An Heir Claimed by Christmas by Clare Connelly

Author:Clare Connelly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2020-09-08T12:54:28+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘YOU’RE NERVOUS.’

Her eyes lifted from her lap to his face, then shifted to the window behind him, and the view that sped past as the car moved. Her fingers were clasped in her lap, her features drawn. Annabelle Papandreo looked beautiful, wealthy and untouchable. Her blonde hair had been clipped to one side, and for their wedding she’d worn a stunningly ornate headband that invoked a nineteen-forties vibe. Her gown had been similarly timeless, art nouveau lace meeting silk, hugging her body all the way to the floor.

‘Is that silly?’ she asked.

He shook his head, finding it hard to look away from her face. Some time after boarding the flight, she’d taken all her make-up off and slipped into a change of clothes, far less glamorous than the wedding outfit but every bit as striking—a black linen singlet paired with a pair of silk trousers.

Dimitrios had found the flight a unique torment, his fingers itching to reach out and feel the different textures for himself.

‘It’s just been a big day,’ she pointed out, referring to the whirlwind of their brief morning ceremony, the lunch with his family and a few select friends—only those he thought she’d like best—and then the flight to Singapore.

The moment they’d stepped off his private jet and on to the tarmac, the sultry night heat had wrapped around them. Max hadn’t seemed to notice, nor mind, but Annabelle had fanned her face with a magazine as they’d walked, then turned the air-conditioning up in the limousine as soon as they were inside. It was like an ice cube now, but again, Max was impervious to the climate—he was fast asleep in his car seat, opposite them.

‘You did very well.’

She spun back to face him, her eyes scanning his face for sincerity. How could she doubt his words? It had been a big day, just as she’d said, yet in every way she’d carried herself with pride and grace. He had known she was nervous about seeing his brother and meeting his mother and yet she’d embraced them, taking time to speak to them at length, showing them who she was and making inroads into forming a genuine relationship with both of them.

There was nothing about her that had seemed unhappy, or had spoken of the unusual terms of their marriage. To anyone watching, they would have seemed like a perfectly normal couple on their wedding day.

If Zach thought Dimitrios’s about-face with regard to marriage was strange, he’d had the manners not to say as much on Dimitrios’s wedding day. But Dimitrios had decided a long time ago that he wasn’t interested in love or marriage—he’d seen what ‘love’ had done to his mother and it had been a salutary example of what he never wanted to become.

Which was why this marriage was so damned perfect.

As he’d advanced in years, one part of his plan hadn’t sat well for Dimitrios—the lack of children. He’d felt a yearning to continue his lineage, but he’d still been reconciled to not having that, given that he didn’t want a traditional marriage.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.