The Mills & Boon Ultimate Christmas Collection. Kate Hardy

you could survive grief. She could survive pain.

      She could survive being alone.

      She stood, walking to the garage, where she knew she would find the driver whom Andres had been using the past few weeks.

      She saw him standing in there, by the car, obviously waiting for anyone who might need a ride.

      He pushed away from the car, lifted his head. “Princess?”

      “I need you to take me into town. I need to see Julia Shuler. Can you help me find her?”

      * * *

      It was not the best thing to be drunk on your wedding day. Hell, it probably wasn’t the best thing to be drunk on Christmas Day. Christmas morning, if he were being completely precise. But he had not been able to find Zara after their confrontation last night, and so he had gone into his brother’s library and made liberal use of the Scotch.

      He was waiting for the pain, the headache to hit. Right now the buzz was all that lingered.

      She would come today, he was confident in that. He had made a mistake last night, he knew that. He had gone one too far in using that woman to hurt Zara.

      He had put off touching her for as long as possible, and when he had heard footsteps in the hallway he had grabbed her and pulled her into his embrace, kissing her. Deeply. Passionately. So that no one who bore witness could miss it.

      He wasn’t sure what he had expected, but he had not expected the repulsion that had crawled over his skin. He didn’t want this other woman. She was beautiful, and yet he didn’t want her. Did not want to taste her lips, did not want her lipstick lingering on his flesh.

      And when Zara had seen him...

      He had never known such regret. Not even when he had been confronted with the pictures of himself and Francesca.

      But it had been too late, and he had done what he always did. He had lashed out and hurt her. He had doubled down on the reasoning behind his actions. His brain justifying himself all while his mouth issued the vilest insults to the person he should be prostrating himself before, begging for forgiveness.

      He had felt so desperate to disappoint her now instead of later. Had felt so compelled to make her hate him early so that he had nothing to try and live up to. So that he wasn’t surprised when she left.

      What he hadn’t counted on was the hurt in her eyes. His mother had never faced him after that final day. She had simply left. His father had met him with rage only. Kairos had had kind of a quiet acceptance about him, but had stood firm in the stance that they were brothers and nothing would break their bond.

      Zara had made it very clear that their bond was broken. She had faced him down with anger, as his father had done. But there was more to it than that. It was a righteous anger, and not for herself...for him. Because she had expected that he was better. Truly.

      He realized right then that his parents never had expected more from him.

      He had willingly disappointed them, because that was living down to their expectations. Zara was the only one who had truly expected better.

       She wants things from you that you can’t give. You’re better off without her. Better off without all this.

      His heart burned, calling him a liar.

      Kairos came down the steps of the church, dressed in a tux. “Where is your bride? The wedding starts soon.”

      “I expect she’ll be here.”

      “What have you done?”

      “Nothing out of the ordinary.”

      “So,” Kairos said, “something terrible.”

      Andres let out a derisive laugh. “It doesn’t matter. She doesn’t have anywhere else to go. She’ll be here. She has no other choice.”

      “You are a fool,” his brother said, the venom injected into his words a shock. “I have watched you squander yourself for years but I thought that you would learn. I thought you would not waste this.”

      “Waste what?” Andres asked, the words coming out in a roll of fog in the cold, snowy air. “My forced marriage?”

      “She loves you,” Kairos said, his voice low, vibrating with rage. “It is so clear to anyone who takes the time to look. Have you not?”

      Andres’s stomach tightened, regret lancing him like a sword. “I know.” She would not love him now though. Not anymore. Of that he was certain.

      “And still you betray her?” Kairos looked bleak. “You had the chance to have a woman look at you as she does...and you threw it away?”

      “Attend to your own marriage and the lack of love in it and leave mine alone.”

      Kairos stepped forward, gripped the lapels on Andres’s jacket and backed him against the church wall. “Do not speak of my marriage. You do not know what you’re treading on.”

      “But you feel free to speak to me?”

      “Yes. Because if I had a wife who looked at me the way she looks at you...”

      “What? You’d do your very best to make sure she stopped?”

      “Tabitha and I are not in love. We never have been.”

      “Perhaps you could have been.”

      “This,” Kairos said, “is not about me. I am not the one who is supposed to be married in five minutes, has hundreds of guests in attendance and yet has no bride.”

      “She will be here.”

      “You had better hope so.” Kairos turned and walked back into the church, closing the sanctuary doors behind him and leaving Andres outside in the snow.

      But she didn’t show. The snow began to fall harder, the temperature dropping as the day wore on. He imagined that people had left the church by now, spilling out the other entrance, leaving him alone here at the back, in the yard that bordered the cemetery and the woods.

      He took a deep breath, but rather than making him feel refreshed, the frigid air let a burning, searing ache into his chest that he could scarcely breathe around. It was unendurable, unending.

      And still, he stood and waited, even though he knew she would never appear. Even though he knew she wasn’t going to come. He had done it. He had tested her feelings for him, and he had broken them.

       Isn’t it what you wanted?

      He’d thought so. Had thought he would feel blessed relief at being released from her. From her expectations, if not her presence.

      But he felt nothing like relief. He felt ruined.

      Wasn’t that the sick, sad thing about a man intent on self-destruction? He was bleeding out, and desperately wishing he could stop it. Even though he’d inflicted the wound. It was too late. All he could do was stand here, dealing with the consequences that he had earned. Consequences he had been aiming for. Consequences he didn’t want.

       You’re in a hell of your own making.

      Zara had told him that. Zara had been right.

      But he was just so tired. So tired of wanting things and being denied. It was easier not to want them. Easier not to try. But Zara... Zara made him want. She made him think that it might be possible to have a life. To have love. A marriage.

      There had been little windows of time where he’d been able to imagine forever with her. Where he had let himself dream of children, of her looking at him with love in her eyes every single day. But the more he wanted it, the more terrifying it became. The most beautiful dreams had a tendency to morph into the foulest of demons.

      So he’d attempted to exorcise this demon before it had gotten him. But now he regretted it. And it was too late.

      With