by Lucy Monroe
“You seem much more relaxed with the current schedule.” And it bothered him more than she would ever understand now that he understood how much she had not enjoyed her previous one. How exhausting she had found it and how she had tried so hard to be the attentive parent she wanted to be and still not let him down.
“I am.”
“Then we will keep it.”
She stilled, like she was waiting for him to take the words back. Of course, he did not.
Finally, she nodded. “I would like that.”
“Corrina and Petros can do some of the socializing for the company’s sake we have been doing these past five years.”
“So, you won’t just start going to these things without me?”
“Ohi.” No, he would not. Absolutely. Did she not realize he would miss her? But he did not say so, only offered what he knew she would believe. “I too want to see my children grow.”
“I’m glad.” Pollyanna untucked her feet, no doubt preparing to stand. “Well, that’s a good place to start, don’t you think?”
“I do.” He reached for her tea and took a sip, grimacing at the taste.
She smiled. “Not your favorite.”
“No, but you like it.”
“I do.”
“And that is all that matters.” He hoped she understood that he was talking about more than tea here.
“Is there anything you want to see happen?”
That she would even ask proved to him once again how committed to making their marriage work his incredible wife really was. “Your generosity of spirit humbles me. Since you are asking, date nights. I want them once a week, whether we’ve been to a business-related social function, or not.”
“I’d like that, Alexandros.” She stood, clearly assuming he was done.
But he wasn’t. “I want to call you agape mou without you flinching, frowning, or turning your face away.”
“I…” She let her voice trail off and showed she understood how important this was by really thinking about her answer. “I’ll try.”
He nodded. “About last night—”
“As angry as you made me, I think it’s a good idea,” she slotted in before he could tell her he’d been stupid to suggest such a thing.
“You do?”
She nodded.
“For six months?” If his voice rose on the word months, he could be forgiven.
“No. The six months is about your mother and sister only. I’m due in ten weeks and then six after that while I heal.”
“That’s still four months,” he practically shouted.
She startled, like his raised voice had surprised her. “It was your idea.”
“And it was stupid.”
“No. You were right. We both used sex to paper over the cracks. I don’t want those cracks becoming chasms.”
He wanted to argue, but Alexandros found he could not. He had let his wife down in a very real way. If this was his penance, then he would pay it.
“You want to go shopping? With me?” Polly wasn’t sure she’d heard her husband correctly.
It was just not him. The Alexandros Kristalakises of the world did not trail along with their wives to the shops.
His smile was all warm engaging charm. “You may have not noticed, but you are expecting our son in just over two months.”
“Hard to miss.” Harder to miss was that it was midmorning and her business tycoon husband was in their penthouse, not his office.
Again.
“We have no nursery for him.”
They did have a nursery. At Villa Liakada. “We have everything at the villa.” She should have had the nursery furniture, the bassinet at the very least, brought to Athens.
Polly wasn’t sure why she hadn’t already taken care of it. The entire layette she’d put together for her son’s arrival was still in there as well.
“Which we will need when we are staying there on weekends.”
“Papa!” Helena came careening into the living room, Hero close in her wake. “Are you going to go swimming with us?”
“Not today, louloudi mou. I am taking Mama shopping.”
His little flower made a face. Helena definitely took after her father in her lack of interest in that pastime. “Do I have to go?” the three-year-old asked suspiciously.
“Ohi. You will go swimming with Hero, have a lovely lunch with Aunt Corrina and then take your nap, ne?” They were going to have to hire a second nursemaid to replace Dora in Athens.
The older woman would keep her position on a part-time basis for when they visited the villa, but she hadn’t wanted to make the move to Athens.
“I get to visit Aunt Corrina?” Helena asked excitedly.
“Most assuredly, but only if you promise to nap nicely for Hero afterward. She has schoolwork she has to do.”
Polly smiled her approval at her husband remembering what to him was probably trivial, but was very important for Hero. “You’re a very nice man for a billionaire business shark.”
“I am glad you think so.” His smile had a spark of something that sent need sparking through Polly even as their daughter promised most sincerely to take her nap nicely.
Hero and Helena, accompanied by two of the security team, left for the pool a moment later, and Polly was left alone with her confusing husband.
“You want to furnish a nursery? But you’re sleeping in it.” Had he forgotten that salient fact?
“I live in hope my wife will invite me back into our bed, sex or no sex,” he said, his voice low and seductive, his body somehow closer than he had been only a second ago. “Until then, we can have a daybed installed in the office.”
There was certainly room for one. One thing about the penthouse was that the rooms were all oversize. There was enough square footage for six bedrooms easily, but the architect had designed the apartment on a grand scale, every room oversize with lots of built-in storage.
Her husband had been overstating the case when he said they didn’t have the facilities to entertain. Parties of fifty or more? Would be crowded. But their dining table could be extended to accommodate seating for ten.
When it was kept in its current formation for six, there was more than adequate space for hosting a cocktail party comfortably, even if they didn’t have a banquet-size room like they did at Villa Liakada. And while it was nowhere near the size of the rooftop garden, their personal terrace was quite large and well situated to increase their entertainment space.
“I did not kick you out of our bed. It was a mutual decision, based on your suggestion, I might add.” She missed him in their bed.
Of course she did, but not having sex to fall back on as a distraction tactic was forcing them both to be more forthcoming and maybe even more aware of the other’s needs outside of the bedroom. She’d realized how much he enjoyed her company when it didn’t lead to sex, how important it was to him to spend time together, regardless.
She liked knowing that, but also acknowledged that there had been many times in the past she had unknowingly disregarded his need for her companionship, thinking it was all about the sex.
“One I regretted almost immediately, but even so, I think it has been illuminating in a good way for both of us.”
His words so closely resembled her own thoughts, Polly smiled. “I think so too.”
“That does not mean I want this moratorium to last indefinitely.” He said it like she might actually be thinking along those lines.
“Neither do I,” Polly assured him.
“Good.” He leaned down and kissed her.
Polly responded, letting her body relax into his.
Alexandros took her weight, sliding his arm around her expanded waist. When he pulled his mouth from hers, they were both breathing heavily, but there was no urgency to take things further. It felt too g
ood just to be held, to be needed for more than her body.
That thought hit her hard. Did she think of herself that way? Had he been right that Polly had stopped believing in the romance of their relationship? That he cared for her as more than a convenient, if very compatible, bed partner?
“So, you want to go shopping?”
“I’ve cleared my schedule for the rest of the day.”
Wow. She shifted so she could meet his eyes. “The whole day?”
“We don’t have to shop the whole time,” he said, sounding just the tiniest bit panicked.
Polly laughed. “We don’t have to shop at all. We can order everything online.”
“You don’t like ordering personal things online, unless you have no choice,” he said, showing a perception she would not have expected, but more than that, a consideration for her feelings that she’d learned not to expect either.
The fact her newly perceptive husband realized just how personal the nursery was to her touched Polly deeply.
“He’s going to sleep in our room in the bassinet for the first few weeks,” she reminded Alexandros.
“I remember Helena. I thought your mother and mine were going to come to blows over your refusal to put our newborn in the nursery at night.”
“Just because she doesn’t choose to voice her opinion over all her adult children’s decisions, doesn’t mean she can’t hold her own when she needs to.” It had helped that in that case, Alexandros had not sided with his mother.
Polly had told him flat out that he could move out of their bedroom if he didn’t like the baby’s bassinet being in there. But he’d told her he had no problem with it.
He had adored their daughter from before her birth.
“Not that she liked her bassinet at first,” Polly remembered fondly. “She only slept well when you held her on your chest.” The nights he’d spent in Athens away from them those first two weeks had been rough.
Helena had eventually settled into her bassinet and not needed her daddy’s heartbeat in her ear to sleep.
“I remember. It was a special time.”
Love for this man poured through Polly, and she smiled at him. “Yes, it was.”
They shopped high-end boutiques for nursery items and additions to the baby’s layette, but then Alexandros instructed their driver to take them to a store on the outskirts of Athens.
They hadn’t found a crib and changing table yet, though Polly had seen a couple that would work. Just nothing that she’d fallen in love with. “Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
“I don’t like surprises.”
“That is not true.”
She laughed. “No, it’s not, but I still want to know.”
“Are you hungry? Would you like lunch first?”
Her tummy rumbled, answering his question.
His laughter was rich and warm, and she couldn’t help what she did next any more than she could have stopped taking her next breath.
Polly leaned over and kissed him, not rushing it. Letting her lips move against his, loving how he returned the caress instantly but made no move to take it deeper.
Finally, she pulled back only far enough to look into his eyes. “Thank you.”
“You are welcome, but why are you thanking me?”
“For taking this time, for doing it with a smile and that super sexy laugh that makes me all warm inside.”
“I’m very glad to know my laughter affects you that way.”
“It’s more than that, it’s knowing you’re happy to be here.”
“I am.”
She didn’t remind him there had been a time when he wouldn’t have been. They were going forward, not staying mired in the past. “So am I.”
They ate lunch on the patio of a café that served traditional Greek fare. Polly enjoyed her spanakopita very much, but kept snacking on the pistachios on the crudités plate.
She ate the last one and frowned.
“Would you like me to get you more?” Was that laughter in his voice.
Polly blushed. “I don’t know why, but I’ve just been craving pistachios this pregnancy.”
“No doubt your body needs the nutrients found in them.”
“Or I just love their salty goodness.”
“Or that.” He laughed, but waved a waiter over and requested more for their table.
“I’m going to turn green if I keep eating these,” she joked.
“Even green, I will still love you.”
Polly went still, his words doing things to her heart and emotions, not all of them good, but mostly good.
“You’ve never been a guy who says that a lot.” And she’d finally decided it meant he didn’t feel the emotion like she did.
It hadn’t been like that in the beginning of their relationship. She hadn’t needed the words as a frequent affirmation. But that was before they meshed lives that she now realized had probably never been meant to go together.
He acknowledged her words with an indecipherable look. “I have come to see that not saying the words may have convinced you they were no longer true.”
If they ever had been. “If it had just been a matter of saying it, or not saying it, I don’t think I would have drawn that conclusion.” Her dad adored his wife and children. However, he had never been a man to make a lot of verbal declarations. “But it isn’t, is it?”
“What do you mean?” His gorgeous face revealed a confusion that might have annoyed her weeks before.
She’d thought he should know, but now she saw it as more endearing. He was trying.
“If you had shown me that you loved me, if I had been a priority in your life,” she explained, “I don’t think the lack of words would have bothered me. It might other women, I don’t know. I only know myself.”
“And you needed actions I did not give, so the lack of words cemented a belief inside you that I do not love you.”
“Yes.” It was a level of honesty they did not usually engage in.
But there was no moving forward as they’d both said they wanted to do without putting truth out there to be dealt with.
He nodded. “It is my intention to both say the words and to show you that I feel them.”
She wanted that, more than was safe for her heart. “This reconstruct our marriage plan is a risky one, you understand that, don’t you?”
“I would have said not to do it was riskier.”
“But I’d settled into our marriage, found my peace with the limitations of our life. You’re doing your best to convince me that we can have something different, something better. If I believe you and you let me down, I don’t know if I have what it takes to find that peace again.” Simply admitting that was scary for her, because it meant her future might take a turn she did not want, had never wanted, but might not be able to avoid.
“Is that why you are fighting this so hard?” he asked, as if he was finally understanding something that had bothered him.
But she didn’t understand his question. “How am I fighting it?” She’d agreed to try, hadn’t she? Agreed to work toward an emotional intimacy she’d blocked herself off from since before the birth of their daughter.
“You do not trust me to change.”
“Well, no.” But that wasn’t fighting against him trying to, was it?
He winced, like he’d really hoped for a different answer. “Because you fear that if you trust me and I let you down again, it will be the end.”
She laid her hands over her stomach, letting the life there give her a measure of peace. “Yes.”
“And you do not want that?”
She shook her head. “We have two children together.” She didn’t want to bring their son into a broken home.
Alexandros nodded. “Both our daughter and our unborn son deser
ve the strongest family we can give them.”
“And in your mind, that means having a strong marriage?” She’d thought he believed that, when they’d first dated and gotten married.
Then she’d come to believe Alexandros had very different priorities than building a strong marriage with her.
“Ne.” He infused that one word of affirmation with a deep sense of feeling and commitment.
And she liked hearing it. A lot. This bid of his to save their marriage wasn’t only about his need to prove he was as good a husband as his brother.
“You know, our marriage wasn’t rocky.” Not until he’d started pressing her for things she no longer felt able to give. Like her trust.
“How stable could it be if you were not as happy in it as I was?”
“From my perspective, it was very stable.”
“Only because you never considered the possibility that if you no longer loved your husband, you could fall in love with someone else.” He said the words like even voicing the thought pained him, but it was a real worry for him.
She would never have expected him to entertain such a thought. “I would not allow a relationship to develop to the point that might happen.” And she’d never fallen out of love with him, so it was a moot point anyway.
She was terminally afflicted.
“I believe you would not knowingly do so.”
“But you think it could happen?” she asked, still surprised he harbored such a worry.
“I think I will never take that risk.”
“Staying married is really important to you.” Had it always been? Polly didn’t know.
Wasn’t sure it mattered. It was true now and that was what was important.
Pain flared in his espresso gaze. “It is, and I am sorry you came to believe otherwise.”
“I’m not sure how much I believed and how much I feared. And once I got pregnant, well, I never even considered you’d end things between us.”
“That is something at least.”
“Family is important to both of us.”
“Yes, but perhaps I put too much emphasis on my family of birth and not enough on the one I was making with you.” It was a huge admission for a loyal Greek son and brother to make.