Claiming His Christmas Wife

“And Enrico, yes.”

“Can I open them? Per favore, Zio?” she asked very sweetly.

“Not yet.”

She gave a little pout of disappointment.

Italian? Imogen sank down on the sofa so she wouldn’t fall down.

“You never mentioned your sister,” she commented. All he’d told her was that he was close with his father, who lived in Charleston, and didn’t see much of his mother, but she also lived in that city.

“Gwyn’s mother married my father while I was at university, but passed away soon after. Gwyn and I didn’t grow up together.”

They seemed close now, if he was giving the woman access to his apartment when he wasn’t even here. He’d been cautious about letting his wife into his personal space, constantly picking up behind her and uptight that the few things she’d brought with her hadn’t fit with his existing decor. At the time, she had put it down to the shift from bachelorhood to living with someone, but she knew now it had been more than a territorial thing. He hadn’t wanted her there at all. It still made her throat raw to think of it.

“This is Antonietta.” He was still holding her. “We call her Toni.”

The little girl cupped her hand near his ear and whispered something.

The corner of his mouth twitched. “Toni Baloney.”

Toni giggled and hunched her shoulders up to her ears. “What’s your name?”

“Imogen. My sister used to call me Imogen the Imagination Magician.”

Toni widened her eyes in excited wonder. “I love that name.”

He didn’t just have family, but a fun and loving one. Huh. Why would he have felt a need to hide that from her?

“Come eat your apples and cheese, topolina,” Gwyn said as she returned, waving Toni toward the snack at the elegant glass-topped pedestal dining table.

Travis set the girl on her feet and she skipped across to climb up and kneel on a velvet-upholstered chair.

Imogen hadn’t been allowed at the grown-up table until she was twelve.

“The doorman let us up because you left notice that we would arrive today.” Gwyn came over with coffee, cream and sugar, then seated herself where she could watch Toni. “I thought that meant you remembered we were coming. I was going to text, but I got busy with the kids. If we’re imposing, I’ll ask Vito to move us to a hotel.”

“It’s one night. I forgot, that’s all.” Travis seemed to blame Imogen for his absentmindedness with the cool glance he flicked her way as he sat.

Imogen lifted her brows, wondering how he was going to explain her presence now that his worlds had collided.

He didn’t bother, only sat back with his black coffee. “Vito had meetings?”

After a beat of surprise, Gwyn nodded. She smiled at Imogen. “We just got in from Italy. My husband often has business in New York, so we make a stop here, adjust to the jet lag, let the kids leave fingerprints all over Zio’s furniture, then head to Charleston.”

“To see Travis’s father?”

“Henry, yes. And the bank has offices there. Vito checks in and works on and off while we visit Nonno. For the last few years, Henry has been coming to us for the holidays, but this year is his seventieth birthday. It’s right before Christmas and he’s having a party, so we came to him.”

“Sounds fun.” Imogen deliberately offered nothing about herself.

“It should be.”

Silence reigned as they all blew across coffee that was too hot to drink.

The corners of Gwyn’s mouth wore the tiniest curl. She was clearly dying to pry, but was far too polite to ask. Or knew Travis would talk when he was ready and not before. Imogen had come up against that perversely closed-off side of him herself. In fact, the things Gwyn had just told her were probably the most she’d ever learned about his personal life.

“Toni, do you see an elephant in this room?” Imogen turned her head to ask.

Gwyn snorted and almost spilled her coffee.

Toni sat up on her knees and swung her head this way and that. “No.”

“Mmm... My mistake. I thought there was one.”

Travis sent her a warning look.

“We’ve taken up both guest rooms, but the kids can come into our room if need be,” Gwyn said mildly.

“Is there an aquarium?” Imogen asked Toni. “Because I feel like someone is fishing.”

Gwyn had to scratch her nose to hide the laugh she suppressed.

Toni cocked her head, sensing opportunity. “We can pretend to fish in the pool.”

“It’s too cold, topolina,” Gwyn said. “When Papa gets back and Enrico is awake, we could maybe go to the indoor one downstairs. You and I are going to have a little sleep first, though. Soon as you finish your snack.”

“And Imogen?”

Imogen plucked at the pajamas she was wearing, certain that was what had prompted Toni’s question. “I’m going to nap, too, but by myself.”

Travis looked at Gwyn. “Would you have something that Imogen could wear when she wakes?”

“Of course. I’ll find something right now.”

* * *

Gwyn took Toni upstairs and Travis finished his coffee, watching Imogen while wishing for something stronger in his cup. He knew he should check his phone. He’d been ignoring it since walking out of that meeting yesterday. Finding Gwyn here reminded him he had a life beyond Imogen. A trip to Charleston in a few days for his father’s birthday and the family Christmas celebrations.

He couldn’t think of anything, however, except the woman who had had a way of consuming his thoughts from the moment he’d met her. She had walked into his brand-new offices here in New York four years ago, as he’d been expanding beyond Charleston, starting some of his most prestigious architectural projects to date.

She’d introduced herself as a writer for one of the cornerstone publications in New York and proceeded to interview him. Her auburn hair had rippled in satin waves as she’d canted her head at him, listening in a way that had made him feel ten feet tall.

“Let’s talk more over dinner,” he had suggested after an hour of growing ever more fascinated by her engaging curiosity and earnest little frowns. Her legs were lithe stems beneath a black miniskirt, propping up a notebook where her handwriting looped in big swirls and t’s that she crossed with a sweep of her slender wrist. Her breasts had looked to be the exact fit for his palms. Everything about her had looked like a perfect fit. She had been, not that he had had confirmation that first night. Dinner had turned into an invitation back to his old apartment, which was when she had confessed to being a virgin.

“At twenty?” he’d chided with skepticism. “How is that possible?”

“Probably because I don’t know what I’m missing,” she had shot back, laughing at herself yet surprising him into laughing, as well.

That quick wit, that unvarnished honesty, had convinced him she was exactly what she appeared—a journalism student from a good family with a bright mind and a cheeky wit that would keep him on his toes. There was absolutely nothing to dislike in that package.

The packaging had been the lie, of course. Mislabeled. Ingredients not as advertised. Definitely looking shopworn these days.

Finishing her coffee, she set down her cup, bringing him back to the present.

“You don’t want me here. I’ll go.” She looked around, frowning. She was probably looking for her purse, which was in the pocket of his overcoat. He’d hung it in the closet at the door. It could stay there for now.

“Where to?” he prompted. Goaded. He was fed up with her thinking she had options when clearly neither of them did.

She swallowed. “I’ll talk to my landlord—”

“No,” he cut in.

She turned a look on him that sparked with temper. “What do you want from me, Travis?”

“Let’s start with an explanation. Where did all my money go?” He waved at the fact her worldly possessions consisted of pajamas she hadn’t been able to pay for out of her own pocket. “Where did yours go?” She hadn’t been rich, but she hadn’t been destitute.

She blew out a breath and sagged into the sofa, pulling a tasseled cushion into her middle.

He braced, waiting to see if she would tell the truth or lie yet again. Wondering if he would be able to tell the difference.

“I was trying to save Dad’s business.”

“Publishing,” he recalled.

“Newspapers and magazines.” She gave him a pained smile. “Print media.”

He recalled what she’d said in the car. “‘The wrong horse.’”

“Such a dead one, yet I beat it like you can’t even imagine. Your money, my trust fund. Dad sold the house and liquidated anything that wasn’t already in the business. We threw every penny we had at it. Then he went into care, which was another bunch of bills. My name wound up on everything. I couldn’t declare bankruptcy while he was alive. It was too humiliating for him. We were pretending it was all systems go while I sold furniture and clothes and Mom’s jewelry to make ends meet. His cremation was the final straw. I was behind on rent and got evicted. I wasn’t really keeping up on friendships by then and owed money to the few friends I had left. I wanted to start over on my own terms, so I found something I could afford and that’s what I’m doing.”

“That roach-infested brothel is your idea of a fresh start? Why didn’t you come to me?”

“Oh, that’s funny,” she said with an askance look. “What would you have said?”

Everything he was saying now, but he wouldn’t have let her get to where she was passing out on the street from neglecting her health.

“You married me to get your hands on your trust fund. Didn’t you?” She had never admitted it, but he was convinced of it.

She hesitated very briefly before nodding, eyes downcast. Guilt? Or hiding something?

“I wanted access to it so I could help Dad.” She had the humility to shake her head and quirk her mouth in self-contempt. “Not exactly an economist over here. I knew better. Digital publishing was all I learned at school, which he thought was useless.” She shrugged. “I tried to convince him to start doing things online, but old dogs...” She smiled without humor. “It would have been too little, too late, even if he’d bought in.”

“So, you’re broke.”

“I’m in a hole so deep all I see is stars.”

“You’re telling me the truth? Because if it’s addiction or something, tell me. I’ll get you help.”

“I wish it was. There would be pain relief, at least. Escape.” Her smile was a humorless flat line.

He drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair, frustrated by what sounded like brutal honesty. Nevertheless, he muttered, “God, I wish I could trust you.”

“What does it matter if you do or don’t? I mean, thanks for the hospital, I guess. I’ll try to pay you back someday, when I can afford a lottery ticket and happen to win the jackpot, but—” she flicked a helpless hand in the air “—our lives won’t intersect after today, so...”

* * *

Her heart lurched as she said those words, trying to be laissez-faire about it.

He narrowed his eyes. “That would be nice if it were true, but I’ve just taken responsibility for your hospital bills. For you. What am I going to do? Turn you out on the street? In the middle of winter? I happen to possess a conscience.”

“Meaning I don’t?”

“It was pretty damned calculating, what you did.”

“You’re the one who set the terms of the prenup,” she reminded him. “That was all you. All I did was sign it.”

“And took the money after three weeks of marriage.”

“Oh, I should have given you my virginity for the bragging rights of saying I was once Travis Sanders’s lay of the day?” She blinked her lashes at him, pretending her shields were firmly in place when she was silently begging him to contradict her. To say she had meant more to him than that.

She had been willing to give it up without a ring in the heat of passion, if he would only remember. He was the one who had proposed and led her to believe he cared.

A muscle pulsed in his jaw. “I’m surprised you haven’t sold our story, if you needed money so badly.”

She pressed her lips together, but he was quick enough to read her expression.

“Considered it, did you? I cannot believe I thought we had a shot,” he muttered.

“Oh, did you?” She leaped on that. “Did you really? How about you step off your high horse a minute and be honest about your own motives. Why did you marry me?”

“You know why. You refused to sleep with me until I put a ring on it.”

“And you wanted in my pants so bad, you wanted bragging rights to my virginity so bad, you made our quickie marriage happen.” They’d known each other a week. “Then what? Did you take me home to meet this wonderful family of yours, all flushed with pride in your darling bride? You didn’t even tell me you had a sister.” She thumbed toward the stairs. “She hasn’t got a clue who I am. Does your dad?”

His stony expression told her that was a hard no.

“At no point did you think we had a shot.” The words were coming out thick and scathing, but they tore up her insides, sharp as barbed wire, seeming to affect her far more than him. “You were mortified that you’d succumbed to marriage. Every time I said, ‘Let’s go out,’ you said, ‘Let’s stay in.’ The one time we ran into someone you knew, you didn’t even introduce me. You didn’t just skip the part that I was your wife. You didn’t acknowledge me to them at all.”

His cheek ticked and he looked away, not offering an explanation, which scored another fresh line down her heart.

“You wouldn’t let me change my status online and said it was because you wanted me to yourself. Then you went to work every day, leaving me alone in that big apartment where I wasn’t allowed to touch anything.”

“You claimed to be writing for your father, if I recall. Why did I never see any of those articles?” So scathing.

Her face stung, but she wasn’t about to get into her father’s lack of love for her. One spurn was all she could relive at a time, thanks.

“You were planning our divorce before you said, ‘I do.’ That’s why you drew up the prenup. All you cared about was keeping the damage to your reputation at a minimum. You invested nothing in our relationship except what I took when I left, certainly not your heart. Our marriage was as much a transaction on your side as mine. I bruised your ego by walking out before you told me to leave, not your feelings. Tell me I’m wrong.”

Please. She silently begged him to give her a rosier view of their flash-in-the-pan romance. Her whole body tingled, ions reaching out for a positive against this negative charge consuming her.

“Fine,” he bit out. “You’re right. I knew it was a mistake even as I was saying the words.”

His words skewered into her. She swallowed, wishing she had died in the gutter, rather than survive to face this.

“You’re welcome for remaining your dirty little secret, then,” she snapped. “For what it’s worth, you’re one of thousands of mistakes I’ve made. Not unique or special at all.”

“You don’t know when to quit, do you?” he said in a dangerous voice. “Aside from the day you walked out, of course.”

“Oh, you started that. You know you did.”

“A husband is allowed to ask his wife why he needs to top up her credit card before it’s a month old,” he said through his teeth.

“Your exact words were, ‘I don’t care where it went.’ You didn’t want to know about my life any more than you wanted to share details about yours. I quit kidding myself at that point. It wasn’t a marriage if you were suffering buyer’s remorse. I did you a favor by walking out.”

“That’s one way to frame it.”

“Yeah, well, I keep trying to do you the favor of walking away again, but you keep forcing me to sit my butt back down. Why is that?”

“Because you owe me, Imogen.” He leaned forward, hand gripping the arm of his chair as though trying to keep himself in it.

“I owe a lot of people. Get in line.”

The sound of the elevator had them both holding their stare but clamming up while the animosity cracked and bounced between them.

A superbly handsome man appeared in a bespoke suit. Little sparkles came off him where snowflakes had melted across his shoulders and in his dark hair. He was clean-shaven, calm and confident, not taken aback in the least by the sight of an orphan in hospital pajamas huddling on Travis’s designer sofa.

“You must be Imogen,” he said with a heart-melting Italian accent, coming forward to take her hand in a gentlemanly shake. “No, don’t get up. Vittorio Donatelli. Vito, per favore.”

“Gwyn texted you?” Travis surmised.

“And the photographers downstairs inform me that Imogen is your wife. Congratulazioni,” he said to Travis with a blithe smile. “They asked for a comment. I told them I’m very happy for you, of course.”

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