The Bride He Stole For Christmas by Caitlin Crews

CHAPTER FIVE

“I’MTHEONE asking the questions,” Timoney protested, but her words seemed to trail off even as she was speaking them.

Because Crete levered himself down, bracing his hands on the back of the settee, effectively caging her there.

Unless, of course, she wanted to lean forward and—

But no. That would be bad.

Because it would be so good.

And Timoney was unprepared for this, if she was honest. It had been bad enough for him to appear out of the mist, like every dream she’d had since she’d left his flat in London in tears. It had been another to sit on this well-worn couch she loved, to gather her strength around her as securely as she had her cloak and imagine this was some kind of cross-examination.

One she might actually win.

Especially when she’d gotten him to do a thing he’d never, ever done before—talk about himself. Not his businesses, but him.

It was a harsh little gift, but a gift all the same.

She had always suspected he was a man who could feel deeply. She had always told herself that, secretly, he did. But having heard him actually discuss the cold facts of his stark upbringing, she wasn’t at all surprised that he didn’t want to.

Timoney felt entirely too much on his behalf.

But now his face was too close to hers. And that same old familiar seismic upheaval that was a hallmark of the Crete Asgar experience rocked through her anew. There was no solid ground. There was only the brilliant dark blue of his eyes, his perfectly sculpted face, and that scraped-raw, hollowed-out-with-longing need for him that she didn’t think she would ever be rid of.

No matter what happened tomorrow.

“You were soft and spoiled when I found you,” he said, his voice as pitiless as it was rough, and yet she felt it on her skin—all over her skin—like a caress. She had to fight to repress a shudder of reaction. “A ripe little peach, mine for the taking. If it hadn’t been me, little one, it could have been anyone. You and those useless friends of yours, careening about London, looking for trouble. Do you know how many girls like you find more trouble than they can handle, year after year?”

“Do you?” she retorted, though her heartbeat was heavy in her ears and her skin felt so oversensitive that a glance might make her come apart. “And if you do, it really begs the question—how many young women do you normally pluck up and carry off into coatrooms?”

His mouth curved and it was not a relief. It was too hard for that. Too sardonic.

“Here’s what I know about entitled little heiresses like you,” he said, his voice a raw thread of dark need inside her. That was the trouble with this man. He had always felt like he was a part of her. “You spin around brightly, then crash. One after the next. Whether it is into sad marriages like the one you plan to enter into tomorrow. Whether it is too much partying, too much exposure, too much glamour, until all you can see is the underside of such things, black and scarred and torn. It all ends in the same dreary way.”

“If I’m so interchangeable, there seems even less of a reason that you should find yourself here tonight,” she managed to say, somehow getting her chin to lift in at least some small show of defiance. No matter how shaky she felt inside. “Go find another just like me, with my compliments. I’m sure she can tell you exactly what you want to hear. Sooner or later you’ll almost certainly find one who won’t dare to express emotion in your sterile little apartment no matter the provocation. A match made in heaven.”

“This is the point I’m trying to make, little one,” he murmured, still much too close. Still too raw, inside and out. Could she feel the heat of his body, blazing into her? Or was it that she wished she could? “Girls like you are used to getting what you desire. You don’t even know how to want, not really. The world is simply handed to you on one platter after another, so that you truly believe it’s character building to live in Belgravia in a listed house. You may even think you’re roughing it when really, all you’re doing is playacting until your money comes in.”

As that hewed a bit too close to her own thoughts on her tenure as an admittedly silly PR girl, she had no choice but to bristle at hearing him say it.

“Thank you for your dissertation on my uselessness,” she threw back at him. “But I assure you, no one is more aware of the playacting component than me.”

“You should thank me for throwing you out, Timoney.” And his dark blue eyes glittered like the night sky. “It looks as if it’s given you a little bit of character.”

What was funny was that she knew that was meant to be a killing blow. If he had delivered it while they’d been together, it would have destroyed her.

But that was the thing about being wrecked as totally as he had wrecked her. It wasn’t possible to be wrecked like that twice.

Or she hoped it wasn’t.

So she did the unthinkable. She laughed. “It seems to me that you’re indicting yourself,” she said. “Maybe it’s true that I was an unformed little piece of clay, traipsing about London in search of meaning or a kiln. But it’s also true that you were captivated by that particular little lump of earth. Besotted, one might even say. But not in love, of course.” And she did nothing to keep that faint note of mockery from her voice. Maybe not so faint. “Because that would be a bridge too far. Did you come here to see if you can erase the damage you did so I can go straight back to being putty in your hands?”

“I would not object.”

His gaze dropped to her mouth, then, and try as she might, Timoney couldn’t deny the electricity that hummed within her. Maybe she didn’t want to deny it.

But whatever backbone she might have gathered on her way out of London, she knew she might as well rip it out and sling it out into the snow if she succumbed to his kisses again.

Twice tonight was already too much. It made her much too weak. Too susceptible.

She ducked under his arm and rolled to her feet, not caring if he knew she was legitimately running away from him. She was.

Because she knew exactly how shaky her foundation was when he was concerned.

“Insulting me isn’t going to change the fact that I have more questions for you,” she told him when she was standing some distance away. “If that’s what you thought.”

“I did not intend to insult you. And I’ve answered your questions. You are the one who has flung herself halfway across the room a great deal, as if you fear something. Is it me, Timonitsa mou? Or is it yourself?”

Timonitsa mou. My little Timoney.

“Very well.” She could feel herself flushing hot, and knew that it was entirely possible that he could see it. That was unfortunate. But she didn’t understand what she could do to stop it, so she simply slipped out of her cloak, and tossed it over the back of the settee, a little shower of bright red fabric to distract them both. “Let us speak of fear. To the casual observer, it would appear that you’re the one who’s afraid. Of the possibility I might love you. Or is it something more than that? Is it...?” She dared to look back at him then, searching his face and that faintly arrested expression he wore. “Is it more that you’re afraid you might actually love me back?”

Timoney couldn’t believe she’d dared ask that question.

It was as if all the air in the room was sucked away, and there was nothing but the beat of her heart. And of his, too, though perhaps she only imagined she could hear it. Feel it.

Like he was always going to be a part of her.

She saw his jaw tense. There was a flicker of movement, and she glanced down to see his hands in fists at his sides.

And Timoney couldn’t tell in that moment if she wanted to push him further, to see if he would break—

Or if she wanted only to hold him and mend his jagged pieces back together as best as she could, with whatever tools she had to hand—

But there was a sound in the hall outside the conservatory, and to her horror, she realized that she could hear voices.

And worse, they were drawing closer.

“You cannot be found here,” she hissed at Crete.

One of his arrogant brows rose and she thought he intended to refuse to hide himself. To stand his ground and face whoever came in the door, and everything inside her...eased, a little, at that notion.

Because if it happens, you will have to choose, won’t you?asked a voice inside her. If it is your uncle, he will know exactly what this means, and he will demand—

But it didn’t matter. Because, perhaps more astonishing than anything that had come before, Crete looked around and then stalked over to that long table where her mother had kept all of her pots. It was sturdy and tiled, and it was impossible to look beneath it, thanks to all the terra-cotta pots still stacked there.

She blinked in astonishment as Crete...disappeared behind it, lowering himself between the table and the window with tremendous, offended dignity.

On any list of things Crete Asgar might do, she would never in her life have included any possibility that he might secrete himself behind a table. For any reason at all.

It made her feel something like dizzy.

Out in the hallway, the voices moved closer. Timoney looked around, snatched a book off the shelf, then retreated to her settee and did her best to look as if she was entrenched in her reading.

Only moments later the door was flung open and a couple came tumbling in, laughing and flushed with as much wine as ardor.

And it was from some great distance inside, some bird’s-eye view, that Timoney recognized the pair of them. It was Julian, who was to marry her come the morning. And the young wife of some minor diplomat.

Julian came to a stop. He stared at Timoney, who stared back.

In mute astonishment.

The diplomat’s wife took longer, and when she recognized the bride—the reason she was here in this house at all—she only glanced at Julian and quietly excused herself.

After she shut the door behind her, all was silent.

Timoney dared not glance over at her mother’s potting table.

“I say, my dear,” said Julian in that same voice that he always used, that Timoney liked to tell herself was courtly. When she thought the real word to describe it was condescending. “I rather thought you’d retired for the evening.”

“I like to read each evening before I sleep.” She glanced down at the book in her lap and saw that she’d picked out one of her favorite books, a thick volume of children’s adventure stories that actually featured girls, not boys.

She wanted to club him with it.

Which was in itself a surprise, as it was the most she’d felt in Julian’s presence since they’d met.

Julian studied her for a moment, then smiled in a manner that looked diffident and apologetic. That was, unless she looked at his cold gaze, which was neither.

“I am a man of many needs, my dear,” he said then, in the same tone. “A conversation I expected to have after our wedding, not before. But you are a practical girl, are you not? You must be, I think, to marry so quickly after such a scandalous union as the one you had with Asgar. As you know, I have already indicated that I will care for any...unfortunate consequences of that union.” He nodded at her belly, as if she might have missed his meaning. “I ask very little in return.”

“That very little being a blind eye, presumably,” she said. “To diplomat’s wives and whoever else catches your fancy. Is that it?”

He inclined his head. “I’m of an old school. I will require all the usual marital rights, but in a situation such as ours, where there are no complications involving tender feelings, it can truly harm no one if I slake some of my darker hungers in other places. You may learn to thank me for this, in time.” That smile of his deepened, though his gaze seemed harder. “You seem at a loss for words, Timoney.”

“It’s all so indelicate,” she said quietly, like the girl she’d been pretending to be for months. Encased in ice and irritated when anything disturbed her bleakness. But now everything was different. Now she had melted. Still, she tried. “Surely such things are not spoken of. Not like this.”

“Now, now,” Julian said, with a chuckle that was not in the least bit friendly. “Fewer lessons in decorum from a girl who until recently was nothing but a whore for a mongrel, please.”

Her blood pounded so hard in her ears that Timoney was shocked she didn’t topple over. It took every bit of willpower she had to keep from whipping her head around to see if Crete was reacting to that mongrel comment from his place behind the table.

She wanted to scream.

She wanted to fly at Julian and slap him straight across his red, jowly face.

It was as if she’d emerged from some kind of frigid swamp. She’d thought of it as being frozen solid, but what she felt now was far worse than a simple melting. It threatened to suck her in, this realization of what she’d done. What she’d agreed to when she’d felt nothing.

Had Julian said such things before? Had he expressed his opinion about not only Crete but also Timoney’s behavior like this?

She couldn’t remember it, because she hadn’t cared either way. And yet she knew, suddenly and without doubt, that he had.

And more, that she’d simply sat there like a block of icy wood, too lost in her own misery to care what was said to her or around her.

God help her, but this brutal awakening was not a kindness.

“I see the cat has got your tongue,” Julian said with another chuckle. “This pleases me, Timoney. I don’t mind telling you, I’m not marrying you for your conversation.”

His gaze raked over her then, making her feel stripped naked. And not in a pleasant way. Not the way she felt when Crete looked at her, too much heat in his gaze.

It felt rather more like a threat.

She actually bit her own tongue to keep from speaking any of the words that clambered there, desperate to fall out of her mouth.

Or more likely catapult out and insult this man, who she was only just realizing she didn’t know at all.

Not because he hadn’t showed himself to her. But because she hadn’t been paying attention.

“Enjoy your reading,” he told her. “I shall see you in the morning.”

Another threat.

Timoney stayed where she was until she heard the faintest sound from behind her, only a breath after the door closed behind Julian.

She turned, almost afraid, so wildly did her heart pound.

For Crete rose from the place where he had concealed himself, a dark movement. And his gaze upon her was like thunder.

She expected him to seethe at her. Possibly even shout. She expected him to storm across the room and grab her, hauling her up against him to argue his case.

And the contrast between the man who had just walked out of this room and Crete there before her was almost too much to bear. Especially when all he did was stand there instead of moving closer, that blue gaze dark and intent on her.

Meaning she could not help but compare the man she loved with the man she would marry.

It was painful.

More than painful. It made her stomach twist viciously, so that she almost doubled over. It made a kind of sick shame wash over her. It made her feet seem to lose their grip on the floor beneath her, like she might tumble off into nothing, and she did not know if she wanted to scream or cry. Or both.

She had known the differences between the two men, of course. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t noticed them before. How could anyone fail to notice them?

But she had never gazed upon Julian with Crete’s taste in her mouth.

“Well?” she demanded, because that was better than the silence. “Will you delight me with more trenchant observations about who I am and why I’ve made the choices I have?”

His mouth flattened. “I think your choices speak for themselves.”

And that was worse.

Timoney’s eyes eased closed and she found herself wrapping her arms around her middle, as if that could do something. As if she could hug herself out of this.

“Do you require that I say this again?” came his voice. Dark. Silken and rough at once and worse, inevitable. Irrevocable. “You cannot marry that man, Timoney. You must know this.”

Timoney had never known anything more. And she sucked in a breath, prepared to tell him that, no matter how reckless—

But she stopped herself.

Because there were other things she knew.

And one of them was him.

She had long wanted to ask him about his childhood, and while he hadn’t told her anything tonight she hadn’t known already, that he’d told her anything at all felt like a revolution. Because while he had spent their time together splitting his focus between her and his many businesses, she had done absolutely nothing but study him. It was one more thing she’d beat herself up about once he’d dropped her.

But her studies hadn’t been in vain—because he’d shown her that he did feel. As deeply as she’d known he did. She’d heard his battered heart in every gruff word he’d uttered.

Timoney still believed with everything she was, every bone in her body, that he loved her. But so what? What did Crete Asgar know of love?

Not only did she doubt that he could identify his own emotions, she doubted it would matter if he did. If she were to do as he asked, walk away from this wedding, move in with him again, even attempt to hammer out some kind of relationship that was less one-sided than the one they’d had before... What would it accomplish?

There would be more time with him, yes. And that was no small thing. She thought there was a part of her that would gladly sell her own soul for even one day more. At her lowest point, she would have made that bargain for a mere glimpse of him from across a road.

But she already knew how it would end.

And what she’d told him out in the garden had not changed.

It was a shame that she felt alive again, so that the devil she knew seemed a whole lot more like a demon she hadn’t fully comprehended until now.

But Julian had already given her the schematics to the marriage she expected. All she had to do was follow the rules. There would be no emotional cost. Sex would be unpleasant, but then, wasn’t that what she wanted? Because she’d already had far too much of the kind of lovemaking that made her soul feel too thin. That had not only taken her apart with pleasure, but had made her wonder how it was possible to exist in a world when she was so profoundly changed.

She had to think it was better for her to subject herself to Julian’s attentions rather than go back to Crete only to lose herself, then him, all over again.

Because she also knew that Julian’s attentions would also end. The diplomat’s wife was young and Timoney would inevitably age out of his interest. Once that happened, she assumed he would be perfectly amenable to living separate lives.

Maybe Crete was right and it was a sad little life. But at least she would be herself. Not that mess of raw emotion and no spine to speak of that she became around Crete.

That had to be better. She was sure it was.

“Why are you smiling?” Crete asked her then.

And Timoney might regret what she was about to do. She knew she would. It had been bad enough to look upon the reality of Julian with Crete here in the room. It would be nothing short of a horror to truly let herself experience Crete once more only to walk down the little aisle in the chapel here tomorrow.

But she could handle regret.

Or anyway, she hoped she could.

Hadn’t she already?

“Am I yours?” she asked him. “Truly?”

She saw something flare in his gaze, that brilliant shot of heat. And she could feel it inside her, far better than those other feelings of shame or horror.

Or this deep sadness she doubted would ever really leave her.

“You know you are,” he said, his voice low.

Thick. Hot.

And threaded through with a hint of deeply male satisfaction. Because, she knew, he thought he’d won.

For there was nothing Crete Asgar loved more than winning.

Especially not her.

But Timoney held out her arms anyway, because this was for her, not him. “Then prove it.”