Page 2 of The Bride He Stole For Christmas

Then she’d met Crete Asgar and she’d stopped thinking of any future that didn’t involve him.

Even thinking his name here, now, at a table filled with the kind of braying toffs he disdained, made her fight backa deep shiver.

There was a straight line between that fateful night and this one.It had all beenheaded for disaster from the start—though she hadn’t known that then. She hadn’t known, or wanted to know, a thing but Crete.

And Timoney was pleased that her heart had been ripped out and trampled, because it no longer beat too hard. It no longer threatened to burst.She could stand here,on the night before her wedding to another man she hardly knew, and congratulate herself on feelingvery littleat all.

Because after a whirlwindsix months as Crete’smistress,he had finished with her two months ago. Brutally.

She felt proud that she could think of it that way. Such a quiet little sentence.He had finished with her.Such bloodless words to describe that scenein that penthouse of his, all modern anglesand cold lines set up there above the Thames, wherehe’dtaken everything that Timoney was, shredded it, then set it all on fire.

It’s better this way,she assured herself.There’s nothing left to worry about losing.

She heard her uncle’s voice from beside her and snapped back into the here and now, at this holiday dinner party that was supposedly in her honor.

“I hopeyou aren’t lapsing off into any unfortunate second thoughts,”UncleOliver said coldly at her elbow. Timoney had no memory of the rest of the party rising from the banquet table, but they must havedone. Fornowshe could see straight across to her favorite tapestry on the far wall, though staring about the brightly lit, festive room didn’t warm her as it might have once. It could have been ash for all she cared.

Maybe it was.

“I don’t have thoughts, Uncle,” she replied coolly. “Second or otherwise. You have forbidden it.”

His hand was on her elbow then, and he squeezed far too hard, but she did not give him the satisfaction of wincing.No, indeed. She felt the pain of it, and some part of it thrilled her.That she could feel even a sensation like that, her uncle’s brand of quietly sadistic violence, and react not at all.

“Julian tells me that you declined his offerof a drink last night,” her uncle hissed into her ear. “I thought we were agreed on our course of action.” Meaning he’d ordered her to offer the groom a preview of what he was purchasing.

“I will be marrying Julian soon enough,” Timoney said, turning her gaze toward her uncle. And maybe itwasn’tentirely true to say she felt nothing. Only that she showed nothing. Because, she could admit, she took no little pleasure in the way she gazed dispassionately at this man whose distaste for her seemed to bounce off her now.Like rubber. She especially liked that it clearly enraged him. “Sono reason to rushinto it.”

“What sudden preciousness is this?” her uncle snarled. He leaned in closer, across the corner of the table they shared. “You’re damaged goods, Timoney. Thatcretin’sfingerprints are all over you. You flaunted yourself on his arm and he made no secret of the base physicality of your union in every photograph taken by the baying press. Yet you darepull on a cloak of false modesty?”

Timoney pointedly tugged her elbow out of his grasp. “It’s not modesty, Uncle. It’s strategy.Why givemyselfaway for free with the wedding so soon? What if he was disappointed?” She shrugged as if they were discussing livestock. Well. She supposed they were.“Damaged goods or not, why would a man pay full price for something when he’d already had it at a discount?”

If she wasn’t already ruined—and not in the way her uncle imagined—this would destroy her, she was sure. This cold, dispassionate discussion of the marital rightsshe’dbe expected to perform tomorrow.

Said marital rights that were, she waswell aware, somethingher elderly husband was eagerly awaiting. Julian had made his interest in her clear since the momenthe’dlaid eyes on her here at one of her uncle’s dreadful soirees not long after she’d slunk back to the ancestral pile in shame, still licking her wounds.

Though it was more accurate to say that shewasn’tso muchlicking woundsas she was attempting to...pretend that she was stilla person.Instead of the tiny little pile of crushed-out cinders that Crete had left behind him that night.

It hadtaken her uncle only a few weeksto talk her into this marriage that benefited him the most. He had ranted on about the shame she’d brought on the family. About the stain of itthat would clingto his own three daughtersif Timoneywas allowed tocontinue her downward spiral.

By his reckoning, havingbeen sullied and discarded by the likes of Crete Asgar—as infamous for his entirely self-made wealth as for his contempt of the sort of hereditaryriches that Olivernowpossessed—Timoney was no betterthanthe sorts of addicts one could find cluttering upthe streets. Oliver did not view such addictions as diseases. They were choices, he liked to declare. For it was one thing to genteelly pop painkillers like all the women in Oliver’s circles did to survive their practical marriages. It was something else again to allow one’s weaknesses to be sovisible, and Timoney was already on the wrong side of that equation.

For she had appeared in too many papers Oliver’s friends actually read, clearly in thrall to her unacceptable lover.

What next?he had thunderedat a family dinner a week or so after she’d returned.Would she turn to modeling—which, in his mind,was merely prostitution by another name.

I will take that as a compliment, Uncle,Timoney hadreplied over her chilled soup with a flash of her former defiance.I had no idea you rated my looks so highly.

That had gotten hera slap.

More than that, it had gotten her uncle thinkingabout how best he could use her looks to his advantage.

You’re the spitting image of your mother,he had said not long after. Timoney knewthis wastrue,andit was one more thing painful for her to try not to think about. She grew more like her mother every day. The blond hair, the wide smile, the pointed chin.So similar, and yet Crete had seen to it that there was nothing resembling the spark of joy in her that had always brightened her mother’s gaze.

It was better not to think of such things. It only made her sad.

Beside her, her uncleseemed to still be turning over the notion that Timoney mightactually haveacted strategically in his interest.But she knew it wouldn’t last. She had only to inhale too loudly to agitate him anew.

“On that note,” she said now, “I believe I will call it a night. I expect tomorrow will be long.”And arduous in more ways than one.