Page 22 of A Billion-Dollar Heir For Christmas

And at the end of the day, what was her alternative? Her cousin’s spare room when her child could be the heir to all of this? For the sake of her pride?

How could she think she could call herself a good mother if she did something like that?

So she tilted her head a little bit to one side, though she couldn’t quite manage to be as flippant as she wanted.

“Well,” she said, and had to swallow, hard. “Since you asked so nicely, I will. I’ll marry you.”

And because he smiled at her, she even signed his papers, too.

Because what she wanted was a father for her child. She wasn’t a gold digger. She hadn’t had the slightest idea there was any gold to dig. That being the case, she didn’t see any reason why sheshouldn’tsign. How silly would it be to turn around and make some claim to this land, this house, this grand legacy for herself?

For her child, now—that was a different story.

So she signed the papers. And she stood in his study with the celebrant from the local registrar, the notary, the unreadable Leonor, and several other officials who might actually have been his attorneys, and she married him.

“That was not exactly the culmination of love’s young dream,” she said not long after, when the official-looking men had all been ushered out by the housekeeper and only she and Tiago remained. “But I suppose it got the job done.”

Because she was trying to sound supportive.

He glanced over at her, this man who was herhusband—a word that felt silly to eventhink—and Lillie told herself it was just as well that they’d done it this way. There was no big white dress. No crowds of family or friends. No flowers, no attempt at emotional vows, no deeply embarrassing yet always entertaining wedding disco.

He was wearing what she supposed was a more casual version of his usual clothing. The usual dark suit, but the collar of his crisp white shirt was open. Wide enough that she could see not only the strong column of his throat, but the hint of the dark hair she knew was sprinkled over his chest—seeming to exist purely to emphasize the marvelous shape of him. Those hard planes of muscle, the intriguing ridges of his abdomen.

Though it was better not to think of such things right now, she warned herself. She looked down at her own outfit instead, a simple dress from her suddenly expansive wardrobe. Deceptively simple, that was. She knew perfectly well that it made her look somehow delicate and elegant at once, when she felt more awkward and misshapen by the day.

And instead of being bridal in any regard, it was a serviceable navy.

Yet they were married all the same.

Tiago kept looking at her intently far too long. And then he beckoned for her to follow him as he opened up the floor-to-ceiling windows that were everywhere in this house, all of them doubling as doors that let out to the various tiers of terraces and balconies and patios aplenty. In this case, the red-tiled patio was set beneath an arbor, trailing vines that might not have been flowering in the first flush of spring, but were pretty all the same.

Though all Lillie could think of was how pretty they would look if she accentuated them with some Christmas lights. Out here, in all this winter sunshine, it seemed entirely too easy to forget what day it was. What month. She supposed that if she didn’t have a baby growing inside her to mark the time it would be the easiest thing in the world to simply drift off into a daydream of some eternal Portuguese summer and lose touch with herself entirely. It was already difficult to imagine that there was any scenario that would lead her to return to all that cold hard rock in Aberdeen.

Tiago ushered her to a seat at the table that had been set up there, waiting for them.

“How lovely to have a bit of a meal after a wedding,” Lillie said brightly. “Almost makes it seem real, doesn’t it?”

Tiago’s brows knitted together as he stared at her. “I assure you, our marriage is very real. Did you imagine there was some pretense in the proceedings?”

“It was more a figure of speech.”

“I would never play games with something so critical,” Tiago told her darkly.

“Because you’re known for otherwise playing a great many games, of course,” she said with a laugh.

And Lillie was not surprised that he did not laugh with her. She wasn’t sure why she was laughing herself, except she thought she was a bit more nervous than she wanted to let on. Because it was one thing to think about nights in Spain, and to make the best of things as she had been doing since, which had perhaps not been the hardship some people liked to think.

There was a part of her that mourned the loss of her solitary nights in her little room in Aberdeen, with the baby inside her and memories of Spain to keep her warm.

Because now the man in those memories was herhusband, just as he would shortly become thefatherof their child—who she would no longer carry inside her—and maybe she wasn’t quite as resigned to all of this change as she pretended.

This was all a little more disruption than she’d had planned when she’d taken Patricia’s place at that resort.

It had certainly never occurred to her that if she did somehow find her mystery man one of these days, he would be sostern. So uncompromising, even though she was sure she could see little hints of that fearless, fiery lover she’d met that first night. But she supposed there was no crying over spilt milk. Not now.

She concentrated on the food instead, because she knew by now that it would be stellar, but as she was walking over to the table to take her seat, she stopped short. Her hands moved over her belly and she frowned.

Tiago was at her side in a moment, his hand on her elbow, his frown now an expression of concern. “Is something the matter?”