by Lucy Monroe
Anna was not Polly’s name and she never thought of herself that way. However, as time went on, Polly had allowed her Anna persona to develop. The Anna facade stood between her and any real interaction with her detractors, and most of the time, even with her husband anymore.
“Your silence does not signify agreement,” he said as if just figuring that fact out.
“No, it does not.” It never had.
“It is your way of telling me you can’t be bothered to argue any longer.”
“Maybe.” She was reeling.
He’d gone from stone dense to insightful literally overnight, and Polly didn’t know how she felt about that.
“I think my mother has almost as much ground to make up with you as I do.”
Suddenly, Polly had her own insight.
Her husband was terribly competitive. And last night she had inadvertently triggered his need to prove he was the better husband between himself and his younger brother.
News flash—that would require something Alexandros simply could not give her.
His love.
“I’m beginning to realize just how often you use silence as its own answer,” he said in a tone she found difficult to interpret.
“You used to tell me off all the time for disagreeing with you so often.”
“Be careful what you wish for—isn’t that how the saying goes?”
“Are you saying you want me to argue with you?” She didn’t buy it. Not for a single second.
“I want you to think it’s worth it.”
“It’s a goal to shoot for,” she said with more facetiousness than she usually allowed herself with him.
His sardonic look said he recognized it. “You have an appointment with the chiropractor and acupuncturist the day after tomorrow,” he said, changing the subject away from confrontation like he never did. “I would have arranged it for tomorrow, but you’ve already got your appointment with your OB.”
“Wednesday? But I have committee meetings in Athens. Did you forget I was going to fly in on the helicopter with you?” Beryl had arranged it, as she always did when Polly needed to get into city.
Polly would come home in a car with a driver, usually after sharing lunch with her busy husband. It was one of those treats she looked forward to. Adult time during the day with Alexandros.
“There will be no more uncomfortable helicopter rides into Athens for the duration of your pregnancy.” His tone said this was not one of those occasions he wanted her to think it was worth arguing with him.
Too bad! “But my charity work!” Work he’d insisted she had to do in order to fulfill her responsibilities as his wife.
“Can be done by someone else.”
Like her efforts had no intrinsic value because she was the one making them? Thank you so much, husband! “What if there is no one else?”
“We will hire Beryl an assistant and she will take your place in committees, etc. After working for you so long, she knows your stand on things, what you would want to involve yourself in and what you would not.” He reached across the table and took her hand. “Listen to me, pethi mou. You are too valuable to me to allow you to continue putting your health at risk. And while the work you do on behalf of children at risk and the marginalized is incredibly important, it is not more important to me than you are.”
He was saying all the right things, but she wasn’t believing them.
She couldn’t afford to let herself go down that road again, where she thought he loved her, valued her and had married her for anything other than the untrammeled lust he felt for her body.
“While Beryl is invaluable to me, she is not the wife of a billionaire.”
“But she has your ear, which means she influences your donation and spokesperson power. It will suffice for this season of your life.”
Season? Did he mean beyond delivery of their second child? “I assume you’ve already spoken to Beryl about this change in her duties.” He might make it sound like he’d just thought of hiring her social secretary an assistant, but Polly wasn’t that naive.
Alexandros did not wait to act.
His hand squeezed hers. “Naturally, you are right. You know me well.”
But did he know her? “Didn’t you think that maybe you should have discussed some of these changes with me before you made them?”
“I saw a problem and I sought to fix it. What is wrong with that?”
“The problem is mine to fix.”
“Only you weren’t fixing it. You were running yourself ragged doing all the same old stuff.”
She couldn’t deny that. Polly had her own measure of pride and hadn’t wanted to admit she wasn’t physically up to the same schedule she’d always kept. “If you’ve hired a nanny behind my back, we are going to have some serious words,” she warned him.
“It would almost be worth it to see you engaged enough to actually argue with me, but that is not something I would do.”
“You want me angry with you?” she asked. This was the second time he’d alluded to wanting that and she was trying to understand why suddenly he wanted her to revert to how she’d used to be.
Willing to argue every time she didn’t agree with his autocratic view of the world. Angry with him more often than she’d ever wanted to be.
Because she kept expecting him to treat her like he loved her.
She didn’t have those expectations any longer.
“No.” Which did not surprise her. “I want you real with me, and I’m only just now realizing how long it has been since I saw the real Pollyanna. Only in the same way I have realized that there are an honored few that already do.”
“What do you mean?”
“My brother. His new wife. The few you call friend and not acquaintance.”
He’d left off her family, but maybe that was because he realized bringing them up would only point out how differently her parents and siblings treated Polly to how his own mother and sister did. “None of them call me Anna.”
And at its most basic level, that was the dividing line.
“So, all I have to do is call you Pollyanna to get back into the charmed circle?” he asked in that seductive tone he usually reserved for the bedroom.
Heat climbing her cheeks at her body’s instant reaction to it, she said, “I don’t know what circle you’re talking about.”
But she did. He meant the people she trusted, including those few she’d learned she could rely on since moving to Greece.
Her husband, she had learned not to trust.
“Yes, you do.”
“Yes, I do,” she admitted.
“I call you Anna.”
“Yes.”
“You do not like it.”
“It is not my name.”
“It is a nickname.”
“That your mother finds more acceptable than my real name. Yes, I know.”
“You have never asked me to call you Pollyanna instead.”
She shook her head. Was he rewriting history now? “That is not true.”
He stared at her, his mouth open to refute her words, but then he must have remembered. Because he went oddly pale. “You told me Anna was not your name and you would prefer if I would not use it.”
“But your mother had made it clear how very lowbrow she found my real name.”
“So, I called you Anna around her.”
“Not just around her.”
He winced in acknowledgment. “I slipped once too often and realized I needed to use it all the time, for consistency.”
The other option of course would have been for him to never use it. For consistency. And because Polly had made it clear that was what she wanted. But then, when had Polly’s wants, or even needs, ever trumped his mother’s? Never, that was when.
Their daughter demanded he
r father’s attention right then, and Polly was grateful for it. She was done with this weird walk down memory lane.
No one could change the path their marriage had taken, because she’d realized way too late that she’d married a man programmed to hurt her.
Because, despite a few claims to the contrary, usually when she’d done something that made him really happy, like giving birth, he did not love her.
No man who loved her would treat her the way that Alexandros had since their marriage and her move to Greece. The very fact he’d insisted on moving into his family home, one they had had to share with the two wicked witches, showed just how little her feelings had mattered to him.
He knew from the beginning that Athena had wanted him to marry an entirely different type of woman. It had taken Polly longer to see the contempt behind the smile.
Even so, Alexandros would be so annoyed if he knew she thought of his mother and sister in those terms.
But Polly’s thoughts were her own and even her had to be in charge husband could not police them.
They put their daughter down for her nap together, and Polly enjoyed the family togetherness so much, moisture burned the back of her eyes.
“Are you all right?” he asked as they left their daughter’s bedroom together.
“I’m fine.” She didn’t consider that two-word answer deception.
She simply said what he expected to hear.
Suddenly she found herself in his arms and being carried past the staircase that would have taken them back downstairs, down the hall and to their bedroom.
“It’s the middle of the day, Alexandros!”
“When has that ever stopped me?”
It was true that some weekends they utilized the time during their daughter’s naps to enjoy marital intimacy, but since he was never home during the day during the week, and not always on the weekends, it was something very new.
“Don’t you have to get back to the office?” she asked in wonder as he laid her down on their bed, his expression harsh with need that hadn’t been there a moment ago.
Or maybe it had been and she just hadn’t let herself notice it.
“The office can wait.” He removed his jacket and tie in rapid succession, his nimble fingers already working the buttons of his shirt open.
She gasped, her shock was so great at that unprecedented statement.
CHAPTER THREE
ALEXANDROS IMPATIENTLY TUGGED his shirt over his head with only the cuffs and a few buttons undone. Shock turned to passion as the body she loved touching so much was revealed to her hungry gaze.
He unhooked his leather belt and didn’t even bother taking it from the loops as he usually did before undoing his slacks to push them down his hips.
“They’re going to get wrinkled like that.”
“Do you care?” he asked lazily.
She shook her head, her gaze glued to his now-naked body.
“I love the way you look at me. In the bedroom.” There was something strange in his expression she couldn’t read though. Like something about what he’d said bothered him.
Polly leaned up on her elbows, confident in this, as she was in no other area of their relationship. In this area, there could be no denying they were entirely simpatico.
While she no longer believed he loved her, the joining of their bodies was still making love because of her feelings for him. And she did believe he felt affection for her.
It wasn’t all the amazing sexual compatibility they’d shared since the first time they touched.
“You do it for me,” she said cheekily but with a heated look she knew he wouldn’t misinterpret.
“Tease me at your own peril,” he warned.
But she wasn’t worried. Polly reached down to tug at her dress, as if she was going to pull it off.
He leaped. Like literally leaped and took hold of her wrists. “No. That’s mine.”
“What is yours?” she taunted.
“Undressing you.”
“I undress myself all the time.”
“Not when I’m there to do it for you.”
And that was true. Even when sex wasn’t in the offing, her husband considered it his privilege to take her clothes off if he was around to do it. Whether it was to get ready for bed or to change for dinner didn’t matter. He got a big charge out of it.
This time though, sex was definitely in the offing. It spiced the air around them, making it heavy with the mutual desire that had not dimmed in five years of marriage.
His sex rigid with need, he crossed the carpet to their bed. When he reached Polly, her husband tugged her to her feet and turned her around so he could slide the zip down on her dress, revealing curves that were exaggerated by pregnancy. He took his time peeling her dress down her arms and sliding it ever so slowly down her body.
“Now, who is teasing, Alexandros?” she asked, her tone breathy with desire.
“Your husband.”
“You are that.” She’d never denied it, for good or ill.
“And I always will be,” he said with more force than finesse before cupping her breasts. “No one else will ever touch you like this.”
“You’re feeling possessive.”
“Because you are mine.”
“And you are mine,” she reminded him. “We have matching wedding bands.”
His hot mouth landed against the side of her throat, sending her thoughts splintering. Alexandros knew all her hot spots and seemed intent on visiting each one.
Somehow, she found herself naked on the bed, his head between her legs, his mouth driving her pleasure higher and higher. Two fingers pressed inside of her, rubbing against that inner bundle of nerves that made her scream with need.
She wanted him inside her. “Alexandros! Now!”
But instead of moving up her body, he suckled at her clitoris, and she came with a long scream she couldn’t have held back with the best will in the world. He nursed her through aftershocks of pleasure until she was nearly sobbing with the pleasure that was not abating.
Only then did he shift up her body and press his hardness into the wet, slick, swollen opening of her body.
He pressed inside her, stretching her, filling her, giving her more and more pleasure. His initial thrusts were long and slow, and she could feel a second climax build impossibly fast.
This time when she came, he was with her, his own hoarse shout blending with her cries.
Afterward, he pulled her close, his body wrapped around hers completely.
She rubbed her head against his chest and kissed his hard muscle. “This is nice.”
“Better than nice.”
“Mind blowing.”
“Better.”
She yawned. “Mmm. I shouldn’t be tired. I slept in this morning.”
“But you are pregnant. You need your rest.”
“If you say so.”
“I do.”
She didn’t know how long he cuddled her, but she was dozing when he slid from the bed. “I need to shower and get back to Athens.”
“Work waits for no man,” she mumbled.
He laughed. “Perhaps not, but it waited this afternoon for my woman.”
She smiled at him, reveling in the truth of that statement.
Polly fell asleep to the sound of him showering in the en suite, waking hours later to discover he’d given strict instructions for her not to be disturbed. Beryl had fielded calls, and Dora had agreed to remain overseeing Helena until Hero showed up. All organized by Polly’s billionaire tycoon before he flew back to Athens.
Polly barely had time to make it to share dinner with their daughter, unsurprised when she got the message from the housekeeper that Alexandros had been held up in Athens and wouldn’t be joining them. Helena asked, but wasn’t upset when told her papa would see
her to tuck her in later.
And he made it back in time to do so, so neither was Polly.
The next morning, Polly stopped in stunned silence when she realized her husband was sitting at the breakfast table with Beryl and Helena.
“I stayed to go to your obstetrician appointment with you.” He sounded like he expected a medal for that.
“You said you didn’t have time.”
“When did I say that?”
“When I was pregnant with Helena.”
“Things were different then.”
“The takeover thing?” she asked.
He nodded, color scoring the masculine angles of his face. He didn’t like thinking about that time any more than she did, if for very different reasons.
“Should I point out that I’m six months pregnant?”
“Things change.”
Or he realized his brother would have been attending these appointments with Corrina from the beginning. Once again, he was competing in the husband stakes.
But since she’d always craved having him by her side for the doctor appointments, she simply said, “Okay.”
He gave her a look she couldn’t read, not that she tried very hard to do so. She was too busy getting her own suddenly chaotic thoughts into some kind of order.
She and Beryl went over her schedule for the day, and Polly realized Alexandros had meant business when he said he thought she was doing too much. He’d given Beryl instructions already to cancel things or go in Polly’s place.
Polly didn’t argue because, honestly? She was so tired today, she’d found it hard to get out of bed.
That wasn’t unusual with this pregnancy, but she fought on, trying for normal.
Her OB’s eyes widened and then narrowed when she realized that Polly’s husband was with her.
They’d met only once before. When Polly had given birth to Helena. And it had not been a mutual admiration society then. Dr. Hope had been less than impressed when the father-to-be hadn’t shown up until the final few minutes, having come after receiving the call he’d asked for.
One of the bodyguards, who was keeping tabs on what was happening in the birthing suite had let Alexandros know when it was time for Polly to start pushing.