Page 25 of A Billion-Dollar Heir For Christmas

“Oh, dear,” Lillie said, those blue eyes of hers sparkly again. “I don’t think I’ve everexemplifieda thing. Your poor list.”

And when he thought about that later—after he’d left her there before dessert arrived, muttering something about a business call he did not have to make—what he remembered was how unconcerned she seemed. As if she truly did not care one way or the other about any list of attributes the wife of a Villela should have possessed.

She hadn’t even asked what they were.

Tiago found himself brooding about them instead. And as the days passed, he cataloged Lillie’s many flaws as he observed them, matching them against that list of spotlessness and sophistication in his head.

Especially when he was tempted to tell himself he didn’t care about the discrepancy.

“You’re doing it again,” she said another night. This time, he had insisted they dress and eat in the elegant dining room. She sat to his right, and he expected that she would be overwhelmed by all the different plates and utensils that made up the sort of overly formal dinner he felt certain she had never indulged in before. But this was Lillie. She lookedentertained, not overwhelmed. She even smiled at him now, her eyes dancing. “Looking at me and finding me wanting, at a guess.”

That she could read him when no one else could made his skin feel too tight on his own body. “It is only that we will have to make certain that you receive the instruction you need,” he told her stiffly. “There are certain expectations surrounding my name. I would hate for you to be out in the world and seen as a representative of this family without possessing the necessary skills, that’s all.”

“You are all heart, Tiago.”

She said that serenely and then, holding his gaze in a manner he could only call challenging, she picked up the fork he had just been at pains to tell her was the wrong one, and used it anyway.

And later on, once again barricaded in his office—because he needed to leave her after these dinners where she sat about in pretty dresses, laughing and sparkling too brightly when the only thing that was meant tosparklewere the chandeliers—he thought about that list again. And more, about the way his parents had raised him.

They had made it perfectly clear what was expected of him.

Our family has too much wealth and power for you to expect that you should spend your life seeking happiness, his father had told him when he was a teenager.You will hear many things as you grow, about how you must seek your truth.About how what truly matters is your own personal happiness. But the people who say these things are not Villelas.

Yes,Pai, Tiago had replied when his father had leveled that familiar glare on him.

Villelas cannot be selfish. A Villela is more than welcome to seek contentment, Tiago, but happiness?His father had shaken his head.It is better by far to strive for usefulness. You are a steward, not a star. This is what you must remember.

Tiago had never forgotten.

Just as he never forgot being left when he’d daredgrievewhere they could see him.

Over time, there were more things he did not question. The way his parents always looked taken aback to see him, as if they’d forgotten all about him while he was off at school. The many holidays he and Leonor had been left to their own devices in one house or another, because his parents did not see any reason to curtail their schedules to see him.

The year that became two that he did not see them at all, because they had important things to see to elsewhere.

He had been ten, then eleven, and he had known better than to mention it when he saw them again.

Just as he knew, deep down, that all of this had made him stronger. More capable of doing what was necessary. More, that he needed it.

Because now he understood that he had a gift that most men of his wealth and consequence did not: he did not expect that he was the center of anyone’s thoughts. He did not expect to be thought of at all.

It made him less arrogant—and more successful—than his peers.

He had never questioned what his parents had taught him, because he could see in everything he did that they had given him innumerable gifts. And he told himself he was not going to start questioning them now.

What he did question was how he was ever going to raise his own child with a woman who did not herself understand—or eventryto understand—the realities of life as a Villela.

His parents had not loved each other. They would have recoiled at the very idea that they might. There were far more important things to concern themselves with, as they always made sure to tell him. They had always liked to say, quite proudly, that the vagaries of emotion were beneath them.

And his grandmother might have been a counterpoint to that in her time, but Tiago had only known her as a small boy. Small boys wanted to believe in all manner of impossible things. He felt grateful indeed that he had outgrown it.

He did not know why he did not tell Lillie these things.

Instead, he attempted to model his parents’ relationship and modify Lillie’s behavior as he went. Like the nightly dinners where he would ask her coolly what she did with her day, and, when she remembered to ask him the same, give her the concise and emotionless breakdown that he expected in return.

But though he realized this was how he expected colleagues to behave in business scenarios too, his wife did not seem to get the message.

“What exactly is the plan?” she asked one night.