‘OK... I’ll go to Greece with you for a visit and I’ll apply for unpaid leave from my job. I don’t want to just give it up. I like working,’ she admitted, while scarcely able to credit that she was willing to take that leap of faith into the unknown with him.
But her world and its boundaries had changed irrevocably, she acknowledged ruefully. She could no longer trust Jordan because, clearly, he was addicted to gambling. He had stolen her inheritance from her, frittered away her hard-earned cash, destroyed her trust. Even if Jordan recovered, it could be years before she could have faith in him again because addiction was a slippery slope and he would always be fighting temptation. And Jordan had put both her and Alfie at risk. Tor, at the very least, was keen to put Alfie’s best interests first, and that Tor was keen to introduce their son to his family impressed her. He could’ve kept Alfie as a dark little secret and visited him discreetly and nobody would ever have known that the little boy existed.
Instead, Tor had chosen to be open and honest with his relatives and he was making room for his son everywhere in his life. Only, what did that mean for her? Not marriage, she couldn’t marry a man simply because he had got her pregnant, could she? But everything in her once stable world was shifting, she conceded apprehensively, and it was happening so fast that it left her breathless.
‘You and Alfie will need new clothes. It’s much warmer out there,’ Tor completed. ‘A shopping trip is on the cards.’
But Pixie was still thinking over his insistence that she consider marrying him. She had noticed that he had finally removed his wedding ring but naturally she hadn’t said anything about it. ‘Why do you want me to consider marrying you?’ she asked bluntly.
‘Two parents would be better than one for Alfie. I want him to have my name and my family, to become part of that support system. I want to be fully involved in his upbringing, not standing on the sidelines. Without taking him away from you, I want to share him,’ he delineated tautly. ‘But that’s all for him and me. For us—well, we’d be a work in progress but we’d be a family and the attraction between us is strong.’
‘I would need love.’
‘I have to be honest. I don’t think I could do love again.’
‘Because you’re scared,’ Pixie breathed in a softer tone of understanding.
‘It’s nothing to do with fear,’ Tor asserted between gritted teeth of repudiation, insulted by that interpretation of his natural reservations. ‘I grew up with Katerina. She was my first love. I was young, naïve and idealistic. I’m not that boy any more. I’m a man and my expectations of a woman are much more practical and prosaic. You have abilities that I respect and value. Loyalty to your brother, in spite of the fact that he’s let you down badly. You have compassion for the weak because, make no mistake, Jordan is weaker than you and in trying to help him you could be setting yourself up for a world of hurt and disappointment.’
‘I’m willing to take that chance and, even though some of what you’ve said makes sense, I’d want more than practicality in marriage. I’d want passion.’
‘I can give you passion,’ Tor told her boldly, shimmering eyes welded to hers, and all the oxygen in the car suddenly seemed to be sucked up. ‘I can give you as much passion as you can handle.’
‘Passion and love from a guy who’s willing to take a risk on me.’
‘Successful bankers estimate the risks they take in advance and without emotion getting involved.’
Pixie nodded in acceptance and sighed. ‘I’m not a cold person.’
‘No, you’re not...and my family are not cold either. For Alfie’s sake, I’m glad you are the way you are, but that doesn’t change the fact that you and I are very different. We would only work as a couple if you could accept those differences.’
‘I’d always be wanting more,’ Pixie told him, wondering why her eyes were prickling and stinging, why she suddenly felt all worked up about a perfectly innocent and unthreatening conversation. Aside of that sexual sizzle between them, they didn’t suit and that was that—better by far to see and accept that now than try to fight it. So, Katerina had been his first love, his only love, which was probably why her treachery had been so massively damaging. After all, if he couldn’t trust the girl he had grown up with, who could he trust?
‘I have every hope that you’ll change your mind,’ Tor murmured. ‘Should I have lied and said that I could give you what you want?’
‘You can’t fake emotion. I’d have seen through you.’
‘Most people can’t read me.’
‘I saw you at your lowest. You have certain tells,’ she told him gently, thinking of his body language that night when Alfie had been conceived: the haunted dark eyes, his lean, restless hands shifting with the grace and eloquence that were so much a part of him, the emotion that seethed inside him, the emotion that he denied and suppressed.
Tor elevated a fine ebony brow. ‘We’re definitely going to have to discuss the tells.’
Emerging from that disturbing recollection of their first meeting, Pixie went pink, trembling a little as that unavoidable flood of physical awareness shifted like melted honey down deep inside her, warming her from the inside out as she pressed her thighs together and stiffened defensively. She wanted to slap herself for even those few moments of remembrance, for an indulgence she no longer allowed herself. To maintain boundaries, she too needed to put that intimate past knowledge of Tor behind her.
* * *
‘No, we’re not arguing about this any longer...you are not buying me clothes!’ Pixie told Tor heatedly. ‘You can pay for Alfie’s clothes, but not mine.’
‘Have you any idea how much money I must owe you in terms of child support?’ Tor enquired calmly.
And it was precisely that calm and lack of embarrassment that riled Pixie. She didn’t want to discuss money with Tor. She didn’t want to admit that she was pretty much broke because she’d never had sufficient cash to manage to save. Paying what she had believed to be her share of the mortgage and buying food every month had cleaned her out and reduced her wardrobe to ‘must-have’ slender proportions.
She had forgotten what it felt like to buy something just because she liked it or fancied something new because, nine times out of ten, Alfie had needed something more. And now Tor was trying to hand her credit cards, open accounts for her, put her in the hands of some fancy stylist so that she could do him proud in Greece, and it was all too much for her to handle. Registering that she was on the brink of silly tears because he wasn’t listening to her, Pixie pushed her trembling hands down on the arms of her chair and stood up.
‘I can’t listen to any more of this... I’m out,’ she said thinly, and walked out of the dining room.
Tor released his breath in a groan and drained his wine glass, pushing away the plate in front of him because his appetite had died. For long minutes he sat and pondered his dilemma. How was she planning to buy clothes without money? Why was she so resistant to his financial help when it came to her personal needs? Had he ever even heard of a woman refusing a new wardrobe before?
When the table was being cleared, and after he had politely refused his housekeeper’s suggestion that she make something else for him to eat, Tor vaulted upright and followed Pixie upstairs. There was nothing more frustrating than someone who walked away from a dispute, he registered in frustration, although he could not recall ever having an argument with a woman before the night on which Katerina had died. He and Katerina had never argued prior to that, had had no differences of opinion, minor or major. In essence they had not talked that much. Maybe those had been revealing signs of an unhealthy or, at the very least, boring relationship, he conceded grimly. How did he know? He hadn’t had a single relationship since then and if he had ever had any skills in that field, they had to be distinctly rusty.
He knocked on her bedroom door and scowled. That was another problem: the whole ‘s
eparate bedrooms’ thing was tying him up in knots. Why did she make such a big deal of sex? Sex was physical, not a pursuit anyone needed to imbue with magical properties or meaning. Was it because the only time she had indulged in sex she had ended up pregnant? Or could she simply be resistant to his advances because that one-off experience with him had been lousy? That drunk, how considerate could he have been? Tor clenched his teeth together and wondered if he could bring himself to ask. He knocked again. He needed to know, he needed details. He recalled sufficiently to be aware that he had enjoyed himself thoroughly, but that did not mean that his partner had also enjoyed the experience.
‘What?’ Pixie demanded aggressively as she flung the door wide on him. Dragged out of the shower by the knocking on the door, she was in a thoroughly bad mood.
There she was, not even five feet tall and barefoot and wrapped in a stupid towel, which covered her delectable curves from neck to toe. Why did his housekeeper buy such huge towels in his household? Tor wondered absently. And why did the angry fire of challenge in Pixie’s bright blue eyes turn him on?
‘We need to talk.’
‘No, we don’t,’ Pixie argued, trying to close the door on him.
‘Yes, we do,’ Tor decreed, stalking over the threshold, automatically gathering her up into his arms, a warm, struggling, fragrant bundle of damp femininity that fiercely aroused him. He was shocked by that reaction as he carefully laid her back down on the bed. ‘You explain to me now why you won’t allow me to buy you clothes when you need them...’