Page 37 of A Billion-Dollar Heir For Christmas

And what they were singing was Christmas carols.

But that was not the worst of it, he discovered as he stopped dead in his front hall and stared around in amazement. The house—hishouse, the ancestral home of his mother’s people—had been transformed.

And while he had not exactly locked himself away in his office, Tiago knew he had been less available these last few days. While it was true that he had a lot of work to do, as ever, it was also true that he’d found himself a bit more keen to do it than usual.

Even after he’d realized that he was waiting for her to turn up for her afternoon tea break, which had infuriated him. What had infuriated him even more was that she hadn’t, as if he’d finally succeeded in chasing her away.

This is what you want,he’d told himself sternly.You can take this opportunity to create more space between the two of you, as you know you must.

But he had gone to her that night anyway.

And since she’d skipped dinner, he’d had to go looking for her. He had found her back in her guest suite, which had outraged him. He had expressed that outrage by crawling into the guest room bed with her, using the four posters to great advantage as he exercised his opinion on his wife’s skipping of meals and sleeping alone.

I had no idea you felt so strongly about it,she’d said, her smile sleepy and her blue eyes full of heat and laughter.I had no idea you wereallowedto feel strongly about anything, in fact.

He had ignored that. Virtuously. Though he had expressed the feelings he most certainly did not have in other, more creative ways.

But the next night, when he had to hunt her down again, he carried her across the house to his quarters because she was his wife and she should be in his bed.

A point he made certain to belabor until the dawn.

And that was the order he had given this very morning, to move all of her things into his rooms, where she belonged.

He had thought that settled it.

But instead, Lillie had turned his house into a Christmas card.

A very particular sort of Christmas card, traditional and certainly not Portuguese.

There were evergreen trees everywhere, strung with lights. And where there weren’t trees, there were even more lights. There was mistletoe. There were seeming truckloads of ornaments. There was the usual nativity scene his grandmother had put up every year, mercifully left alone, but everything else was red and green, as if Santa Claus had come and exploded everywhere.

Even his grandmother’s garden was not spared. There were lights strung from the surrounding rooftops, covering the courtyard in a latticework of gleaming white lights that sparkled as he glared at them.

He stood there for much too long, something simmering in him that he could not identify, but it was big. Unwieldy.

And he was not at all sure what to do with it.

Tiago turned and saw the housekeeper standing there, looking as self-contained as ever.

“Where is she?” he gritted out.

But Leonor had never been cowed by a member of his family, which was why she had stayed here so long. “If you mean Senhora Villela, she is waiting for you to join her.” She did not raise her brows at him. She would not dare. All the same, the suggestion that she might remained. “I assume that is where you were headed.”

“I know my way around my own house, I think,” he bit out, cold. Frigid, even.

The older woman did not appear to notice the chill. “Thesenhorahas prepared something special.” And this time, she actually did indulge in something a little too close to a lift of her brow. “It is Christmas Eve, after all.”

She did not wait for him to respond to her, because she was impertinent. And clearly did not fear that he might fire her, which, naturally, he would never do.

And in any case, he followed her. Unwillingly, or so he told himself. But he also knew that Lillie was waiting wherever it was his housekeeper was taking him, so there was no possibility, ever, that he wouldn’t go.

That realization only made him...icier.

And his mood did not improve as Leonor led him outside onto one of the far patios. Where he did not find the seating areas he expected, usually quietly arranged to take in views across the vineyards that ended where the sky met the sea far off in the distance. Tonight the patio itself was transformed.

Into what he could only call...a full-on Christmas assault.

Complete with an avenue of evergreen trees, bristling with silver bells and lights, down which he was compelled to walk until he found himself in what might once have been a tastefully done seating area with braziers for a touch of heat. Now it, too, was unrecognizable and was...