The Greek's Christmas Bride

by Lynne Graham

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Pixie asked abruptly, watching sharp tension tighten the sculpted lines of Apollo’s lean, hard face.

  ‘Nothing. I forgot,’ Apollo said equally abruptly, ‘I have a couple of work calls to make. Will you be all right settling in here on your own?’

  ‘Of course I will be.’

  Apollo strode down the stairs like a hungry lion in search of prey. If Pixie was pregnant, there would be no home birth, he reasoned with immediate resolve. No, she was going to a fully equipped hospital regardless of how she felt about that decision. He would also engage a standby medical team. He wouldn’t take any risks with her because he was too conscious that something quite unexpected could happen during a birth. He wouldn’t mention that to Pixie though. He wasn’t that stupid. He didn’t want her worrying and certainly not to the extent he was suddenly worrying.

  For a split second he was grudgingly amused by his own attitude. He had married Pixie to have a child and now that there was a chance they might have succeeded at step one, he was suddenly awash with anxiety. She was so small…and the baby could be big as he had been…and now he needed a drink.

  By the time Pixie had watched her luggage being unpacked, enjoyed a cup of tea on the shaded terrace alone and even taken Hector for a walk through the meandering gardens with tree-lined paths alone, she had accepted that Apollo was not as excited by the concept of becoming a father as she was excited about becoming a mother. He had vanished like Scotch mist and she felt that they did not have the kind of marriage that empowered her to go looking for him as a normal wife might have done. Looking for Apollo any place struck Pixie as clingy and she refused to act clingy.

  Dr Floros arrived, middle-aged and bearded and relentlessly cheerful even in the face of Apollo’s grave demeanour. Yes, Apollo had finally reappeared and Pixie could not help but notice that her husband was as grim as a pall-bearer in comparison to the chirpy medical man. Maybe the actual prospect of a child was a little sobering for a playboy, Pixie reasoned uncertainly as she took the test and vanished into the palatial cloakroom on the ground floor. It would be foolish of her to think that he had lost his original enthusiasm for conception. That wasn’t possible, was it?

  ‘My wife is very small in size,’ Apollo remarked to the doctor while Pixie was absent.

  ‘Nature has a wonderful way of taking such differences into account,’ Dr Floros assured him without concern. ‘I’ll take a blood test as well if the result is positive.’

  Pixie watched the test wand change colour, but since the packaging and instructions were in Greek she had no idea what was a positive and what was a negative and had to return in continuing ignorance to the two men.

  Dr Floros beamed before she even reached them. ‘Congratulations!’ he pronounced in English.

  Pixie felt a little dizzy at the confirmation that she was going to be a mother and she sat down hurriedly, her attention locked to Apollo’s lean, strong face. He froze, betraying nothing, neither smiling nor even wincing in reaction and she wanted to slap him for it. Apollo explained about the blood test and Pixie stood up a little nervously because she didn’t like needles. Indeed Dr Floros only got as far as flourishing his syringe before Pixie felt faint, her knees wobbling so obviously that Apollo gripped her to steady her.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  And no, she wasn’t all right because at that point she fainted and resurfaced lying on a sofa.

  ‘Don’t look at the needle…’ Apollo urged, quick as always to identify the source of her fear, and he crouched down beside her and held her hand as tightly as if she were drowning.

  The test was done. She apologised to the doctor and he said it was probably the combination of the good news and stress that had made her pass out. Dr Floros departed and Apollo reappeared with Olympia carrying a pot of tea.

  ‘You could say something now,’ Pixie prompted when they were finally alone.

  Apollo frowned. ‘About what?’

  ‘Well, it did only take us six weeks…you could look happy, look pleased!’ Pixie emphasised in annoyance.

  ‘I am pleased,’ Apollo assured her unconvincingly. ‘But not if it makes you ill and you collapse like that. That was scary.’

  ‘I didn’t exactly enjoy it. I hate needles and injections and I felt so dizzy and then everything went dark,’ Pixie explained rather curtly. ‘I’m not about to be ill. I’m simply pregnant and there are a few symptoms that come with that. Dizziness is one of them. Holly was always getting light-headed.’

  ‘Luckily we have a lift, so you won’t have to use the stairs.’

  Pixie studied him in wonderment. ‘You expect me to use a lift to go up or down one floor? Are you crazy?’

  ‘You could fall on the stairs,’ Apollo traded with deadly seriousness.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Cheerful.’ Pixie rested her head back and tried to imagine becoming a mother. She wasn’t about to let Apollo’s strange lack of enthusiasm take the edge off her sense of joy and achievement. A baby, a darling, gorgeous little baby who was hers and his. She couldn’t keep Apollo but she could keep their baby. She was happy, really, really happy about that aspect and suspected it would be something of a comfort in the future when Apollo was no longer a constant part of her life.

  There would be a divorce first, she reminded herself doggedly. Then she would have to get accustomed to seeing him with other women in tabloid pictures, knowing he was sharing a bed with them while also knowing exactly what he was doing with them there. Doubtless he would phone her to keep up to date with their child’s development and from time to time he would visit in person until the child was old enough to go and visit him. It would all be very civilised and polite but she was already painfully aware that losing Apollo would smash her heart to smithereens!

  Apollo studied the tears rolling down Pixie’s cheeks as she stared up at the ceiling. She wasn’t happy about being pregnant and he wondered why he had expected otherwise. She liked kids, he knew she did, but then they weren’t having a child in the most ideal circumstances, he reminded himself grimly. She was having a child she would pretty much raise alone and possibly she felt trapped because at her age most women were young, single and free as the air.

  A chilling shot of rage assailed Apollo at the image of Pixie reclaiming her freedom after a divorce and becoming intimate with another man. He had the strangest possessive feelings where she was concerned, he conceded in bemusement. For some reason too he was feeling as exhausted as if he had climbed a mountain. Somehow Pixie being pregnant was incredibly stressful. No, worse than stressful, frightening, he adjusted in consternation. For the first time it occurred to him that Vito had been saved from such concerns by only entering his son Angelo’s life when the baby was already six months old. Was it normal for a first-time father to feel on the edge of panic? He crushed the reaction and went into denial.

  ‘By the way, we’re having a big party here in a few weeks,’ Apollo announced in a determined change of subject. ‘I organised it last month.’

  ‘Thanks for sharing after the event,’ Pixie said sarcastically.

  ‘I’ve invited friends and family here to celebrate our marriage but I didn’t fancy a wedding-type event,’ Apollo confided with a cynical twist of his mouth. ‘I settled on a fancy-dress party for a theme.’

  ‘Oh, joy…’ Pixie mumbled sleepily as she turned her face into a cushion, presenting him with her narrow back.

  ‘I’ve taken care of our outfits,’ Apollo told her with pride, relieved she would not be put to the worry of wondering what she should wear and very much hoping that she would appreciate the amount of trouble he had gone to.

  ‘Your way or the highway,’ Pixie whispered unappreciatively. ‘Don’t worry. I knew what a control freak you were the day I married you.’

  Apollo surveyed Hector, who was seated on the rug, his little face seemingly anxious. You and me too, buddy, Apollo thought wryly while he wondered if it was possible that Pixie could roll off the sofa and hurt herself wh
ile she slept. For the first time in his life concern was weighing him down like a big grey cloud closing out the sun. He had never truly had to worry about anyone but his father but now he had a wife and a child on the way. He thought it extraordinary that achieving the pregnancy required to fulfil the terms of his father’s will should suddenly and quite inexplicably feel, not like a prize, but more like a poisoned chalice.

  *

  Apollo came to bed in the early hours. Having persuaded herself that he might not even choose to still share the same room, Pixie was lying sleepless watching the moonlight glimmer through the shadows. She listened to him in the shower, watched him stride naked towards the bed and sensual heat curled low in her body because she could see that he was aroused.

  Apollo slid quietly into bed and lay there, thoroughly irritated by the throbbing at his groin. Pixie was pregnant, fragile and definitely off-limits. But it was as if she had lit a fire in him the first time they had had sex. It was a fire only she could seem to cool and that knowledge seriously disturbed him. Throughout his adult life Apollo had viewed sex as a casual diversion from more important activities. Sex had always been easily available and his libido had never homed in on one particular woman. His life had been wonderfully simple, he reflected grimly. He would see a woman he wanted, enjoy her for a while and when he got bored move on to the next. And now, for some peculiar reason, he wasn’t getting bored any more…and he was feeling urges he had no desire to feel.

  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?