The Greek's Christmas Bride
‘Come over to the sinks,’ Pixie urged, alarmingly short of breath at the prospect of laying actual hands on him.
Apollo stared down at her. She was even smaller than he had expected, barely reaching his chest and very delicate in build. He had seen boards with more curves. But she had amazing eyes, a light grey that glittered like stolen starlight in her expressive face. She had an undistinguished button nose and a full rosebud mouth while her flawless skin had the translucent glow of the finest porcelain. She was much more natural than the women he was accustomed to. Definitely no breast enhancements, no fake tan and even her mouth appeared to be all her own.
As he sat down Pixie whisked a cape round him and then a towel, determined not to be intimidated by him. ‘So, what on earth are you doing here?’
‘You’ll never guess,’ Apollo intoned, tilting his head back for her.
Pixie ran the water while noting that he had the most magnificent head of hair. Layers and layers of luxuriant blue-black glossy strands. His mocking response tightened her mouth and frustration gripped her. ‘When did you last see our mutual friends?’ she asked instead.
‘At my father’s funeral last week,’ Apollo advanced.
Pixie stiffened. ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ she said immediately.
‘Why should you be sorry?’ Apollo asked with unsettling derision. ‘You didn’t know him and you don’t know me.’
Her teeth gritted at that scornful dismissal as she shampooed his hair. ‘It’s just what people say to show sympathy.’
‘Are you sympathetic?’
Pixie was tempted to drench him with the shower head she was using. Her teeth ground together even tighter. ‘I’m sympathetic to anyone who’s lost a family member.’
‘He was dying for a long time,’ Apollo admitted flatly. ‘It wasn’t unexpected.’
His outrageously long fringe of black lashes flicked down over his striking eyes and she got on with her job on automatic pilot while her mind seethed with questions. What did he want with her? Was it foolish of her to think that his descent on the place where she worked had to relate to her personally? Yet how could it relate to her? Outside her ties to Holly and Vito, there was no possible connection.
‘Tell me about you,’ Apollo invited, disconcerting her.
‘Why would I?’
‘Because I asked...because it’s polite?’ he prompted, his posh British upper-class accent smooth as glass.
‘Let’s talk about you instead,’ she suggested. ‘What are you doing in England?’
‘A little business, a little socialising. Visiting friends,’ he responded carelessly.
She applied conditioner and embarked on a head massage with tautly nervous fingers. A second after she began she realised she had not asked him if he wanted one but she kept going all the same, desperate to take charge of the encounter and keep busy.
Apollo relaxed while lazily wondering if she did any other kind of massage. The file hadn’t shed much light on her sex life or her habits but then two broken legs had kept her close to home for months. As her slender fingers moved rhythmically across his skull he pictured her administering to him buck naked and the sudden tightening at his groin warned him to give it a rest.
Irritated by the effect she was having on his highly tense body, Apollo thought about how much he needed sex to wind down. His last liaison had ended before his father’s funeral and he had not been with anyone since then. Unlike Vito, Apollo never went without sex. A couple of weeks was a very long time for him. Had he found Pixie unattractive, he would’ve backed off straight away; however that wasn’t the case. But—Diavole!—she was teeny, tiny as a doll and he was a big guy in every way. She rinsed his hair and towelled him dry while he thought about her hands on his body and that ripe bee-stung mouth taking him to climax. It was a relief to move and settle down in another chair.
‘What do you want done?’ she asked him after she had combed his hair.
He almost told her because he was all revved up and ready to go and he had never before reacted to a woman with such unsophisticated schoolboyish enthusiasm. ‘A trim...but leave it long,’ he warned her while he wondered what the secret of her attraction was.
Novelty value? He was tall and he generally went for tall, curvy blondes. But possibly he had got bored with a steady diet of women so similar they had become almost interchangeable. Vito had raved about how down-to-earth and unspoilt Holly was but Apollo was a great deal less high flown in his expectations. If Pixie pleased him in bed, he would count her a prize. If she got pregnant quickly he would treat her like a princess. If she gave him a child, she would live like a lottery winner. Apollo believed in only rewarding results.
Of course, she might turn him down. A woman had never turned him down before but he knew there had to be a first time and it was not as though he were in the habit of asking women to have a child with him. And if he spilled all to Pixie then he would be vulnerable because she might choose to share his secrets with the media for a handsome price and that would scupper his plans. So, however she reacted, he would be stuck having to pay her to keep quiet and that reality and the risk involved annoyed him.
Momentarily, Pixie stepped away to right the swaying coat stand, knocked off balance by an elderly woman. In the mirror, Apollo watched as Pixie bent down to pick up and hang the coats that had fallen and he was riveted by a glimpse of her curvy little rump before she straightened and returned to his side.
Her scissors went snip-snip. She was confident with what she did and every so often her fingers would smooth through his hair in a gesture almost like a caress. He glanced at her from below his lashes, wondering if it was a come-on, but her heart-shaped face was intent on her task, her eyes veiled, her mouth a tense line. It didn’t stop Apollo imagining those touchy-feely hands roaming freely over him. In fact the more he thought about that, the hotter he got.
When she wielded the drier over him, Apollo tried to take it off her. He usually dried his own hair and then damped it down again to make it presentable but Pixie swore she would do nothing fancy and withheld the drier, determined to personally tame his messy mane.
Until she had had the experience of cutting Apollo’s hair it had never crossed Pixie’s mind that her job could be an unsettlingly intimate one. But touching Apollo’s surprisingly silky hair disturbed her, making her aware of him on a level she was very uncomfortable with. He smelled so damned good she wanted to sniff him in like an intoxicating draught of sunshine. Wide shoulders flexed as he settled back in the chair and she sucked in a slow steadying breath. She had never been so on edge with a customer in her life. Her nipples were tight inside her bra and she felt embarrassingly damp between her thighs.
No, she absolutely was not attracted to Apollo. It was simply that he made her very nervous. The guy was a literal celebrity, an international playboy adored by the media for his jet-set womanising lifestyle. Any normal woman would feel overwhelmed by his sudden appearance. It was like having a lion walk into the room, she reflected wildly. You couldn’t stop staring, you couldn’t do less than admire his animal beauty and magnificence but not far underneath lurked a ferocious fear of what he might do next.
Apollo sprang upright and Pixie hastened to retrieve his jacket and hand it to him. He stilled at the reception desk and dug inside it while she waited for him to pay. He frowned, black brows pleating, and stared at her. ‘My wallet’s gone,’ he told her.
‘Oh, dear...’ Pixie muttered blankly.
His green eyes narrowed to shards of emerald cutting glass ready to draw blood. ‘Did you take it?’
‘Did I take your wallet?’ In the wake of that echo of an answer, Pixie’s mouth dropped open in shock because her brain was telling her that he could not possibly have accused her of stealing from him.
‘You’re the only person who touched my jacket,’ Apollo condemned loud enough to turn heads nearby. ‘Give it back and I’ll take no action.’
‘You’ve got to be out of your mind to think that I would steal from you!’ Pixie exclaimed, stricken, as her boss, Sally, came rushing across the salon.
‘I want the police called,’ he informed the older woman grimly.
The dizziness of shock engulfed Pixie and she turned pale as death. She couldn’t credit that Apollo was accusing her of theft in public. In fact her first thought was insane because she found herself wondering if he had come to the salon deliberately to set her up for such an accusation. All he had to do would be to leave his wallet behind and then accuse her of stealing from him. And who would believe her word against the word of someone of his wealth and importance?
Her stomach heaved and with a muffled groan she fled to the cloakroom to lose her breakfast. Apollo was subjecting her to her worst possible nightmare. Pixie had always had a pronounced horror of theft and dishonesty. Her father had been a serial burglar, in and out of prison all his life. Her mother had been a professional shoplifter, who stole to order. If Pixie had stumbled across a purse lying on the ground she would have walked past it, too terrified to pick it up and hand it in in case someone accused her of trying to steal it. It was a hangover from her shame-filled childhood and she had never yet contrived to overcome her greatest fear.
CHAPTER TWO
THE POLICEMAN WHO arrived was familiar—a middle-aged man who patrolled the streets of the small town. Pixie had seen him around but had never spoken to him because she gave the police a wide berth. Acquainted with most of the local traders, however, he was on comfortable terms with her boss, Sally.
By the time Apollo had been asked to give his name and details he was beginning to wonder if it had been a mistake to call in officialdom. He didn’t want to be identified. He didn’t want to risk the media getting involved. And if she had taken his wallet wasn’t it really only the sort of behaviour he had expected from Pixie Robinson? She was desperate for money and he was well aware of the fact that his wallet would offer a bigger haul than most. The constable viewed him in astonishment when he admitted how much cash he had been carrying.
Pixie gave her name and address in a voice that trembled in spite of her attempt to keep it level. Sick with nerves, she shifted from one foot onto the other and then back again, unable to stay still, unable to meet anyone’s eyes lest they recognise the panic consuming her. Perspiration beaded her short upper lip as the police officer asked her what had happened from the moment of Apollo’s arrival. While she spoke she couldn’t help noticing Apollo lounging back in an attitude of extravagant relaxation against the edge of the desk and occasionally glancing at his gold watch as though he had somewhere more important to be.
She had never been violent but Apollo filled her with vicious and aggressive reactions. How could he be so hateful and Vito still be friends with him? She had known Apollo wasn’t a nice person on the day of Holly’s wedding when his speech had made it obvious that Holly and Vito’s son had been conceived from a one-night stand. Since then she had read more about him online. He was a womaniser who essentially didn’t like women. She had recognised that reality straight off. His affairs never lasted longer than a couple of weeks. He got bored very quickly, never committed, indeed never got involved beyond the most superficial level.
‘Don’t forget to mention that you went back to the coat stand when the old lady knocked some of the coats to the floor,’ Apollo reminded her in a languorous drawl.
‘And you’re suggesting that that’s when I took your wallet?’ Pixie snapped, studying him with eyes bright silver with loathing.
‘Could it have fallen out of the jacket?’ the police officer asked hopefully, tugging a couple of chairs out from the wall to glance behind them. ‘Have you looked under the desk?’
‘Not very likely,’ Apollo traded levelly. ‘Is no one going to search this woman? Her bag even?’
‘Let’s not jump to conclusions, Mr Metraxis,’ the policeman countered quellingly as he lifted the rubbish bin.
Apollo raised an unimpressed brow. He was so judgemental and so confident that he was right, Pixie thought in consternation. He was absolutely convinced that she had stolen his wallet and it would take an earthquake to shift him. Her stomach lurched again and she crossed her arms defensively, the sick dizziness of fear assailing her once more. She didn’t have his wallet but mud would stick. By tea time everyone local would know that the blonde stylist at Sally’s had been accused of theft. At the very least she could lose her job. She wasn’t so senior or talented that Sally would risk losing clients to her nearest competitor.
The policeman lifted the newspaper lying in the bin and, with an exclamation, he reached beneath it and lifted out a brown hide wallet. ‘Is this it?’
Visibly surprised, Apollo extended his hand. ‘Yes...’
‘When the coat stand tipped, your wallet must’ve fallen out into the bin,’ Sally suggested with a bright smile of relief at that sensible explanation.
‘Or Pixie hid it in the bin to retrieve at a more convenient time,’ Apollo murmured.
‘This situation need not have arisen had a proper search been conducted before I was called in,’ the policeman remarked. ‘You were very quick to make an accusation, Mr Metraxis.’
Impervious to the hint of censure, Apollo angled his arrogant dark head back. ‘I’m still not convinced my wallet ended up in the bin by accident,’ he admitted. ‘Pixie has a criminal background.’
Pixie froze in shocked mortification. How did Apollo Metraxis know that about her? That was private, that was her past and she had left it behind her a long time ago. ‘But not a criminal record!’ she flung back curtly, watching Apollo settle a bank note down on the desk and Sally hastily passing him his change.
‘We shouldn’t be discussing such things in public,’ the policeman said drily and took his leave.
‘Take the rest of the day off, Pixie,’ Sally urged uncomfortably. ‘I’m sorry I was so quick to call the police...but—’
‘It’s OK,’ Pixie said chokily, well aware that her employer’s business mantra was that the customer was always right and such an accusation had required immediate serious attention.
It was over. A faint shudder racked Pixie’s slender frame. The nightmare was truly over. Apollo had his wallet back even though he still couldn’t quite bring himself to accept that she hadn’t stolen it and hidden it in the rubbish bin. But it was over and the policeman had departed satisfied. The fierce tension that had held Pixie still left her in a sudden rush and she could feel herself crumpling like rice paper inside and out as a belated surge of tears washed the backs of her eyelids.
‘Excuse me,’ she mumbled and fled to the back room to pull herself together and collect her bag.
She sniffed and wiped her eyes, knowing she was messing up her eyeliner and not even caring. She wanted to go home and hug Hector. Pulling on her jacket, she walked back through the salon, trying not to be self-conscious about the fact that the customers who had witnessed the little drama were all staring at her. A couple who knew her called out encouraging things but Pixie’s entire attention was welded to the very tall male she could see waiting outside on the pavement. Why was Apollo still hanging around?
Of course, he wanted to apologise, she assumed. Why else would he be waiting? She stalked out of the door.
‘Pixie?’
‘You bastard!’ she hissed at him in a raw undertone. ‘Leave me alone!’
‘I came here to speak to you—’
‘Well, you’ve spoken to me and now you can...’ Pixie swore at him, colliding with his scorching green eyes and almost reeling back from the anger she saw there.
‘Get in the car. I’ll take you home,’ he said curtly.
Pixie swore at him again and, with a spluttering Greek curse and before she could even guess his intention, Apollo stooped and snatched her off her feet to carry her across the street.
Pixie thumped him so hard with her clenched fist, she hurt her knuckles.
‘You’re a violent little thing, aren’t you?’ Apollo framed rawly as he stuffed her in the back seat of the waiting limo.
‘Let me out of this car!’ Pixie gasped, flinging herself at the door on the opposite side as he slid in beside her.
‘I’m taking you home,’ Apollo countered, rubbing his cheekbone where it was turning slightly pink from her punch.
‘I hope you get a black eye!’ Pixie spat. ‘Stop the car...let me out! This is kidnapping!’
‘Do you really want to walk down the street with your make-up smeared all over your face?’
‘Yes, if the alternative is getting a lift from you!’
But the limousine was already turning a corner to draw up outside the shabby building where she lived, so the argument was academic. As the doors unlocked, Pixie leapt out onto the pavement.
She might be petite in appearance but she was wiry and strong, Apollo acknowledged, and, not only did she know how to land a good punch, she also moved like greased lightning. He climbed out of the car at a more relaxed pace.
Breathing rapidly, Pixie paused in the hall with the door she had unlocked ajar. ‘How did you know that about my background?’
‘I’ll tell you if you invite me in.’
‘Why would I invite you in? I don’t like you.’
‘You know I can only be here to see you and you have to be curious,’ Apollo responded with confidence.
‘I can live with being curious,’ Pixie told him, stepping into her room and starting to snap the door shut.
‘But evidently you don’t think you can live without your foolish little brother...do you?’ Apollo drawled and the door stopped an inch off closing and slowing opened up again.
‘What do you know about Patrick?’ Pixie asked angrily.
Apollo strode in. ‘I know everything there is to know about you, your brother, your background and your friend Holly. I had you both privately investigated when Holly first appeared out of nowhere with baby Angelo.’
Pixie studied him in shock and backed away several feet, which took her to the side of her bed. Even with the bed pushed up against one wall it was a small room. She had sold off much of the surplus stuff she had gathered up over the years before moving in. ‘Why would you have us both investigated?’ she exclaimed.
‘I’m more cautious than Vito. I wanted to know who he was dealing with so that if necessary I could advise and protect him,’ Apollo retorted with a slight shrug of a broad shoulder as he peered into a dark corner where something pale with glimmering eyes was trying to shrink into the wall.
‘Just ignore Hector. Visitors, particularly male ones, freak him out,’ Pixie told him thinly. ‘I should think that Vito is old enough to protect himself.’
‘Vito doesn’t know much about the dark side of life.’
It was no surprise that Apollo considered himself superior in that regard, Pixie conceded. From childhood, scandal had illuminated Apollo’s life to the outside world: his family’s wealth, his father’s many marriages to beautiful women half his age, the break-ups, the divorces and the court battles that had followed. Apollo’s whole life had been lived in a histrionic headline-grabbing storm of publicity.
And there he stood in her little room, the perfect figurehead for a Greek billionaire, a living legend of a playboy with a yacht known to attract an exceptional number of gorgeous half-naked women. It seemed unfair that a male with such wealth and possessed of such undoubted intelligence should also have been blessed with such intense good looks. Apollo, like his namesake the sun god, was breathtakingly handsome. And he had undeniably taken Pixie’s breath away the first time she’d seen him at Holly’s wedding.
Apollo might be a toxic personality but when he was around he would always be the centre of attention. He had sleek dark brows, glorious green eyes, a classic nose and a stubborn, wilful mouth that could only be described as sensual. His sex appeal was electrifying and it was a sex appeal that Pixie would very much have liked to be impervious to. Sadly, however, she was a normal living, breathing woman with the usual healthy dose of hormones. And that was all it was...the breathlessness, the crazy race of her heartbeat, the tight fullness of her breasts and that strange squirmy, sensitive feeling low in her pelvis. It was all hormonal and as reflexive and trivial in Apollo’s radius as her liking for chocolate, not something she needed to beat herself up about.
A faint little pleading whine emanated from the shadows and recalled Pixie to rationality. As she realised she had been standing dumbly gaping at Apollo while she thought about him an angry flush crept up her face. In a sudden move, she reached for Hector’s leash. ‘Look, I don’t know what you’re doing here but right now I have to take my dog out for a walk.’
Apollo watched her drag...literally drag...a tattered-looking and clearly terrified little dog out of the corner to clip it onto a leash and lift it into her arms, where she rubbed her chin over the crown of its head and muttered soothingly to it as if it were a baby.
‘I have to talk to you. I’ll come with you.’
‘I don’t want you with me and if you have to talk to me about anything I have to say that accusing me of theft and utterly humiliating me where I work wasn’t a good opening.’
‘I know how desperate you must be for money. That’s why I assumed—’
Pixie spun angrily, her little pearly teeth gripped tightly together. ‘That’s why it doesn’t pay to assume anything about someone you don’t know!’
‘Are you always this argumentative? This ready to take offence?’
‘Only around you,’ Pixie told him truthfully. ‘Look, you can wait here while I’m out. I’ll be about fifteen minutes,’ she said briskly and walked out of the door.
Two steps along the pavement she couldn’t quite believe she had had the nerve. After all, the way he talked he knew about Patrick’s gambling debts and the threat against his continuing health. She broke out in a cold sweat just thinking about that reality because she really did love her little brother. Patrick didn’t have a bad bone in his body. He had made a mistake. He had tried too hard to be one of the boys when he took up playing cards and instead of stopping the habit when he lost money he had gone on gambling in the foolish belief that he could not continue on a losing streak for ever. By the time he had realised his mistake, he had built up a huge debt. But Patrick was working very hard to try and stay on top of that debt. He was an electrician during the day and a bartender at night.
Apollo had dangled a carrot and that she could have walked away even temporarily from the vaguest possibility of help for Patrick shook Pixie. But was Apollo offering to help them? No, that was highly unlikely. Why would he help them? He wasn’t the benevolent, sympathetic type. Yet why had he come to the salon in the first place and sought her out personally? And then accused her of theft? Her head aching with pointless conjecture, she sighed. Apollo was very complicated. He was also unreadable and impulsive. There was no way she could guess what he had in mind before he chose to tell her.
* * *
Apollo examined the grim little room and vented a curse. Women did not as a rule walk out on him, no, not even briefly. But Pixie was headstrong and defiant. Not exactly submissive wife material, a little voice pointed out in his head but he ignored it. He trailed a finger along the worn paperback books on the shelf above the bed and pulled out one to see what she liked to read. It was informative: a pirate in top boots wielding a sword. A reluctant grin of amusement slashed Apollo’s lean, darkly handsome features. Just as a book should never be judged by its cover, neither apparently should Pixie be. She was a closet romantic with a taste for the colourful.