The Christmas He Claimed The Secretary by Caitlin Crews

Author:Caitlin Crews [Crews, Caitlin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2022-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

TIZIANO FELT THE jolt go through Annie, and he wanted nothing more than to explore it, chase after it—but not with his brother looking on.

He had planned for this moment. He had known it would happen tonight. He’d sat in his brother’s office earlier, subjecting himself to one of the lectures that had been increasing in frequency and sturm und drang of late, knowing that this art opening would offer the best opportunity to flaunt his mistress directly at Ago and the Camerons. No more containing his behavior to the tabloids, and Ago could take it up with Everard Cameron himself if the old man had a problem with it.

As Tiziano very much hoped he would.

But now it was happening, and it was different from how he had imagined it.

Because he didn’t much care what Ago thought or what Everard Cameron was doing. All he found he could think about was protecting Annie.

Tiziano didn’t know when that had started. He was not, by nature, a protective man. Not for him the doting on others that seemed to occupy so much of some people’s time.

He and his brother had been taught to consider these things a weakness. Why dote on anyone? What mattered was duty.

But even if he hadn’t been raised to acknowledge and flout his own duty, he could not comprehend why he had such urges toward a woman he employed. Perhaps he did not pay her a salary, but then, he had always been significantly more old-school than people tended to believe, given how flamboyantly modern he made himself out to be when it suited him. The bottom line was that it made far more sense to him to house her and dress her and call her his mistress than to simply pay rent on a flat, as he knew some men did, and move various women in and out as his ardor cooled.

Possibly, having never done either before, he was treating Annie less like a run-of-the-mill mistress and more like a favorite. The way a notorious ancestor of his had treated an opera singer of some notoriety back in Venice in the 1800s, happy to leave his wife and children to rusticate in the country until he was forced to make appearances. Always against his will.

Tiziano found he understood.

Because everything would be going swimmingly if it weren’t for these feelings inside him that he could hardly make any sense of. If it weren’t for the way her shoulders fit so neatly in the curve of his arm, so that he was assaulted by her delicate scent each time he inhaled.

It made him wish he was a different man. The man he was pretending to be, in fact. It made him want to do things. And not the things he was normally associated with.

He was not surprised when his brother let out a short laugh.

He was equally stunned.

“‘In love?’” Ago repeated, in tones of disbelief. “You. Tiziano. In love? I doubt very much you know the meaning of the word.

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