his office the way he normally would. Instead he’d raced home to discover her here. She hadn’t seemed the least bit put off by his reaction to the bold, bright colors she’d painted—or to her presence in what was meant to be his sanctuary.
You really need to think about brightening yourself up, she’d told him with that great, unearned authority of hers that had baffled him from the start. And bewitched him, against his will. Maybe make that an action item in one of your meetings, Crete.
You need to think about boundaries, he had growled back.
And the smile she’d given him had been pure wickedness. Maybe you should teach me some, she’d invited him.
He had. Oh, he had.
But what he hadn’t done was take that mural down. Not even after she’d gone. And even now he couldn’t seem to come up with a good reason why not. His staff had offered, repeatedly, and he’d simply waved them off.
And now he sat in his chair once again and stared at all the haphazard splashes of color, tossed this way and that as if she’d simply flung paint at the wall to see what might happen. Brilliant blues. Screaming reds. Sunshiny, buttery, happy yellows.
The bloody thing was an eyesore.
Crete found himself on his feet. He left his study and walked through the flat, turning on the lights as he went, though the sky outside was brightening and light was beginning to come in all the walls of windows.
It was one of the most sought-after spaces in London. It was the finest view available. That was why Crete had bought this place. But for the first time, he noticed what Timoney had been saying from the moment he’d brought her here. That it really was...institutional.
You are the richest man on earth, or close enough, she had said not long after moving in. You can have anything you want, in triplicate. Why on earth have you chosen to live in this...prison?
Her words seemed to chase him as he moved through his rooms. Rooms upon rooms, all of them empty, because the point was having them, not filling them. Concrete and steel in the place of furnishings, because he told himself he liked clean lines and no clutter, the better to focus. Selected works of art chosen not because they were pleasing to him, but because they were worth vast fortunes.
He didn’t even look at them.
What Crete looked at—what he studied, day and night—was that mural Timoney had painted for him that would likely offend and horrify his art dealer.
And it all made sense to him now.
The problem wasn’t the mural. He’d tried to convince himself, in these last few weeks, that he kept it on that wall to remind himself of the defacement he’d allowed. To make sure he never forgot how wholly he had abandoned himself for a woman.
Making him more like the father he had always detested than he found at all excusable.
But now it was clear.
Everything he did, everything he was, was a prison. This was a cell of many fine rooms and he little more than a prisoner of his own making.
He found himself standing stock-still in the center of the nearly empty great room his expensive decorator had assured him was the height of sophistication. Not that he’d cared either way. His only interest in sophisticated people and their elegant pursuits was in showing up to prove that anyone could buy the things they all held so dear.
That they could hate him all they liked, but he never went anywhere.
But he’d missed the fact that he’d made that...literally true.
This flat was a prison. His life was a prison. When he’d clapped eyes on Timoney outside that club, she’d been like a key in a lock he’d stopped noticing was there ages ago. She’d wedged open the door. And instead of finding his way out, he’d slammed the heavy bars into place again.
The word prison kept echoing in his head.
And it seemed perfect that he’d come to this realization while it was not quite daylight outside.
Because she had spoken of hope and light. It seemed he needed her to do that so that he could finally see all the bars around him. The ones he’d put there. Day after day, year after year. Building this cell and leaving himself here to rot.
Hope and lightwas a silly, soft sort of notion he would have laughed at, before her. He would have slept soundly, tossed her out the first time she’d left her things about, charged right on into the next project and the next and the next...
But now he understood.
Now he understood everything, and it was as if he was ripped wide open from the inside out, so that too much understanding poured into him, battering him.
Changing him.
Letting him know that truly, he had been changed for good long ago.
Outside a club, at a party he hadn’t wanted to attend, when he’d caught eyes with a girl who’d looked like a moonlight over the Mediterranean.
She’d smiled at him and he’d never been the same.
And maybe it was finally time he stopped fighting that.
Crete was finally ready when she woke again. It was light outside and coming up on ten o’clock, when she was meant to walk down an aisle out in the country and hand herself off to a man who would stamp out every last trace of light in her as if it had never been.
Whatever happened here, at least he had saved her from that darkness. He could take some solace in that, surely, for there was no one alive who deserved to wilt away in the darkness less than Timoney.
He knew the moment she sat up in his bed, so attuned was he to the sounds in this prison of his. Or perhaps it’s the fact you’ve lived here for years but have never truly moved in. If you had bothered to put rugs on the floor there would be nothing to hear.
Crete accepted that was true, little as he liked it.
He waited out in the great room, listening to the sounds she made as she moved around in the back of the flat. He heard the shower go on, then off some while later, leaving him with too many images of her lush body in hot water and slick with soap.
But today was not about his libido.
Or so he kept telling himself, until his jaw was so tight he was surprised it didn’t snap.
Sometime later she appeared, her blue eyes still sleepy and her hair wet, buttoning up an old shirt of his she must have liberated from his wardrobe as she walked. Along with what he thought were a pair of his boxer briefs. Her favorite uniform, as he recalled.
As always, his heart seemed to swell at the sight of her. But today he didn’t pretend that wasn’t happening. He simply stood there and watched her come toward him, letting his heart do what it would.
And maybe because she was still half-asleep, her eyes lit up when she saw him the way they always had, before.
The way, he promised himself, they would again.
Because he watched the way she pulled herself back as she remembered why she was here today, and he’d done that. Crete knew he had. He watched the shutters close down her expressive face and knew that he was the only one responsible.
And God knew he couldn’t bear the thought that any part of her should be dimmed.
But he didn’t have too long to contemplate that because her eyes widened again in the next moment, as she came to a stop beside him and took in what he’d done.
“What... What is this?” she stammered.
He found himself scowling.
“Christmas.” His voice was gruff. “Obviously.”
Timoney moved past him, farther into the room. And he turned to look, too, wondering what she saw when she looked at his handiwork. This work of the few hours he’d had.
Because she had talked of Christmas, so he had ordered one up, paid dearly for it, and had transformed this room she’d had always hated.
Now it bristled with evergreen trees, all of them festooned with lights. So many lights it made the cavernous room feel warm and enchanted. It made this prison of his look the way he felt when he gazed at her.
The way he felt right now.
And it didn’t feel at all natural to simply...let himself feel. Not to hide. Not to divert. Not to pretend it wasn’t happening.
“Crete.”
But the way she said his name was barely more than a whisper, laced through with wonder. Or what he hoped was wonder.
And he was ready when she turned around.
He stood there before her and though he had dressed at some point during his Christmas morning rush, he felt as if he had never been more naked.
“I do not want you to think that I am trying to impress you with what I can buy, Timonitsa mou,” he said stiffly. “That is not what this is.”
She looked almost stricken. Her hands moved as if she was reaching toward him, but she dropped them back to her sides. “Crete. I...”
But she trailed off when he shook his head. And he had the distinct impression that he looked more severe than necessary... Then again, he didn’t have it in him to make this easy.
He didn’t do easy.
There were some who had been born with that sort of charm, but he was not one of them. Everything he’d ever gotten in this life had come from hard work. Day after day, year after year, when it yielded great results and, more important, when it didn’t. He wasn’t afraid of work.
In many ways it was the only love he had ever known.
But it was a cold love. A harsh love. It could give him a splendid prison and a life filled with only the finest things, but it couldn’t make him as happy as a splash of yellow across a wall. It couldn’t look at him with eyes brighter than the sky.
And it wasn’t what he wanted any longer.
Crete had never faced a harder task—or a steeper mountain to climb, in his life of bounding over them like they weren’t there—than this one.
“Your wedding was due to begin five minutes ago,” he said, sounding darker than necessary. “I am surprised that no one has rung you, demanding to know your whereabouts.”
She seemed to consider that. “Happy Christmas to you, too.” And she didn’t precisely smile then. But there was the hint of that wickedness he’d known about her. “And I imagine they have rung me repeatedly and searched the whole of the estate by now. What will all the abducting, I didn’t have time to leave a note. Or fetch my mobile.”
He studied her, telling himself to do this correctly. “Do you wish to contact them now and explain?”
Her chest rose and fell, hard, as if she was having trouble keeping her breath even. “I...do not.” When he only waited, she sighed. “I suspect my absence will speak for itself. I imagine that Julian will think it’s because I saw him in the middle of a dalliance last night, but that can’t be helped.”
“I can return you to your uncle’s house, if you wish it,” Crete made himself say. No matter how bitter the words tasted on his tongue.
She stood a little straighter then. “I do not wish it.”
“Are you certain?”
“This is the first day of the rest of my life, Crete,” she said softly. “There are a great many things I wanted to do with my life before I loved, then lost, then allowed myself to get talked into a wedding I never wanted. Before my parents died. Maybe I want to do some of them. All of them.”
He nodded at Timoney’s hands, and the ring she wore.
“You can start by taking that ring off.” And he was not an uncertain man. As far as he was concerned, all he need do was think it and it became law, but this was Timoney. He cleared his throat, then forced out the unfamiliar plea. “Please.”
It was distinctly unfamiliar, and uncomfortable, to admit to himself that he had absolutely no idea what she would do next.
Timoney blinked. Then she looked down at her own hand as if it surprised her to find it was connected to her. She frowned for a moment, then she wrenched the diamond off her finger. Then, holding his gaze again, she simply...tossed it.
Crete had never heard a finer music than the faint clatter the ring made as it hit the floor, then skidded out of view beneath one of the trees.
“Did that feel good?” he asked.
And she smiled at him. That beautiful smile that had knocked his whole world askew the first time he’d seen it. And every time since.
“As a matter of fact,” she said. “It really did.”
So while she was still smiling, brighter than all the lights on these trees he’d put up just for her, Crete did something he had never done before in the whole of his life.
He sank to his knees before her. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out the ring he had acquired by waking up London’s foremost jeweler at the crack of dawn. On Christmas. And then making it worth the man’s while to come here, bearing boxes lined with velvet, so that Crete might make his selection.
And no matter what happened next, it would be worth every last penny the man had wrung out of him for that service—simply for the look on Timoney’s face as Crete knelt there before her.
“I wanted to give you Christmas because I want to give you everything,” he told her. “I want you to do every one of those great many things that you dream about.”
“Crete.” His name was a whisper. “What are you...?”
But he couldn’t think too much more about what he was doing or he wouldn’t do it. He would retreat back behind his bars and live a life of cold steel and concrete. Darker and darker all the time. He might end up there still.
First, though, he would try to walk out of his cell, once and for all, and reach for the things he’d always told himself he didn’t want or need, because they slowed everyone else down. Love. Companionship. The vulnerability of it all. The longing and the need and the perfect happiness of lying next to her in the dark, close and whole.
He had stopped holding out his hands when he was still a child. But hadn’t his childhood taken enough from him? Two families. His name. His heart.
Crete held out his hands now.
And for the first time in as long as he could recall it, he let himself hope.
“I want to give you light,” he told her, as if he was carving the words he spoke into the stone beneath them. “And I want, more than anything, to give you love. And all the hope you can handle. But I think you know how little I know of each. Light is one thing.”
He couldn’t look away from her. He didn’t want to look away from her.
She stood before him, her hands over her mouth as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Wet hair and bare feet. Her face scrubbed clean. His boxer briefs.
Crete had never beheld more beauty. It filled him up. It coursed through his veins.
It made him believe.
“All I know of light or hope is you, Timoney.”
He had never knelt before because it had always seemed like surrender to him, but he knew better now. He had never been more powerful than when he dared to do this. To hand over his heart to this woman, knowing full well that she could hurt him more, and more critically, than he had ever been hurt before. She could destroy him. But he did this anyway. “And any belief I might have in love, is you.”
Crete held out the ring he had chosen, because it had reminded him of her. It was a precious moonstone, large and almost iridescent, surrounded by enough diamonds to sparkle the way she did.
“Are you...?” Her hands were still over mouth, so her words were muffled, but her eyes were bright. “Is that...?”
“I want to marry you, as I said last night,” he told her. “But not to wait out your uncle or your money or whatever other nonsense I might have spouted. That was me trying to hide. But I do not wish to hide any longer, Timoney. I... I love you.”
He thought she whispered his name.
But he pushed on, his voice growing rougher with each word, because he had said it. And now he needed to say the rest. “You make me imagine that I am a man. Not a mystery or a monster or an alien creature set down amongst these humans I cannot understand. With you I am only a man, flesh and blood and capable of loving you as you deserve.” He shook his head as if to clear it. “I don’t know if I ever will, but I know that I will start by setting aside all this anger, all this pain I have long tried to pretend was only fuel to me. I will let it go, Timoney. This I promise.”
This time she said his name. He heard it perfectly.
“Because, Timonitsa mou, you are light and you are hope, and there is nothing I cannot do when I put my mind to it. Only look around you.” He kept holding the ring out between them, his gaze locked to hers as if he would never look away again. “If you give me the chance, I will spend my life trying to be the man you make me when I am with you. I will learn to be as you are, with the courage of a hundred fearless lions, prepared to fight for even as dark and twisted a heart as mine. And so sure, despite everything, that you would win. How could this not inspire me? I will dedicate myself to making you as happy as you can be, and making up for what I have put you through. I will leave my past where it belongs. Because what I want is the future. Every possible future. With you. And I promise you that I will love you, as best as I can, until I draw my final breath.”
He realized his heart was pounding. His head felt alarmingly light. “If...” He cleared his throat. He dared to hope. “If you will have me.”
And then he waited, his whole existence in the balance. In her hands.
For a long moment Timoney only looked at him. A great deal as if she was seeing a ghost.
And then his heart dropped, for her beautiful eyes filled with tears.
And he thought, There it is, then.
For there could be no arguing. There was no point in temper. It was one thing to bluster and carry on. He was good at that.
But it was another to offer his heart, unadorned, and have that be rejected.
Crete understood in that moment not only how it was that people died of broken hearts, but how easy it would be to succumb. Because how was he to go on with a heart that no longer beat?
But then, before he could even think about lowering his arms, Timoney’s beautiful face broke wide open into that life-altering smile of hers.
Wider now. Brighter.
Then she was rushing toward him, hurtling herself into his arms.
Crete caught her, bearing her down with him onto the hard floor and turning so he could cushion her. She was so busy pressing kisses all over his face, his neck, that it took him a beat, then another, to hear what she was saying with every touch of her lips to whatever part of him she could reach.
“Yes,” she whispered, fervent and fierce and sure. So very sure. “Yes, I will marry you. Yes, I will love you. Yes, Crete. Yes.”
And so it was there, lying on the floor surrounded by his first Christmas ever and all the bars of his prison busted wide open, that he slid that ring onto her finger.
Then started his most important project yet: loving her forever.
Which, it turned out, he was as good at as he was everything else he touched.
Because Timoney was light. She was hope made real. He was grateful for her every day of his life.
But he was still Crete Asgar.