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“Good.”

“What? I mean, pardon?” She had forgotten what they were talking about.

“I’m glad he doesn’t gossip about me. I’m a private person.”

Okay, then.

She stifled a sigh and looked toward the door. Was Ilias milking the cow and growing the nutmeg himself? What was taking him so long?

She moved to the dining table and started to carry one of the chairs toward the tree.

“What are you doing?” Konstantin was beside her in three long strides, sending a jolt of electricity through her blood.

“I’m a shortcake.” She was pointing out the obvious. It was the bane of her existence that she was barely five feet tall, especially at times like this when she found herself staring into the middle of a man’s chest, feeling at every disadvantage because of her size. “I can’t reach the top branches.”

“I’ll do it. Show me what you want.” He replaced the chair, body almost brushing hers, fritzing her brain cells.

He moved to the tree and waited with bored expectation.

“I’m not one of those people with a rigid set of rules around how the tree looks.” She made herself move closer even though she was walking right up to the tiger with his razor-sharp claws and giant teeth. “I just pick something from the box and stick it in a bare spot.”

It wasn’t rocket science, but he took the frosted globe from her hand, held it near a top branch, then looked at her again.

“Sure.” She shrugged.

A snowflake went next, then a snowman. Each time, he checked with her before he looped the string around the branch.

“Have you never decorated a tree before?” she asked with bemusement.

“No.”

“I guess that shouldn’t surprise me. Mom hasn’t hung her own decorations in years. If I hadn’t come to spend the holidays with Ilias, he probably wouldn’t bother, either. I like doing it, though. Put this one here.” She extended the reindeer as high as she could.

His fingers brushed hers as he took it.

They were standing really close. Close enough that she caught the faded scent of his aftershave and the traces of the rum he’d taken straight because they’d run out of eggnog.

The music switched to Mariah Carey crooning “All I Want for Christmas Is You.”

As Eloise looked up at him, Konstantin looked down at her and their gazes tangled. The world tilted and Eloise fell into an abyss.

Oh.Something happened within her. She had always felt giddy and nervous around him. Awestruck. She thought he was beautiful and compelling and she had always longed for him to like her. Tonoticeher.

She hadn’t realized it would be like this, though. She was old enough that she garnered sexual attention. Sometimes it was flattering, other times unwelcome.

It had never felt reciprocal. Not until now. The sensation was like an implosion that compressed heat into her, then expanded in an all-over blush of pleasure.

Konstantin looked at her the way a man looked at a woman and whatever cocoon she’d been occupying was suddenly too confining. She wanted to break out and step out and open herself. She felt fragile as a butterfly, but weighted, too. As though her blood were made of molasses.

That’s what his eyes were made of, she thought distantly: dark gold bittersweet molasses. And his mouth...

Her heart fluttered as she willed him to kiss her.

The keypad beeped and the lock hummed. Ilias called out, “They didn’t have the good kind. We’ll have to make do.”

Konstantin moved to the table where he’d left his phone and pocketed it, then met Ilias in the foyer.

“I have to get back to Athens.”