Page 18 of A Billion-Dollar Heir For Christmas

“That cannot happen again,” he told her. Severely.

“It seems likely to happen again and again and again,” she replied after a moment, her voice husky. Roughened in a way that made him want nothing more than to lay her out before the fire crackling in his grate, follow her down to the ground, and see if it was even possible to indulge in her enough that this hunger might somehow be sated. “Otherwise, I don’t see why you transported me all the way to this lovely, remote estate where no one could possibly hope to find me.”

“I am afraid you have the wrong idea.”

And he heard the way he said that. So stiff, so unyielding, that he might as well have been made of stone. He sounded like every lecture his father had ever given him. All that talk of duty, legacy. Responsibility. Until tonight, he had always thought those things were stamped deep on his bones. That he would not need to think of them, for he simplywasthem.

In every possible respect, it seemed, except where she was concerned.

Tiago expected her to react badly to what he said. To look hurt, at the very least. He braced himself for it, not sure that he would be able to handle it the way he needed to, but already lecturing himself on why it was necessary that things be done in the way he had decided earlier.

But Lillie laughed. “You think I’ve got the wrong idea, do you?” Her laughter was not helpful. It was like a bright song, filling the room and pouring through him, like the melody a wish might make as it was granted. “Do you reckon? I’m nearly five months pregnant. Whatwrong ideado you imagine I might have?”

“I intended to have a discussion with you tomorrow,” he said, even more stiffly than before, as if he was an awkward man. As if there had ever been a situation that he could not master.

This was the first. He disliked it, intensely.

Her brows arched as she studied him. And though she laughed again, it seemed less an expression of pure amusement—not with that new edge to it. She crossed her arms, her siren eyes looking narrower than before.

He didn’t like that either.

“I’ve ruined everything by not staying locked up in my room like a naughty child, clearly,” she said, and then she even rolled her eyes. As if that was something people could just...doat him. “You really don’t seem to like it much when things don’t go according to your plan, do you? I expect that’s all the money. It makes a person imagine that everything they think and do is more important. And that if others don’t fall in line, that it’s necessary to maneuver them into whatever it is you think they should do. No one likes to be maneuvered, Tiago. Maybe you don’t know that, having grown up like this. I accept that it’s possible no one has told you. Likely because they work for you and are too scared to tell you much of anything, if you want my opinion.”

“I do not,” he grated out. “And as it happens, Lillie, you are the only thing that has ever failed to go according to plan.”

She didn’t ask him if he meant tonight, or five months ago. But then, he knew she didn’t need to. Because he knew that she possessed the same confounding skill that he did, but in reverse. He knew this woman was perhaps the only person alive who could read him with a glance.

He didn’t care for that, either. But he comforted himself that at least he wasn’t meeting her in a delicate contract negotiation where his ability to bluff his way into a better position would be at risk.

“I hope you don’t think I’m going to apologize for that,” she said, after spending too long looking for God only knew what on his face. “Besides, this is all you playing catch-up. I can assure you, falling pregnant after one night on a Spanish vacation was not in my plans, either. And until yesterday, I assumed that was a responsibility I’d be taking on all alone.”

“That obviously won’t be necessary.” He couldtasteher, was the thing. That made it feel like nothing short of an indignity that he could not go to her, strip her naked, and taste her everywhere else, too. But he didn’t do it. Somehow. He moved, though his body felt as if it was fighting him every step of the way, and located himself behind the desk over against one wall. So he could at least attempt to feel more in control. “I’m a man of limitless resources. There is no need for you to struggle ever again, and indeed, I intend to see to it that you do not.”

But she did not look even remotely relieved. Or grateful. She scowled at him. “I didn’t seek you out for a payday.”

Tiago raised a brow. “Did you not? Then you would be the first.”

“I sought you out,” she said, very primly, “because it wasthe right thing to do.”

“And the fact that I am a wealthy man by any standard played no part in your decision to turn up in my office, I am certain.”

She stared at him for a moment, and he realized that she wasn’t coming back at him with a knee-jerk response. It looked as if she was considering what he’d said. “No, you’re right. I thought you were the pool boy, after all. It was a pleasant surprise to find that if you chose to take responsibility, this baby would be well looked after.”

And that was what he wanted her to say, surely. It was what he’d expected her to say from the start. But now that she’d said it, he found it rang false. It sat in him wrong, and he had long considered himself a finely tuned instrument when it came to other people’s veracity. It was part of what made him such an excellent businessman, capable of keeping his fingers in a great many pies at once, secure in the knowledge that it was a very difficult thing indeed for anyone to fool him.

He could not say that what he felt at the moment wassecure.

“There is obviously a great deal of chemistry between us,” he said baldly, because he was always good at that, too. Never one for messing about with thinly veiled this and implications of that, not when he could aim straight at it instead. He saw her eyes widen and could not have said if the sensation that seemed to punch through him was delight that he had gained ground, or a strange regret. “But that is not something I choose to indulge in when it comes to matters of business.”

“Matters of business?” she echoed, sounding as if shewantedto laugh but couldn’t quite get there. “Are you referring to your child as part of your...business?”

“The child will not simply be a baby, Lillie.” He sounded forbidding, he knew, but he leaned into it. Because she needed to hear this. She needed to fully take the reality of the situation on board. “This child will be the heir to two great dynasties. Both come with their own august legacies and considerable mythologies, which would be burden enough. But both also come with significant fortunes attached, and that, like it or not, is business. For if it is not, it will soon be a moot point. It will all disappear. The work of generations, that easily.”

There was something in her gaze then, making all that bright blue turn dark. “What exactly are you trying to say to me?”

Tiago sighed, as if she was being dense. And he hated himself for that, too, when she stiffened. “This cannot be an affair, Lillie. No matter what happened between us in Spain. Do you not understand? I will have to marry you.”

Her eyes went wide. Her face paled, and not, his ego could not help but note, in the transformative joy a man in his position might have expected to see after a proposal. “Marry me? Marryyou? Are you mad? On the strength of one night?”