Husband for the holidays, p.1
Husband for the Holidays, page 1
In so many ways, this was her dream come true. Could she really complain if it wasn’t exactly perfect? “Yes. I will marry you, Konstantin.”
“Good.” He slid the cool ring onto her finger, then looped his arms behind her.
Eloise’s hands were on his lapels, quivering with pleasure at having this right to touch him.
She looked up at him, expecting him to kiss her, but he only caressed the edge of her jaw with his bent finger.
He dipped his head into her throat and nuzzled his lips against her skin.
She gasped and shivered. Her nipples stung and her knees grew weak.
His breath pooled near her ear, fanning the arousal taking hold in her. This was surreal. Too perfect. Like a Christmas miracle. Not that she believed in such things, but maybe it was?
Canadian Dani Collins knew in high school that she wanted to write romance for a living. Twenty-five years later, after marrying her high school sweetheart, having two kids with him, working at several generic office jobs and submitting countless manuscripts, she got The Call. Her first Harlequin novel won the Reviewers’ Choice Award for Best First in Series from RT Book Reviews. She now works in her own office, writing romance.
Books by Dani Collins
Harlequin Presents
Innocent in Her Enemy’s Bed
Awakened on Her Royal Wedding Night
Marrying the Enemy
Four Weddings and a Baby
Cinderella’s Secret Baby
Wedding Night with the Wrong Billionaire
A Convenient Ring to Claim Her
A Baby to Make Her His Bride
Bound by a Surrogate Baby
The Baby His Secretary Carries
The Secret of Their Billion-Dollar Baby
Diamonds of the Rich and Famous
Her Billion-Dollar Bump
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.
Husband for the Holidays
Dani Collins
For Doug, my husband for holidays and all the rest of the days in the last thirty-plus years. Happy anniversary!
Contents
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
EPILOGUE
EXCERPT FROM HIS WEDDING DAY REVENGE BY KIM LAWRENCE
PROLOGUE
Seven years ago...
THE DOOR CLOSED behind her brother and Eloise Martin was left alone with the enigmatic Konstantin Galanis.
Her seventeen-year-old heart began to pound. Not with fear. Not exactly. Ilias was only running to the corner for eggnog and would be back in five minutes, but she was still overcome by something between awe and dread, as though she’d been left alone with a tiger and the promise that he doesn’t bite.
Like heck. From what she’d read of his business acumen, Konstantin picked his teeth with the bones of his enemies every morning.
He was king of the jungle magnificent, too. He wore a stylish knitted pullover in ivory with brown suede patches on the elbows and the tops of his shoulders. His jeans were black, matching his short boots. His hair was cut short around his ears and was rakishly windswept on top. Given it was late afternoon, a hint of shadow was coming in on his jaw, framing his somber mouth and accentuating the hollows in his cheeks. His brows were strong thick lines over eyes that were cast down to ignore her in favor of his phone.
This crush of hers was silly. Childish. She knew it was, but she’d never been able to shake it. While her friends swooned over a cute actor or a boy band star, she secretly took screenshots of Konstantin from news releases and imagined a world where she was part of his life.
It was so immature! Especially when she was looking at him now and all she felt was intimidated and mesmerized.
He must have sensed her staring. His spiky lashes lifted and his dark brown gaze snared hers. Her pupils dilated in reaction. The lights on the tree suddenly seemed to paint the whole room in psychedelic reds and blues and golds and greens.
Quit gawking, she ordered herself and shakily turned back to the tree she was supposed to be decorating.
She didn’t allow herself to look over her shoulder. He’d probably gone back to reading his phone, but her acute awareness of him had her imagining she felt his gaze traveling down her back and bottom and legs. She grew clumsy as she took each ornament from its case and looped it onto a branch.
“Ilias said you came to New York to settle some business with him.” Nerves made her voice off-key and sharp.
Silence, except for the music switching to “Santa Baby.”
She looked over at him.
He was looking at her, which made her pulse hitch.
“Yes,” he replied.
“I don’t...” She cleared her throat, feeling extra awkward. “I know that Galanis is a freight and shipping enterprise, but I don’t know what you do there.” She had the impression it was more involved than managing an inherited fortune the way her brother did.
“I oversee it. We’re expanding into media and tech so it’s being rebranded as KGE.”
“You run it by yourself?” She hung the next ornament and glanced over.
“I have employees.”
He made her feel gauche, quirking his mouth in that ironic way.
“I meant that it sounds like a lot to shoulder for one person.” He was twenty-five, same as Ilias, even though he projected an air that was light-years ahead of everyone on the planet in maturity and life experience. “I only wondered if you have brothers or sisters who help?” Ilias had never mentioned any siblings and gossip sites were distressingly vague when it came to Konstantin’s personal life.
“No,” Konstantin replied.
“Other family?” His grandfather had died a few years ago.
“No.”
This was going well. “Pets?” she asked facetiously.
“No,” he pronounced dryly. “What do you really want to know? How I came to live with my grandfather? I don’t talk about it.”
Well, that was clear enough, wasn’t it?
“I wasn’t trying to be nosy.” She ignored the sting of his less than subtle rebuff and hung another ornament, this one shaped like an icicle. The heat in her cheeks should have caused it to melt into a puddle on the floor. “You and Ilias have been friends forever.” Since their boarding school days in England. “But he’s never told me much about you.”
Ilias had rarely brought his friend around. Aside from early glimpses over the tablet, Eloise had only seen Konstantin in person a handful of times. This was the first time in well over five years that she’d spoken to him in person, but she’d been idolizing him from the first time she heard his voice.
“Good.”
“What? I mean, pardon?” She had forgotten what they were talking about.
“I’m glad he doesn’t gossip about me. I’m a private person.”
Okay, then.
She stifled a sigh and looked toward the door. Was Ilias milking the cow and growing the nutmeg himself? What was taking him so long?
She moved to the dining table and started to carry one of the chairs toward the tree.
“What are you doing?” Konstantin was beside her in three long strides, sending a jolt of electricity through her blood.
“I’m a shortcake.” She was pointing out the obvious. It was the bane of her existence that she was barely five feet tall, especially at times like this when she found herself staring into the middle of a man’s chest, feeling at every disadvantage because of her size. “I can’t reach the top branches.”
“I’ll do it. Show me what you want.” He replaced the chair, body almost brushing hers, fritzing her brain cells.
He moved to the tree and waited with bored expectation.
“I’m not one of those people with a rigid set of rules around how the tree looks.” She made herself move closer even though she was walking right up to the tiger with his razor-sharp claws and giant teeth. “I just pick something from the box and stick it in a bare spot.”
It wasn’t rocket science, but he took the frosted globe from her hand, held it near a top branch, then looked at her again.
“Sure.” She shrugged.
A snowflake went next, then a snowman. Each time, he checked with her before he looped the string around the branch.
“Have you never decorated a tree before?” she asked with bemusement.
“No.”
“I guess that shouldn’t surprise me. Mom hasn’t hung her own decorations in years. If I hadn’t come to spend the holidays with Ilias, he probably wouldn’t bother, either. I like doing it, though. Put this one here.” She extended the reindeer as high as she could.
His fingers brushed hers as he took it.
They were standing really close. Close enough that she caught the faded scent of his aftershave and the traces of the rum he’d taken straight because they
The music switched to Mariah Carey crooning “All I Want for Christmas Is You.”
As Eloise looked up at him, Konstantin looked down at her and their gazes tangled. The world tilted and Eloise fell into an abyss.
Oh. Something happened within her. She had always felt giddy and nervous around him. Awestruck. She thought he was beautiful and compelling and she had always longed for him to like her. To notice her.
She hadn’t realized it would be like this, though. She was old enough that she garnered sexual attention. Sometimes it was flattering, other times unwelcome.
It had never felt reciprocal. Not until now. The sensation was like an implosion that compressed heat into her, then expanded in an all-over blush of pleasure.
Konstantin looked at her the way a man looked at a woman and whatever cocoon she’d been occupying was suddenly too confining. She wanted to break out and step out and open herself. She felt fragile as a butterfly, but weighted, too. As though her blood were made of molasses.
That’s what his eyes were made of, she thought distantly: dark gold bittersweet molasses. And his mouth...
Her heart fluttered as she willed him to kiss her.
The keypad beeped and the lock hummed. Ilias called out, “They didn’t have the good kind. We’ll have to make do.”
Konstantin moved to the table where he’d left his phone and pocketed it, then met Ilias in the foyer.
“I have to get back to Athens.”
“What? Why?”
Ilias’s shock echoed hers. She moved closer to eavesdrop, hearing the rustle of Konstantin’s overcoat as he slipped it on. His voice lowered, but she heard his rumbled words.
“Your sister is cute, but I don’t want to encourage her.”
Oh, Gawd.
She covered her face, mortified that she’d misinterpreted that moment and made such a fool of herself that Konstantin couldn’t even stick around to face her.
“I’d hoped she’d grown out of that.” Ilias’s voice held humor. “Thanks for not making me call you out for pistols at dawn. We’ll talk soon.”
The door closed and she wanted to run into her room and hide. She made herself go back to the tree and pretend she hadn’t overheard anything.
“That looks good,” Ilias said behind her. At least he was kind enough not to tease her.
“I think so,” she lied, refusing to look at him. She hated this tree. The whole season was ruined. Based on how sick she felt, she doubted she would ever enjoy Christmas again.
CHAPTER ONE
Present day...
THE TWELVE DAYS of Christmas was turning into twelve nights of acute anxiety.
Eloise glanced again to be sure she had the right name on the present and knocked on the door of the Manhattan high-rise apartment.
A woman in silk slacks and a cowl-neck sweater answered the door. Her blond hair was in a ponytail, but the loose, messy kind that had been teased to look casual. Her makeup was fresh enough to signal she had plans for the evening. She gave Eloise’s elf costume a pithy once-over and sighed.
Eloise knew what an atrocity it was. Even the smallest uniform had been too big for her and the fabric was so cheap static made it cling in all the wrong places. Plaits of orange yarn protruded from either side of her green bent cone hat behind pointed ears. The whole thing was probably askew because the yarn was itchy and she kept flicking it away from her face. Fake fur trimmed the green vest she wore over a long-sleeved turtleneck of red-and-white stripes. Her green skirt fell to mid-thigh and ended in triangles adorned with bells. Her legs were made to look like candy canes complete with shoes that turned up at the toes.
She was a caricature looking at a version of the affluent person she used to be.
“Good evening,” she said with a polite smile. “I believe the doorman announced me? You ordered Twelve Days for Noah?”
“My sister-in-law did. She must be mad at me.” The woman turned to call out, “Noah? There’s someone here to see you.”
“Again?” A four-year-old boy ran to the door in his pajamas.
“Hi, Noah!” Eloise crouched and dug deep for a voice that was playful and filled with the magic and wonder of the season. “I’m Merrilee. I think you met Rocket yesterday? I’m another one of Santa’s helpers. He asked me to bring you this.” She offered the gift.
“Cool!” He grabbed the gift. “Can I open it?” He was already retreating back into the apartment.
“Say thank you first,” the woman said in a harried voice.
“Thank you,” Noah called back, but he was gone.
“See you tomorrow,” Eloise said as she stood, but the door was already shutting in her face. “Merry Christmas,” she added, faint and facetious.
She might once have been as rich and well-dressed as that woman, but she had never been that awful to people who were just trying to make ends meet. She had definitely taken for granted living in places like this, though. And having plans on Tuesday night and being showered with gifts just because.
She dragged her oversized velvet sack full of gifts back to the elevator. It was affixed to a square of wood on casters and was worse than walking a dog, wandering every direction and clipping her heel when she least expected it.
Once in the elevator, she dug for the next parcel, checking the time and the address on her phone. The building was only a few blocks away, but dragging this cloth bag through the streets was a lot harder than it looked. Snow clogged up the casters and—
Wait. Were there two kids at this next address? She pawed deeper into the bag, vaguely aware the elevator had halted and the doors opened to the lobby. This one? She turned the gift over inside the bag.
“Up or out?” a gruff male voice asked with tested patience.
That voice.
She jerked her attention upward and recognition crashed over her along with a hormonal rush of yearning that nearly took out her knees.
Oh, my God.
Horror followed because she did not want Konstantin Galanis to see her like this.
He wasn’t even looking at her. His profile was every bit as remote and compelling as she remembered, every bit as dismissive as he stood to the side, holding the open door to give her room to exit while he looked toward the front doors of the building.
He was as impossibly good-looking as she remembered, too, broodingly handsome with his black hair and stern brow and strong freshly shaved jaw. His overcoat hung open over a cranberry-colored jacket, a pleated shirt and tuxedo trousers.
Did he live in this building? Or—
He started to turn his head, probably wondering what was taking her so long. She ducked her head in panic, wanting to dive into this giant sack of hers and disappear. Hunching her chin into her chest, she scurried past him, sack veering uncontrollably behind her.
“Hey. How’d that go?” the overly friendly doorman asked her as he brought her coat and boots from his parcel shelf behind his desk.
“Fine.” Horrible. Worst night ever and she had some doozies to compare to.
“Are you coming back tomorrow?” He was mid-twenties, same as her. His smile invited her to linger and chat, but she didn’t have time. Or inclination.
“Depends on the schedule. I’m a spare, covering for whoever calls in, but it’s only Day Four. I’m sure I’ll be back here at some point.” As she spoke, she hurried to toe off her silly shoes and zipped into her knee-high boots, then shrugged on her coat, still feeling as though Konstantin were standing over there staring at her when he had definitely already forgotten about her and was twenty stories up by now.
“Let me give you my number. Maybe we can have a drink—” The doorman’s expression changed into one that was more professional. “I’m sorry, sir. Is there a problem with the elevator?”
Eloise glanced up from tucking her curly shoes into the sack, realizing that Konstantin was still here in the lobby, still holding the doors open while he stared at her with a thunderstruck look on his face.
No! Her stomach curdled. She ducked her head again, skipped the switch of hat and finding her gloves. She didn’t even belt her coat before she yanked the sack toward the door, desperate to get away before—
