The Bride He Stole For Christmas by Caitlin Crews

CHAPTER EIGHT

THELASTTHINGin the world Timoney wanted was to thank him.

Her pulse was a riot inside her. Her head was spinning, and not only because she was upside down. There was something buried inside her, something suppressed, that seemed to be storming its way out and she had no idea what might become of her then. She wanted to rip him apart with her fingers, to make him heed her cries—

Or that was what she told herself she wanted as he strode away from her uncle’s house. Carrying her with him whether she wanted to go or not.

And she was terribly afraid that thing inside her, nearly free now, was a kind of triumph. Laced through with relief.

As if, despite what she might have said to him in the conservatory, she reveled in the fact he’d made this choice.

Freeing her from Julian and her uncle and the choices she’d made while grayed out and dead within. Without her having to make them herself.

Maybe you should thank him after all, that voice needled her.

The world spun all around again and she found herself on her feet, but only briefly, as Crete set about strapping her into the passenger side of the gleaming Range Rover he’d left parked haphazardly near the estate’s lower stables.

He slammed the door and strode around the front of the vehicle. And it was only when he swung in beside her that Timoney realized that she really should have used this opportunity to effect her escape.

Because surely if she had an opportunity to escape and she didn’t take it, that was a choice. Wasn’t it?

But instead of hurling herself out into the night and running for the questionable safety of the house, she’d been too busy contemplating the fact that Crete Asgar had actually turned up out of the blue. Had kissed her silly, then made her sob and scream on the floor of the only room in that house that had always felt safe. And had topped all that off by abducting her.

The night before her wedding.

On Christmas Eve.

And by the time it occurred to her that she really ought to try the door and see if she could outrun him, however unlikely, he was already turning the car around and heading away from her childhood home.

With what felt like a tremendous amount of finality.

Not that she was required to accept that, she told herself stoutly. He didn’t get to decide.

“This is remarkably childish, Crete,” she said as he headed down the winding drive. The December dark pressed in all sides and his headlights caught the remnants of the mist as it still collected in the hollows. Making herself sound reasonable and rational made her feel, if not in control, at least not as out of control as this situation should feel. “What do you think is going to happen now? Do you think removing me from the house will fix anything?”

“It will fix one, pressing matter,” Crete replied, his eyes on the road ahead. “This is something you should know about me by now, Timoney. I always put out the biggest fire first.”

But she knew that wasn’t true, because the biggest fire of all still burned inside her. She was beginning to understand that it always would. No matter how much ice she piled on top of it, or how much gray she wrapped around herself. The flames were only ever banked, never extinguished.

“Sooner or later, whatever madness this is will pass,” she said quietly, because thinking about the fires within wasn’t helpful. “What gives you the right to wreck my life in the meantime? You had the opportunity to stay with me forever and you chose instead to have me tossed out of your flat. You don’t want this. You don’t like to be told no, that’s all.”

And she hoped he never knew what it cost her to sound so serene when she felt anything but.

“Surely it’s time to set aside all this drama.” But she could see that despite that tone he used, as if this was all the deepest silliness, his hands were like fists around the steering wheel. “You were not tossed out into the street like so much rubbish and I believe you know this well.”

“Was I not? I don’t recall you being there as your men hustled me along. I was given two hours.”

He muttered something in Greek.

“Two hours,” she said again, more distinctly. “And it wasn’t that I needed more time than that to pack, Crete. It was that my lover, whose home I shared, told me that he never wanted to lay eyes on me again. I understand that this may come as news to you, but for most people that is the kind of blow that it takes some time to recover from.”

The real truth, she knew, as she looked out at the narrow lane that he was driving along now—and much too quickly—hemmed in on either side by the hedges, was that she wasn’t recovered. She wasn’t sure recovery was possible.

Wasn’t that how she’d ended up agreeing to marry Julian in the first place?

She glanced over at Crete. His face was set in harsh lines, his lips pressed together as if he was fighting off some of those emotions he would claim he didn’t have.

And this was the trouble. She didn’t like the feeling that she’d actually hurt him. She loved him. Whatever else happened, that didn’t change. That he wouldn’t admit something hurt him didn’t mean it didn’t. She knew that. Just as she knew that all hurting him did was hurt her. Maybe that was love, too.

Because no one had ever said that love meant happiness. Or that joy didn’t have a price. She had thought the price she must pay was Julian, but in many ways this was worse.

For it was sometime after midnight, she saw on the car’s dashboard. Technically Christmas, and that made a kind of sense, because this was a bittersweet sort of miracle. She had never thought she would see Crete again, and yet he had appeared like a dream. He had swept in like the mist, told her things about himself he never had before, and the way they’d come together could only and ever be love, as far as she was concerned.

Whether he would call it that or not.

She wanted to think that it was anxiety inside her, carrying on, ordering her to leap out of the car, demand that he turn around, do something to make it clear that she intended to marry in the morning.

But she knew better. She was trying to defend herself against the inevitability of the next time he would leave her. She wanted to believe in this. She wanted this Christmas miracle.

All while she knew that he believed in Christmas and miracles about as much as he believed in love.

For some time they drove in silence. Timoney could feel some tension leaving her the farther they traveled from the house. From Julian and her unpleasant future. And yet the farther they traveled from her childhood home, the closer they got to London and the more a different sort of tension grew in her.

Mile by mile.

“You,” Crete said, almost softly, if that was a word that could be used for such a hard man, “are the only person I have ever met who has never treated me as if I was some kind of alien.”

Such a soft yet sharp spear, thrust straight through her heart. She folded her hands in her lap and stared down at them. “I don’t think you’re an alien. That would be convenient, wouldn’t it?”

He let out a sound that she supposed was a laugh, though it seemed to curl around inside her like smoke and didn’t help any with the weight of misery that seemed to sit on her then.

But she should not have felt miserable on behalf of her kidnapper. What was the matter with her? She ought to have felt miserable because she was being kidnapped, not because he might have tender feelings about it.

Something is very wrong with you, she told herself sternly.

Crete handled the country lanes easily, as if the towering hedges and slippery roads were nothing to him. As if the way the lanes wound this way and that was nothing short of soothing.

How she wished she could find a way to soothe herself—but she hadn’t really managed that since she’d met him, had she? And she could hardly recall what had come before.

He made a low noise, as if he was coming to some kind of decision. She thought he sat a bit straighter behind the wheel. “You know my name is not actually Crete, do you not?”

“That is a wrinkle I did not see coming.” Timoney frowned down at her interlaced fingers. “Though it would explain a lot if you had an evil twin. Did the bad version of you knock you over the head and lock you up somewhere? Is this the good version? I have a lot of follow-up questions.”

He shot her a fulminating look, then returned his gaze to the winding lane.

“I was born with a proper Greek name,” he told her, his voice a rasp across the darkness between them. “Adrastos Demetrios. My mother had many issues, there’s no denying that. But she did not name her only son after an island.”

And despite all the many articles that Timoney had ever read about him, she’d never encountered this little nugget of information. It seemed almost fantastical that he might have a name out there that no one had ever discovered. A secret name he was sharing only with her. Only now.

Something in her seemed to hum around the syllables of that lost name. Adrastos Demetrios. Him but not him.

Another gift, that voice within whispered.

“Crete is traditionally a female name,” he told her. “It is also the only place in Greece my father’s wife had ever visited. So this is what she chose to call me.”

Timoney turned in her seat, forgetting her own concerns as she studied his proud profile beside her. “Do you think she knew that it was a girl’s name? Does she speak Greek?”

“She does not speak Greek, no.” His mouth curved into that shape that was not a smile. “But my father does. I myself did not learn Greek until I was in school and could choose my own elective courses. As you can imagine, Greek was not encouraged in the father’s house. And so it was my Greek teacher who first told me that my nickname was usually only used for girls. I think she expected me to be horrified.”

“But you preferred to defy expectations,” she whispered. “As ever.”

“I legally changed my name to Crete when I was eighteen,” he told her in that same dark rasp. As if it was painful to tell her this. “Because it was the only thing my father and his wife ever gave me. And though they meant it as a mockery, I’m certain, I chose to claim it as a prize.”

Of course he did. This proud, remote man. Timoney had never wanted to reach out to him more. It actually hurt to keep her hands to herself.

And Crete was still speaking. “But more than that, it was a challenge. Let them laugh at a man with a woman’s name. Let them amuse themselves at my expense. It would only make it all the sweeter when I crushed them.” He let out that laugh again. “And, indeed, it did.”

And any remaining doubts Timoney might have had that she was head over heels for this man, despite everything, faded away then. Because when he told her such harsh things, such sad reminders of the brutal place he’d come from, all she wanted to do was wrap herself around him and show him at least one moment of softness. At least one small bit of something better.

Tears pricked at the back of her eyes. “I’m sorry that even your name is a battlefield.”

“Everything is a battlefield, Timoney.” His voice was low. Gravelly. “And I take a deep pleasure in winning these wars. It has been this way with everything and everyone, always. Until you.”

Once again she felt winded, and she could feel the tears threatening to spill over. “That’s not fair.”

“Did you think this would be fair?” She only realized the car had slowed to a complete stop when he turned in his seat. His strong hand pulled her face around to his. “Love or war, it’s all the same to me.”

“You don’t believe in love,” she replied in a whisper, not jerking her chin from his grasp. Not fighting him.

“Maybe not, but I have always preferred war. It is simple. There are winners and losers. There is none of this mess.”

“This is only as messy as you want to make it,” she managed to say. “You could so easily have stayed away, Crete. You broke things off for a reason. You could have carried on as you have these past two months. What changed?”

“Nothing has changed.” She thought she saw some kind of ghost in his gaze then. Or did she only wish she did? Either way he dropped his hand, though his gaze remained intent. “But you deserve better than Julian Browning-Case.”

“Let’s think about this rationally,” she suggested, her gaze direct on his. “You carry me off like a caveman.”

“Do cavemen drive Range Rovers?” His voice was arid. “I had not realized.”

“Obviously there’s a spark between us. I won’t deny that. Let’s say that I stay with you again. Or who knows? Find my way back to that listed house in Belgravia that you were so disdainful of earlier.” She shook her head, still holding his gaze. “Sooner or later, it will be too much for you. Again. And by that time, perhaps, Julian will have moved on.”

“Good,” Crete growled.

Timoney sighed. “Julian isn’t the point. If I don’t show up at my own wedding tomorrow, my uncle will disown me.”

“Is this a tragedy?” Crete demanded. “You’ll excuse me if I do not weep. Whether your uncle disowns you or does not, all you will have to do is wait a few years for your trust to kick in. Is this not how it works to be an heiress?”

“You’re talking about money, Crete. I’m talking about family.”

“You don’t even like your family.” He sounded mystified.

“What does that have to do with anything? My aunt has her moments. And my cousins are perfectly unobjectionable.” He had been honest with her about his name, so she swallowed, hard, and returned the favor. “And they are all I have left.”

He shook his head, then turned his attention back to the lane before him. When the Range Rover began to move again, Timoney couldn’t tell if she’d lost something or gained it.

“I know you don’t understand family,” she said, her gaze drawn back toward the way the headlights danced over the lane. The way the dark night held them fast in its grip, as if they were alone in all the world. Suspended here together in the quiet and the cold. “I don’t expect you to. But until a few years ago, I would have told you I had the best family in the world. My parents loved me and I loved them in return. And I know that they would expect me to do whatever I can to maintain a relationship with my uncle and his family, no matter what.”

“If your parents loved you at all, how could they possibly countenance your uncle’s wish to sell you off to one of his cronies?” Crete made a dismissive noise. “A man who makes no secret of the fact that his only interest in you involves the marital bed. Was that what your parents wanted for you?”

Her parents seemed very far away tonight. But then, happily, so did any marital bed she might share with Julian. But what caught at her was that Crete had brought them up of his own accord. She couldn’t recall him ever doing so before.

Much less speaking of love.

Her heart seemed to skip a few beats.

“My parents wanted me happy,” she said quietly. She laced her fingers together again, because it was that or reach out to him and she didn’t quite dare. “This is what I’m trying to make you understand, Crete. No matter what happens now, whether I am disowned or I simply go off with you for a time and come back to be married off to someone else, it’s all the same, isn’t it? I’m not happy. I’m not going to be happy. Because what I want I can’t have. You’ve already made that abundantly clear.”

“You don’t know that.”

But he drove faster, so that the dark and misty night seemed a blur on the other side of the windows.

“I do know that.” She sighed. “I have no intention of playing war games with you. And you don’t believe in love. Those are incompatible positions, Crete. You must know that.”

“Compatible or incompatible matter little if you’re carrying my child,” he gritted out.

Her hands rested in her lap and she resisted the urge to touch her belly. To imagine. “And if I’m not?”

“Then you will come to a place of gratitude, I have no doubt, for the act of service this is,” he said. With all his arrogance. “You are not required to suffer that man’s bed. You are welcome.”

Timoney kept her gaze on the dark blur of hedge and distant sky. “But I won’t be happy, will I?”

Crete made a low noise. Disbelief. Temper. Some mix of both. “Are you suggesting that you would be happier suffering with that pig?”

And Timoney blew out a ragged sort of breath. “Julian could never possibly break my heart. He could only harm me in small ways.”

“I think you underestimate him.”

“But you, Crete.” She frowned at him. “You want to drag me off and pretend that we can go back to some version of what we were? At what cost? I’ve already tried loving you enough for both of us, and that didn’t work. Why should this?”

She thought she could hear his teeth grind together, so hard was his jaw then.

“Maybe it would be better if we postpone these discussions until such a time as we know whether or not you are to be the mother of my child.” He bit the words out. “I suspect that will answer any questions you might have.”

“Putting aside the fact that you haven’t thought to ask whether or not I wish to be a mother at all, much less of your child, what do you plan to do?” she demanded. “Will you fly me off to one of your solitary islands? Will you hide me away so that I dare not make you think about the things you’d rather avoid?”

“What will be the point in that?” he hurled at her. “When you would only haunt me either way?”

For a long while, as he drove through the darkness, Timoney sat with that.

And wished—oh, how she wished—that it could be enough.

Her cloak lay over her like a blanket and she pulled it tighter around her now, letting her eyes drift shut.

Once, it would have been enough to imagine she might haunt him. Once, knowing she affected him at all would have felt like a prize. Worth whatever she had to do to achieve it.

But she knew better now.

Timoney would never think it was enough until he admitted that he loved her the same way she loved him. Without limits. Without sense.

Wholly, desperately, and irreversibly.

Until then, she did not doubt that he wanted her. But she also knew he wouldn’t keep her.

So she kept her eyes closed and she let the rhythm of the wheels beneath her lull her into sleep.

Or into dreams, anyway, whether waking or not. Where she could pretend they might build a new life untainted by what had come before, or what she knew lay ahead.

Where she could pretend that love might finally be enough.

It was very early Christmas morning now, and maybe the true miracle was that she got this little space in between to imagine. To feel alive again. To remember the past without shutting down and to imagine the kind of future she knew they would never have.

To close her eyes in a speeding car and feel his presence all around her. To know, once more, the glory of his touch, and pretend for some little while that they could truly be together the way she’d always wanted.

It was a far better Christmas gift than she’d expected this year.

And Timoney would take it, for as long she could, before reality rained down upon her once again.