Page 19 of A Billion-Dollar Heir For Christmas
“On the strength of your pregnancy. Because the Villela heir must be legitimate.” He looked at her as if he had never seen her before and would never see her again, or maybe it was simply that he did not wish to say the thing he knew he must. But that was life, was it not? Forever forcing himself to do what was necessary, what was right. Never what he wanted. So he took a deep breath. “We will marry. Quickly. And once that happens, I will never touch you again.”
He didn’t know what he expected her to do. Cry, perhaps. Look torn apart by such declaration.
Make it clear that she thought that was as much of an injustice as he did.
But instead she straightened against the doorjamb. Then she glared at him as if she was the one in charge here. As if she had the power.
“Good,” she said, her eyes flashing. “Let’s hurry up and marry, then.”
CHAPTER FIVE
THEWEDDINGTOOKplace three days later.
And if Lillie was discomfited by the speed of it, and how clearly it had all been planned before they’d come to Portugal in the first place, that seemed to be the least of her worries. Primary among her actual concerns was...what had become of her.
In Scotland she’d been...diffident. Forgiving. She’d let all those idiots in her house condescend to her for ages. She’d let them get away with all that passive aggressiveness while she’d spent the last few years of her life adrift, because all of her actual friends had gone ahead and got lives while she hadn’t had the slightest idea what to do with hers.
She had been asleep for years, perhaps, but she was wide awake now.
And she had to stay awake, because whileshemight have been worryingly happy to remain drifting to and fro in the tiny little tides of her little life, that was not the sort of life she wished to model for a child.
Once she started thinking like that, the stakes seemed even higher.
What sort of mother did her baby deserve?
Not the sort who let a scrum of housemates treat her ill, that was certain. And not the sort to bow down to the man who’d fathered her baby, either. She might have been spirited away to Tiago Villela’s Portuguese retreat. She was pregnant with his child and set to marry him, fair enough.
That hadn’t exactly been the proposal of her dreams, butshewasn’t backing down, because being Tiago’s—legally—was no more thanherbaby deserved, and Lillie had discovered to her delight that there were some things, it turned out, she was perfectly happy to fight about.
The life her child could and would have topped that list.
Leonor, who was clearly more family than housekeeper, assured her that everything was well in hand. All Lillie had been asked to do over the past few days was rest, eat, and entertain herself. All of which she had done, to excess.
A lot like she was trying to prove something to Tiago. How comfortable she was. How at her ease with his dictates.
Only when she was all alone, late at night, did she admit that the fact it was so easy for him to ignore the passion that still scorched her, just thinking of it, hurt her more than it should.
It was only there in her bed of clouds, covers over her head, could she let herself shake with all the pent-upnervesshe dared not show to a man she’d thought was made of molten heat who, apparently, coulddecideto make himself an ice sculpture at will.
But when she woke up each morning, she allowed none of her bewilderment to show.
He didn’t want to touch her?Marvelous.She could entertain herself without him forever. She found out quickly that most of the books in the house were languages she didn’t speak. Portuguese, of course, but also Spanish, French, and what she thought was German. It was only in the guest wing that the books were in English. But because she had a stubborn streak, she liked to take books she could actually read and settle down to read them...in other parts of the house.
Because if no one was going to admit that Tiago wanted her to remain confined to quarters so he need not gaze upon her unless he expressly wished it, she was going to pretend she had no idea that she was supposed to stay put.
She swam in the pool that Leonor had pointed out to her that first night. Even though it was the waning days of November, the pool was warm, the sun was bright, and it was all much more delightful than it should have been.
Ice sculptures be damned.
They brought her a decadent high tea each day at four on the dot. Besides that, there were all the meals she could possibly want, the food so good it would have made her eyes roll back in her head in sheer delight...
But she was too busy pretending not to be affected by any of it. And all that pretending was a lot of work. It made her hungry.
It made her shake in her bed, night after night, when no one could see her.
Today, however, was her wedding day and she was finding it difficult to keep up the same stubborn front.
She felt fluttery and odd, she acknowledged, as she sat in the sitting room in her guest quarters to take her breakfast that morning. More fluttery by the moment.