Claiming His Christmas Wife

by Dani Collins

  “Where were you?”

  “Rowan’s. We finished lunch but weren’t finished talking, so we went back to their apartment. She offered me a contract.” Her eyes bugged out.

  “For the biography?”

  “Yes! I told her she was crazy, that there are other people who are way more qualified, but every time I tried to talk her out of it, she offered me more money.”

  “Why would you talk her out of it? That’s fantastic. Let’s celebrate.” He walked them across to the wine fridge, then set her on her feet to bend and take out a bottle of champagne.

  “I haven’t signed anything. I wanted to talk to you first.”

  “As long as the compensation is fair, I say it’s a terrific opportunity.” He opened the cupboard and brought out two flutes. “Quit worrying you’re not good enough. You are, otherwise she wouldn’t have asked you.”

  “But I’ve never taken on anything so big. Nic has a guy working on his father’s biography who’s done seven already. I asked Rowan if I could cheat off his work. She laughed and said that’s why she wants me. That we have the same sense of humor and she feels comfortable talking to me about her childhood. I guess her relationship with her mother was rocky at times. She needs someone she trusts to find the balance between truthful and kind.”

  He popped the cork and a minuscule cloud wisped from the neck of the bottle before he poured the frothy bubbly into the glasses.

  “And she chose you. Well done. I’m proud of you.”

  Imogen hesitated to clink and he met her eyes. They were swimming in a thick gloss of tears. “Really?”

  His heart took a swerve and nearly tipped completely. Had no one ever said they were proud of her? Ever?

  “Yes.” Emotion thickened his throat and his chest ached. “Very.”

  They touched glasses with a crystalline ping and sipped. Actually, she seemed to take a bigger gulp, swallowing audibly. Her voice sounded nervous when she spoke.

  “There’s a small catch if I take it.”

  If.

  The air shifted. The pressure in his chest grew. “What’s that?”

  “I’ll travel to Greece a lot, especially at first. She’s fine with my bringing some things back here, but there’s a lot to sort through. Letters and photographs. Playbills and other memorabilia. All very flexible. I’ll be back for the opening of the hotel in Florida. If you still want me to be there.” Her voice thinned as she said the last.

  “You’re leaving.” And here came the train whistle in the distance.

  “Rowan is taking the kids back to Greece at the end of the week. She’s hoping I’ll go with them, since she’ll have some time to get me started while she’s there. That’s why I said I needed to talk this out with you first.”

  They hadn’t made any commitments. He couldn’t hold her back unless he was prepared to make one. He pushed his hand into his pocket and the diamond on the engagement ring cut into his palm.

  “Once I sign the contract... The advance is very generous. I should be able to find a decent apartment—”

  “Not necessary,” he heard himself say, staring into the rise of bubbles in his glass.

  “You don’t feel differently about my being here, now that I have options?”

  “No. I want you here.” So badly it scared him.

  Her mouth trembled into a fresh smile. “Really?”

  The emotional intimacy of the moment nearly undid him. He hated feeling this vulnerable.

  “Of course,” he said gruffly. “Come here.” He set aside his glass.

  She moved into his arms.

  He had to remind himself to be gentle, because the beast was roused. The greedy one who was possessive and ravenous and territorial, needing to mark her as his own.

  She matched him, though. Matched him in the way that was terrifying because it turned their lovemaking raw and elemental, and because it told him she was feeling the same desperate need to cleave onto him that he felt with her.

  He picked her up and carried her to his bed, leaving their fresh bottle of champagne to go flat.

  CHAPTER NINE

  TRAVIS WOKE TO her cry.

  He rolled, gathering her trembling form into him so her wet cheek smeared across his pecs. He was only half-awake, reacting on instinct, not thinking until he was stroking her hair and murmuring for her to wake up that she preferred to suffer through this.

  He couldn’t bear it, though. He couldn’t bear the wrenching sounds of sorrow, and he couldn’t bear the reason she was having her bad dream.

  When I’m feeling sorry for myself...

  Why? He had given her as much pleasure as he knew how to deliver, binding her to him as indelibly as possible without sewing their skin.

  “Travis,” she breathed on a sniff and hugged her arms around him, pressing her silky warmth to his front. Shudders of reaction were still working through her spine.

  “My fault,” he said in a voice that rasped his throat. They’d made love for hours, skipping dinner. “I’ll go order something for delivery.”

  She made a noise that wasn’t quite a protest, but the weight of her against him urged him not to move. Her heart rate eased along with her breaths, but she had a sense of despondency about her.

  “I feel like this is the beginning of the end,” she said in a hollow whisper.

  He did, too, but he wasn’t ready to face it. That’s why he had drowned them both in sexual ecstasy. Cupping the back of her hair, he pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Let’s see how things go.”

  He left the bed.

  * * *

  Imogen had been gone a week, and she missed Travis to the point she woke with a tearstained face and a dream of waiting for him to come to her, which he never did.

  I want you here. She had taken such heart from that, but now she had time to reflect, she saw it wasn’t words of love or commitment. What they had was unrestrained passion, not something that lasted.

  So, even though she pined for him and feared that this job was going to be the undoing of their relationship, she also knew she had to push herself into a position of independence.

  Heck, she needed that for her own self-worth and peace of mind. She could never stay with him as his mistress, kept and resented over time, eventually abandoned. She needed this job, this money, this distraction from fretting about their future. She needed to know she had a future regardless of what happened between them.

  So she signed the contract and sent him a photo of her signature.

  He FaceTimed her. “Congratulations.” He looked so pleased for her that she could have cried.

  “Thank you—Oh,” she cut herself off, noticing the man at the window. “Sorry. Rafe is waving and giving me a thumbs-up.” She waved at him, calling, “Bye!”

  “Who the hell is Rafe?”

  She faltered under the sudden ice in Travis’s tone.

  “I told you about him. He’s my counterpart, working on Nic’s father’s biography. He’s leaving for London.”

  “But he’ll be back. You’ll be working with him.”

  “Remotely. Travis.” She had always thought that jealousy in a man would be flattering, but it just sounded like a lack of trust. “We’ll check in via email, to discuss crossover details. That’s all.”

  He seemed to accept that and she promised to come to him in Florida when she returned. He had a grand opening of a hotel he had designed and she was joining him for the gala ball.

  * * *

  She arrived with just enough time to change in their top-floor suite while reading his text that he was downstairs and couldn’t get away.

  He had left her a gown. It was an airy confection with a flowing skirt in shades that matched the tropical waters off their terrace. The bodice was strapless and snug, sexy and elegant at once.

  She hadn’t arranged a s
tylist so only gathered her hair back from her face, letting it fall behind her shoulders in a fluttering mass of auburn and amber.

  When she arrived in the ballroom, it was an aquarium of bright gowns and tuxedos. She looked for a podium or the bar, somewhere he was likely to be standing—

  Oh. He was looking right at her.

  He held a drink and seemed arrested, wearing a look she couldn’t interpret. Approval? Hunger? With a blink he took action, setting aside his drink and weaving toward her through the crowd.

  Her heart soared as he approached. Growing bigger with each step until she couldn’t deny what the enormous feeling inside her was. Oh, no.

  “I missed you,” she said, when she really wanted to confess, “I love you. I’ve always loved you.”

  It dawned through her with all the promise of a sunrise, a new day, a fresh start. It wasn’t the immature, unrealistic love she had had for him when they were married, though. It was a mature, achingly wise kind of love that knew she couldn’t beg for or demand or earn his love. She could only offer her heart and hope.

  Was it glowing like a neon sign from her smile, beating like a telegraph message in her throat? He must have seen something because he seemed to grow more reserved. Stony.

  “You look beautiful.” He took her hand and bussed her cheek with the lightest of kisses, lacking the heated frenzy of need that thrummed in her.

  The ballooning sensation inside her began to deflate.

  “So do you,” she said, trying not to falter into doubt. In so many ways, he had helped her find her confidence, encouraging her to pursue this job and believe in herself. She didn’t want to think it was suddenly in jeopardy, but there was no safety net of reassurance to fall back on, no declaration of love, of anything, to save her from plunging into insecurity.

  She kept her smile on her face and searched his expression, asking inanely, “Is everything going well?”

  “Perfectly. I imagine you’re tired from all the travel. You only have to make an appearance. Let me introduce you and you can disappear early if you’d like.”

  He took her cool hand in his and dragged her across to meet his clients. Words were said. Pleasantries exchanged.

  “You haven’t had a chance to look around?” the owner said, offering his arm. “Let me show you.”

  * * *

  Travis offered his arm to the owner’s wife and followed them onto the mezzanine. They looked down into the lobby fountain, then moved out to a terrace that overlooked a palm-tree-lined pool and a beach glowing in the moonlight against a starry sky. The design was meant to hark back to the owner’s family château with arches and columns, wrought iron and well-crafted stonework. At the same time, his wife was very fanciful and demanded every luxury be afforded to their exclusive guests.

  He’d seen it all and talked to these people until he was sick to death of them. He watched Imogen instead. Drank her up and hated himself for having waited to see her one more time before he ended it. Needing this much at least.

  “It’s stunning. Like a fairy tale castle,” Imogen said after the tour. “And now I know your secret,” she said to Travis in an undertone, hugging his arm. “You’re a closet romantic.”

  He stiffened, reacting to her, as always. Applying brutal discipline within himself, trying not to.

  He had been feeling her absence keenly, which unnerved him. He wasn’t a needy man. It was uncomfortable for him to be distracted, wondering where she was, what she was doing. The hollow ache in him had warned of a deeper, more debilitating pain the longer their relationship went on. A harder fall when she left for good.

  Then she’d delivered a one-two punch of taking a job that would continue to take her away and mentioning a man. The jealousy, the uncertainty, that had risen in him then had made it clear to him he was in too deep. He couldn’t ride a roller coaster with this many plummets and heights. She already held too much power over him.

  “Your husband is a genius,” the owner stated magnanimously. “I couldn’t be happier.”

  Imogen dropped Travis’s arm, turning to correct the man about the state of their marriage, but his wife was busy saying, “You two should join us on the vineyard next week. We’re having a house party at our cottage.”

  “Imogen is fresh in from Greece,” Travis interjected. “She’s writing a biography. I don’t expect to see much of her in the next while as she digs into it.”

  His words jarred her. She glanced at him with a little frown.

  She tried to keep a smile on her face as they returned to the ballroom, walking with the owner’s wife now, telling her what she could about her assignment, but she kept glancing back at him.

  When Travis drew her onto the dance floor, Imogen said stiffly, “If you didn’t want people to think we’re a couple, you shouldn’t have invited me to join you here.”

  “I was repeating what you told me in your text,” he said flatly. “You said you were going back as soon as you could. How is Rafe?” he added.

  She stopped dancing. “What are you doing, Travis?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know.” With a little flinch, she looked for an exit. “I’m not playing. Or maybe I am, because you don’t really give me a choice, do you?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I’m taking you up on your offer to leave early.” She forced a smile. “Please make my excuses.”

  He looked into her eyes, the raw anguish and shadow of betrayal, and knew this was it. Wind seemed to rush past his ears, as though he was in free fall, but at least he could see the ground. The end point. Okay, then. He braced himself.

  “I’ll walk you up.”

  * * *

  He followed her to the alcove where the bank of elevators let out. It was empty and a pair of doors opened the moment she jabbed the button.

  “Why did you ask me to come down here?” she demanded as they were closed into a car alone. “Just so you could pull the pin in the most humiliating way possible? Why didn’t you tell me to stay in Greece? Why did you tell me you wanted me to stay with you?”

  “You’re the one hiding that you’re meeting a man—”

  “Don’t you dare.” She charged out the opening elevators and down the silencing carpet of the hall. It took two jabs of her card to open the door to their suite, she was shaking so badly.

  She barely restrained herself, waiting for the door to close before she rounded on him.

  “Accuse me of anything,” she said, rage thickening in her throat. “But don’t you ever accuse me of cheating on you. You’re the one who spent the four years since our marriage sleeping with anything that moved.”

  He rocked on his feet as though she’d clawed his face. “Bit late in the day to bring that up, isn’t it?”

  “You think because I haven’t mentioned it that it doesn’t bother me? I hate it! But I have never once said anything because I left you. Our divorce was my fault. I was the villain.” She knocked her breastbone so hard it thumped.

  He frowned, but she railed on.

  “No, I did not jump into bed with the first stranger I met, the minute I was out of your sight. Go to hell, Travis, for thinking I would.” She kicked off her shoes and yanked out her earrings. She threw the jewelry onto the table, glad for the way her earrings caught in her hair. The hurt distracted her from the way she was disappearing inside. Growing hollow and filling up with darkness. “How many women have you slept with since I’ve been away?”

  “None,” he bit out, seeming affronted she would even ask. “But whether it was Rafe or some other man or some other reason, we were never going to last. You knew that, Imogen.”

  “Really?” That took her aback. “Well, I guess if you believe it, then it must be true.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Your optimism is appealing, but it’s delusional. We both knew, up fro
nt, that this was temporary.”

  “So Rafe is an excuse. You’re ready to end it, but didn’t have the guts to say so.”

  “Is there a reason this needs to be ugly? Yes,” he said, voice brutally hard and clear as crystal. “I’m ready to end it. I’m sorry if that hurts you, but yes. It’s over.”

  “Oh, you’re sorry? If you’ve hurt me? Well, I’m sorry every day that I’m even alive. I’ve been conditioned to take the lion’s share of blame in every confrontation or conflict. Do you realize that I’m going to walk out of here believing this was my fault? My fault you don’t want to make a commitment. That you aren’t capable of love. That you don’t want me. You hurt me, Travis. Every single day, it hurts to be this in love with you and know you don’t feel the same. Are you sorry for that?”

  He flinched, jaw pulsing. “Yes. And it only proves my point. You should leave and find someone who can give you the love you deserve.”

  “Wow,” she choked, thinking it ironic that she finally believed she did deserve it when he was telling her to look for it elsewhere. “I definitely will.”

  She hadn’t unpacked more than her hairbrush and makeup. It only took a moment to fill and close her carry-on with a snap that sounded very loud in the thick silence. Like a gunshot through the heart.

  “I’ll get a few things from the apartment, then go back to Greece. Rowan set up the guest cottage for me to come and go.” She lifted her head. “Don’t expect me to stay celibate this time. Don’t expect me to forgive you for the fact you won’t. This is really it. This one is on you.”

  * * *

  Travis went back to the party and only drank water, even though an urge to drink himself blind prickled his throat. He wasn’t his father. He wouldn’t be destroyed by a woman.

  The next morning, he packed her gown and jewelry on autopilot, taking care of what needed to be done exactly the way he had every other time his life had taken an unexpected dip or turn.

  He had told her the truth. This breakup was always going to happen. Maybe he had hurried it with his flare of jealousy, but even though he doubted she would ever cheat, the harder truth was that he couldn’t make her be faithful. He couldn’t make her stay.