A Daddy by Christmas

by Teri Wilson

  With this ring, I thee wed.

  His breath came hard and quick, and he tried to slow it down, to make himself last. As good as she made him feel, he didn’t want to finish like this. He needed her legs wrapped around his waist. He needed to cover her willowy body with his.

  He needed to be inside her.

  For as long as we both shall live.

  “I want you, Chloe,” he growled, winding a lock of her hair around his finger, pushing it back from her face so he could look her in the eyes.

  They’d gone liquid with desire, dark and heavy-lidded. Bedroom eyes. But he and Chloe had an agreement, and they were about to cross every last line they’d previously drawn in the sand. He wanted her to be sure, because if she wasn’t, they’d stop right now. It wouldn’t be easy, but he’d manage.

  “Tell me you want me, love.” He kissed her, and her lips tasted sugary sweet, like wedding cake and fizzy champagne. “I need to hear you say it.”

  “I want you, Anders.” She nipped gently at his bottom lip, and he nearly came. It was a miracle that he hadn’t already. “Desperately so.”

  No woman had ever made him feel this way before—half out of his mind with need. Something strange was happening, something that felt far more meaningful than it should have, but he didn’t want to stop and analyze it. He’d been doing just that his entire life, and where had it gotten him?

  Dumb luck had led him to Chloe Wilde. He didn’t deserve her, and he’d never been quite so keenly aware of that fact as he was now, poised above her, ready to slide into her warm, perfect body.

  Chloe reached for him again, guiding him to her entrance. He took a deep breath and pushed inside, pausing to give her a chance to adjust. Then, as he kissed her, she opened for him and he thrust his way home.

  And two shall become one.

  Chapter Eleven

  What had they done?

  Chloe had insisted on only one rule: keeping things platonic. Everyone knew what platonic meant. It was no big mystery. Platonic meant no kissing, no cuddling and absolutely no sex. Yet here she was, less than twelve hours after marrying Anders Kent, waking up naked in bed beside him.

  Or more accurately, on top of him.

  Oh God.

  She slid off him and wrapped the sheet around herself, moving as gingerly as possible. She was afraid to slide out of the bed in case the movement woke him. The minute he was conscious, they needed to talk about the enormous mistake they’d just made. They needed to set new boundaries, reinstate the strict no-sex policy.

  Chloe wasn’t quite ready to have that conversation. Not while she was feeling so pleasantly warm and sated, wearing nothing but a Tiffany diamond.

  Which your new husband had been contractually obligated to give you.

  How could she have been so stupid? She’d somehow managed to convince herself that the kiss at the wedding had meant something when it so obviously did not. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have had to tempt him into sleeping with her. He would have been an active and willing participant from the second they’d walked into the honeymoon suite.

  She glanced down at him, sleeping so soundly beside her. Funny, she could have sworn he’d once told her he never slept past five in the morning. Yet it had to be at least eight o’clock. The bedsheets were bathed in a pink glow from the morning sun’s rays glinting off the surrounding skyscrapers. They’d never managed to close the velvet drapes before they’d fallen into bed. From the moment he’d put his hands on her, everything had become a blur of shimmering heat. Of sensation. Her mother’s wedding gown was still in a pile on the floor, as if she’d stepped out of it only moments ago. The various parts of Anders’s tuxedo littered the sitting area, from one end of the room to the other.

  She bit back a smile. This is what a real honeymoon suite looks like the morning after a wedding.

  Then she blinked. What was wrong with her? This was exactly what she’d been afraid of in that pivotal moment before Anders kissed her for the first time. She’d known she was in trouble. She’d sensed it as surely as she’d sensed the epic domino effect she’d set into motion when she’d stumbled during the toy soldier number in the Thanksgiving parade. Only then, the destruction had played out in slow motion. She’d watched, consciously aware of each wrong move, every tiny misstep, as one dancer after another fell to the ground.

  Not this time. This time, she’d plunged headfirst into disaster. Intentionally. She’d known exactly what she was doing, from the minute he’d taken her hand and led her away from the ballroom. He hadn’t seduced her as she’d expected him to, but no problem. She’d taken matters into her own hands.

  This was how she’d end up with a broken heart. She wasn’t the type of person who could indulge in meaningless sex. She wished she could. Oh, how she wished it, but she just wasn’t wired that way. The whole fake marriage idea might have worked if she’d stuck to the rules, but now she wasn’t so sure.

  Could she really walk away from Anders and Lolly in less than a month?

  You don’t have a choice. You have to.

  She glanced down at her temporary husband. His chest rose and fell with the languid grace of a dreamer, and the sternness in his features seemed softer somehow. More relaxed.

  He looks happy. She swallowed hard around the knot in her throat. He looked happier than she’d ever seen him.

  But what did she know? She was Anders’s wife, but she’d known him for less than a week.

  His eyes drifted open, first one and then the other, and then his mouth curved into a tender smile as he realized she’d been watching him sleep. Her heart clenched. It’s too late, she thought. She was already in too deep. The thought of losing this, of losing him, already left her with a cavernous, hollow feeling in her heart.

  This is why people shouldn’t sleep with their pretend husbands.

  She bit her bottom lip to keep it from quivering.

  “Hey.” Anders’s brow furrowed and he slipped his hand beneath the sheet to cup her breast and run his thumb gently over her nipple. “Why do I get the feeling you’re about to climb out of bed?”

  Because I am. His touch drew a sigh out of her. Just one tender brush of his fingertips—that was all it took for her body to crave him again. She could feel it building inside. The want. The need.

  “We have brunch, remember?” She forced herself to crawl away from him while she still could, and nearly tumbled to the floor in a tangle of sheets and desperation.

  Over twenty years of dance classes and she couldn’t even manage to get out of bed gracefully. Perfect.

  She righted herself and pulled the sheet tighter around her bare body, consciously aware of the deepening frown on Anders’s perfectly chiseled face. When at last she’d become steady on her feet, she flashed him a smile. A fake one, obviously, since pretending was all she knew how to do now.

  He didn’t move a muscle. He just stared at her as she silently willed her heart to close itself up like a book that could be read only one time and then tucked away and forgotten.

  His gaze slid to the clock on the nightstand and then back to her. Was it her imagination or did her heart actually hurt when he looked at her now? You have no one to blame but yourself.

  He’d asked her. More than once.

  Are you sure?

  Tell me you want me... I need to hear you say it.

  She’d been sure. She’d never been so sure about anything in her life, never wanted anything as badly as she wanted him inside her. And that was precisely the problem.

  “Brunch isn’t for almost three hours.” His voice was raw and delicious. It sounded like pure sex.

  A rebellious shiver coursed through Chloe. This conversation would have been so much easier if he weren’t naked.

  Anders stood and closed the distance between them, and she couldn’t force herself to look away from his long, lean body and its scul
pted planes as he moved toward her.

  She’d kissed those muscles. She’d dug her fingernails into that glorious flesh as he’d pushed his way inside her. In the mirror behind him, she could see little half-moon marks on his back—evidence of her longing, her passion. Passion that no man had ever brought out of her before. Only him. Only Anders.

  What did it mean? What did any of this mean?

  “Talk to me, love.” He reached for her hand, then gingerly lifted it to his mouth and kissed the place where her wedding ring wrapped around her finger. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  There was no way she could do this for two more weeks, not if he expected her to pack up her things and leave on Christmas Eve.

  “Nothing.” She pulled her hand away, pretending not to notice the angry knot in his jaw as she did so. “It’s just that the wedding is over now.”

  “And?” His gaze narrowed, and he peered at her as if daring her to continue.

  She didn’t have to. It wasn’t too late to throw herself into his arms and kiss him, to start the morning over again. But if she did, what would happen the next morning? And the one after that?

  What would happen when she woke up the day after Lolly’s custody hearing and remembered everything had been for show?

  “And last night was wonderful, but it should probably be a onetime thing.” She stopped talking before she choked on a sob.

  Out of the many, many lies she’d told in the past few weeks, this one was the biggest. It was the most devastating whopper of them all. She didn’t want it to be a onetime thing. She wanted it to be more than that. She might even want it to be forever.

  For as long as we both shall live.

  What was she thinking? She still didn’t know her husband. Not really. He’d just sexed the sense right out of her, which was yet another reason they shouldn’t sleep together again. Ever.

  Anders didn’t say anything. He just stood there, studying her, as if he was trying to see inside her head.

  Thank goodness he couldn’t. They’d been married all of five minutes and she’d gone and reversed the script. But he didn’t need to know that, did he? “I mean, that’s what we agree on. Right?”

  Say something.

  If only he’d give her some indication that he felt the same way. One word...that was all it would take. But she couldn’t just put herself out there if he didn’t feel the same way. They’d agreed on a fake marriage. He’d even wanted her to sign a contract.

  She peered up at him, breathless, willing him to argue with her. For a bittersweet second, she thought he might. In the morning light, his eyes were bluer than ever, as clear as the sparkling sea. And an invisible force seemed to pull her toward him, inviting her to dive right in.

  But then he blinked, and it was gone. Whatever magical connection or genuine bond that had formed between them when they’d said I do fell away, and his expression hardened into stone.

  Right before her eyes, he seemed to change from the man she’d spent the night with back into the brooding stranger she’d met at the animal shelter.

  * * *

  Anders was in no mood for brunch.

  He wasn’t sure how he could sip mimosas with the Wildes over French toast and gourmet waffles when he was still trying to unravel whatever had gone wrong the night before. Because something had definitely happened. He just wasn’t sure what it was.

  But he showed up and did his damnedest to smile and make small talk with Chloe and her family, because that was what husbands did, right? And Anders was Chloe’s husband now. She was his wife.

  In name only. He took a bitter gulp of black coffee.

  Why did the businesslike nature of their union grate so much? He’d known what he was getting into. They both had. There’d been no ambiguity about the rules—a platonic relationship, no sex. They’d never sworn not to have feelings for one another, but that had been a given. And now here he was, sitting beside Chloe the morning after their wedding, wanting nothing more than to reach for her hand under the table or brush the hair from her face and kiss her full on the lips for all the world to see.

  Lolly wiggled her way between them, gripping Tessa’s cell phone and chattering about her sleepover at Tessa and Julian’s apartment. “And after we watched a dance movie, Tessa let me try on some of her costumes. We took pictures. Look!”

  Chloe helped her scroll through images on the iPhone, and as adorable as they were, the nagging sense of regret in Anders’s gut grew worse as he looked at them.

  “I’m glad you had fun, sweetheart.” He kissed the top of Lolly’s head, careful to avoid the perfect ballerina bun Tessa had created for her.

  “She’s welcome anytime,” Julian said, signing the words at the same time, since Tessa was deaf.

  The whole family seemed to know American Sign Language, something he hadn’t realized the day before during the busy buildup to the wedding. Lolly had apparently picked up a few basics during her sleepover, because when Anders reminded her to thank Tessa and Julian, she’d pressed her fingertips to her chin and brought them forward, almost like blowing a kiss—ASL for “thank you.”

  “Please come back soon, Lolly.” Tessa mouthed the words along with her hand gestures. “We loved having you.”

  Beside him, Lolly bounced up and down. “And will you come to my dance recital on Christmas Eve? Please? I’m going to be Clara from The Nutcracker.”

  Julian grinned at her. “Of course we will.”

  “We’ll all be there, Lolly. I promise.” Emily patted the chair beside her. “Why don’t you come sit beside me until it’s time to go home?”

  Emily shot Anders a wink as Lolly scooted away and settled beside her. She was clearly trying to give him as much alone time as possible with Chloe until they took Lolly home, and the message wasn’t lost on his wife. She glanced at him with wide eyes, no doubt wanting him to play along and act as if they were real newlyweds who couldn’t keep their hands off each other.

  He moved to slide an arm around her and her earlier words rang in his head.

  Last night was wonderful, but it should probably be a onetime thing.

  Anders didn’t want it to be a onetime thing. From the moment he’d opened his eyes, all he could think about was reaching for her beside him, burying his hands in her softly tangled hair and making love to her again. He still couldn’t quite wrap his mind around the fact that he’d misread the situation so profoundly.

  Or had he?

  The second his hand brushed against her back, a shiver coursed through her, sending a jolt of pure electric arousal straight to his groin. Her gaze shot to his, and in that brief, unguarded moment, he could see all the things she refused to say. Last night had meant something. She still wanted him—she might even want him as badly as he wanted her. She just didn’t want to admit it.

  He kept his arm draped around her shoulders and casually toyed with a lock of her hair, biting back a smile as her cheeks grew pink and she reached for her mimosa and took a healthy gulp.

  “Have you two thought about a honeymoon?” Emily asked.

  Anders arched a brow at Chloe. Oh, I’ve thought about it. I’m thinking about it right now, and so are you, my darling bride.

  “Um...” Chloe’s flush turned as red as Santa’s plush suit.

  “Give them time, Mom. Christmas is in less than two weeks. I’m sure they want to get through the holidays first.” Allegra pointed her fork at Chloe. “Besides, you’re in charge of Baby Nutcracker, remember? You can’t go anywhere until after Christmas Eve.”

  “I’m not.” Chloe’s gaze darted toward Anders. Then she blinked and looked away.

  Neither of them was going anywhere until after Christmas Eve, because that was the end date of their agreement. Lolly’s guardianship hearing was first thing in the morning. Afterward, all bets were off.

  The date rested so heavily on Anders’
s shoulders that he hadn’t thought beyond it in weeks. It was as if the entire calendar ended right then and there.

  Except now, he could almost see past it. Not entirely. He still had no idea what the days beyond Christmas Eve would look like. He desperately hoped they included Lolly. She was the reason he’d ended up in this absurd situation to begin with, after all. Now that he was married, he could finally breathe again. He could allow himself to believe that it would all work out and Lolly could stay.

  But he wasn’t altogether sure why he was suddenly so acutely aware of the days, weeks and months to come. He only knew, sitting beside his complicated, beautiful wife at that joyous table in Bennington 8, surrounded by people who’d been lied to—kind people, good people—that the day before Christmas wasn’t an end date.

  It was a beginning.

  Of what, he had no idea. He’d taken Chloe to bed, but their marriage was still a sham. Nothing had changed, and yet somehow everything had. Because despite the mess they’d made, and despite the fact that when Chloe let him take her hand and wind his fingers through hers, he knew it was just for show, the glittering diamond on her finger sparked something deep inside him. Something he hadn’t felt in a very long time.

  Hope. It was the hope of a fool—a man who’d abandoned his controlled, exacting existence and had been grasping at straws, making things up as he went along, making a mess of disastrous proportions.

  But it was all he had, at least until Christmas.

  * * *

  “Your apartment is lovely.” Chloe crossed her arms as she looked out over the snowy landscape of Central Park.

  She could see ice-skaters spinning circles on the pond below and horse-drawn carriages making a wide loop around the green-and-white-striped tents of the Christmas market in Columbus Circle. She’d never been in a penthouse like this before—or anywhere else, for that matter—with such a spectacular view of the city. It was breathtaking, like standing in the center of a snow globe.