A Baby on the Greek's Doorstep

‘I’m Tor,’ he murmured. ‘I think I must have fallen asleep before I called a taxi to take me home.’

‘I didn’t know anyone was here. I’ve just come in from work and I was making some supper,’ Pixie confided. ‘Who are you visiting here?’

His brow furrowed. Slowly, he sank back down on the recliner. ‘My apologies... I don’t recall her name. A leggy redhead with an annoying giggle.’

‘Saffron,’ Pixie told him with concealed amusement. ‘But why did she just leave you in here?’

He shrugged. ‘She stormed off. I rejected her and it made her angry.’

‘You rejected...Saffron?’ Pixie queried in disbelief because Saffron, a wannabe actress, resembled a supermodel and turned heads in the street.

‘A misunderstanding,’ he corrected smoothly. ‘I thought I was coming to a party. She thought something else. I’m sorry. I’m rather drunk, not in proper control of my tongue.’

No way was he drunk!

Pixie was accustomed to dealing with surly drunks at A & E and usually they could barely vocalise or stand without swaying or cursing. He was speaking with perfect diction and courtesy and remained astute enough to smooth over the unfortunate impression he might have made in saying bluntly that he had rejected the other woman. All the same, she hadn’t thought there was a man born who wouldn’t jump at the chance of having sex with the gorgeous redhead. Presumably, Saffron had either sought the privacy of her own room upstairs to handle such a blow to her ego or she had gone out again, but Pixie could only be impressed by a man particular enough in his tastes to say no to a beauty like Saffron.

‘What are you cooking?’ he shot at her unexpectedly.

‘A cheese toastie,’ Pixie responded in an undertone as she lifted the lid, waved away the steam and reached for her plate.

‘It smells incredible...’

‘Would you like one?’ she heard herself ask and she wanted to slap herself for being so impressionable.

He was a complete stranger and she owed him nothing but, as her brother’s partner had warned her, she was a ‘nurturer,’ the sort of woman whom men, according to Eloise, would take advantage of. And Pixie had seen the evidence for that condemnation in her own nature. She did like to feed people; she did like to take care of them. Pleasing people, tending to their needs, satisfied something in her, a something that Eloise believed she should suppress out of self-interest.

‘I’d love that. I’m starving.’ He smiled at her and that smile locked her knees where she stood because it was like a galaxy of golden warmth engulfing her, locking his lean bronzed features into shocking beauty, releasing a flock of butterflies low in her tummy. Stupid, stupid, stupid, she castigated herself with self-loathing as she reached for the bread and butter again before saying, ‘Here...have this one... I’ll have the next.’

As she pushed the plate with a knife and fork across the island, he tugged out one of the high stools and settled into it. She busied herself with the sandwich maker, her pale skin pink while he watched her, and she could feel the weight of his regard like a brand. Nothing she had felt in Antony’s radius could compare to the thrumming level of awareness assailing her beneath the stranger’s gaze.

* * *

The hair was weird, there was no other word for it, Tor was reflecting, his gaze locked to those tumbling pale green curls lying tousled on her narrow shoulders, but if a woman could rock green hair, she was rocking it. She had the brightest blue eyes he had ever seen, the softest, pinkest mouth, the most flawless skin, but she was so undersized he could barely see her behind the barrier of the island.

‘What height are you?’ he asked curiously.

Pixie cringed. ‘About four ten...no tall genes in my family tree.’

‘How old are you?’

‘Why are you asking me that?’

‘I’m in an unfamiliar house with unknown occupants. I don’t want to find out that I’m keeping company with someone’s child, and you don’t look very old...’

‘I’m twenty-one,’ Pixie provided grudgingly. ‘Almost a fully qualified nurse. Totally grown-up and independent.’

‘Twenty-one is still very young,’ Tor countered mildly.

‘So, how old are you, old man?’ Pixie enquired teasingly, putting down the lid on the second toastie and relaxing back against the kitchen cabinets to watch him eat. ‘Coffee?’

‘Black, sweet. I’m twenty-eight,’ he told her.

‘And married,’ she noted without thought as the ring on his wedding finger glinted under the light and she switched on the coffee machine again. ‘What were you doing with Saffron? Sorry, none of my business... I shouldn’t have asked,’ she muttered, backtracking in haste from that unintentional challenge.

‘No offence taken. I’m a widower,’ Tor volunteered.

Pixie turned back to him, stirring the coffee and passing it to him. ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’

‘It’s OK,’ Tor said with a stiffness she recognised, the awkwardness of someone unaccustomed to dealing openly with the topic of grief. ‘It’s been five years since my wife and my daughter died.’

Pixie paled. ‘You lost your child as well?’

Pixie felt even more awkward, painfully aware of how she had felt earlier that evening when she had dealt with her first death at the hospital. The finality of a passing and the grieving family left behind scarred the staff as well. For a man to have lost both a wife and a child together was an enormous double blow and her heart squeezed on his behalf at the idea of such a huge loss.

Pale too beneath his bronzed skin, Tor jerked his chin down in silent confirmation.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered.

‘Nobody ever mentions it now. For them it’s like it happened a hundred years ago,’ he muttered with perceptible bitterness.

‘Death makes people uncomfortable. They avoid discussing it often out of fear of saying the wrong thing.’

‘Or as if it might be contagious,’ Tor slotted in drily.

‘I know... My parents passed within a week of each other and even my friends avoided me at school when I went back,’ she told him with a grimace of recollection.

‘A car accident?’

‘No, they caught legionnaires’ disease on a weekend away. They were both diabetic with compromised immune systems and they didn’t go for treatment soon enough. They thought they’d caught some harmless virus and none of us knew any different.’ Pixie shifted a wordless shoulder in pained acceptance. ‘My father went first and Mum a day later. I was devastated. I had no idea how ill they were until it was too late.’

‘Is that why you’re doing nursing?’

‘Partially. I wanted to know more so that I could help people when they needed it and I like doing useful, practical stuff.’ Pixie sighed, a rueful smile tugging at her generous mouth. ‘And to be frank, I was also the sort of child who bandaged teddy bears and tried to raise orphaned baby birds. My brother calls it a save-the-world mentality.’

‘I have a brother too but we’re estranged,’ Tor heard himself volunteer, and wondered for the first time if that old saying about alcohol loosening the tongue could actually be true because he was gabbling like a chatterbox, which he was not and never had been. He was innately reserved, rather quiet outside working hours. Or was it her affecting him? Unthreatening and studiously unsexy as she was in her pale grey pyjamas adorned with little pink flamingos? And no sooner had he thought that than he had to notice the stupendously sexy thrust and sway of a pair of firm full breasts beneath her top as she clambered up on the stool to eat her toastie.

‘You’re estranged?’ Her big blue eyes clouded with sympathy. ‘That’s sad.’

‘No, it’s not. He slept with my wife!’ Tor bit out, shocking himself with that revelation, which had never crossed his lips before, not to anyone, not for any reason, a sordid secret he had planned to

keep buried until the day he died.

Pixie’s eyes widened in shock. ‘Oh, my goodness...’ she gasped. ‘Your brother did that?’

‘He and I didn’t grow up together. We are not close,’ Tor acknowledged grudgingly. ‘But I could never forgive him for that betrayal.’

‘Of course, you couldn’t.’

That first confession having leapt from his tongue, Tor was discovering that for some inexplicable reason he could not hold back the rest. ‘On the night my wife died she admitted that she had fallen in love with Sev before we married but that she fought her feelings out of loyalty to me and assumed she would get over him.’