Page 32 of A Billion-Dollar Heir For Christmas

Lillie felt undone, unspooled. She shuddered against him. His head tipped into the crook of her neck, and they shook together, there in what was left of the dark.

Leaving them raw.

Bare.

Seen,she thought as she drifted off to sleep once more.

When she woke the next time, the sun was pouring in from outside and she was alone in his bed.

Lillie didn’t really like how that felt, but this wasn’t Spain. For one thing, she was already pregnant.

As she swung out of the bed, she told herself all the rest of the ways this was different. She knew his name. She supposed she’d taken his name, though for all his talk ofVillela wives,she hadn’t given any particular thought to keeping her name or taking his. Still, she was in his bedroom, not some random hotel room.

“This isn’t the same thing at all,” she told herself briskly.

She went to use his shower, though she was half-afraid of drowning herself in all those different sprays. When she came out, there were new clothes waiting for her on the bed she’d left a mess that was already made.

They were like ghosts, these servants of his, and she wasn’t sure she would ever get used to it. But she still pulled on the outfit someone else had picked out for her. And like all the clothes that had been provided for her here, it was a lesson in simplicity. Another one of those shockingly comfortable T-shirts that bore no resemblance to any T-shirts she had ever worn in her life. A pair of jeans that were softer still, but the stretchy waistband that not only fit her belly, it made her feel supported. Not simply bloated and round, but a woman with a figure.

She pulled on the sweater they’d left for her, too, a simple crewneck thing, except it, too, felt like soft, sweet dreams as it fell into place against her body. And when she glanced in the nearest mirror, she laughed, because she looked well classy in a way she never had before.

Who knew that all it took was posh clothes, well cut.

Something about that made her laugh again, though it didn’t quite take away from that clutching sense of uncertainty deep inside.

And Lillie didn’t like that at all, so she set out to find him, only realizing as her toes got cold that she’d neglected to stamp her feet into the boots they’d left next to the bed. Meaning she was padding around the gaspingly fancy house in her bare feet, which she did not have to consult Tiago to know was not how a Villela wife was meant to comport herself.

She chose to take that as a good sign. Because the last thing she wanted was to live her life in that kind of coma. Everything he’d ever said about his parents made her stomach hurt.

Lillie went to his study first, but he wasn’t there. She had thought that study of his was his office, but it was only in exploring the house in her bare feet and morning-after hair that she came across him in a modernized office space tucked away on the floor below his bedroom. When she peered in, he was on a video chat of some kind, nodding with ill-concealed impatience as people spoke to him rapidly in different languages.

When he replied, it was as calm and stern as ever, and Lillie couldn’t tell if her reaction was a sweet joy or a kind of deep consternation—but either way, it made her flush.

When the call ended, he turned from the desk where he’d been standing, arms folded, frowning into the screen on the far wall.

She’d been uneasy since she woke up. A little dismayed, even, that he’d repeated his original disappearing act. But the whole time, she’d told herself it was a hangover from Spain. That everything was different now.

She’d counted all the ways.

But all it took was one look now, and Lillie knew she been right to worry.

Because her husband looked straight through her, long and slow and frigid, as if she was a stranger.

CHAPTER EIGHT

THEDECEMBERDAYSrolled along and it was as if Lillie had somehow found herself married to two husbands instead of one.

It would have been panic-inducing, if she let it.

Every night was a mad, intense exploration of each other. Just like Spain had been. Only this wasn’t one night in Spain followed by five months of longing. This was better, because it was deeper.

Because they knew each other now. They knew each other better every day. And every night their bodies sang out in recognition of that ongoing intimacy. What had struck them both like lightning at that resort became hotter because it was deeper now. Because of the things they shared. The baby they were expecting. The house they lived in. The interactions they had that brought them inexorably closer, like it or not, and then set them alight in the dark.

Every night was better than the night before. Every night seemed longer, more shattering. They turned to each other in that bed again and again, but no matter how endless and devastatinglygoodit all was, one thing held true.

Every morning Tiago would wake up and act as if none of that had ever happened.

As if he had actually kept his promise that he would never touch her again.