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‘Because I do.’ She drained the rest of her coffee and put the mug back down on the table. ‘I realise that people have one-night stands all the time, but I’m not one of those people.’

His gaze roamed over her in a disturbingly sharp way. ‘Do you know that for certain? Have you ever had a one-night stand?’ He paused and his gaze narrowed yet again. ‘Have you even had sex full stop?’

* * *

Liberty’s gaze flared, her lovely face getting even pinker than it already was. ‘That’s an incredibly rude question. And I’m not answering it.’ She pushed her chair back abruptly and turned to the door. ‘If you’re not going to get a Christmas tree, then I’ll damn well get it myself.’

Kaius watched her storm out, heat still licking up inside him, irritating him. The whole conversation had irritated him. First the questions about Neve’s will, then that memory she’d somehow pulled from him. He’d been so annoyed that he’d been needlessly rigid about forbidding a Christmas tree.

A knee-jerk reaction that he shouldn’t have made, as had been the suggestion that she sleep with him. He pushed her too far. He’d very much said the wrong thing, and he was now angry with himself about it.

Neve had always hated overly emotional reactions, so he’d started practicing detachment almost as soon as he’d started living with her. His mind, in her opinion, was the best part of him, that’s why she’d adopted him. His incisive intelligence and his way with numbers, with money. Of course, later, when he’d turned eighteen, she’d come to appreciate other parts of him, but it was his mind first and foremost. Be brilliant, she’d told him. Be the best. Act as if you’re the smartest person in the room, because you are.

And that’s how he’d lived his life for the past twenty years.

Now, though, Liberty had arrived, and suddenly he was feeling things he shouldn’t, acting in ways that were unfamiliar, saying things he’d never normally say.

She is changing you.

No, that was absurd. She wasn’t changing him. She might have woken up his body, but nothing else. And as for these recalcitrant emotions that kept flooding through him, well, he’d deal with those. He’d marry Liberty, inherit Neve’s companies, and then he’d carry on her legacy, as she would have wanted.

He pushed back his own chair and rose from the table. Ten minutes later, after he’d cleaned up the breakfast dishes, he glanced into the living area to see where Liberty was, only to see through the huge windows, a small figure determinedly tramping through the snow towards the forest that lapped up to the edge of the fjord’s cliffs.

Oh, for God’s sake. She’d basically ignored him. And despite having nearly frozen to death the night before, she was back out there again, looking for her bloody tree, and in clothes that were in no way suited to the weather.

Fuck. He was going to have to go and get her, wasn’t he?

Kaius muttered another curse under his breath, then turned from the window. He went into the mudroom, put on some proper snow boots, gloves, and a down jacket—though he didn’t feel the cold much these days—then strode out of the house after her.

‘Liberty,’ he called as he approached her over the snow. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

She didn’t stop and she didn’t turn, her hair a blaze of gold in the icy winter sun. ‘I’m getting a bloody Christmas tree. What does it look like?’

‘Wait,’ he said forcefully.

Finally, she stopped and turned around. She was in the coat she’d had on the day before, an old blue one that was surely still damp, and her sneakers, which were definitely still damp. No gloves. She looked cold, too, except for the anger in her eyes. That was hot enough to melt the snow around her.

He had a sudden vision then, of those pretty amber eyes fixed on him as she lay beneath him, her golden hair spread over his sheets. Would her eyes burn like that with pleasure? With desire? Would she burn for him?

Neve never burned for you.

Neve never burned for anyone.

And you hated that she didn’t.

Yes, he had hated it. Once. But all of that had happened a long time ago, and he’d been so young. So naive. After she’d refused his gauche marriage proposal, he’d left for university in England, finding various ways to forget his heartbreak. He even forgot that he had a heart at all, eventually coming to see that those intense feelings he’d once had for her were merely a young man’s crush on an older woman. Problematic, possibly, but nothing more.

Liberty wouldn’t be cold like Neve. She’d be the opposite.

Desire kicked hard inside him, almost choking him. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d wanted anyone this badly. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d let himself want anything at all.

‘What?’ Liberty demanded, that pretty chin of hers lifting. ‘If you’re not going to help, you can go back into the house.’

Kaius caught his breath, and the words came out of him before he could think. ‘A kiss,’ he said. ‘I’ll get you a Christmas tree if you give me a kiss.’

Her eyes widened slightly. ‘A kiss?’

‘Just one.’ He couldn’t stop looking at the curve of her mouth. Would she taste sweet? Or would she taste of snow and ice the way Neve once had? Yes, she’d taste sweet, he decided, and hot, too. God…