A Baby on the Greek's Doorstep

‘He should be punished for what he’s done to you,’ Tor contradicted, his firm mouth compressing into a taut line.

‘Mum should have left the house to both of us,’ she protested on her brother’s behalf. ‘It must’ve been very hurtful for Jordan to realise that he’d been left out.’

‘He wasn’t her son, he was her stepson,’ Tor pointed out drily. ‘Generally parents do choose to leave their worldly goods to blood relatives.’

‘And you think Jordan targeted me because I was left the house?’ Pixie demanded angrily, jumping to her feet. ‘Well, I think that’s nonsense! Maybe he did cheat to get his hands on the money, but he cared about me.’

‘I’m not saying that he didn’t, but using you to get his hands on more money quickly became his main motivation. Before he got involved you had a secure future with the ownership of that house. Instead he ensured you were loaded down with mortgage payments and student loans,’ Tor sliced in in a harsh undertone. ‘And now some very dangerous men are chasing him for repayment, which puts both you and Alfie at risk. You can’t go back to that house. You can’t risk meeting up with Jordan in public again either.’

‘You can’t tell me that!’ Pixie gasped. ‘You can’t tell me where I can live and what I can and can’t do!’

‘When it comes to your security I will tell you, particularly if it affects my son.’

‘You didn’t want to know about your son when I was pregnant last year!’ Pixie slung at him vengefully. ‘Don’t expect me to have faith in you now!’

‘You know now that I didn’t remember you and that I’m only telling you what you don’t want to hear because you need to know those facts,’ Tor countered in his measured level drawl. ‘But you can have faith in my determination to ensure that neither you nor my son are further affected by Jordan’s bad choices.’

‘But I have to go back to the house... I’ve got a cat to look after...and then there’s all my stuff.’ Pixie gasped, the ramifications of what he was telling her finally beginning to sink in.

‘I’ll make arrangements for you to remove your cat and your possessions immediately. There’s a good chance that your brother’s creditors will ransack the property and take anything that they can sell.’

Pixie went pale and broke out in nervous perspiration. ‘Oh...my...word,’ she whispered in horror. ‘This is a nightmare.’

‘With my support it doesn’t have to be.’ Tor pulled his phone out and began to make calls while she stared at him wordlessly.

He was on the phone for about ten minutes and it sounded as though he was rattling off instructions to someone. ‘When you go to the house you will take my security team with you to protect you and you will leave Alfie here.’

Slowly, painfully, it was dawning on Pixie that, faced with impending homelessness, she was in no position to call any shots. ‘But I can’t move in here!’ she exclaimed.

‘I am more than happy to have you and Alfie here.’

‘Well, possibly for a few days until I can move on. I’ll have to find somewhere I can rent. Maybe there’s someone at work I can share with. Thank goodness I’m not due back at work until next week,’ she gabbled, covering her clammy face with her spread hands in an expression of near desperation as the true meaning of her position hit her hard.

‘I’d prefer for you to stay on here,’ Tor admitted. ‘It will make it easier for me to get to know Alfie.’

‘That’s important to you, is it?’

‘The most crucial thing in my life right now,’ Tor disconcerted her by declaring. ‘I can’t begin to tell you how much his existence matters to me.’

And Pixie almost scoffed at that turnaround in attitude on his part until she recalled the man with the haunted eyes telling her about his daughter’s death, and she compressed her lips and said nothing, shame silencing her because she recognised sincerity when she saw it. Tor had only needed confirmation that Alfie was his to develop a serious interest in his son.

‘You and I have had a very troubled start...but we don’t have to continue in the same vein,’ Tor framed almost roughly.

‘We don’t,’ she agreed, welded to his beautiful eyes, bronzed by golden highlights and strong emotion.

‘In time I genuinely believe that we could make something of this...attraction between us, potentially even marriage,’ Tor spelt out almost curtly, so tough did he find it to broach the concept of a new relationship, particularly when he had promised himself that never again would he make such an attempt with a woman.

Pixie flushed and froze, not quite sure she had heard those words but keen to nip any such toxic notion in the bud. ‘Oh, no...you and me? We’re not going there,’ she told him without hesitation.

His fine ebony brows drew together. He was not vain, but he was confident and arrogant, and he knew his own worth. He was richer than sin, reasonably good-looking and most women loved him. He wasn’t remotely prepared for Pixie’s blunt and woundingly instant rejection. ‘Why not?’ he asked equally bluntly.

A strangled laugh that was not one of amusement was wrenched from Pixie. She stared back at him wide-eyed, as if his proposition had been shocking.

‘Why not? How can you ask me that?’ she exclaimed. ‘Five years after you lost your unfaithful wife you’re still not over her and you’re still wearing your wedding ring. No woman in her right mind would risk getting involved with you!’

For once in his life, Tor was silenced because it was a direct strike he hadn’t been expecting. His ultimate goal was to marry Pixie and legitimise his son’s birth and he had expected to proceed to that desirable conclusion by easy stages; the possibility of rejection had not once crossed his mind. Now it dawned on him that he could well be facing a long and stony road, toiling uphill every step of the way, because this was a woman who knew stuff no other woman had ever known about him and there would be no fooling her, no fobbing her off with something less than she felt she deserved.

‘So, to sum up, you and me...well, you bury that idea,’ Pixie advised him briskly. ‘You and Alfie? Speed ahead...and I’ll stay here until I get sorted out.’

It was a tragedy that he was so emotionally unavailable, so wrapped up in the past, she acknowledged unhappily. Marriage to Tor would have changed her life and Alfie’s out of recognition but marrying a man still unhealthily attached to a past love would be a daily punishment for her. She could still remember the love between her parents and their relationship had struck her as a shining example of what marriage should be. She cringed at the prospect of being Tor’s second-best and the likelihood that she would always be compared to her predecessor, whom he had loved. No, she had made the right decision, putting her own need for security and happiness above her son’s needs...hadn’t she?

CHAPTER SIX

IT WAS THE middle of the night or at least the early hours of the morning, Pixie guessed, when Tor shook her awake.

‘Your brother’s in hospital,’ he told her grittily.

Pixie forced herself up on her elbows, shaken out of a sound sleep, and stared up at Tor, fully dressed and formidable. ‘He’s...what?’

‘He’s been beaten up by his creditors,’ Tor divulged thinly. ‘I wasn’t sure whether or not to tell you.’

Pixie searched his lean dark features in wonderment. ‘Of course, you tell me,’ she protested. ‘He’s my brother and he screwed up, but I still love him!’

That bold statement of affection seemed to unnerve Tor slightly. His shimmering golden eyes hooded and cloaked as if she was showing him a softness that he didn’t want to see in her. ‘Does that mean that you want to see him?’

‘Of course, I do,’ she confirmed, clambering out of bed, suddenly uneasily conscious of the reality that she was only clad in pyjamas and of how incredibly uncomfortable Tor could make her feel when she was anything less than fully dressed.