by Lynne Graham
‘I hate you!’ Pixie snapped with pure venom because it was the last straw that he should witness her in such a state when all her defences were down, and there were many more such tart exchanges before her stomach settled again.
Having cleaned her up with unblemished cool, Apollo carried her back to bed. ‘Do you want me to cancel the party?’
‘You can’t. Half our guests are already on their way,’ she groaned. ‘I’ll be fine once Holly gets here.’
‘I haven’t had sex with anyone but you since we got married,’ Apollo announced just when she was least expecting any reference to that burning issue.
‘Don’t believe you,’ Pixie gasped, turning over on her side to avoid looking at him. ‘Nobody would believe you. I’m not stupid. It’s what you do, it’s who you are…you probably can’t even help it.’
‘It’s not who I am!’ Apollo bit out hotly from between clenched white teeth, his eyes emerald bright and accusing. ‘The least you can do is give me the chance to explain.’
Pixie closed her eyes tight and played dead. His sudden anger had unnerved her. She didn’t fear him but right then she didn’t feel equal to the challenge of such an emotive confrontation. In fact suddenly all she wanted was Holly’s reassuringly soothing presence. Tears stung her eyes behind the lowered lids.
‘Izzy is Jeremy Slater’s kid sister. Vito and I went to school with Jeremy. Although you haven’t met him yet, he’s a close friend. Izzy was at a dinner I attended. I’ve met her before and she asked me for a lift because she was visiting someone with an apartment in the same building as my London penthouse. I thought nothing of it,’ Apollo admitted grittily. ‘I wasn’t particularly surprised either when the paparazzi jumped out to photograph us when we arrived because Izzy’s every move is currently prime fodder for the tabloid newspapers.’
‘So, according to you, you simply gave her a lift,’ Pixie recited. ‘How does that explain her still being with you the next morning?’
‘She spent the night with whoever she was visiting. She phoned me first thing and asked me if I could drop her off on my way into the office. She was waiting for me in the lobby and we left the building together.’
‘When you were caught on camera again. Why didn’t your bodyguards intervene?’
‘Because I suspected that Izzy was using me to raise her own profile and, not having thought through the situation, I saw no harm in it and waved them back,’ Apollo ground out angrily.
His explanation covered the facts but his generosity towards Izzy Jerome’s craving for publicity when he himself loathed paparazzi attention infuriated her. Since when had Apollo not ‘thought through’ a situation? He must’ve realised how the press would present those photos, one taken the night before, the next early the next morning.
‘I’m sorry,’ she pronounced flatly. ‘I don’t believe you.’
The door thudded closed on his exit and only then did her tension ease a little yet she had never felt so empty. She had not realised that she could love anyone as much as she loved Apollo and she had not realised that losing someone could hurt so much that it hurt to breathe. And it was a lesson she truly wished she had not had to learn. She had lain awake a long time the night before. Apollo had presumably slept in another room and ironically his absence had distressed her as much as his presence would have done. It was as though she were being ripped slowly apart, divided between wanting him and not wanting him.
Vito and Holly arrived mid-afternoon. As soon as Pixie heard Holly’s bright voice echoing up from the hall she called down to her friend from the upper landing. Apollo and Vito looked up. Pixie reddened and waved to excuse herself for not having gone downstairs to welcome their guests.
‘I’m pregnant,’ she told Holly baldly. ‘And, yes, it was planned.’
‘Is that why Apollo is looking a little ragged round the edges?’
‘No… I think that was caused by the doctor telling us that we’re having twins.’
‘Twins?’ Holly squealed in excitement. ‘When are you due?’
As the friends shared due dates, because Holly was expecting her second child, they went downstairs by a service staircase and settled down with cool drinks in the orangery with its tall shady plants and softly playing indoor fountain.
‘Vito told me about the will and that you were planning to have a child with Apollo,’ Holly confided then.
Pixie sighed heavily.
‘And you broke the rules, didn’t you?’ Holly whispered, anxiously searching Pixie’s tense little face and shadowed eyes. ‘You went and fell madly in love with his fancy-ass yacht.’
Pixie didn’t trust herself to laugh or speak and she jerked her chin down in confirmation.
Holly groaned out loud.
‘I wanted a child and because I wasn’t very good at…er…dating I thought that Apollo could be my best chance of ever having one,’ Pixie admitted very quietly. ‘I should tell you now…we are separating after the party.’
‘Is it really that cut and dried? I mean, even Vito, who generally assumes the worst of Apollo when women are involved, thinks that there’s no way that Apollo would have slept with Izzy Jerome. She’s Jeremy’s kid sister and sisters are off-limits between friends. And Apollo has uninvited Izzy from your party,’ Holly completed with satisfaction.
‘Izzy Jerome was on the guest list?’ Pixie gasped in dismay.
‘She’s not any more,’ Holly emphasised. ‘I don’t think he is involved with her. She’s very young, you know, still a teenager.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ Pixie lifted her head high and sipped at her drink. ‘The best way forward for us now is for us to go our separate ways. That was planned from the start.’
Holly shook her head. ‘I can’t believe you signed up for that. I thought you hated him.’
Pixie said nothing because there was a sour taste in her mouth. Only days had passed since she had planned to tell her friend how very different Apollo was from his public image but recent events had proved her wrong in all her assumptions. In truth she supposed that she had stupidly idealised Apollo to justify the reality that she had fallen in love with him.
‘Let me see what you’re wearing tonight,’ Holly urged in a welcome change of subject.
Pixie took her up to the bedroom to show her the long scarlet dress in its garment bag. ‘Apollo had it designed and I don’t like it much…it’s a wee bit slutty, don’t you think? I have no idea what he’s wearing.’
Holly skimmed a thoughtful fingertip over the black corset lacing round the bust line. ‘Gangster’s moll?’
‘Well, at least there’s no fairy wings included,’ Pixie commented flatly. ‘But there is a very ornate piece of valuable jewellery which he brought back from London and he evidently expects me to wear it with the costume.’
Pixie opened the worn leather box on the dressing table and listened to Holly ooh and ah over the fabulously flamboyant ruby necklace and drop earrings. She turned her head and glanced back at the red dress again. There was something about it, something eerily familiar but she couldn’t pin down what it was.
Dressing for dinner, she donned the costume. She decided it was fortunate that pregnancy had swelled her boobs because the gathered, dipping neckline positively demanded a glimpse of bosom. She tightened the laces, noting with wry appreciation that she finally had the chest she had long dreamt of having. But like her marriage to Apollo, it was an illusion, she thought morosely, for when she had finally delivered her twins she would probably return to being pretty much flat-chested again.
Apollo strode in and she stopped dead to stare at him. He was tricked out like a pirate in tall black boots and fitted breeches with a white ruffled shirt and a sword. And being Apollo and fantastically handsome, he looked spectacular and electrifyingly sexy.
‘I gather that I’m a pirate’s lady,’ Pixie guessed.
‘A pirate’s treasure,’ Apollo quipped. ‘You’re not wearing the rubies.’
He extracted the necklace fr
om the box and handed her the earrings. ‘This set belonged to my mother. It hasn’t been worn since she died. I had it cleaned and reset for you in London.’
The eye-catching rubies settled coolly against her skin and she slowly attached the earrings, watching them gleam with inner fire as they swung in the lamp light. ‘Thanks,’ she said stiltedly.
A very large dinner party awaited them on the ground floor. With surprising formality Apollo brought his relatives forward one by one to meet Pixie. There were innumerable aunties and uncles and cousins. She marvelled at his calm control under stress and his polished manners. He was essentially behaving like a proud new husband. Nobody could ever have guessed that that dream was already dead and buried. It had been a dream, she reminded herself doggedly, a dream that could never have become reality with Apollo Metraxis in a leading role.
In the ballroom she watched Apollo socialising and frowned. It wasn’t fair that she could barely drag her eyes off his tall, powerful physique; it wasn’t right or decent that she still felt his magnetic pull. And Apollo dressed up like a pirate was pure perfect fantasy. The arrogant tilt of his dark head, the breadth of his shoulders, his narrow waist and lean, tight hips, the long muscular line of his thighs in skintight pants. Her mouth ran dry watching him and her weakness filled her with self-loathing.
Apollo, meanwhile, was in a filthy mood. The planning had gone perfectly but the timing had gone seriously askew. He should have known better; he should have known not to waste his time trying to be something he was not. Since when had he been romantic? What did he even know about being romantic? And in any case, she hadn’t even noticed, which said all that needed to be said. He had taken the cover of her battered romantic paperback and had the outfits copied. Even the costume designer had gazed at him as though he were crazy and he felt like an idiot for going for the pirate theme. Even so, he wasn’t going down without a fight.
‘I’m no good at slow dances,’ Pixie protested when Apollo slowly raised her out of her seat and took her away from Holly, whom she had clung to throughout the evening.
‘So, stand on my feet,’ Apollo advised, wrapping her slender body into his arms with the kind of strength she couldn’t fight without making a scene.
Murderously conscious that their guests were watching them, Pixie pressed her face against his chest and breathed in deep. He smelled so good she wanted to bottle him. Her fingers spread across his powerful shoulders and she drifted in a world of inner pain, wavering wildly between hating and craving and loving. She had missed him so much when he was away from her in London and now she had a whole future of missing him ahead of her.
‘I won’t agree to a separation,’ Apollo breathed softly above her head.
‘I don’t need your agreement. I’ll just leave.’
He went rigid in her arms and missed a step. Pixie was fighting back tears, reminding herself that they were in the middle of a party, that they were the centre of attention as much because she was a new bride as because the bridegroom had been outed as a cheat little more than forty-eight hours previously.
‘I’ll buy you a house in London…but you stay safe here until I have that organised for you.’
‘I don’t need your help.’
‘I’ll call you when I’ve set up the house and you can fly out and give me your opinion.’
Pixie swallowed back a sudden inexplicable sob because, without warning, Apollo had stopped fighting her and had backed off. Instead of feeling relieved, she felt more lost and alone than ever. They really were splitting up. Their marriage was over.
*
The three weeks that followed were a walking blur for Pixie. Apollo had left Nexos as soon as the last of their guests had departed. He had not attempted to have another serious conversation with her. Those last words exchanged on the dance floor, with her ridiculous threat to just walk out, lingered with her. Yes, she could walk out, she conceded, but she couldn’t just walk away from her feelings, the painful feelings that accompanied her everywhere no matter where she was or what she was doing. She couldn’t stop thinking about Apollo or fighting off the suspicion that she had condemned him on the basis of his reputation rather than on the evidence.
So preoccupied was she that she barely noticed that her bouts of sickness were fading away. She had to move into maternity clothes rather sooner than she had hoped because most of her fashionable outfits were too fitted to cope with her swollen breasts and vanishing waistline. She purchased new clothes online, loose-cut separates picked for comfort rather than elegance. With Apollo absent she discovered that she didn’t care what she looked like. He phoned every week to civilly enquire after her health, and when he asked her if she could join him in London on a certain date her heart sank, because once he showed her the house he expected her to occupy she assumed that the dust would settle on their official separation. Evidently he had accepted that their relationship, their intimacy, was over now.
And wasn’t that what she had wanted? How could she move forward without putting their marriage behind her? Apollo had denied infidelity but he hadn’t put up much of a fight against her disbelief, had he? But like a sneaky snake in the grass in the back of her mind lurked the dangerous thought that she could, if she wanted, offer him a second chance. She was so ashamed of that indefensible thought that it woke her up at night in a cold sweat. She understood that her brain was struggling to find a solution to her unending grief and sense of deep loss and she knew that the forgiving approach worked for some couples but she knew it would never work for her. Nor would it work for a male like Apollo, who needed strong boundaries and punishing consequences because he wouldn’t respect anything else.
Pixie arrived back in London late afternoon in late December with Hector in tow. A limo met her at the airport and whisked her back to the penthouse apartment. Apollo was flying in from LA and had told her that he would not be arriving until shortly before their scheduled meeting. That was why it was a surprise for Pixie to be curled up on a sofa with her dog in front of the television and suddenly be told by Manfred that she had visitors. As she stood up Hector bolted for cover under a chair.
A tall man with prematurely greying dark hair walked in with an oddly self-conscious air but Pixie’s attention leapt straight off him towards the highly recognisable youthful blonde accompanying him.
‘I’m Jeremy Slater and I apologise for walking in on you like this but my sister has something she has to say to you,’ the man told her stiffly. ‘Izzy…you have the floor…’
The tall, slender blonde fixed strained blue eyes on Pixie and burst into immediate speech. ‘I’m really sorry for what I did. I set Apollo up as cover. I knew he was married but I didn’t think about that. I’m afraid I was only thinking about what suited me.’
Pixie was frowning in bewilderment. ‘You set Apollo up?’ she repeated blankly.
‘I knew that if I was spotted with Apollo, the paps would assume that we were together and that they wouldn’t look any more closely into who I was staying with in that building,’ she spelled out tautly.
‘What my sister isn’t saying,’ Jeremy interposed drily, ‘is that she has been involved with a famous actor, who keeps an apartment in Apollo’s building. As that man is married, both my sister and he wished to keep their relationship out of the public eye.’
‘I didn’t intend to cause anyone any trouble,’ Izzy said pleadingly.
‘But you weren’t too concerned when you did cause that trouble,’ Pixie pointed out, her stomach churning with shock. ‘I can see that I have your brother to thank for this explanation being made.’
‘I couldn’t stand back and let Apollo take the fall for something he didn’t do,’ Jeremy declared cheerfully. ‘He’s been guilty as charged so often and I’m certain that that means that he suffers in the credibility stakes.’
‘Yes,’ Pixie agreed, her face hot with shame because even she hadn’t really listened to Apollo when he’d said he was innocent.
She hadn’t asked the r
elevant questions and she hadn’t asked if he could prove his story. In fact she hadn’t given him a fair hearing in any way and in retrospect that acknowledgement humbled her. In common with any other bystander she had indeed assumed that he was guilty as charged, but she had had much less excuse than other people because she had lived with Apollo for months and knew that he was something more, something deeper than the heartless womaniser he appeared to be in public.
Jeremy and Izzy departed soon afterwards with Jeremy remarking that he hoped they would soon meet in more sociable circumstances. His sister, however, said nothing, probably guessing that Pixie never wanted to see her again if she could help it.
After that visit, Pixie went to bed but of course she couldn’t sleep. She had never trusted Apollo and had essentially regarded her distrust as a trait that strengthened her. Only now was she seeing the downside of that outlook. Looking for the worst and always expecting the worst from a man was not a healthy approach and it was unfair. Even worse, using distrust as a first line of defence had crucially blinded her to what was actually happening in their marriage. She should have recognised how far Apollo had already drifted from his original blueprint for a marriage that was a business arrangement. Time after time he had done things, said things that defied that blueprint and she had ignored that reality. After all, she had changed—why shouldn’t he have changed too?
*
The next morning it was a struggle for Pixie to eat any breakfast. She had forced a separation on Apollo and had voluntarily given him back his freedom. She had well and truly proved to be her own worst enemy. Pride and distrust had driven her into rejecting the man she loved. Could he forgive her for that? Could he forgive her for misjudging him?
Would her misjudgement and their marriage even matter to him now? After all, his inheritance would soon be fully his because by the time their children were born he would have met the exact terms of his father’s will. Nowhere in that will did it state that Apollo had to be still living with his wife.