by Lynne Graham
‘He should be punished for what he’s done to you,’ Tor contradicted, his firm mouth compressing into a taut line.
‘Mum should have left the house to both of us,’ she protested on her brother’s behalf. ‘It must’ve been very hurtful for Jordan to realise that he’d been left out.’
‘He wasn’t her son, he was her stepson,’ Tor pointed out drily. ‘Generally parents do choose to leave their worldly goods to blood relatives.’
‘And you think Jordan targeted me because I was left the house?’ Pixie demanded angrily, jumping to her feet. ‘Well, I think that’s nonsense! Maybe he did cheat to get his hands on the money, but he cared about me.’
‘I’m not saying that he didn’t, but using you to get his hands on more money quickly became his main motivation. Before he got involved you had a secure future with the ownership of that house. Instead he ensured you were loaded down with mortgage payments and student loans,’ Tor sliced in in a harsh undertone. ‘And now some very dangerous men are chasing him for repayment, which puts both you and Alfie at risk. You can’t go back to that house. You can’t risk meeting up with Jordan in public again either.’
‘You can’t tell me that!’ Pixie gasped. ‘You can’t tell me where I can live and what I can and can’t do!’
‘When it comes to your security I will tell you, particularly if it affects my son.’
‘You didn’t want to know about your son when I was pregnant last year!’ Pixie slung at him vengefully. ‘Don’t expect me to have faith in you now!’
‘You know now that I didn’t remember you and that I’m only telling you what you don’t want to hear because you need to know those facts,’ Tor countered in his measured level drawl. ‘But you can have faith in my determination to ensure that neither you nor my son are further affected by Jordan’s bad choices.’
‘But I have to go back to the house... I’ve got a cat to look after...and then there’s all my stuff.’ Pixie gasped, the ramifications of what he was telling her finally beginning to sink in.
‘I’ll make arrangements for you to remove your cat and your possessions immediately. There’s a good chance that your brother’s creditors will ransack the property and take anything that they can sell.’
Pixie went pale and broke out in nervous perspiration. ‘Oh...my...word,’ she whispered in horror. ‘This is a nightmare.’
‘With my support it doesn’t have to be.’ Tor pulled his phone out and began to make calls while she stared at him wordlessly.
He was on the phone for about ten minutes and it sounded as though he was rattling off instructions to someone. ‘When you go to the house you will take my security team with you to protect you and you will leave Alfie here.’
Slowly, painfully, it was dawning on Pixie that, faced with impending homelessness, she was in no position to call any shots. ‘But I can’t move in here!’ she exclaimed.
‘I am more than happy to have you and Alfie here.’
‘Well, possibly for a few days until I can move on. I’ll have to find somewhere I can rent. Maybe there’s someone at work I can share with. Thank goodness I’m not due back at work until next week,’ she gabbled, covering her clammy face with her spread hands in an expression of near desperation as the true meaning of her position hit her hard.
‘I’d prefer for you to stay on here,’ Tor admitted. ‘It will make it easier for me to get to know Alfie.’
‘That’s important to you, is it?’
‘The most crucial thing in my life right now,’ Tor disconcerted her by declaring. ‘I can’t begin to tell you how much his existence matters to me.’
And Pixie almost scoffed at that turnaround in attitude on his part until she recalled the man with the haunted eyes telling her about his daughter’s death, and she compressed her lips and said nothing, shame silencing her because she recognised sincerity when she saw it. Tor had only needed confirmation that Alfie was his to develop a serious interest in his son.
‘You and I have had a very troubled start...but we don’t have to continue in the same vein,’ Tor framed almost roughly.
‘We don’t,’ she agreed, welded to his beautiful eyes, bronzed by golden highlights and strong emotion.
‘In time I genuinely believe that we could make something of this...attraction between us, potentially even marriage,’ Tor spelt out almost curtly, so tough did he find it to broach the concept of a new relationship, particularly when he had promised himself that never again would he make such an attempt with a woman.
Pixie flushed and froze, not quite sure she had heard those words but keen to nip any such toxic notion in the bud. ‘Oh, no...you and me? We’re not going there,’ she told him without hesitation.
His fine ebony brows drew together. He was not vain, but he was confident and arrogant, and he knew his own worth. He was richer than sin, reasonably good-looking and most women loved him. He wasn’t remotely prepared for Pixie’s blunt and woundingly instant rejection. ‘Why not?’ he asked equally bluntly.
A strangled laugh that was not one of amusement was wrenched from Pixie. She stared back at him wide-eyed, as if his proposition had been shocking.
‘Why not? How can you ask me that?’ she exclaimed. ‘Five years after you lost your unfaithful wife you’re still not over her and you’re still wearing your wedding ring. No woman in her right mind would risk getting involved with you!’
For once in his life, Tor was silenced because it was a direct strike he hadn’t been expecting. His ultimate goal was to marry Pixie and legitimise his son’s birth and he had expected to proceed to that desirable conclusion by easy stages; the possibility of rejection had not once crossed his mind. Now it dawned on him that he could well be facing a long and stony road, toiling uphill every step of the way, because this was a woman who knew stuff no other woman had ever known about him and there would be no fooling her, no fobbing her off with something less than she felt she deserved.
‘So, to sum up, you and me...well, you bury that idea,’ Pixie advised him briskly. ‘You and Alfie? Speed ahead...and I’ll stay here until I get sorted out.’
It was a tragedy that he was so emotionally unavailable, so wrapped up in the past, she acknowledged unhappily. Marriage to Tor would have changed her life and Alfie’s out of recognition but marrying a man still unhealthily attached to a past love would be a daily punishment for her. She could still remember the love between her parents and their relationship had struck her as a shining example of what marriage should be. She cringed at the prospect of being Tor’s second-best and the likelihood that she would always be compared to her predecessor, whom he had loved. No, she had made the right decision, putting her own need for security and happiness above her son’s needs...hadn’t she?
CHAPTER SIX
IT WAS THE middle of the night or at least the early hours of the morning, Pixie guessed, when Tor shook her awake.
‘Your brother’s in hospital,’ he told her grittily.
Pixie forced herself up on her elbows, shaken out of a sound sleep, and stared up at Tor, fully dressed and formidable. ‘He’s...what?’
‘He’s been beaten up by his creditors,’ Tor divulged thinly. ‘I wasn’t sure whether or not to tell you.’
Pixie searched his lean dark features in wonderment. ‘Of course, you tell me,’ she protested. ‘He’s my brother and he screwed up, but I still love him!’
That bold statement of affection seemed to unnerve Tor slightly. His shimmering golden eyes hooded and cloaked as if she was showing him a softness that he didn’t want to see in her. ‘Does that mean that you want to see him?’
‘Of course, I do,’ she confirmed, clambering out of bed, suddenly uneasily conscious of the reality that she was only clad in pyjamas and of how incredibly uncomfortable Tor could make her feel when she was anything less than fully dressed.
In recent nights, she had encounte
red Tor in the nursery when teething was making Alfie fractious and unwilling to settle and he would cry and cry. She usually told Emma to go back to bed and that she would take care of her son, but Tor had proved to be surprisingly invested in Alfie being upset, persisting with his presence when she had expected him to lose patience and leave them alone. And gradually, it had dawned on her that Tor was a father prepared to take the rough with the smooth and willing to help out when Alfie was less than his cheerful smiling self. Was that the result of his previous experience with young children or simply his drive to make up for that poor start in fatherhood that he had acknowledged? Whichever, Pixie was unwillingly impressed by Tor’s ability to cope with his son even when he was whiny and miserable. Add in the reality that Tor was half-naked during those encounters, clad, as he was, in only a pair of faded jeans, and she was a woman, heaven forgive her for that truth, but suddenly she was fully on board with him pushing in where before she had had nobody but herself to depend on.
There was Tor, a six-pack of impressive musculature on parade, all bronzed and lethally built and sensual. With that temptation before her, being got out of bed in the middle of the night had, without warning, become a thrilling kind of adventure. She had to struggle to keep her attention on Alfie when Tor was there, bare-chested and sleepy, those gorgeous eyes drowsy and somehow even more compelling, the black spiky lashes strikingly noticeable and his eyes on her. Hot, hungry, interested. But she wasn’t stupid and she wasn’t going there—wasn’t going to make that mistake again.
She was a pushover for Tor, she reckoned unhappily. One hint that he wanted something more and she was ready to jump on the chance. But that would only complicate things between them, she warned herself sagely. Tor was open to having sex with her, nothing more lasting, nothing deeper, she reckoned ruefully. She believed the idea of marrying her had been his knee-jerk conventional overreaction to the discovery that he was a father again, not a proposition that he was properly serious about. In the short term, however, Tor was a typical male, programmed to seek sexual satisfaction, and for the present he didn’t seem to be seeking that outlet with any other woman, so she was convenient and available, but his apparent interest didn’t mean anything more than that. It was wiser to keep her distance, retain her barriers and stay uninvolved while letting him build his relationship with Alfie separate from hers.
‘A car will be waiting for you when you’re ready.’
‘You’re not coming with me?’ she heard herself say and reddened fiercely.
‘I want to punch your brother too. He put you and Alfie in danger. You could’ve been in that house with him. You could’ve been hurt, and it would’ve been his fault,’ Tor breathed rawly.
Pixie compressed her lips. It was several days since she had returned to the empty house and packed up their belongings and Coco. The move had been executed at frightening speed because Tor’s aid had included a professional removal team and a van as well as a squad of Tor’s security men to protect her. Within little more than an hour and a bit, everything she possessed had been transferred, much of it now stowed in an attic room on the top floor of the town house. Some day she would have to go through it all and she would probably dump a lot of what she had grabbed in haste, stuff that Jordan wouldn’t value but she did. There had been the family photo albums, and her mother’s treasured bits and pieces as well, items she would never part with, the objects that reminded her of her happy childhood and favourite moments, which she would, one day, share with Alfie.
‘But Alfie and I have been with you, safe, and Jordan’s my brother,’ she muttered ruefully.
‘Your half-brother,’ Tor stressed.
‘He was eight when I was born. He’s been with me all my life. He might as well be my full brother,’ Pixie countered steadily.
‘A family connection isn’t a forgive-all escape clause,’ Tor objected, marvelling at her ongoing loyalty to a male who had let her down so badly. His half-brother, Sev, had betrayed him and Tor knew that he would never pardon him for his behaviour. Of course, his outlook had always been very black and white on such matters, he conceded, and clearly Pixie’s was not.
And Pixie instantly knew that he was thinking of his brother, who had slept with his wife and whom he could not forgive.
‘Jordan loves us. He’s got nobody else,’ Pixie stated almost apologetically in the face of Tor’s disapproval. ‘I need to be the bigger person here and try to help him.’
‘Even if he’s already burned all his boats?’
‘He tried to tell me, warn me away to keep Alfie and me safe, but I think he was too ashamed to tell me the whole story.’ Pixie sighed.
In spite of his attitude, Tor joined her in the waiting limo. It was barely dawn and the drive to the hospital was accomplished in silence. ‘You don’t need to do this,’ she said awkwardly on the way in.
‘If you’re here, I’m here.’
Jordan was in a cubicle in A & E. He had been badly beaten, his face swollen, his eyes black. He had a broken arm and cracked ribs too and he couldn’t meet her eyes. ‘I knew they’d be coming for me,’ he said thickly. ‘That’s why I wanted you and the baby out.’
‘You can come back from this,’ she told him.
He twisted his head away, a tear leaking from one eye before he closed it and shuddered. ‘It’s too late. I’ve lost everything—the house, you and Alfie...there’s nothing left. It’s all my own doing.’
‘You can come back from this,’ she repeated.
* * *
‘Jordan needs help, he needs therapy,’ Pixie muttered to Tor, who had remained in the waiting room, an island in a distant corner, surrounded by security men and normal humanity. ‘He’s at his lowest ebb.’
‘He’s got what he deserves,’ Tor opined unsympathetically, walking her back outside and tucking her into the waiting limo.
Her gaze was full of reproach. ‘Do you have to be so hard?’
‘That’s who I am. And after what Jordan did to you, you shouldn’t be feeling sorry for him,’ Tor told her grimly as he swung in beside her.
‘You don’t have an ounce of compassion in you,’ Pixie complained.
‘You could persuade me otherwise,’ Tor informed her, dark eyes bright as gold ingots below the velvet sweep of his black lashes. ‘But I wouldn’t advise you to try.’
The power of those eyes holding hers unleashed a flock of nervous butterflies low in her tummy. ‘Why not?’
‘The world turns on negotiations and agreements. If you want me to help your undeserving brother, there would be a price...and you wouldn’t want to pay it.’
Bewilderment gripped her. ‘Try me...’ she invited.
‘You’re appealing to my dark side and that’s not a good idea,’ Tor warned her.
‘You mentioned negotiation,’ she reminded him.
‘Essentially, you give me what I want and in return I give you what you want.’
‘I’m not stupid. I understood that without the explanation!’ Pixie slung back impatiently. ‘Jordan needs help.’
‘He needs therapy, his debts paid off, a fresh start,’ Tor enumerated without skipping a beat. ‘You’re asking me for money and that’s easy because I’ve got a lot of it, even though I don’t believe that Jordan should be dug out of the hole he dug for himself.’
‘Shut up!’ Pixie cried, out of all patience with that unemotional assessment. ‘What do you want from me? And no, you can’t have that.’
Rare amusement lightened Tor’s gaze, making his eyes sparkle and dance and his firm mouth slant upward. ‘That?’ he queried sardonically. ‘Are you referring to sex?’
‘Yes,’ Pixie retorted tightly. ‘And you can’t have that in return because I’m not for sale and I’m not the sort of person who would trade sex for anything.’
Tor’s self-discipline cracked and he grinned. ‘I’m glad to hear that and I can work with what
you’ve just told me.’
Pixie shot him an unconvinced glance. ‘You...can?’
‘I wouldn’t want a woman who would use sex as a bargaining chip,’ Tor traded smoothly. ‘For the right price, I want more than sex.’
Pixie studied him in complete shock.
‘You’re so innocent. Why do you look so surprised?’ Tor quipped. ‘Virtually everything has a price.’
‘Jordan’s my family.’
‘Who stole from you and put you and our son at risk of harm.’
‘What did you mean about “the right price”?’
‘My terms would be simple. That you agree to visit Greece with me to introduce Alfie to my family and consider marrying me.’
‘Marrying you?’ She gasped incredulously.
‘You only have to consider the idea. When I first broached the idea, after all, you dismissed it without even considering it. I’m not going to try and force you into anything,’ Tor proclaimed defensively. ‘But I do want my family to meet Alfie.’
‘I have to go back to work tomorrow.’
‘Give me that trip to Greece and you’ll never have to work again,’ Tor murmured sibilantly. ‘Seriously, the world will become your oyster.’
Breathless, Pixie whispered, ‘And Jordan?’
‘He gets therapy and a new start, but he has to be in the mindset to change, otherwise, I warn you, you’re wasting your time,’ he warned her flatly.
‘I want him to have that chance...’
‘Marry me and we’ll be a family,’ Tor told her.
And it was the perfect promise because Pixie longed to be part of a family again more than she wanted anything else. Jordan’s deception had hit her hard and, while she still regarded her brother as family, he was now somewhere on the outside of that charmed circle until he could prove himself decent again.