Billionaire's Christmas Vixen by Cara Nelson Read Free Book Online Page A

couldn’t pinpoint her reason for not wanting to tell him about Eric, but something just didn’t feel right about it. Or could it be that she didn’t truly know the answer to the question? Perhaps she was having a difficult time with tell him because she honestly didn’t know what was so amazing about Eric. They had dated for two years, but had known one another since they had been toddlers. They had been pushed together from day one. Because of it, Brea had dated no one else since him. It felt wrong, dirty. Even if they weren’t technically together, even if he’d told her that he didn’t really love her, she could think of no one else.
    But what made him special? She couldn’t say. “I don’t know,” she replied quietly, her eyes focusing on the swirls of white and brown as they melded with one another. She didn’t want to think about this, about Eric. She’d spent so long focusing on him, on being his wife, on finally pleasing her family. To do anything but that just seemed wrong.
    “How can you not know? Do you love him or do you not? Do you want to marry him or do you not? Are you going to go home and fight for him, or are you going to just let him walk back out of the door once Christmas is over?”
    She was surprised to hear these words coming from him. It almost sounded like support. “Your mother may have overstepped her boundaries with inviting him, but if he’s the man that you want to spend your life with, then you should take advantage of it.” He smiled, sipping down the last of his coffee, which was probably cool by now. “So what do you want, Ms. Nelson? Do you want to marry the man that didn’t want to marry you, or do you want to chase him down and show him what he’s missing by not marrying you?”
    Brea only watched him, taking in his words, knowing that they were true, but not wanting to listen. She did love Eric, even if at this point, it was only out of habit. He was quite possibly the only way she was going to ever build a relationship with her family.
    She had been blamed for the breakup. She had been reprimanded for not being good enough, for not being who Eric wanted and needed, and in part, Brea thought that they might be right. She wasn’t good enough. She wasn’t strong enough for him, she didn’t have a good enough job to impress his circle of friends; she wasn’t beautiful enough, not classy enough. Her idea of dressing up was a pair of jeans without holes in them. She cried over everything and had no idea how to be strong in the face of pressure. She was nearly 30 and still had no idea what she wanted to do with her life. She was a mess, and because of it, Eric had left her.
    “I’m not entirely sure if that’s even what I want,” she admitted out loud. She wasn’t sure if she believed the words until she’d actually spoken them. She wasn’t sure, and she thought that she hadn’t been in quite some time. Even as Eric was calling things off with her and she spent the next weeks broken with devastation, that she might have even known then. Her tears had soaked her pillow, her sister spent a week with her to help her recover, and she had even called in sick at work for a handful of days because she just couldn’t face the world. But now, now she thought that some of those tears were tears of relief. Even if her family had been disappointed and blamed her for what had happened, she had felt relief that she could finally make her own choice. And Eric would not have been it.
    “If he isn’t who or what you want, then why spend so much energy on him?”
    She sighed. “My parents. I’ve tried impressing them, I’ve tried making them proud for my entire life, and always come up short. But Eric was my shot at that. Eric was my shot at finally getting into their good graces, so I took it and ran and tried hanging on, but I couldn’t. I think that, in a way, I may have once loved him.” George’s head was cocked to the side questioningly. “Don’t get me wrong,