‘I hate you!’ Pixie snapped with pure venom because it was the last straw that he should witness her in such a state when all her defences were down, and there were many more such tart exchanges before her stomach settled again.
Having cleaned her up with unblemished cool, Apollo carried her back to bed. ‘Do you want me to cancel the party?’
‘You can’t. Half our guests are already on their way,’ she groaned. ‘I’ll be fine once Holly gets here.’
‘I haven’t had sex with anyone but you since we got married,’ Apollo announced just when she was least expecting any reference to that burning issue.
‘Don’t believe you,’ Pixie gasped, turning over on her side to avoid looking at him. ‘Nobody would believe you. I’m not stupid. It’s what you do, it’s who you are…you probably can’t even help it.’
‘It’s not who I am!’ Apollo bit out hotly from between clenched white teeth, his eyes emerald bright and accusing. ‘The least you can do is give me the chance to explain.’
Pixie closed her eyes tight and played dead. His sudden anger had unnerved her. She didn’t fear him but right then she didn’t feel equal to the challenge of such an emotive confrontation. In fact suddenly all she wanted was Holly’s reassuringly soothing presence. Tears stung her eyes behind the lowered lids.
‘Izzy is Jeremy Slater’s kid sister. Vito and I went to school with Jeremy. Although you haven’t met him yet, he’s a close friend. Izzy was at a dinner I attended. I’ve met her before and she asked me for a lift because she was visiting someone with an apartment in the same building as my London penthouse. I thought nothing of it,’ Apollo admitted grittily. ‘I wasn’t particularly surprised either when the paparazzi jumped out to photograph us when we arrived because Izzy’s every move is currently prime fodder for the tabloid newspapers.’
‘So, according to you, you simply gave her a lift,’ Pixie recited. ‘How does that explain her still being with you the next morning?’
‘She spent the night with whoever she was visiting. She phoned me first thing and asked me if I could drop her off on my way into the office. She was waiting for me in the lobby and we left the building together.’
‘When you were caught on camera again. Why didn’t your bodyguards intervene?’
‘Because I suspected that Izzy was using me to raise her own profile and, not having thought through the situation, I saw no harm in it and waved them back,’ Apollo ground out angrily.
His explanation covered the facts but his generosity towards Izzy Jerome’s craving for publicity when he himself loathed paparazzi attention infuriated her. Since when had Apollo not ‘thought through’ a situation? He must’ve realised how the press would present those photos, one taken the night before, the next early the next morning.
‘I’m sorry,’ she pronounced flatly. ‘I don’t believe you.’
The door thudded closed on his exit and only then did her tension ease a little yet she had never felt so empty. She had not realised that she could love anyone as much as she loved Apollo and she had not realised that losing someone could hurt so much that it hurt to breathe. And it was a lesson she truly wished she had not had to learn. She had lain awake a long time the night before. Apollo had presumably slept in another room and ironically his absence had distressed her as much as his presence would have done. It was as though she were being ripped slowly apart, divided between wanting him and not wanting him.
Vito and Holly arrived mid-afternoon. As soon as Pixie heard Holly’s bright voice echoing up from the hall she called down to her friend from the upper landing. Apollo and Vito looked up. Pixie reddened and waved to excuse herself for not having gone downstairs to welcome their guests.
‘I’m pregnant,’ she told Holly baldly. ‘And, yes, it was planned.’
‘Is that why Apollo is looking a little ragged round the edges?’
‘No… I think that was caused by the doctor telling us that we’re having twins.’
‘Twins?’ Holly squealed in excitement. ‘When are you due?’
As the friends shared due dates, because Holly was expecting her second child, they went downstairs by a service staircase and settled down with cool drinks in the orangery with its tall shady plants and softly playing indoor fountain.
‘Vito told me about the will and that you were planning to have a child with Apollo,’ Holly confided then.
Pixie sighed heavily.
‘And you broke the rules, didn’t you?’ Holly whispered, anxiously searching Pixie’s tense little face and shadowed eyes. ‘You went and fell madly in love with his fancy-ass yacht.’
Pixie didn’t trust herself to laugh or speak and she jerked her chin down in confirmation.
Holly groaned out loud.
‘I wanted a child and because I wasn’t very good at…er…dating I thought that Apollo could be my best chance of ever having one,’ Pixie admitted very quietly. ‘I should tell you now…we are separating after the party.’
‘Is it really that cut and dried? I mean, even Vito, who generally assumes the worst of Apollo when women are involved, thinks that there’s no way that Apollo would have slept with Izzy Jerome. She’s Jeremy’s kid sister and sisters are off-limits between friends. And Apollo has uninvited Izzy from your party,’ Holly completed with satisfaction.
‘Izzy Jerome was on the guest list?’ Pixie gasped in dismay.
‘She’s not any more,’ Holly emphasised. ‘I don’t think he is involved with her. She’s very young, you know, still a teenager.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ Pixie lifted her head high and sipped at her drink. ‘The best way forward for us now is for us to go our separate ways. That was planned from the start.’
Holly shook her head. ‘I can’t believe you signed up for that. I thought you hated him.’
Pixie said nothing because there was a sour taste in her mouth. Only days had passed since she had planned to tell her friend how very different Apollo was from his public image but recent events had proved her wrong in all her assumptions. In truth she supposed that she had stupidly idealised Apollo to justify the reality that she had fallen in love with him.
‘Let me see what you’re wearing tonight,’ Holly urged in a welcome change of subject.
Pixie took her up to the bedroom to show her the long scarlet dress in its garment bag. ‘Apollo had it designed and I don’t like it much…it’s a wee bit slutty, don’t you think? I have no idea what he’s wearing.’
Holly skimmed a thoughtful fingertip over the black corset lacing round the bust line. ‘Gangster’s moll?’
‘Well, at least there’s no fairy wings included,’ Pixie commented flatly. ‘But there is a very ornate piece of valuable jewellery which he brought back from London and he evidently expects me to wear it with the costume.’
Pixie opened the worn leather box on the dressing table and listened to Holly ooh and ah over the fabulously flamboyant ruby necklace and drop earrings. She turned her head and glanced back at the red dress again. There was something about it, something eerily familiar but she couldn’t pin down what it was.
Dressing for dinner, she donned the costume. She decided it was fortunate that pregnancy had swelled her boobs because the gathered, dipping neckline positively demanded a glimpse of bosom. She tightened the laces, noting with wry appreciation that she finally had the chest she had long dreamt of having. But like her marriage to Apollo, it was an illusion, she thought morosely, for when she had finally delivered her twins she would probably return to being pretty much flat-chested again.
Apollo strode in and she stopped dead to stare at him. He was tricked out like a pirate in tall black boots and fitted breeches with a white ruffled shirt and a sword. And being Apollo and fantastically handsome, he looked spectacular and electrifyingly sexy.
‘I gather that I’m a pirate’s lady,’ Pixie guessed.
‘A pirate’s treasure,’ Apollo quipped. ‘You’re not wearing the rubies.’
He extracted the necklace from the box and handed her the earrings. ‘This set belonged to my mother. It hasn’t been worn since she died. I had it cleaned and reset for you in London.’