by Lucy Monroe
He knew she thought his mother had instigated this, but Polly was wrong on that count. Every time his wife had implied their compatibility in the bedroom was their saving grace, he’d grown more and more bothered.
And determined to prove her wrong.
His mother had told him that if he wanted to fix what he had broken, he would have to sacrifice his own wants and desires.
He could not think of a bigger sacrifice than to give up sex with his wife while he proved himself to her.
But lying there in the dark, craving her touch, just wanting to hear her breathing beside him, he had to question his own wisdom.
Perhaps he could prove his love without giving up the one thing they got right.
Maybe he’d been a world-class idiot giving that one thing up when there was a very real possibility it was the only thing that had kept his marriage together at times.
The thought chilled him and made it no easier to sleep.
Alexandros heard his wife moving around as soon as she got up.
Though she was quiet, no doubt not wanting to wake their energetic daughter, he was aware of every rustle that indicated Pollyanna was no longer sleeping peacefully in their bed. If she had slept peacefully at all. He certainly had not.
The prospect that his request the night before had given his wife as poor a night’s rest as he’d had did not sit well with him.
Skipping his usual workout, Alexandros was even more efficient than normal with his morning ablutions, finishing his shower quickly and dressing without fuss. Alexandros left his suit jacket off until after breakfast as was his usual habit and went in search of Pollyanna.
She wasn’t in their room or the kitchen as he’d expected her to be. She baked when stressed and he’d half expected to walk into controlled chaos, but the kitchen was pristine. A quick search of the apartment and their personal terrace only revealed his still-sleeping daughter in her room.
He opened the door to the foyer. No Polly.
But their security guard was in his usual place.
“My wife?” Alexandros inquired.
The guard nodded toward the ceiling. “Up on the rooftop.”
“Alone?” Alexandros barked.
He tried to let Polly have as much normalcy to her life as possible, but she was the wife of a billionaire. Alone was not a word she got to indulge in.
“No, kyrios. Sanders is up there watching her from a distance.”
Trying to give his wife the illusion of privacy. Alexandros approved.
Alexandros nodded his acknowledgment before knocking on the door of his brother’s apartment. Petros was dressed to work out, as Alexandros had expected he would be. They both started their days early.
“I need you to keep an ear out for Helena while I talk to Pollyanna.”
His brother didn’t ask why, or suggest they talk later, just nodded his head and made his way into the other penthouse apartment. Knowing his daughter was in good hands, Alexandros headed up to the roof.
Sanders stood unobtrusively in the shadows, and Alexandros dismissed him with a quick hand gesture.
Pollyanna didn’t seem to be aware of Alexandros’s presence, her focus on the budding sunrise. Ensconced on the designer outdoor sectional the decorator had assured him was perfect for the space, her feet tucked under her, she held a steaming mug.
His wife had not dressed, but merely pulled a wrap on over her pajamas. It was a homey look that she made altogether too enticing.
“Kalimera, Pollyanna.”
She looked up, no surprise evident in the smooth movement, her expression serious but lacking the suppressed fury that had been there the night before.
In that moment, he did not know if that was a good or bad thing.
“Good morning, Alexandros. I see you are ready to face your day.”
He shrugged. It would never occur to him to come out onto the rooftop garden half-dressed, much less in his sleep shorts and T-shirt.
It was one of the ways they were very different. He did not have the luxury of presenting any appearance but absolute control.
He settled on the sectional as well, rather than taking one of the armchairs. “How did you sleep?”
She gave an almost smile. “You know? Surprisingly well. I was so angry you were listening to your mother about our marriage again, but suddenly I was just tired. And I slept.”
He winced. That didn’t sound as promising as it should have. Tired of him? Tired of trying? Tired of what?
“My mother told me that if I wanted to fix what I had broken, I had to be prepared to sacrifice my own wants and desires. I could imagine no greater sacrifice than to give up the physical expression of the passion between us, though I honestly believe she had no idea I was thinking about how sex seemed to paper over cracks I hadn’t even known were there.”
Pollyanna studied him, like she was trying to read his mind. Maybe she was. “Really? At the villa, you know what she said.”
“I do, but it is very possible a woman of my mother’s generation actually believes that forgoing intercourse during pregnancy is what is best.” That she felt the need to offer that advice was something he still found difficult to fathom.
But then Pollyanna had not been looking in the best of health the last time she saw his mother and sister before the visit to Villa Liakada.
His wife inclined her head. Not an agreement, but not a dismissal either.
Her ability to be fair, even in the face of great provocation was something he should never have dismissed when she asked for his support against his mother and sister.
Alexandros had been unable to get past the against concept, never taking the next step to realizing how very necessary presenting a unified front had been and how very much his wife had deserved his support. Full stop.
“I told her that if I lost you because of her and Stacia, I would cut them both from my life permanently.” It was very little in the way of reparation for past mistakes, but he offered it with absolute sincerity.
Surprise flared in Polly’s beautiful blue eyes. “Did you mean it?”
“I did.” That she even felt the need to ask increased his anger with himself.
He should never have made her doubt her importance to him or where his ultimate loyalty lay.
“I appreciate that you feel so strongly, you would say something like that, but let’s not pretend. No matter what their machinations, if you lose me Alexandros, it won’t be their fault.”
Tension thrummed through Alexandros, his jaw tightening so it was hard to speak, but he managed it. “I know.”
“You’re the one who broke promises to me, who told me he loved me and then treated me like I didn’t matter too many times to discount.” She’d said things like this, back when they were first married. She’d said them with tears and she’d screamed them.
And he had not listened.
He was listening now, though his wife’s voice was void of emotion.
Alexandros gritted his teeth against a sound that wanted to come out of his own aching throat, the back of his eyes burning with impossible moisture. “I am sorry.”
“I wonder. Are you sorry? Do you believe you were genuinely in the wrong, or are you simply trying to prove that your brother is not a better husband than you?”
“Is that what you think this is about?” Alexandros asked, unexpected pain ripping through him.
Alexandros was not an emotional guy. He couldn’t afford to be.
“Yes.” That was all.
Just one word given in a flat tone from his overly emotional, voluble wife.
No overexplaining. No tears. No glaring.
He did not like this lack of emotion in her. One way she’d always been his complement was that Pollyanna could give voice to feelings he could not even admit having to himself.
“It
is true. I do not like thinking you see my brother as a better husband to his wife than I am to you. I am a competitive man,” he admitted, wondering for the first time in his life if perhaps that trait was not always a good thing.
Her lips twisted. “I know.”
Of course she did. Pollyanna knew him well, whereas he had lost sight of who she was and needed to learn her heart all over again. “I find it far more disturbing that you would consider me a poor husband at all, if you want the truth. I’m sure you think that’s very conceited of me, but you are the best wife I could ever imagine having.” He still marveled at the miracle that had them meeting. “That I would not be the same for you is not something I can accept.”
“That may change.”
He knew she wasn’t talking about him becoming her ideal of a husband. She didn’t believe he wanted that role badly enough to change. She was talking about her being his perfect mate. “I assure you, it will not.”
“I’m done making all the compromises,” she said in a tone that warned him more was coming. “For the next little while, I think I may be done compromising at all.”
“Tell me what you want, and I will see you get it.” It was another promise, but she would learn this one wasn’t empty.
“Even if it means I want six months to build our relationship without your mother’s or sister’s influence?” she asked, her voice laced with doubt in his sincerity.
CHAPTER TEN
ALEXANDROS’S KNEE-JERK REACTION was to deny such a thing. What would his father have said?
However, he’d just promised he would give his wife what she needed so they could work on their marriage.
He could make the same choices he always had in the past and expect Polly to go along with his family’s norms, or he could do something different. Something that proved she mattered more than anything or anyone to him.
“You do not want to see my mother at all, even at our son’s birth?” he asked, rather than reacting with his first instincts. His mother would be devastated. “What about her seeing Helena?”
“I will not allow our daughter to be hurt,” Pollyanna said, as if that should be obvious.
“Then what?”
“I trust Corrina to supervise visits with your mother.”
“And the birth of our son?” It was only ten weeks away, give or take.
“I don’t want your mother or your sister anywhere around me during that time.” The implacability in Pollyanna’s manner could not be ignored. She wasn’t going to move on this matter. “I don’t want them visiting me, or our baby in the hospital.”
“My mother will be very hurt.” He wasn’t going to argue with his wife, but he needed to point out the consequences of such a course of actions.
Pollyanna’s wry gaze said she was fully aware. “Tell me something, Alexandros. If a company that relied on your goodwill did everything it could to undermine you in the market and talk Kristalakis Inc. down, what would you do?”
“Destroy it.” He sighed, fully aware of how quickly and unhesitatingly he had answered. “But this is family, Pollyanna, not a business rival.”
“I didn’t say a rival. I said a company that should be your ally, but for reasons of their own decided not to be.”
He nodded, acknowledging the point.
“And I don’t want to destroy your mother, but I do want her to stop and think about the cost of her behavior. If I had left you as she wanted, I would have raised Helena in America and this baby would never have come to be. Athena would rarely have seen her granddaughter and she never would have gotten the chance to know her grandson.”
All the air whooshed out of Alexandros’s body. “You are not leaving me.” He swallowed back the tightness in his throat. “Please, do not leave me.”
“I have no plans to do so, but if your mother had gotten her way, I already would have.”
“She didn’t believe you were the right woman for me.” Alexandros had no choice but to acknowledge that.
His mother had baldly admitted as much to him when she’d come to his office to apologize.
“That implies she’s had a change of heart.”
“She has.”
“I hope that’s true, but my six-month moratorium stays. And I don’t want you seeing her either.”
“What? You do not mean that.”
“I do.”
“But Polly, my father is gone. It is my duty to look after my mother.” He could not abandon the older woman entirely, no matter how angry she made him.
Which said what about the threat he’d been so sure he meant about cutting her out of his life if he lost his wife?
“Your brother can do the looking after for a while. I don’t want to wonder if your actions are driven by your own feelings or hers. I want a chance to get to know each other again without poisonous whispers making things that should be beautiful ugly.”
Pollyanna leaned toward him earnestly. “I believe if we are both willing to work at it, if we truly do focus on our marriage for the next six months, then maybe you’ll be in a place where you won’t put her feelings above mine and maybe I’ll be in a place to trust you not to.”
There was that word, trust. The one thing besides her love that Alexandros most wanted from the beautiful, vibrant woman he had married.
“Petros was very smart to move into the penthouse after marriage, wasn’t he?” Alexandros asked ruefully.
He’d thought his brother had been wrong to refuse to postpone his own wedding on their mother’s whim; now Alexandros realized just how wrong he’d been about so many things.
Pollyanna relaxed back against the sofa, taking a sip of her tea. “I think he learned from our mistakes.”
“You mean my mistakes.”
“No. I didn’t argue moving in with your family and then it took me a while to realize your mother’s and sister’s behavior was intentional.”
“Because you could not imagine my mother and sister trying to break us up. Your family would never do something like that.” And she hadn’t argued moving in because her tender heart had been moved by the losses his family had suffered and his mother’s plea they all continue to live together at the villa as a family.
As generations of the Kristalakis family had done.
“No, they wouldn’t. My mother? She despised my oldest sister’s husband when they first married, but she never said a word against him.”
“How did you know she despised him?”
“I didn’t like him either, and I went to my mom for advice. She told me it didn’t matter if we liked him, my sister loved him.”
“But you like him now.”
“I do. So does Mom.”
“What changed?”
“The easy answer? He did. We did. The hard one? My sister got ovarian cancer. It’s a terrifying disease that kills more women than survive it. My sister survived and a lot of that is down to how well he took care of her. He found an experimental treatment program in Canada, and even though they told him there was no room for my sister, he wouldn’t take no for an answer. He got her in. That pushy certainty he was always right saved my sister’s life, and I learned that he loved her as much as she loved him. Just because he wasn’t touchy-feely and had a sometimes acerbic sense of humor didn’t mean his emotions weren’t just as engaged. Mom and I love him now.”
“My mother thinks you are a saint.” His mother had spent their time apart as a family doing some soul-searching of her own, and she had admitted to Alexandros she hadn’t liked what she’d found.
“In six months, she can tell me that herself if she really thinks it.” Again, there was no give in Pollyanna on this.
“I wouldn’t lie to you.”
“On purpose, no, I don’t think you would.”
“But unwittingly, you think I would.”
“Something like tha
t.”
“What else?” he asked, more than a little worried what other “un-compromises” his wife wanted.
“I want to stay in the penthouse.”
That, at least, was easy. “Done.”
“Corrina thinks we can convert the corporate apartments into more usable space for visiting family, our security team and some kind of indoor playroom-slash-gym for the children.”
“Whatever you want.”
“I want this space to be family friendly.” She indicated the rooftop garden with an all-encompassing wave.
“What does that mean?”
Pollyanna listed some things she and Corrina had brainstormed the day before.
“I will find a nearby building to move the helipad to. I would prefer a more parklike setting for our children.” Which would require the entire space of the rooftop.
If they were going to live in a penthouse, his family was going to have the best that lifestyle had to offer.
“Are you sure?” Pollyanna asked, as if she really thought he’d balk at something so simple.
“You could have asked me for any of this anytime in the past five years, and I would have done it,” he assured her.
“Maybe you actually believe that, but I know it’s not true.”
“I can prove nothing about my intentions in the past, only the present. Know those intentions are for your contentment.”
“Not happiness?”
“No one person can assure another’s happiness.”
“I agree.”
“You chose to be happy while living under the strain of a life not anything like what you’d wanted or imagined you would have with me.” He understood that now. “I believe you will find it much easier to make that choice if you are genuinely content with your lot.”
She took another sip of her no longer steaming tea, the scent of chamomile wafting to him. “You’re probably right.”
“I like to be right.”
“I know.” A worried expression flitted over her lovely features, but then it was gone. “I’m not going back to full-time corporate prop after the baby is born. I want time with my children.”