Page 41 of After-Hours Heir

She nearly laughed when she looked up at him because that was actually how it felt. Like her taxes had come due in a very big way.

She was having a baby. She had married Christos Onassis.

“I’m having a moving company go to your place and pack up everything you might need. Your furniture, of course will stay behind.”

“Oh. Of course. Why would I want my furniture?”

“Did you not find the suite you were just in to your liking?”

“It’s very nice, I’m sure. But it has nothing to do with me.”

“Perhaps you would like one on the second floor. Or the third? There are infinite rooms for you to choose from.”

“Which is farthest from yours?”

“The third floor it is,” he said. “You will have a bathtub in a bathroom with all glass walls. It overlooks the city below. I imagine it’s quite evocative.”

“You don’t know?”

“I’m not given to long, scenic baths.”

“Then, what’s the point? What’s the point of any of the excess?”

“I can have it. And so I do.”

Gladiators in the arena…blah-blah-blah.

The usual Christos soliloquy.

“You know that nurse offered to rescue me.”

“And you didn’t take her up on it?”

“I’m here of my own free will,” she said, if for nothing else than to remind herself of that, because she had felt vulnerable just moments before, and she badly wanted that vulnerability to go away.

Because it hadn’t been a wedding, not really. And this was a marriage only for the sake of the baby. Except even that got tangled and twisted around in her head.

Because he wasn’t going to be the sweet, loving father that she’d had.

But still, you made the best choice possible for the baby. You protected the publishing company. You’re making sure there are no ugly custody battles.

It was true. She had protected herself and the child in the best way she could think to. And there was no point second-guessing it now.

“I’ll just go to my jail cell, then,” she said.

“I thought you were intent on making it clear you were here of your own free will?”

Their eyes caught and held, and she found it difficult to breathe.

Why was it so complicated? It should be very simple. Simply put, he was the most aggravating man she had ever known. He was borderline heartless. And yet all of that was tangled around that relationship they’d spent six months having over text. The fact that she was having a difficult time joining that up with the man in front of her.

But what she did feel?

It was the heat. In spite of everything.

She really did need a reprieve.

“Well. You can have all my things brought to me later.”