The Greek's Christmas Bride

Pixie shifted across the bed inch by inch, wishing it weren’t quite so big. Her hand settled on the male shoulder furthest from her and slowly drifted down over Apollo’s magnificent torso. She smiled as she felt his hard muscles ripple and tense across his abdomen.

He turned towards her and his eyes glittered in the moonlight. ‘We shouldn’t,’ he breathed with sudden amusement.

‘Don’t be silly,’ Pixie whispered, her tiny hand heading further south to find the long, jutting length of him and stroke. ‘I’m pregnant, not breakable.’

Apollo groaned out loud and arched his lean hips while watching her slide below the sheet to administer an even more potent invitation and that fast his once renowned self-control broke like a dam breaking its banks. He tugged Pixie up to him with shuddering impatience and rolled her under him while his hungry mouth tasted hers with heated urgency.

‘That’s more like it,’ Pixie commented a shade smugly as she gazed up at him, her fingers skimming caressingly through his damp, tousled hair. She felt lighter than air at the ego-boosting confirmation that he still wanted her. Intelligence warned her that he was a young healthy male, who was usually in the mood for sex, but she refused to think about that angle, choosing to concentrate instead on the soothing conviction that pregnancy wasn’t quite the turn-off she had feared.

‘There is only one way this can continue,’ Apollo decreed, resting her back against the pillows. ‘You lie there… I do the work, koukla mou.’

And it was amazing, she thought much later, drifting into an exhausted and gratified sleep, but then it always was amazing with Apollo.

Apollo held her while she slept and marvelled at how natural it had become to hold her close. One large hand splayed across her flat stomach. How had he ever believed that he could walk away untouched after conception occurred? How had he credited that he could bring a child into the world and not want to play a full part in his son or daughter’s life? The unquestioning arrogance of those selfish assumptions belatedly savaged his view of himself. As fond memories of moments with his own father while he was still a little boy drifted through his mind he finally understood Vassilis Metraxis’s almost primitive need to safeguard the continuation of the family line, and he also grasped that walking away at any stage from his own child wasn’t an option he would ever be able to live with.

CHAPTER TEN

THREE WEEKS LATER, Pixie blinked sleepily into wakefulness and finally sat up to make a grab for the phone ringing while ruefully contemplating the empty space beside her. It was forty-eight hours since Apollo had flown to London on business. Pixie would have accompanied him had the whole household not been in chaos getting ready for the big party the following day. With the housekeeper, Olympia, presenting Pixie with query after query it had slowly dawned on her that she needed to stay on Nexos to take charge.

‘Nonsense,’ Apollo had declared without hesitation. ‘These matters have been managed without a wife’s input for years.’

But during that conversation Pixie had had to race off and be horribly sick, which had driven home hard another drawback. Hours of travel with her current delicate stomach would make her miserable and she was in no hurry to face Apollo with the repugnant downside of pregnancy. She was being ill an awful lot more than she had ever expected because her morning sickness seemed to attack at all times of the day. For that reason she had used the party arrangements as an excuse because she didn’t want Apollo to realise just how sick she was. While in her head she knew she should be sharing her suffering with him because he was an adult, it was a struggle to overcome her reluctance. He would fuss and she hated fuss and didn’t want to be treated like an invalid. In any case they had arranged for Pixie to have her first scan that very afternoon and she planned to ask the visiting gynaecologist then about her seemingly excessive sickness.

Pixie put the phone to her ear.

‘Pixie?’ Holly exclaimed before bursting into a mile-a-minute speech that left Pixie, who was still drowsy, none the wiser.

‘Sorry, I didn’t catch all that,’ she confided.

‘You’ve seen that stupid story already, haven’t you?’ Holly groaned. ‘Your voice sounds weird…you’ve been crying…’

A cold feeling slid down Pixie’s spine while she leant back against the pillows, striving to overcome the nausea beginning to creep over her. It would’ve been easier for her to simply admit that she was pregnant and sick but her best friend would be arriving the next day for the party and she wanted to save her baby news until she saw her in person. ‘What story?’

‘Vito insists it’s untrue…well, with that particular girl.’

‘Can I phone you back, Holly?’ Pixie gasped, cutting off the call and leaping from the bed in wild haste to charge for the bathroom.

Afterwards, she rested her brow down on the welcome coldness of the marble vanity counter and tried to muster the energy to clean her teeth. Oh, dear, she thought limply, it had not occurred to her that pregnancy would be quite so challenging. Certainly Holly had had a few upsets during her pregnancy but nothing similar to what Pixie was encountering.

And what had Holly been referring to? Some story in a newspaper? About Vito? No, why would she be phoning Pixie if it had been about Vito? And why would Holly think she had been crying about something? The chilled feeling of foreboding returned and as Pixie’s brain began to function again she reached for the tablet by the bed and put Apollo’s name in the search engine. The usual flock of references came up. She knew from experience that if she wanted to she could now access images of herself arriving on Nexos looking like a skinny bird in a very big sun hat that covered her face almost completely…

She sat on the edge of the bed while a tabloid page formed under the title ‘Leopards don’t change their spots…’ And with perspiration breaking out on her clammy skin she read about how the newly married Apollo Metraxis had been pictured entering his apartment building with a very beautiful girl and emerging with her still in tow the following morning. For a few moments she thought she would be sick again but she fought the urge fiercely.

So, what she had always expected to happen had happened within only a few months of their wedding. It was no big deal, she told herself squarely and, casting the tablet aside, she went for a shower. Apollo had said he would try to be faithful but the very first time he had had to leave her behind he had found alternative entertainment of the sort he was most accustomed to enjoying. His behaviour sent a powerful message. Clearly, Pixie was no more important or special to him than any othe

r woman he had slept with. How could she ever have thought otherwise?

And Izzy Jerome was a very beautiful girl with long corn-blonde hair and endless legs. She was also famous, a fairly recently discovered model/celebrity. Apollo’s type in every way. Well, she wasn’t about to make a giant scene over Izzy or do anything silly, Pixie warned herself severely. It was time to default to their original marriage setting in which they shared a business arrangement and nothing else. At least she could save face that way, she reasoned in despair, a sudden convulsive sob creeping up on her and squeezing her throat painfully tight.

But she wasn’t going to cry over Apollo, Pixie told herself angrily. He wasn’t worth her tears. He was selfish and shallow and his betrayal had literally been written in the stars because she had always been well aware that leopards didn’t change their spots. The phone was ringing again somewhere in the distance but she ignored it, sitting on the shower seat while the water beat down on her and washed away the shameful tears. A sob escaped her straining lungs and she clenched her teeth in frustration. There was no way she was prepared to greet Apollo with red-rimmed eyes that would tell him just how badly he had hurt her.

And willpower did finally triumph over the tears. She switched off the shower and stepped out to grab a towel but only minutes later found herself throwing up again. Utterly wretched, she curled up on the cold floor for several minutes with Hector nuzzling against her legs. She petted him with a shaking hand. She felt dizzy and sick and dreadful but she wasn’t about to show it. Apollo had done her a favour, she reasoned miserably. Her body was already changing. Her breasts had swelled, her waist had thickened and her tummy was no longer perfectly flat. Apollo would soon have lost interest in her anyway and it was better that it happened sooner rather than later.

After all, she had to learn to be independent again and stand on her own feet. Her baby would need her to be strong and brave. She had to cope and rise above the terrible hurt trying to overwhelm her common sense. He didn’t love her; he had never loved her. The only woman Apollo had ever loved had been the evil stepmother who used him when he was far too young and immature to protect himself and had destroyed his trust and his ability to love. Was it any wonder that he had never had a serious relationship with a woman since then?