This Christmas and Forever: A heartwarming anthology of billionaire holiday romances...

by Clare Connelly

“How do you know there’s anything more to it?”

  “I just do. So? What family stuff?”

  He kicked back in his chair, lacing his fingers behind his head and regarding her for a long moment before nodding slowly. “Okay, if you really want to know.”

  “I do.” She hadn’t even realized she’d been holding her breath.

  “My brother is getting married.”

  “You have four brothers?”

  He nodded. “And one sister.”

  “So one of your brothers is getting married. Isn’t that a good thing? I mean, you seem kind of pissed about it?”

  “Yeah.” He laughed. “That’s because his fiancé is my ex.”

  Something strange flared inside of Claudia. She didn’t want to analyse the dark emotion that overtook her senses, filling her with ice and fire all at once. “Your ex?”

  “Rhiannon,” he nodded.

  The name was vaguely familiar to Claudia. She tapped her fingertip against her cheek. “You were with her when I … back when…”

  “When you begged me to take your virginity?” He prompted, the words droll, as though he was enjoying her discomfort.

  “Yes.” She didn’t meet his eyes.

  “We broke up about a month after I left the UK.”

  “Why?” She didn’t let hope flare in her breast. It had nothing to do with her. That was stupid, immature vanity, a hopeless, blind vanity, speaking.

  “We weren’t well-suited,” he shrugged. “We should have realized sooner but we were friends, I suppose.”

  “How long were you together?”

  “Two years.”

  “Two years?” Okay, now she could name the emotion. Jealousy, unmistakable, fired through her.

  “You went out with the woman for two years and now your brother is marrying her?”

  “Apparently.”

  “What’s she like?”

  He shook his head with frustration. “She’s… does it matter?”

  “I’m curious.”

  He expelled a sigh. “She’s … fine. Nice. A paediatrician who loves children and desperately wants to have some of her own.”

  “And you didn’t want children?”

  “No.” His eyes glittered with something like determination. “I didn’t.”

  Claudia nodded slowly, but she didn’t meet his eyes when she asked her next question. She was lost to the image of the undoubtedly beautiful Rhiannon, who was also smart and professionally accomplished. Who definitely wouldn’t ‘waste’ her life tumbling out of nightclubs and getting photographed with different men every Saturday night. Jealousy chewed through her gut, and a deep sense of inadequacy flared inside of her.

  “Do you still care for her?”

  “Care for her?”

  “I mean, don’t you think it’s kind of a coincidence that you completely lost it at me because you think I’m in some kind of love triangle when actually, you are?”

  “I am not in a love triangle,” he contradicted.

  “Your brother is marrying your ex. What would you call it?”

  “A mistake,” he grunted.

  “Are they a good couple?”

  “I’ve never spent time with them.”

  “Maybe you should,” Claudia suggested thoughtfully. “Unless you plan on never seeing your brother again, you’re going to need to make your peace with it at some point.”

  “Perhaps,” he said with a shrug.

  “Not perhaps. Definitely.”

  “Not this Christmas though. I am going to eat that delicious pudding you made, and whatever else you want to feed me.”

  “You know, that sounds vaguely chauvinistic,” Claudia said with a laugh, banishing the dark thoughts of Rhiannon and her cleverness from her mind.

  “I cooked tonight,” he pointed out.

  “You ordered room service.”

  “Same thing.”

  Claudia couldn’t help the laugh that escaped her. “It really isn’t.”

  “So what are you making us on Christmas day?”

  Her heart twisted. No. It squeezed and plummeted and soared from her chest. It took on a life of its own. It hammered against her ribcage so hard she thought it might explode.

  Us.

  Such a tiny word with such enormous ramifications.

  Most of them good. Some of them horrifying.

  “Turkey,” she said, the word slightly unsteady. “And all the trimmings.”

  “A turkey, just for us?”

  “A small one,” she nodded. “And pudding with custard and egg nog, and fruit mince pies. We’ll go into Bath for the carols on Christmas Eve,” she said, getting carried away. “I always do that.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since I was at school. I was usually in the dorms over Christmas,” she said, and though there wasn’t a hint of blame in the statement, something like guilt and regret slid through him. “There were maybe ten of us left behind each year.” His remorse intensified. “So our headmistress, Mrs Burns, would organize for us to go to carols in the village. We’d do the late-night service, and then come back to the dorms and have a supper of non-alcoholic egg-nog and gingerbread, and stay up late chatting.” She sighed. “It was beautiful. And then, since I got to London, I always go to my local church, just down the street.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “You must have some family traditions.”

  She blinked at him with obvious confusion. “Why must I?”

  “Well, because, it’s a special time of year.”

  “Not for my parents.” She kept her heartbreak out of her voice.

  He was quiet for a moment, his eyes roaming her face thoughtfully. “I often wondered why you weren’t closer to your father.”

  She didn’t meet his eyes. “I’m different to him. Like you said.”

  “Yes.” He frowned. “But I also think you are like him, in many ways.”

  “Really?” Pleasure flickered in her chest.

  “Well, yes. Apart from your aversion to anything book-related.”

  She held her breath, fear spreading through her veins. “What do you mean? I like books.”

  “You like books?” He laughed. “When was the last time you read one?”

  “What? I read all the time,” she lied, the words thick with emotion.

  “What was the last book you read,” he challenged.

  “You know it wasn’t The Taming of the Shrew.”

  “That’s a play,” he laughed.

  Claudia’s cheeks flashed pink.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said softly, reading the shift of emotion in her eyes, seeing sadness where moments ago there’d been pleasure. “I’m saying that in spite of that you remind me of him. That you are smart like he was smart, and interesting, and funny.”

  Her heart flipped in her chest. She liked hearing him talk about her in that way.

  She loved it, in fact.

  “Perhaps it’s why I find you so easy to talk to.”

  “To yell at?” She supplied, the words still thready with the depth of her emotions.

  “I do have a bad habit of that,” he said softly. He expelled a sigh. “I never understood why he chose me as your guardian.”

  “He adored you.” She didn’t manage to keep her bitterness from showing but she softened it with a tight smile.

  “He loved you,” Stavros offered, understanding intuitively how she felt, wishing he could offer her something better. Something more concrete. “He was proud of you.”

  Claudia sucked in a breath and shook her head. “Don’t say that. You don’t need to lie.”

  Stavros’s stomach swooped. He hated that he had been lying. He hated that Christopher had never once spoken glowingly about Claudia. He portrayed her as a perpetual work in progress, and Stavros had believed that. Yet she’d achieved so much – in her own way.

  “You did a wonderful thing tonight.” He reached forward and laced his fingers through Claudia’s, squeezing her hand. “You have a real gift for fundraisin
g.”

  Her eyes were enormous when she lifted her gaze to his face. The compliment spread like warmed butter through her soul, filling all the gaps that years of never feeling good enough had caused.

  “Thank you.” A hoarse whisper.

  “I never really knew that about you.”

  “I think we’ve established there’s a lot you didn’t know about me.” She pointed out, thinking that the biggest secret of all was one he would never, ever find out. “You met my dad at college?”

  Stavros frowned a little at the quick conversation change. “Yeah. He was guest lecturing.”

  “And you were doing creative writing?” Claudia teased, truly surprised at the fact, though.

  “I’d been a huge fan of your father’s books all my reading life,” he said. “As a teenager I used to take them onto our yacht and read all day. I would have changed majors just to get in his class. Hell, I would have changed colleges,” he laughed.

  But a prickle was making its way sharply down Claudia’s spine. “You love to read?”

  “Yeah.” He shrugged. “I always have. I don’t get as much time now but as a child and a teenager I never wasn’t reading a book. Usually a Christopher La Roche.”

  Claudia’s smile was tight. “But you became friends.”

  “At first, I could barely speak in front of him. I was in awe.”

  “You?” Claudia’s disbelief was obvious.

  “What? Why is that hard to understand? The man was a legend. He redefined the horror genre in modern literature. Over nine of his books have been made into blockbuster films. He still comes in on the New York Times bestseller charts. He’s a goliath.”

  Claudia nodded, staring out of the window, watching as snow fluttered down, so beautiful, so whimsical.

  “Eventually I forgot about the legend and got to know him as simply Christopher. We had a lot in common. He was interested in investing and I had a knack for shares.” He shrugged.

  “He thought of you like a son,” she said, the words a little croaky.

  “More like a brother,” Stavros pointed out. “I was closer in age to your father than I am to you.”

  A strange mood had settled between them. A mood that was flat and heavy, that throbbed with awareness of facts, rather than sensuality.

  “Does that bother you?” She asked, lifting his hand to her lips and pressing a kiss to his fingertips.

  “Yeah.” A husky acknowledgement.

  “Why?”

  “Jesus, Claudia, because you’re almost young enough to be my daughter.”

  She laughed. “Not quite.”

  “I shouldn’t be doing this.” A muscle jerked in his cheek.

  “You’re not doing it alone,” she pointed out, squeezing his hands. “Besides, it’s too late for regrets.”

  “You’re right about that.” He stood up, his eyes glowing with promises and something else. Something like acceptance. “Come, Claudia. Let’s go back to bed.”

  She stood slowly, drawn upwards by magnetic force, and she smiled. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  Chapter 11

  IT WAS STILL SNOWING, early the next morning when Claudia woke. She stretched, her body strangely fulfilled, muscles aching, heart squeezing. She brushed against something warm and flipped over, smiling when she saw Stavros.

  In repose, like this, he was like a gentle giant. His harsh, angular face was somehow less imposing and Claudia leaned forward and pressed a kiss against his nose, then a kiss, smiling when he made a grunting noise and went to swat her away.

  She caught his fingertips and drew one deep into the moistness of her mouth. His eyes jerked open and then, he relaxed visibly, smiling as he ran his eyes over her face, conquering every dip in her features as she had just been doing to him.

  “Good morning,” she murmured, lying back down beside him.

  He folded her under his arm, bringing her to his chest, so that she could hear the rhythmic pounding of his heart, the good, steady beating.

  “This is a nice way to wake up,” he said, the words thickened with sleep and something like emotion. “How do you feel?”

  The question was so sweet, so unexpectedly gentle; how could it not breathe promises across her heart? How could it help but fill her with hopes for something beyond this? For more than what they were doing?

  She pushed the hope aside.

  Stavros Aresteides was too astute. Eventually he would realise that she never read anything, not a Facebook status update, not a headline. He would realise that she didn’t send texts or write shopping lists.

  And then he would know how stupid she was. And he would look at her with pity and sympathy and she couldn’t bear it. The thought scraped into her chest and hollowed her out, and she found it almost impossible to breathe as the suffocating realization fell over her that she must walk away from him after Christmas.

  “I’m hungry,” she said, shifting away from him a little.

  “Agape? Are you okay?”

  Shoot. She had to do a better job of pretending. “Yeah.” She grinned down at him. “Just starving.”

  “So I have finally found the way to your appetite,” he teased, pushing up onto his elbows and kissing her lightly. “This is good news.”

  Her heart squeezed. “Food.”

  “Yes, food.” But he deepened the kiss and she groaned into his mouth, needing more, wanting more of him always.

  When he pulled away, she ached with disappointment. She watched as he stepped out of bed and lifted the phone receiver to his ear, placing a room service request in rapid fire terms then smiling down at her.

  Claudia could have stared at him all day. That was, in and of itself, the warning she needed to galvanise her limbs. She stepped out of bed and reached for a robe, wrapping it around her frame and moving into the kitchen area. She podded through two strong, black coffees, and took hers to the window. Hyde park was covered in snow. Ironically, Winter Wonderland seemed out of action for the moment, the rides held still, the gates locked. Was it just too early to open? Or had they closed it because of the snow?

  It was beautiful, anyway. Twinkling lights shimmered in the distance and an enormous Christmas tree peered above the others, an angel on its top making her smile and think of her own Christmas star.

  “Stavros?” She turned around, her eyes pinning to him the moment he walked out of the bedroom. “I just realized something. Something important.”

  “What is it?” He was instantly alert, concern obvious in his features.

  “Your tree doesn’t have an angel! Or a star!”

  “My tree?”

  “The Christmas tree at Barnwell.” She shook her head. “I don’t know how I didn’t realise at the time,” she lied, remembering how completely distracted she’d become by the image of being taken over his knee and spanked across the bottom.

  “I suppose you were just focusing on the heirloom ornaments,” he supplied, but the twinkle in his eye showed that he knew what had been responsible for derailing her thoughts.

  “Yes, I must have been.” She grinned back. “We have to get a star.” She tilted her head to the side. “I have a beautiful one, at my place. We could stop there on the way out of town.”

  His eyes narrowed and she felt his tension ratchet up a notch or ten. “No, let’s buy one for Barnwell,” he said with an air of casual unconcern. “The house should have a star.”

  “Why doesn’t it?”

  “It used to,” he said, grabbing his own coffee from the bench and coming to stand beside her. “But one year, Benedictus and Calista decided to play catch with it.”

  Claudia winced at the image of such wanton distraction.

  “It broke into a million little pieces of glass.”

  “Oh, no! Please tell me it wasn’t like the decorations.”

  He nodded. “Part of the same set.”

  “Oh! Such a waste. How beautiful it would have been.”

  “We’ll find another,” he said, with the promise of so m
any things beyond the star that her heart skidded in her chest.

  “Not like that,” she shook her head.

  She looked up at him and for a moment had the feeling he was going to say something. Something unconnected to the star, or to Christmas. There was a seriousness on his face that shifted everything inside of her.

  But then, the bell rang, and he relaxed. “Room service.”

  She watched him cross the room, his stride long and powerful, even in a setting such as this.

  A bell hop stood on the other side, dressed in the hotel’s uniform. He wheeled the trolley through but Stavros dismissed him then, before he could set the table.

  “I’ll do it.” Stavros nodded, waiting until they were alone again before placing items on the table top, including two newspapers.

  It was a simple, normal gesture but it did something funny to Claudia’s breathing. A newspaper to her was like a loaded gun – especially with Stavros beside her. She could fool most people by flicking to the fashion magazine and looking at the pictures, but not Stavros.

  He was too watchful.

  Too attentive.

  She took the seat opposite, sipping her coffee, ignoring the paper. Or trying to. It was a loaded bomb; she could hear its resolute ticking.

  And yet, strangely, it didn’t explode. They ate together, and it was relaxed and easy, and Claudia truly thought she’d dodged a bullet. Until all the food had disappeared and Stavros cleared the plates to the benchtop and then kicked back in his seat, spreading the newspaper wide in front of him.

  “I might have a shower,” Claudia said, over brightly, still ignoring the newspaper.

  “What’s the rush?” He asked. “We have all day. Sit. Have another coffee. Read the paper with me.”

  “The paper?” She laughed, a brittle sound of desperation. “Newspapers are so boring.” It was completely the wrong thing to say. She knew it the second she’d uttered the words. She’d erred. She’d brought his attention to the newspaper when she could easily have sidestepped the whole issue.

  Her worries had loomed so large in her mind that she’d inadvertently thrown them in his face. She cringed inwardly, wondering why no one had yet invented a speech-unsayer machine, a way to wipe words out of someone’s memory.

  Stavros had heard, and something passed over his features.