Page 33 of A Billion-Dollar Heir For Christmas

He became that stranger, and Lillie had to fight to keep her panic to herself, because she wanted the man she knew. The man she had clapped eyes on back in Spain and had longed for ever since.

Not this ice sculpture who made her worry that she was slowly freezing over herself.

Daytime Tiago was all business and frigid straight through, and while he did not look at her as if she was astrangernecessarily, he maintained a certain chilly distance.

“I cannot countenance boredom,” he told her that first morning, when she’d gone to find him in her bare feet and had found him as shut down as she’d ever seen him. “So I’ve taken the liberty of making sure that tedium does not overtake you while, at the same time, directing your considerable energy in a more appropriate direction.”

“That sounds a bit boring, actually,” she replied, mostly to see him glower, but also to cover up the panicked catapulting of her pulse at the sight of him like this. “Who fancies beingdirectedanywhere, much less somewhereappropriate?”

But the Tiago she was married to by day did not react the way she knew he would at night. He did not even sigh, though his expression suggested that he might. Internally. And what Lillie learned that day was that when Tiagotook the liberty, as he put it, what he was actually doing was laying down the law. Arranging his world in the manner he saw fit. Whether it was providing her with a wardrobe that matched his sensibilities or filling her days with lessons.

Lillie was tempted to complain, but the truth was, she’d always loved school. Private tutoring was even better, as it allowed her to go at her own pace without having to slow down for anyone else. Tiago started her off with Portuguese and Spanish lessons in language and history, because, he told her, the child would certainly speak both fluently.

“You can be sure the bairn will speak English as well as Scots, then, too,” Lillie replied when he made one of his decrees about their child’s future fluency, as if he was handing down stone tablets from on high. “Shall I get you a tutor?Chan eil aon chànan gu leòr.”

But it was daytime Tiago she was telling that one language was not enough, so all he did was gaze at her in that way of his. It suggested the imminent possibility of disappointment and more forbearance than ought to be required.

Tiago by day was a frustration in male form, Lillie often thought in the weeks that followed. Panic lurked in their every interaction, because how could she stay married to a man so cold? How could she let him raise her child?

She couldn’t answer that to her satisfaction. But she wasn’t the slightest bit bored.

In addition to her language and history classes, she received lessons in comportment so that her sometimes-elegant appearance could be matched by a host of elegant actions. Or in any case, that was what the tiny woman dressed in an ever-changing array of chic scarves worn with notable aplombinformed her.

With enough hauteur that made it clear thatherelegance was innate, not taught.

“I don’t quite see the point polishing up this particular sow’s ear into any kind of silk purse,” Lillie said chattily at one of the stiff dinners Tiago insisted upon, this one after a day of lessons on cutlery. “What does it matter?”

“It only matters if you plan to go out in polite company at some point,” Tiago said in thatI am the Villela heirvoice of his, all steel and certainty. “I assumed you would not wish to embarrass your own child, who, make no mistake, will be raised with all the manners incumbent upon his or her station.”

Lillie poked at the salted cod before her. It appeared in some form or another at every meal, because it was the national dish of Portugal, according to Leonor. And Lillie was a proper Scottish woman who might prefer haddock from her local chippy, but she had never met a piece of fish she didn’t like. The infinite variations ofbacalhaupleased her immensely.

But tonight what she liked most was stabbing at it. “This is a very special talent you have, Tiago. To already be using our child as a bargaining chip when it hasn’t even been born yet.”

“I will neveruseour child,” he replied in a low voice, with an intensity that made her sit a little straighter, so much did it remind her of the man she met only in their bed when the moon was high, almost like he wished he was still nothing more than a dream she had. “What I will do is protect that child, just as I will protect you, even if what I must protect you both from is you.”

He delivered that last bit in faintly ringing tones. Lillie stopped abusing the poor meal before her. She sat back in her seat and eyed him for a moment. “And who will protect you?” she asked.

She didn’t add,from yourself.

But he didn’t answer anyway.

Because he insisted that they spend the whole of the evening meal in the very stiff and formal manner he felt was appropriate. That was how his parents had raised him, and he made it clear each night that he thought they’d had the right of it.

And she wanted to flip the table when the panic got into her bones, but she didn’t. She went along with it, because she knew that after dinner there were drinks. Because that was also what civilized people did, apparently. They very theatrically rose from the table and moved to a drawing room or study—likely because they had houses with so many rooms and needed to use them all. Once in the chosen second location, they sat and had further conversations, though more casually, and it was only then that the Tiago she preferred emerged.

Every evening, when he came back to her, the relief just about bowled her over.

Lillie would have been happy if the nights went on forever. It was the endless days that made her wonder if she was going mad. Or if she’d stumbled into one of her favorite torrid novels where a woman found herself married off to a grim man in some castle somewhere, only to discover the passionate lover he only became in the dark was his disgraced twin. Or a vampire, she wasn’t picky.

She wasn’t picky about Tiago by night, either. She tried to enjoy him as fully as she could, and warm herself in all that fire of his, because she knew it would be chilly again come morning.

But there was less time to puzzle over the mysteries of the two sides of Tiago when he added to her lessons halfway through December. This time, it wasn’t more attempts to make up for her lack of a debutante ball, it was classes on finance. Business. Wealth management and estate planning.

“Dare I hope that it’s your intention to add me to your company roster?” she asked one afternoon as they were coming up fast on the bleak midwinter. Not, of course, that there was anything particularly bleak about the Algarve at this time of year, though the locals complained about the cooler weather and the clouds. Facetiously, to her mind. All Lillie saw was the light.

Nighttime Tiago might laugh a little when she said things like that, and scrape his teeth along the line of her neck as punctuation, en route to driving them both wild. The daytime version only gazed at her, making a bit of a show of that faint frown between his eyes.

“I was unaware that you wish to interview for a position in my company,” he replied, with that coolness that she believed wasmeantto make her wither where she stood. Which was only one of the reasons she did not. “Competition is fierce and the process is considered grueling.”