An Heir Claimed By Christmas (Mills & Boon Modern) (A Billion-Dollar Singapore Christmas, Book 1)

by Clare Connelly

  Annie didn’t need to send an email, but she definitely needed a moment to rally her courage before she could come and join the fun family activity Dimitrios and Max had planned.

  ‘Mummy works a lot,’ she heard Max explain as she left the room.

  ‘Does she?’ Dimitrios guided Max past the tree towards the kitchen, but his mind was on Annabelle with every step he took. Her face. Her eyes. The sadness he saw there. The same guilt that had been dogging him for years was exploding inside him now.

  ‘Yeah, she has to.’ Max sighed heavily. ‘She always wants me to have stuff, but it’s hard. So she works a lot, because that’s how she earns money, and it means I get new shoes when I need them and stuff.’ He looked down. ‘My feet grow really, really, really fast.’

  Dimitrios smiled despite the direction of his thoughts. He guided Max into the kitchen.

  ‘I wish she didn’t work so hard, though.’

  ‘Oh?’

  Dimitrios began to pull ingredients from the pantry. With only a moment’s notice, his domestic staff had made sure they had everything they needed on hand for the start of the Great Pudding Tradition.

  ‘Yeah.’ Max came to stand beside Dimitrios and, when he pulled a bag of flour out, Max took it, helpfully carrying it to a place on the bench before returning for another item.

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘Because she’s tired all the time.’

  More guilt slashed Dimitrios. Guilt and a sense of failed responsibility. But it was more than that. He grabbed for the sultanas and passed them to Max, a frown on his face.

  ‘And I’m loud and busy, and I like to do stuff like go to the playground, but I don’t always like to ask Mummy because I know she’s tired and if I do ask her she’ll say yes.’

  Dimitrios nodded. ‘You’re considerate, Max.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Dimitrios had missed so much. He’d missed so much of Max’s life, and he’d missed Annabelle being a mum. He’d missed her tiredness and her happiness, her tears, her pleasure, her everything.

  ‘Do we need aprons? They always wear aprons in cooking shows.’

  Dimitrios nodded, distracted. ‘Yeah, they’re here somewhere. Why don’t you have a look?’

  Max rifled through doors and drawers and appeared with a pair of aprons a minute later. ‘There’s only two.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll go without.’

  Max shrugged. ‘Can you help me with mine?’

  ‘Of course.’

  He secured it around his son’s back, folding it in half to fit, tying it loosely into a bow. They were almost finished measuring ingredients before Annabelle appeared by the door to the kitchen, her expression inscrutable, her hair pulled into a no-nonsense pony tail he found his fingers itched to muss. He looked away with a sense that he was falling off the edge of a cliff.

  ‘We saved you an apron, Mummy.’

  She stiffened, and Dimitrios understood—this was the last thing she wanted to be doing. Damn it, he’d regretted hurting her for seven long years, and now what? Their marriage was going to hurt her every single day. He couldn’t do that. He couldn’t live with this.

  But what other option did they have? She was right—they were both trapped in this marriage he’d insisted on, trapped by their love for Max.

  ‘Thanks, darling. I’ll just make a cup of tea...’

  ‘I’ll make it,’ Dimitrios offered, his eyes holding hers until something shoved him right in the gut. He felt it like a physical blow, but it wasn’t. Everything around him was shifting.

  ‘That’s fine. You keep measuring.’ Her smile was brittle, but when she looked at Max it softened. ‘I won’t be long.’

  ‘You know what we need?’ Max said happily. ‘Christmas carols.’

  He was evidently oblivious to the undercurrent of tension flowing between his parents.

  ‘Christmas carols are a great idea, darling. Let me see what I’ve got.’ Annabelle reached into her back pocket and pulled out her phone. Dimitrios frowned at the sight of it—so old and battered. How had he missed that? She pressed a button and some old jazz carols began to play, filling the kitchen with nostalgia and magic. But Dimitrios was only half-listening.

  He went through the motions of making the pudding, following to the letter the recipe on his own state-of-the-art phone, noticing that Annabelle kept a careful distance from him at all times.

  It was one of the longest days of his life. Both adults were doing everything they could to make it special for Max, which meant they spent the whole day together as a family. The tension of being near Annabelle and not being able to touch her, not being able to make her smile, almost crushed Dimitrios.

  When Max was finally asleep, he went in search of Annabelle. He didn’t know how he knew where she’d be, but something drew him to the Christmas tree downstairs. He found her sitting on the floor with a glass of wine, her legs crossed, her eyes on the present Max had given her, a small frown on her face. She’d showered and was casually dressed, her face wiped of make-up, her blonde hair loose around her face.

  His gut clenched again in a now familiar sensation.

  He loved Max. That love had been easy and instantaneous. He’d taken one look at his son and known the child was a part of him and always would be. And Annabelle?

  Everything inside him ground to a halt. His blood stopped rushing, his heart stopped pumping, his lungs ceased to inflate; he was completely still. Even the world seemed to stand as it was, refusing to shift with its usual motion.

  ‘Annie...’

  It was the first time he’d abbreviated her name. She jerked her face towards his, her eyes huge and for a second unguarded, so he saw the pain there, the look of loss.

  It was a strange thing to inspire revelation but it was like a lightning bolt for Dimitrios. He looked at Annie and knew in that instant he would do anything to make her happy. Not just to make her happy because she deserved to be happy, but because her happiness was suddenly the most important thing in the world to him. Because, if she wasn’t happy, he never could be. Because Annie had come to mean everything to him, and he’d been too mired in his suspicion of love and marriage to see what was right in front of him.

  ‘I was just...’ She turned away from him, the sentence trailing off. ‘I don’t know. Sitting here.’

  Her sadness hit him in the chest but now his reaction didn’t bother him. He understood why his body had been lurching, clenching and feeling so completely different for weeks now. It had been so much smarter than his brain.

  ‘Max has had a good day,’ he said gently, coming to sit beside her. She stiffened; he felt it. God, he’d been such a jerk. How had he missed something so obvious?

  Because he’d been fighting it—Annie—since the first moment they’d met, when she’d been fifteen and the little sister of his best friend.

  ‘He’s had a great day,’ she agreed.

  ‘And you?’

  She turned to face him, her eyes roaming his face, as though looking for something. ‘It was nice to see Max so happy,’ she said eventually.

  He lifted his hand to her cheek; he couldn’t resist it, cupping her skin there. She leaned into his caress for a moment and then jerked back, almost knocking her wine glass over. He reached past her, catching it, then straightened.

  ‘You told me about your parents’ marriage, and I told you about mine,’ he began quietly, knowing he needed to get every word of this right. ‘But I don’t know if I ever explained how much my dad’s behaviour affected me. I don’t know if I made it clear to you that seeing my mum broken by how much she loved Dad formed a part of me that I have held on to my whole life. I had a daily reminder that love is bad. Love hurts. That formed my backbone; it changed me. And I have never regretted that; I’ve never felt that my life was lacking in any way.’

  Her eyes were huge. She moved, as if
she was about to stand up, to run away from this conversation. He couldn’t have that. He reached across, putting a hand on her knee. ‘Hear me out. Just for a minute.’

  Her eyes swept shut. She wanted to leave, he could tell, but she nodded just once, then reached for her wine glass, cradling it in her fingertips. ‘Go on.’

  He released a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. ‘I don’t know if you remember the first time we met?’

  Her response was another short, sharp nod.

  ‘I found you—’

  ‘Don’t lie to me,’ she warned.

  ‘I’m not lying. I found you captivating. I found myself thinking about you and, whenever Lewis talked about you, which was all the time—he was so damned proud of you, Annie—I listened with my whole body. I was glad when he said you had a boyfriend, because whatever hold you had over me wouldn’t survive that. Except it did. I thought of you often, and I wondered about you, so I did the only thing someone like me could do—I went out of my way to avoid you. Whenever you were with Lewis, I steered clear. I controlled my reaction to you completely by not seeing you.’

  She looked towards the tree, the shimmering lights catching her face in little blades of gold and silver.

  ‘And then, after his funeral, I was weak for the first time in my life. I followed my instincts. It was never just sex for me, Annie. And no one else would have done. I needed you that night. Only you could put me back together again. Only you could make sense of the grief that had deluged me completely. I needed you.’

  Her lips parted at his words but she kept her face averted, as though looking at him would be too much.

  ‘You were so beautiful and innocent—so much more beautiful and perfect than I’d dared imagine. I think I knew even then that you were the one person on earth who could make me forgot how much I hated the idea of marriage and love. You were far too great a risk and I wasn’t brave enough to take it.’ He ground his teeth together, hating himself for the decisions he’d made then.

  ‘I disappeared out of your life because I knew if I weakened, even a little, I would want all of you—all of you for ever—and I’m not someone who does “for ever”. You deserved so much better than me.’ He groaned. ‘What a coward I was. A foolish, selfish coward. I told myself I was protecting you by pushing you away, by saying all those awful things to you, but I was protecting my own stupid heart, making sure there was no risk you’d ever want me again.’

  She turned to him then, her beautiful eyes showing sympathy—a sympathy he had no right to.

  ‘I spent seven years consciously forgetting you, and I mean that literally—it was a conscious effort I made every damned day, not to think of you. Because you were all I wanted to think about, Annie. You’re the only person I’ve ever met who’s had this kind of hold over me and now I finally understand why.’

  She mouthed the word, ‘Why?’ but no sound emerged.

  ‘I love you,’ he said simply. ‘I have loved you since before I even met you, but that day you became a part of my soul. I don’t know why, but there is something in you that answers everything in me, and I have fought that harder than I ever want to fight anything again.’

  A juddering sound escaped her lips. ‘I’m not going to take Max away from you, if that’s what you’re worried about,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m not going to ask you for a divorce. I meant what I said the other day. I’m committed to our marriage, because of Max—’

  ‘This isn’t for Max,’ he interrupted, brushing his thumb over her lower lip. ‘I could have moved to Sydney, set up across town from you, shared custody of him. This was never just about Max. It’s been about my family—the woman I love and the child that love made. It’s about us being together because that’s how we belong. It’s about you getting every happily-ever-after you deserve, just like Lewis said. This isn’t guilt speaking, Annie, it’s hope. Hope that you can forgive me, eventually, for the pain I put you through, for my useless foolishness when it came to you. It’s hope, a hope that I probably don’t have any right to hold, that you can let yourself love me without fear, without pain.’

  She stared at him and every second that passed was like a weight being added to his chest.

  ‘I always play to win. You probably know that about me. I told myself I married you for Max. All along I’ve told myself this is for Max—but these last few days have shown me what a lie that was. Because Max is right here in my home, exactly where I wanted him, but with you being miserable and pulling away from me I can’t be happy. I don’t just want Max, I want you too, Annie. You’re both a part of me.’

  She stared at him, tears moistening her lovely eyes, the thick lashes clumping at the base.

  ‘I love you,’ he said simply, urgently. ‘With all that I am. Not because of Max, not because of Lewis, but because of you, Annabelle Papandreo.’

  She made a strangled noise and shook her head, and a part of him threatened to break. He needed to do more, to say more. How could he make this any clearer?

  ‘You called this a gilded cage the other day. Well, yes. It is. I gilded it for you, because I wanted you to have everything imaginable. Because I love you. Every gift was chosen by me for your happiness. I wanted to give you everything because I was too scared to give you my heart—and I see now that’s the one single thing you’ve ever wanted, the one thing that would have shown you how much you mean to me. Now the thing I’m most afraid of is that you won’t believe me, or you won’t trust me not to hurt you again. The gilded cage isn’t our marriage, it’s the idea of living a life without you in it.’

  ‘Dimitrios—’

  ‘You don’t have to answer tonight. We’ve both waited seven years for me to stop being so obtuse. I can wait a bit longer. Just—think about what you want. And know how I feel about you.’

  She closed her eyes; he hated that. He wanted to see her thoughts, to understand her emotions. But when she opened them again, she was smiling and shaking her head. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’ She repeated the words he’d once said to her, and his heart leaped.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  She laughed softly, tilting her head back. ‘I love you,’ she said with a lift of her shoulders. ‘And it sounds like you love me too—a lot—and so, to my mind, that’s kind of a Christmas miracle.’

  He looked towards the tree, a grin breaking out on his face as he relaxed for the first time in a long time.

  ‘Everything has been so perfect, Annie. None of this was pretend. It was perfect because it was real.’

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed, leaning forward and brushing her lips to his. ‘And it always will be.’

  ‘Yes,’ he promised, kissing her right back. ‘You will live happily-ever-after. I promise you that now, with all that I am.’

  ‘I believe you.’

  ‘I was just thinking how perfect this has been.’ Annie smiled as Dimitrios walked into the room. Christmas day was drawing to a close, and it had been the most blissful day of Annie’s life. Max had loved his gifts, and Annie had adored her picture frame—with a photo of Max and her inside it—and the pudding they’d made had been the icing on the cake, a delicious tradition to take forward into all their future Christmases.

  When she’d whispered to Dimitrios that she hadn’t got anything for him, his eyes had glowed and he’d leaned forward and whispered in her ear, ‘You are all the gift I require, Mrs Papandreo.’

  But Dimitrios had a look on his face now that had her sitting a little straighter and placing her eggnog on the end table. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Nothing, I think.’ A frown etched its way across his face. ‘I just had the strangest conversation with Zach. He’s coming over soon.’

  ‘Here?’ She glanced at her wristwatch. ‘It’s eleven o’clock.’

  Dimitrios laughed. ‘For Zach, that’s when the night begins.’

  ‘Of course,’ she agre
ed. ‘Well, it will be nice to see him, anyway.’

  ‘I just pray he doesn’t stay too long.’ Dimitrios grinned, brushing his lips to Annie’s. ‘I have plans for you, my love.’

  ‘And I hope they last all night...’

  ‘All night? How about a lifetime?’

  Coming next month

  THE COST OF CLAIMING HIS HEIR

  Michelle Smart

  ‘How was the party?’

  Becky had to untie her tongue to speak. ‘Okay. Everyone looked like they were having fun.’

  ‘But not you?’

  ‘No.’ She sank down onto the wooden step to take the weight off her weary legs and rested her back against a pillar.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I’m a day late.’

  She heard him suck an intake of breath. ‘Is that normal for you?’

  ‘No.’ Panic and excitement swelled sharply in equal measure as they did every time she allowed herself to read the signs that were all there. Tender breasts. Fatigue. The ripple of nausea she’d experienced that morning when she’d passed Paula’s husband outside and caught a whiff of his cigarette smoke. Excitement that she could have a child growing inside her. Panic at what this meant.

  Scared she was going to cry, she scrambled back to her feet. ‘Let’s give it another couple of days. If I haven’t come on by then, I’ll take a test.’

  She would have gone inside if Emiliano hadn’t leaned forward and gently taken hold of her wrist. ‘Sit with me.’

  Opening her mouth to tell him she needed sleep, she stared into his eyes and found herself temporarily mute.

  For the first time since they’d conceived—and in her heart she was now certain they had conceived—there was no antipathy in his stare, just a steadfastness that lightened the weight on her shoulders.

  Gingerly, she sat beside him but there was no hope of keeping a distance for Emiliano put his beer bottle down and hooked an arm around her waist to draw her to him.

  Much as she wanted to resist, she leaned into him and rested her cheek on his chest.