Claiming His Christmas Wife

by Dani Collins

  Their two days of truce and lovemaking and pleasant visiting with his family reminded her why she had fallen for him in the first place. He was wicked smart, keeping up with Vito on investment-banking talk long after her eyes had crossed, but always listened to her opinion even when it turned into a spirited debate. He was a gentleman and, yes, a neat freak, but it was kind of nice that he hung her coat and wiped a bit of flour from her cheek.

  And seeing him with his niece and nephew was another side of him altogether, the kind of thing that made a woman’s ovaries burst into flower.

  She had to keep her expectations realistic, however. It was a point driven home to her when he screwed in his earbuds to watch some work-related slide show on his laptop during their flight back to New York, then made phone calls in the car all the way into the city.

  She wasn’t so much stung by it as sad. Was it ambition that drove him to shut her out? Or was it a kind of rebound after their closeness the last couple of days? Was she too much for him, as he had claimed that first night in Charleston? How was that any better than not being enough?

  I make rash promises I can’t keep, just for the privilege of touching you.

  She had to remember he wasn’t making any promises at all this time. She had to be careful not to imagine he was. Figuring out how to protect herself from heartbreak was a challenge, though, when she was so susceptible to him, feeling his withdrawal so keenly.

  “Did you hear me?” he asked, touching her arm.

  She had wandered onto the terrace of his building after they arrived back, hugging herself, lost in thought.

  “Hmm? Oh, okay.” Her breath fogged as she spoke and she nodded, then admitted as his words penetrated, “No. I don’t know what you said.”

  “I have to run to the office.” He gave her a look of amusement. “Where were you?”

  “Thinking about making a doctor’s appointment.” As far as protecting herself went, that was a good start.

  He frowned. “Did the flight hurt your ear?”

  “No. I want to go on birth control.”

  “I wear—” he started to say, then made a face as he recalled his slip. “Probably a good idea. Thank you.” Something enigmatic passed over his expression. He seemed to shake off whatever he was thinking with a distracted nod. “Let me know when you have to be there. I’ll arrange the car.”

  “Thank you. Do you want me to cook tonight?”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “I’ll see you when I see you, then, and make do with whatever is in the fridge.” She set her hands on his chest, preparing to rise on tiptoe to kiss him goodbye.

  He tucked his chin. “I meant we can go out for dinner if you’d rather. I’ll only be gone an hour.”

  “Right.” She patted his chest. “I’ve played that game before. I’ll see you when I see you,” she repeated with good-natured rue and stretched to peck his cheek.

  His hands closed on her arms, keeping her from retreating after her kiss. “That sounds like a reprimand.”

  “Not at all. You have even more demands on your time than you used to. I occupy an even smaller slice of your life than I did then. I accept that.” At least, she was trying to. “I’ll use the time to look for work. Rowan emailed me. It sounds like she might have something. I have to read it properly.”

  Nic showed me your piece on Travis. I hope you don’t mind. I’d love to know what you would do with my mother’s story, given the chance.

  Imogen wasn’t taking it seriously, but writing a proposal was a good exercise.

  He dropped his touch and stuffed his hands in his pockets.

  “What you said to my mother... Four years ago was a very busy time for me, expanding, taking on projects that were bigger than anything I’d attempted before. I had no idea what was going on with your father. You’re right that I didn’t ask, but even so, I wasn’t trying to diminish you when I put work ahead of spending time with you.”

  “I know. And I don’t expect you to make me a priority now.” She smiled, but her voice felt stuck like a wishbone lodged in her chest and she couldn’t resist saying, “But I feel for your mother. This is very different. You and I aren’t married and I don’t have a child with you, but she did. It must have hurt when your father shut her out. I just wish you and she were on better terms.”

  “It’s not that easy,” he muttered, swiveling away to stare grimly at the view. “When I told you that Dad drank after she was gone, I meant he dove into a bottle and didn’t come out. He’s a teetotaler now, but it was bad. I was still in high school, but I was suddenly the parent, getting him to bed, getting him to work. I couldn’t leave him alone and go stay with her. I was scared of what he might do to himself. That’s why I didn’t see her.”

  “Wasn’t there anyone to help? What about your uncles?”

  He shook that off. “Dad wouldn’t even admit Mother was gone or why, let alone that he couldn’t cope. His business was suffering. That’s why I had to keep such a sharp eye on things. I don’t blame her for his drinking, but I couldn’t abandon him when she just had. She and I grew apart for all of those reasons.” His profile was like granite. “I can’t pretend everything is fine with her after that.”

  Fair enough, she supposed. “How long did it go on? His drinking? I mean, he seemed fine the other night...”

  “He’s been sober for years. He started going to meetings when I was leaving for university. I genuinely wasn’t sure I’d be able to go, but he was really trying, pulling himself together. Then I found out it was because he was seeing Gwyn’s mom. She was the janitor in his office. I didn’t know what to think of that. I was suspicious and programmed to be protective of Dad. When I did have time to go home, it was to check on him. I wasn’t choosing him over my mother.

  “I’m not still nursing anger. Well, she said some things the other day that annoyed me, but if she was sick or in trouble, if she really needed me, of course I would be there for her. But on a day-to-day basis, all we have is nostalgia and I’m not a particularly sentimental person.”

  That was a warning, she was sure. She looked to her feet.

  “Was she good for him in the end? Gwyn’s mom, I mean.”

  “He would say so,” Travis said with an impatient shrug. “But she got sick almost right away. He spent most of their marriage taking her to treatment and was shattered when she died. Fortunately, Gwyn was there, giving him someone to stay sober for, checking on him often enough I was able to move to New York, but...”

  But none of that added up to a good reason to become attached to anyone. She wondered if he had any positive experiences with love. Even his stepsister had been through a rough time that had left nuclear fallout all over him.

  “Were you worried about your dad when we were married?”

  “I’m always worried about him,” he said with a grimace. “One of my coping strategies is to bury myself in work. I’ll cop to that.” He sent her a look of frustration, one that made her think he might be regretting all he had just revealed. “I did push work between us when we were married. I had set myself some lofty goals and my desire to spend time with you was a threat to them. Today it’s the other way around, though.” His voice softened. “I’m trying to clear up a few things so we can have more downtime in Hawaii.”

  “Really?” She was genuinely astonished, but touched. “You want to walk the beach and hold hands at sunset?” It was a tease, but also a tantalizing idea. A wish.

  “Among other things,” he said, mouth quirking, but he lifted her hand and kissed her knuckle, making her think it wasn’t only sex he wanted from her.

  The idea of him making her a priority was such a sweet and heady thought that she nearly turned all mushy and cried. She wrinkled her nose at him instead and hurried him out the door. “You should get to work, then.”

  He stole one warm kiss and did.

 
CHAPTER EIGHT

  TRAVIS HAD FIBBED, Imogen thought on their last day in Hawaii. This hadn’t been the affair they were supposed to have had. It had been the honeymoon she had longed for.

  After a day of meetings in Honolulu and a mixer with his client, they had flown to Kauai and the site of a new resort Travis would build over the next three years.

  He had booked them into a bungalow—which was actually a three-story six-bedroom villa with an infinity pool and a short walk down to a stunning lagoon. He had worked half days, taking her with him a couple of times to walk the property, have lunch with his clients and check out the competition.

  The rest of the time they had floated in the pool, snorkeled in the lagoon or made love in the airy privacy of their palatial master bedroom. They drank excellent wine and ate fresh tropical fruit and other meals prepared by their day staff. It was bliss.

  “I don’t want to leave,” she murmured when he joined her on their last evening. She stood at the rail of their private balcony wearing only a sarong, watching the sun set.

  “Same.” He stood behind her and set his hand on the rail near her hip, half caging her against it.

  She leaned into his frame, utterly his after a week of near constant contact.

  “Did you get your proposal sent?” he asked, kissing her bare shoulder and sending tingles down into her breasts.

  She smiled and reached up to caress his jaw. “Are you asking if I got all my work done? I did. Not that I expect anything to come of it, but it was nice of them to invite me to throw my hat in.”

  “I don’t think Nic does things just to be nice.”

  “Rowan probably does.” Nic’s wife had been on the hunt for a biographer for a couple of years, although not very seriously. She’d had other priorities with adopting children and other family commitments.

  “The proposal makes a nice calling card, but I don’t expect to pay the bills with writing. Not right away. I applied for some positions back in New York that I might actually get.”

  “Like?” His hand stole into the folds of her sarong. He cupped her breast, gently massaging so her nipple tightened and poked at his palm.

  “Mmm...” She rubbed her hip against the growing press of his arousal. “Um...” She couldn’t think when he did that. “Nothing inspiring,” she managed to recall. “Scanning papers for a museum curator. I think the primary skill required is the ability to withstand supreme boredom.”

  She tried to turn, but he didn’t let her.

  “Don’t lock yourself into something you’ll hate.” Her hair was up, so he kissed the side of her neck, then took her earlobe between his teeth, exerting just enough pressure to threaten pain, making her hold very still and grow sensitized all over, breast swelling into his hand.

  “It feels good to take constructive steps,” she said breathily, barely tracking that they were still talking. “I put my name on some lists for rent-controlled apartments, too.”

  His hand on her breast squeezed a little tighter before he shifted his grip and lightly pinched her nipple, circling and teasing and pulling.

  “Let’s go to the bed,” she murmured, rubbing her butt into the front of his shorts.

  “Not yet.” His hand slid down her belly in lazy circles, caressing and building her anticipation until he slowly cupped his hand over her mound. He made a sound of satisfaction at finding her naked and slick. “I want to make love to you right here.”

  She bent easily to the light exertion of his frame against hers, until her elbows rested on the rail. She was already shifting her feet open, letting him touch her more intimately, biting her lip and scanning through slit lashes in the dark.

  “Someone might see.”

  “There’s no one here but us.” He shifted to lift the back of her sarong away, then his strong thighs were against hers and he was probing for entrance.

  Before they’d left New York, she had seen the doctor again and was fully protected now. She arched to take him in, gasping because she was a tiny bit tender. They made love constantly, but it felt so good every single time that she welcomed the friction against her sensitive tissues.

  Even so, he made a noise of concern and moved very gently, sliding his hand to caress her again where they were joined, exploring, inciting. Digging her nails into his forearm on the rail, she bucked and shivered with a sweet, quick orgasm.

  His breath pooled at the top of her spine as he chuckled with satisfaction. “Again,” he commanded, arousing her with easy thrusts and strokes. “This is all I think about all day, being in you like this, feeling you shiver and come apart.”

  “Me, too,” she admitted, meeting the slap of his hips with pushes of her own. Her need for this made her desperate and scared. For all the steps she was taking to strike out on her own, she knew it was going to kill her to live without him. It made her greedy and uninhibited, determined to be whatever he needed.

  When he covered her and held her tight, pressed deep and stroked her into losing herself, she abandoned herself to the pleasure he gave her, crying out, then whimpering with loss when he withdrew.

  His shorts were already gone and he flicked her loosened sarong away with a single tug of one finger. As they stood there naked and bathed in the rising moonlight, he picked her up. Rather than take her to the bed, he took her to the lounger.

  They stayed there all night, joined and caressing, kissing and pleasuring, neither wanting to go to the bed and end their last night in paradise.

  * * *

  Travis hadn’t realized how much he’d grown used to coming home to Imogen until she wasn’t there.

  The short January days meant it was usually dark outside when he got home from work, but the main rooms were usually lit with lamps and the fire, and she was invariably cooking something that smelled mouthwatering, offering a kiss before getting back to whatever she was chopping or simmering.

  It had been two weeks since Hawaii, and as of today, their affair had officially lasted one week longer than their marriage. He thought they should celebrate by getting out of the city and had reserved a cabin in the Catskills along with asking his pilot to fuel up and file a flight plan.

  But the apartment was empty, the kitchen spotless and Imogen’s laptop not winking a screen saver but completely off. She had had a lunch date with Rowan, but it was five o’clock.

  He texted her and got a prompt reply.

  Be there in twenty.

  He poured himself a drink, surprised how much he wanted one. He told himself it was relief that she wasn’t collapsed in the street again, but there was something about knowing she was on her way back that eased a tension inside him.

  Did he wonder if there was a man involved in her delay? Maybe, but he consciously pushed that thought aside.

  He didn’t want to be jealous and dependent. He made a concerted effort not to be. It wasn’t just leftover teenage angst from watching his father spiral. It was her. Along with wallowing in betrayal, he’d missed Imogen after she had left that first time.

  That hadn’t sat well with him. It was the reason he was trying so hard to keep his boundaries in place now. Hawaii had been incredible but had aided and abetted both a feeling of connection and of reliance. Not his style at all. He was the one who was needed, not the other way around.

  He moved to look at the view, a place they often stood as they shared a drink, talking about their day. If she wasn’t writing for one client or another, she went out on interviews and had signed up for a class to do some sort of website updating, so she would have more skills to peddle.

  He found it strangely threatening.

  She had also gone back and forth to his accountant’s office, finalizing things for her father’s estate, growing less stressed by degrees.

  “I might actually be able to pay you back for his fee someday,” she had said the other day. “Now that Dad’s debts have been f
olded into his estate.”

  She had been tickled pink when her first earned income had gone into her account from a client of Joli’s. It was writing blogs for a car dealership, the amount nominal, but a weekly thing she could count on for the next while.

  “Look,” Imogen had said, showing him the deposit on her phone. “I can take you out for a very modest lunch tomorrow.”

  He had opted for her to pick up sandwiches and deliver them to his office. They’d made love on his leather sofa. After she was gone, he had taken out the rings that somehow made their way into his pocket every day. This could be my life, he had thought. Imogen could be a fixture in his world, with her self-deprecating humor, delivering his lunch and erotic distractions, littering his home with shoes and hair clips, but filling it with her lilting voice and other signs of life.

  For how long? he wondered. Marriage didn’t last forever. Nothing did.

  The elevator dinged and she came in, flushed and beaming, wearing the green dress he’d bought her the first day she’d been here. It sat tighter against her figure now that she was back to a healthier weight. Her breasts pressed against the neckline and the belt was no longer a loose bracelet around her waist but a pretty flash of gold that emphasized the flare of her fuller hips.

  Fetching as she was, the way she kicked off her shoes and practically skipped toward him, looking very damned pleased with herself, was what really kicked up his heart rate. When she threw her arms around his neck and planted a big kiss on his mouth, her bright, golden energy coursed through him like a current.

  He picked her up off her feet so her legs dangled and they were eye to eye, his arms around her butt.

  “Did you finally win the lottery? Why are you so cheerful?”

  “I’m always cheerful. But yes, I kind of did.” She was incandescent, holding him rapt as he took in the sparkle of her eyes, the smile that wouldn’t leave her lips, the air of sheer magic glittering around her. He wanted to make love to her, but he wanted to simply gaze on her at the same time.