Page 44 of A Billion-Dollar Heir For Christmas
But he did not.
Sadly enough, all he did was scoop her dress up off the ground and thrust it toward her.
Lillie took it and held it to her, though she did not put it on.
“The duties and responsibilities that are mine to handle cannot be clouded by emotion,” he ranted at her. His eyes blazed. His mouth was twisted, and he slashed his hand through the air again, and harder this time. “There is no possibility that any good can come of pretending otherwise. It was a mistake from the start to allow this—to let our physical connection take hold. I blame myself.”
“As far as I can tell, you blame yourself for everything,” Lillie said as blandly as she could when her heart had moved to her throat. “Even when no blame is required.”
“Because you don’t understand what’s at stake,” he threw at her. “How could you?”
“Here’s a news flash, Tiago. There’s more to the world than spreadsheets, bank balances, and endless talk of family legacies.”
“You make light of the situation because you’re not suited to it,” he bit out. “This is why, I understand now, my parents were so determined that I understand how crucial it was to marry within my class.”
And Lillie might have been offended by that—maybe she ought to have been—but she wasn’t. Mostly because she knew exactly who she was and where she came from, and she wasn’t the slightest bit ashamed of it.
But she also didn’t think he wastryingto offend her. The man was simply stating the facts as he knew them.
So she swung her legs over the side of her candy cane couch, and stood. And she did not pull her dress on over her body as he obviously wished she would, because she wasn’t a saint here. She was no more and no less than a woman in love, fighting for something she’d never expected to find in the first place.
She was, at last, the woman her parents had raised her to be.
Finally, she had found something worth fighting for.
And she was stubborn, wasn’t she, because she did not intend to let go of it.
Whether he believed in it or not.
“Your mother and father sound like miserable people to me,” she said, careful to keep any emotion from her voice, then, because otherwise she reckoned he would hear only the feelings, not the words. “It seems as if they married in cold blood and barely tolerated each other, then decided that those things were virtues. And who am I to question what works for someone else? But you’re not them, Tiago.”
“I know I’m not,” he threw back at her, still loud in ways the glacial Villela heir never was. Ever. “Because if I was either one of them, I never would have allowed this to happen. I never would have let it get so bad.”
“And if you hadn’t,” she threw right back at him, “we wouldn’t be expecting this baby. And I can’t regret the fact that we are. Even if I’d never found you again, I have every intention of loving this child for as long as I live. I already do.”
“You can love whatever you like,” he thundered at her then, his face in the grip of all those things he didn’t believe in. “But I will thank you to leave me out of it. I will be the appropriate father to my heir. I will teach this child what is expected. What is necessary. I will not traffic in these childish notions of yours. Christmas grottos. Santa Claus.Love.”
He spat those things out as if saying them might take him out at the knees, especially that last.
“Believing in magic doesn’t make you weak,” Lillie said softly, with her whole heart, because he had all the wealth and consequence in the world, but she had that. And she’d bet on her heart any day. “It isn’t something that’s inflicted upon you—it’s a gift. It’s only people who can’t believe in themselves who struggle with it. Because what is magic but another word for love, Tiago? And it isn’t weak people who love. It’s the strong. The brave.” When he looked as if he might argue, she shook her head. “You already know this. Because every night, we strip each other bare. Until we are both raw, vulnerable, naked in every sense of the word. If it wasn’t hard, if it wasn’tterrifying, you wouldn’t have to hide from it in the light of day.”
He didn’t like that. She saw him reject it, even as a different sort of storm worked over him. “I’m not hiding from anything. I’m trying to break the spell I should never have allowed to take hold of me in the first place. Because there are certain responsibilities that need to be met, Lillie. Like it or not. And if you can’t concentrate on those responsibilities, we will have to make certain that we find you an environment where you can focus on what’s actually important.”
She didn’t like the sound of that, but she didn’t let herself pay attention to the way her stomach dropped, or the worry that swept over her. She didn’t let herself tip over into the fear of what she thought he was threatening. Because he wasn’t talking about only her when he talked like this.
And she couldn’t bring her child into the family he kept describing. She wouldn’t.
Lillie stepped forward then, heedless of her nudity, and pointed a finger in his face. And she could see by the arrogant astonishment in the way he reared back that no one had ever done anything like it before.
“Let me tell you what my responsibilities are,” she threw at him, no longer caring if he heard her voice shake. “They do not involve worrying over much about a family name. They have nothing to do with your houses. Or chilly dinners where we act as if selecting the correct fork is the only thing that stands between us and a barbarian horde at the gate.”
“You have no idea—” he began.
But she only jabbed that finger at him again, as if she might thump him in the next moment, and she was as surprised as he looked that he fell silent.
“My responsibilities are to love the man that I married, as best as I’m able, and cherish this baby we made together. No more and no less.” She pulled in a breath. “And you are not the only person on the planet who takes his responsibilities seriously.”
And for a long moment, they both stood there, bathed in twinkling Christmas lights. Christmas carols swept all around them from the strategically placed speakers, all sounding like choirs of mourning to her now. Perfectly harmonized grief, only highlighting and underscoring how unhinged the both of them were while they belted these things at each other that smarter people might know better than to say.