Page 43 of A Billion-Dollar Heir For Christmas

“I don’t want you broken, Tiago,” she said quietly. She pulled in a breath, then let it go, and since this was a night for the telling of truths, decided it was time she told him the only truth that could matter. “Don’t you know? I love you. And what I want is youalive. In every possible way.”

But she knew even before the words were all out that she’d gone too far. Because he was moving then. Tiago stood, that graceful, athletically masculine body somehow jerky tonight. As if he was stiff with some particular arthritis that only all these Christmas lights and unsanctionedfeelingscould give him.

And when he turned to look down at her, he looked betrayed.

“What did you say to me?”

“That I want you fully alive,” she replied at once. “Not simply going through the motions. Not ticking off boxes on a list that someone long dead made up to make sense of their own unhappiness. That’s not living. That’s simply existing, and I—”

“You love me?” he interrupted her to demand, still looking and sounding as if she’d stabbed him through the heart.

This time, she did let out a laugh, mostly because she was startled.

“Of course I love you,” she said, baffled. “How could you imagine otherwise?” Now it was her turn to rub a hand over her face. “You’re not the only one who doesn’t normally trot off with a stranger at a Spanish resort. I’ve certainly never done anything like that before, and didn’t intend to do it again even before I found out I was pregnant. I didn’t believe in love at first sight before you, but I certainly do now.” She shrugged helplessly. “Obviously.”

And she had not intended to say all of that, she supposed. She might have had the odd fight with phantom versions of Tiago in a mirror or two, but she wasn’t unaware of the state of her relationship with this man. It was one thing in the night. But that wasonlyin the night.

There was daytime Tiago to contend with and she didn’t need a primer on the fact he wouldn’t be receptive.

Though it was possible, she could admit as he stared at her in an amazement that she found a touch insulting, that it was sheer stubbornness that made her say it now.

And also because it was true. She didn’t see why she should pretend not to know the truth of things just because that truth might upset him. It wasn’t as if he’d held himself back from sharing his thoughts on how she fell short.

“No,” Tiago said, what felt like several lifetimes later, all of it caught in that gaze of his the way she always was.

And he did not elaborate.

He simply said the one word, flatly. Coolly. As devoid of emotion as if he was discussing bloody office supplies, she rather thought.

Lillie blinked, but he only stared back at her. No longer did he have that look of betrayal on his face. No hint of that anguish from before. It was as if he was wearing a solid stone mask of Tiago Villela. As if he was one of the statues that littered his grounds.

She understood at once that this was what he wanted. This was exactly who he was trained to be. And this was what he had been telling her all along—that this was all he ever wanted to offer anyone.

But she refused to accept that.

“It wasn’t a yes-or-no question,” she said, keeping her voice as careful and quiet as she could though her heart was pounding wildly in her chest. “It was a statement of fact.”

Tiago’s eyes gleamed, but darkly. “What it was, Lillie, was the last straw.”

And the way her pulse was careening about began to seem like more of an alarm, but she found that she was frozen in place. She could do nothing but watch him as if through a glass wall as he moved around the candy-cane-colored settee, gathering up his things. He hauled his trousers up over his hips. He threw his shirt on, but did not button it.

“These delusions cannot be indulged,” he said when he’d accomplished those things, in that same flat way. “It is already a disaster. What we must do is perform the necessary triage, now.”

“I’m sorry, I’m not following. What are the delusions?”

But he ignored her. Then she watched as this man who reacted so little raked his hand through his hair again, seemingly unaware that he was doing it. He made a noise that she rather thought would have been a full shout from another man, but from him was little more than a growl. “It’s not your fault. It’s mine. I should have followed my instincts and known that there was no possible way that you could understand.”

“I am many things,” Lillie said, feeling a spark of her temper ignite—something that came as a relief after all the raw emotion and biting back the things she wanted to shout at him like the fishmonger’s wife he clearly thought she was. “A grubby peasant cluttering up the hallowed halls of the Villela family, clearly. Unworthy of the great honor of having been knocked up by you, anonymously. Message received. But I’ve never been an idiot, Tiago. I understand with perfect clarity what’s happening between us.”

“Evidently you do not.”

She went still because she had never heard him raise his voice before. It made her heart knock hard against her ribs, and not because she was afraid.

And he continued, getting louder as he went. “Clearly you have no comprehension of what you’ve done. I told you. I keep trying to tell you. What you’re talking about is the antithesis of everything I have done and everything I have left to do. I don’t believe in love, Lillie. I can’t. I won’t.”

She cleared her throat because it felt tight. “None of those are the same thing,” she pointed out.

He moved then and a sudden, wild surge of joy rippled through her, because she thought he was going to put his hands on her again—