His Scandalous Christmas Princess by Caitlin Crews

Author:Caitlin Crews
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2020-08-12T16:08:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE WIFE HE’D never wanted and shouldn’t have noticed much now he had her...was driving him mad.

It was the morning of New Year’s Eve. As was his time-honored tradition, Griffin was chasing out the old year with the kind of punishing workout he usually reserved for whipping himself into shape after disappearing into too much debauchery for too long. Who could have predicted that a spate of abstinence would make the particular punishment he doled out to himself on this day...worse?

He ran faster, as if—with enough intensity and speed—he could outrun it.

Her.

It was one of the island’s rare stormy days, keeping him cooped up inside when he would have much preferred to run up and down the hill from the palace to the beach. He liked the palace’s private access road that ensured he could test himself as he pleased without causing a public commotion. He liked to tell himself bracing stories about his desire to pit himself against the elements, and that wasn’t entirely untrue.

But a deeper truth was that his house had never felt so small, when he knew full well it could happily sleep eighteen.

Because Melody was everywhere. Even here, in the gym he doubted she’d set foot in, he was sure that he could catch her scent in the air. Or hear a hint of her laughter.

She was a ghost, haunting him wherever he went. And the worst part of that was that she was not dead like the others who called his name on dark nights. She was fully alive, flesh and blood, and living under the same roof.

“I was given to understand that this would be a sophisticated arrangement,” he’d said coldly one night.

His nightly ritual of sitting in his study, brooding out the windows, and not drinking himself into oblivion because he was past that now he was married, had been interrupted. Again.

By the unsolicited appearance of his wife.

Griffin had not been pleased to discover that she did not need to be guided around the house, carefully ushered from room to room—and, more importantly, more easily left in said rooms. It turned out she could find her way on her own, which meant she...did.

“I think it would be difficult to get more sophisticated than the Idyllian Royal Palace,” Melody had replied airily, standing there in the doorway as if she intended to become a fixture. “Isn’t that, more or less, the definition of royalty? Sophistication by default and decree?”

“I was referring to our marriage.” And the sound of his own, tight voice hadn’t helped Griffin any. His bride was an onslaught all her own. “You have an entire wing of the house. Why aren’t you in it?”

“You know why not.”

She’d smiled at him, sweet and guileless the way she always did, though he knew better, now.

Melody might look like an angel, but she wasn’t one.

Or more precisely, she had no desire to remain one.

“I have already told you that there will be no repeat of that unfortunate night in the courtyard,” he’d told her with all the suppressed outrage he had in him.

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