Claiming His Christmas Wife

by Dani Collins

  And maybe she had a rich imagination.

  She handed the torn envelope to Joli. “I’d love some freelance work if you have any leads. Ad copy, anything.”

  “Email me,” Joli said in her gravelly voice.

  “Thanks.”

  Travis waited until they were in the car to say, “You said you didn’t have any friends to lean on.”

  “Did it look like she has disposable income or a sofa I could use?” She made a face. “She’s very independent and wouldn’t dream of asking anyone for anything, except maybe what I just asked for—tips and leads. I knew if I went to her for money, she’d tell me to sell the rings and I didn’t want to.”

  He had tucked them into his pocket and sat with his elbow on the armrest, finger resting across his lips. “Explain that to me again.” The exaggerated patience in his tone grated; it was so supercilious.

  She shrugged. “As long as I had them, I felt like I had something. I wasn’t at zero. Also, selling them wouldn’t have made a dent in the debt, so what was the point in giving them up and still being broke?”

  He was searching her expression, picking apart her words. She could feel it and held her breath, realizing she had been hanging on to this link to him, needing it.

  She decided to change the subject, even though it meant asking for another favor.

  “It would be helpful...” she began, twisting her hands in her lap. “I mean, if you’re serious about helping me get on my feet, it would be helpful if I could borrow a computer. I’ve kept a toe in with freelancing. It was just hard to hustle work when I had to get to the library around my other jobs. Half the time they kick you off after an hour and I wasn’t picking up my emails fast enough. I’d get back to people only to hear they’d already offered it to someone else.”

  A beat of surprise, then he nodded. “I’ll buy you a laptop.”

  “Just a loan. Please.”

  He only reached into his jacket. She thought he was getting his phone, but he pulled out the pages Joli had given him.

  “Don’t read that!”

  He hesitated. “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t want to know how you react.”

  “How do you expect me to react? She said it was good, didn’t she?”

  She jerked a protective shoulder. “I wrote it when things were very different between us. I don’t—don’t want to see your reaction. Put it away.”

  “When we first met, I thought you were unlike anyone I’d ever met before.” He folded the pages and tucked them back into his pocket. “I still don’t understand you.”

  “I’m defensive. I wouldn’t think I’d need to spell that out. I’m afraid you’ll think that article is too full of awe. You’ll see again what a green, starstruck little fool I was and laugh at me for it. If that’s how you get off, go ahead.” She waved with annoyance at his lapel. “Get it over with, then.”

  He lifted his brows. “Can I suggest something to you? Your father is dead. You don’t have to denigrate yourself in his absence.”

  Nice advice, but it was going to be humiliating no matter what. He would realize how much he had meant to her and might even guess how gutted she was now. That would make today’s kiss and his rejection that much more intolerable. Maybe he deserved to know how full of regret she was, but it was too mortifying to still be half in love with a man who had never cared for her at all.

  “Is that why your father refused to publish it? Did he think it was biased?”

  “I doubt he even read it.” The cityscape grew as they crossed the bridge.

  She felt his stare and turned her head to see something smoldering in his dark expression, something that made her abdomen tense.

  “You should have told me how bad it was, Imogen.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she muttered, looking away, hurt for some reason. Maybe because his reaction was too little, too late. Maybe because she was angry with herself for not confiding in him. “There’s no changing it. I’m over it.”

  He raised his brows in disbelief.

  “That’s why I was starting over the way I was,” she defended. “Yes, it was the hard way, but I didn’t want anything from my past to come with me. Nothing connected to him. That’s why I carried my marriage certificate. At least I could pretend I had your name instead of his.”

  * * *

  Hours later, Travis was spending way too much time lifting his gaze from his screen to the view out the door of his office. Not to look at the tree, either.

  They’d come home to a lounge put back in order, toys stowed in the closet again, wet wipes back under the sink in the powder room.

  Travis had bought a new laptop on the way home, which Imogen had taken to the sofa after changing into tights and a long sweater. She kept shifting, bending and straightening her legs so the hem of her sweater fell to reveal the slenderness of her thighs. She absently pushed it back toward her knee and rubbed one socked foot over the other. They were fuzzy white socks that made him want to squeeze her arches and toes like one of Toni’s plush stuffies. She played with her hair, tickling the fanned end against her thoughtfully pursed lips. She arched and plumped the pillow behind her back, pushing her breasts against the knit of her blue sweater, then relaxed with a soft sigh that vibrated through him all the way over here.

  Fantasies of walking out there, taking that laptop from her startled hands, settling over her and making love to her on the sofa consumed him.

  Their kiss earlier was still clouding his brain and now he had a pair of rings and her article to confound him along with the rest of what she’d revealed. It all spun him back to the heated moments in the back of his car the night before they married. They’d been parked outside her building, his driver having a cigarette somewhere. He’d had his hand up her skirt and she’d been trembling from the most exquisite orgasm he’d ever witnessed.

  He would have done anything, anything in that moment. It was all he could do to restrain himself from claiming her completely right there in the street. Instead he commanded grittily, “Invite me up.”

  Their clothes had been askew, her body still quivering and damp, her lips parted as she tried to catch her breath. When her eyes blinked open in the light through the fogged windows, they’d been hazed with lust.

  Something like agony had pleated her brow and she had bitten her bottom lip before she swallowed and lowered her lashes in a kind of defeat. “If that’s what you want.”

  They had been nose to nose, the air charged with intimacy. Every nuance and breath had imprinted on him—not that he had let himself revisit that memory in the time that had since passed. It was far more comfortable to resent her as a world-class manipulator.

  If he had been manipulated, however, it had been his own hormones and conscience.

  “Isn’t that what you want?” he had asked.

  She’d been honey and heat, pliant with surrender against him, lips clinging to his as he’d succumbed to the need to taste her mouth once more, keeping the fire burning hot between them. Caressing her so she’d gasped and arched in offering.

  “It is.” Her voice had throbbed with longing. “But I was saving it for my husband. For a man who—” She had buried the rest into his neck, her damp mouth making his scalp tighten.

  A man who what? Loved her? His hand on her mound had firmed with possessiveness as he felt pulled apart. In those moments, he had only half believed she was a virgin. Her shocked gasp under his initial bold touch, however, and the way she had shattered with shy joy, inclined him to think she’d never let anyone touch her this intimately before.

  As he’d continued fondling and necking with her, he hadn’t seen her virginity as the prize so much as feeling irrationally jealous at the idea of her being with other men. He had wanted to make her his in a way that went beyond the physical.

  As she’d rested her head on his arm and gaz
ed up at him with surrender, he’d read the melancholy in her trembling smile.

  He could have pressed her to let him have her that night. He could have taken her virginity without the rings, but she would have regretted it. On some level, she would have felt cheapened by giving in without a commitment between them.

  Travis Sanders’s lay of the day.

  His stomach tightened as he recalled how that hadn’t been enough for him, either. Not in those moments. So, he had said the words. Marry me. Tomorrow. He’d spent the night drawing up the prenuptial agreement, thinking he was being sensible in the midst of pure recklessness.

  “That’s it.” Her voice snapped him back to his office while a ping at his elbow notified him of yet another email arriving.

  She was talking about the folders and links and contacts she’d been sending him over the last hour. Now she stood in the doorway and glanced around the office he rarely used. His real office was only blocks away and he traveled to site so often that when he was in his actual home, he preferred to unplug and unwind.

  Imogen’s gaze narrowed on the folded papers he’d left on the corner of his desk. She hugged herself defensively. “Did you read it?”

  “No,” he lied, not ready to confront his feelings on how she’d portrayed him and revealed herself. Straightening, he pulled himself back to the immediate matter at hand. “I’ve been messaging with my accountant. He said at first blush there are several items that should be settled as part of your father’s estate and not carried over to you.”

  She made a face of mild disgust. “I knew I should have hired an accountant, but won’t their fees wash out whatever he saves me?”

  “We’ll see. He’s preparing a release for you to sign, to let his office take over the probate of your father’s will. He said the service provided by the home where your father passed is fine for seniors with modest assets, but they’re not the right approach for something this complex.”

  “All right.” She curled her socked toes. “Do you want me to see if there are steaks or something in the freezer for dinner?”

  That wasn’t the appetite gnawing so consistently at him.

  It would be nice to connect with someone without getting hurt.

  Wouldn’t it?

  “We’ll go out.” His voice sounded more gravelly and curt than he intended, making her stiffen and scowl warily.

  “Why?”

  She was entitled to her shock, and he had ulterior motives, but it bothered him that she was so suspicious. That he couldn’t ask her to dinner without it being a thing that stirred up their past. This constant unraveling of threads he’d long thought tied off was exhausting. Especially since each thread was a viper that ended with a bite and a sting of poison. He sincerely wished they could move forward into something that wasn’t so fraught.

  “We’re promoting a vision of reconciliation,” he reminded her. “At least, the press release implies we’re having a fresh try.”

  Her brows went up in a silent and disparaging, “Good luck with that.”

  He pushed aside his phone and rested his forearms on the desk.

  “How things look is important to me. Partly it’s who I am. Look around. I run a tidy ship. One of the reasons we went out first thing this morning was to give the housekeeper a chance to wipe down all the furniture. The kids make a mess and it’s all I can do to wait until they’re gone to clean up after them.”

  “You’re a neat freak?” She looked at him in sudden interest, mouth curving into a teasing smile. “Here I thought you were perfect.”

  “Worse. I’m a perfectionist.”

  Her smile didn’t stick. Her humor dimmed and her lashes swept to hide her eyes. Because she wasn’t perfect? Neither was he, much to his chagrin.

  “It’s my biggest flaw, but I come by it honestly. My mother spent my entire childhood wiping my face and hands, smoothing my hair and straightening my tie.”

  Imogen bit back a smile. “I may require photo evidence of that. Please tell me it was a bow tie.”

  “I was every bit as fastidious as she was. When I started high school, my father said he would give me a dollar per mark, provided I kept my grades above seventy percent. Who wants a pile of bills adding up to ninety-eight when you can have a crisp Ben Franklin?”

  “There are easier ways to a skinny wallet, you know. Kind of an expert over here.” She gave a little wave. “Ask me anything.”

  And here was the woman who had led him off his straight and narrow path into a wilderness of unpredictability. He forced himself to stay focused on what he wanted to convey.

  “I was the school’s top track athlete, I headed the debate team, played saxophone and organized a repair of a seniors’ center after a storm damaged it.”

  “And dated the head cheerleader?” It was an accurate guess, but he wasn’t stupid enough to confirm it.

  “I also worked weekends at my father’s office and assisted with conveyancing contracts. You can’t miss dotting an i on those. I was voted best all-around student two years in a row. My life was as flawless as I could make it, my future paved in gold.”

  He ran his tongue over his teeth, getting to the difficult bit.

  “Then my mother had a blazing affair. She shattered my father’s heart and handed me a cloud of filthy rumors to wear as I finished out my high school years. Dad nearly lost his business and I had to drop my extracurricular activities to look after him.”

  Her smile faded and her gaze softened with concern. “Sick?”

  “Alcohol.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  He didn’t want her pity. This was an explanation, not a therapy session.

  “My marks suffered, which was untenable, and I got kicked out of school twice for fighting. I hate gossip and bad press, Imogen. I hate even more when I lower myself into reacting to it. I prefer to keep a tight control over myself and everything around me so it never comes to that.”

  Her mouth twitched. “I’ve noticed that. You play your cards close to your chest so you’re always one square ahead of everyone else.”

  He narrowed his eyes at her. “You mixed that metaphor on purpose, didn’t you? Knowing it would bother me. This is why you make me crazy.”

  “There could be a board game that uses cards and spaces. I don’t know.” She pretended innocence with a lift of her gaze to the ceiling.

  That was the part that got to him. The mischief. The invitation to laugh at himself. He shouldn’t be drawn to such capriciousness and maybe that’s why he’d held back from truly committing to their marriage. He couldn’t spend a lifetime with this much uncertainty. With a woman who wasn’t 1,000 percent steady. In a moment of madness, he had wanted to lock her down, contain her, but he had quickly realized such a thing was impossible.

  “I didn’t expect our marriage to last,” he admitted. “You’re right about that.”

  Her lighthearted half smile died. She had one hand on the doorjamb and quarter-turned into it, looking as if she would rather walk away than hear this. Her profile paled, despite the warmth of the gas fireplace having left color in her cheeks a moment ago. She drew her bottom lip between her teeth.

  “After witnessing the way my parents’ marriage imploded, I knew I didn’t want anything to leave a stain on me when ours fell apart.” Maybe he’d even pulled what few supports they had had, encouraging it to collapse so he wouldn’t have to wait for the inevitable. “We’re very different, Imogen.”

  “I’m not perfect.”

  “You’re creative. That’s not a bad thing.”

  “You’re creative,” she pointed out.

  “In a disciplined way.”

  “The right way.”

  Why her saying that wrung out his internal organs, he wasn’t sure.

  “Then why—?” Her voice cracked and she looked upward again.

  The artis
t in him admired the beautiful line from her profile, down her throat and along her feminine torso to the curve of her waist. Artwork. She was absolute beauty without even trying. He took a mental picture, wanting to replicate that line somehow, somewhere. His muse.

  Something deep within him kept wanting to preserve these moments of striking beauty she produced, the sound of her laugh, the scent in a room she had recently occupied. He wanted to press each memory into a book. Secure them in a safe.

  But he couldn’t. He had known that the first time and knew it even more indelibly now. A woman like her wasn’t meant to be confined. It was beyond wrong.

  He heard the vestiges of pain in her voice as she tried again and this time succeeded with voicing her question, if faintly.

  “Why do you want to parade this messy ex-wife of yours in public? Shouldn’t I be kept behind closed doors?”

  Locked in her room, missing dinner.

  The twisting, wringing sensation in him wrenched to an excruciating tightness. His chest grew compressed. “Gwyn’s debacle arrived as I was expanding and taking on debt for a massive project in South America.”

  “The cathedral.”

  “For the Catholic church, yes. You can imagine how thrilled they were that my sister was being publicly shamed for nude photos and a raging affair with a banker. Please don’t ever tell her how bad it was. She was going through far worse, but it demonstrated to me exactly how important my image is to my clients. I’m closing on something in Hawaii as soon as the holidays are over. I can’t risk their confidence flagging because they fear I’m having personal problems.”

  “So, put on my Sunday best, mind my manners and clean up the mess I’ve made.”

  “I own some of this mess, Imogen. I know that.”