The Greek's Christmas Bride
Registering that he was hungry, he dug out his cell phone to order lunch for the two of them.
Walking back into her room, Pixie unclipped Hector’s leash and watched her pet race under the bed to hide.
Apollo was sprawled in the room’s single armchair, long, muscular, jeans-clad legs spread apart, his black hair feathering round his lean strong face, accentuating the brilliance of eyes that burned like emerald fire. ‘Does your dog always behave like that?’ he demanded, frowning.
‘Yes. He’s scared of everything but he’s most afraid of men. He was ill-treated,’ she murmured wryly. ‘So, tell me why you’re here.’
‘You’re in a bind and I am as well. I think it’s possible that we could work out something that settles both our problems,’ Apollo advanced guardedly.
Her smooth brow indented. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘For starters, I will pay you if necessary to keep quiet about what I am about to tell you because it’s highly confidential information,’ Apollo volunteered.
Faint colour rose over Pixie’s cheekbones. ‘I don’t need to be paid to keep your secrets. In spite of what you appear to think, I’m not that malicious or grasping.’
‘No, but you are in need of money and the press put a high value on stories about me,’ Apollo pointed out, compressing his lips. ‘You could sell the story.’
‘Has that happened to you before? Someone selling a story about you?’ she shot at him with sudden curiosity.
‘At least half a dozen times. Employees, exes...’ Apollo leant back into the chair, his strong jaw line taut, dark stubble highlighting his full sculptured mouth. ‘That’s the world I live in. That’s why I have a carload of bodyguards follow me everywhere I go.’
Pixie had noticed the sleek and expensive car parked across the street and a man in a suit leaning against the bonnet while he talked into an earpiece and her grey eyes widened in wonderment. ‘You don’t trust anybody, do you?’
‘I trust Vito. I trusted my father as well but he let me down many times over the years and not least with the terms of his will.’
Belatedly, Pixie recalled the recent death of his parent and the reference to the older man’s will made her suspect that they were finally approaching the crux of the matter that had put Apollo ‘in a bind’. It was, however, hard for her to credit that anything could trap Apollo Metraxis in a tight corner. He was a force of nature and very rich. He had choices most people never even got to dream of having and he had always had them.
‘I have no idea where you’re going with this,’ she muttered uncomfortably. ‘I can’t even begin to imagine any set of circumstances where you and I could somehow settle our...er...problems. Are you asking me for some sort of favour or something?’
‘I don’t ask people for favours. I pay them to do things for me.’
‘So there’s something that you think I could do for you that you’d be willing to pay for...is that right?’ Pixie pressed in frustration as a knock sounded on the door.
Apollo sprang upright, all leaping energy and strength, startling her into backing away several steps. He didn’t want to get to the point, she registered in wonderment. He was skating along the edge of what he wanted to ask her, reluctant to give her that much information.
And Pixie understood that feeling very well. Trust had never come easily to her either. She loved Holly and her brother and Holly’s baby and would have done anything for them. Once won, her loyalty was unshakeable and it had caused her a great deal of pain in recent months that she had had to step back from her friendship with Holly because it was simply impossible to be honest about the reasons why she had been more distant and why she had yet to visit Holly and Vito in Italy. Holly would be determined to help and there was no way Pixie could allow herself to take advantage of Holly’s newfound wealth and still look herself in the face. Instead she was dealing with her problems as she always did...alone.
She stared in disbelief as a procession of covered dishes were brought in by suited men and piled up on her battered coffee table along with cutlery and napkins and even wine and glasses. ‘For goodness’ sake, what on earth is all this?’ she framed, wide-eyed.
‘Lunch,’ Apollo explained, whipping off covers as his men trooped back out again. ‘I’m starving. Help yourself.’
He whipped off the final cover. ‘That’s for the dog.’
‘The dog?’ Pixie gasped.
‘I like animals, probably more than I like people,’ Apollo admitted truthfully.
Pixie lifted the plate of meat and biscuit and sniffed it. It smelled a great deal better than Hector’s usual food did and she slid it under the side of the bed. Hector was no slowcoach when it came to tucking in and he began chomping on the offering almost immediately.
‘Where did you get the food from?’ she asked.
‘I think it’s from the hotel round the corner. There’s not much choice round here.’
Pixie nodded slowly and reached for a plate. Apollo did not live like an ordinary person. He got hungry, he phoned his bodyguards and they fetched a choice of foods at an undoubtedly very stiff price. She helped herself to the fish dish.
‘Are you going to tell me what’s put you in a bind yet?’ she enquired ruefully.
‘I can’t inherit my father’s estate without first getting married,’ Apollo breathed in a driven undertone. ‘He knew how I felt about marriage. After all, it didn’t make him very happy. He was married six times in total. My mother died in childbirth but he had to divorce the five wives that followed her.’
Pixie listened with huge eyes. ‘A bit like Henry VIII with his six wives,’ she mumbled helplessly.
‘My father didn’t execute any of his, although had he had the power I suspect he would have exercised the right with at least two of them,’ Apollo derided.
‘And you’re still an only child? Why would he try to force you to marry?’
‘He didn’t want the family name to die out.’
‘But to prevent that from happening...you’d have to have a child,’ Pixie pointed out with a frown.
‘Yes. He stitched me up every way there is. My legal team say the will is valid as he was in sound mind when he had it drawn up. I also have a five-year window of opportunity to carry out his wishes and inherit, which is deemed reasonable,’ Apollo ground out between gritted white teeth. ‘Thee mou...how can anyone call any of it reasonable? It’s insane!’
‘It’s...it’s...er...unusual,’ Pixie selected uncertainly. ‘But I suppose a rich, powerful man like your father thought he had the right to do whatever he liked with his own estate.’
‘Ne...yes,’ Apollo conceded gruffly in Greek. ‘But I have been running my father’s business empire for many years now and his will feels like a betrayal.’
‘I can understand that,’ Pixie said thoughtfully. ‘You trusted him. I used to believe my father when he told me he’d never go back into prison but he didn’t even try to go straight and keep his promise. My mother was the same. She said she would stop stealing and she didn’t. The only thing that finally stopped her was ill health.’
Apollo studied her in astonishment, not knowing whether or not to be offended that she had compared his much-respected and law-abiding father to a couple of career criminals.
Enjoying her delicious fish, Pixie was deep in thought and surprised that she could relax to that extent in Apollo’s volatile radius. ‘I get your predicament,’ she confided. ‘But the terms of the will must be public property, and they aren’t confidential, so what—?’
‘I have decided that I must meet the terms,’ Apollo incised grimly. ‘I am not prepared to lose the home and the business empire that three generations of my family built up from nothing.’
‘Attachment meets practicality,’ Pixie quipped. ‘I still don’t understand what any of this has to do with me.’
Apollo set down his plate and lifted his wine glass. ‘I intend to meet the demands of the will on my own terms,’ he told her with emphasis, his remarkable green eyes glittering below black curling lashes. ‘I don’t want a wife. I will hire a woman to marry me and have my child. We will then separate and divorce and my life will return to normal again.’
‘And what about the child?’ Pixie prompted with a frown of dismay. ‘What will happen to the child in all this?’
‘The child will remain with its mother and I will attempt to be an occasional father to the best of my ability. My goal is to negotiate a civilised and workable arrangement with the woman of my choice.’
‘Well, good luck with that ambition,’ Pixie muttered, tucking into her meal with appetite while sitting cross-legged on the floor beside the coffee table because there was only one chair and predictably Apollo had not offered it to her. ‘It sounds like a very tall order to me...and anything but practical. What woman wants to marry and have a child and then be divorced?’
‘A woman I have paid well to marry and divorce me,’ Apollo said drily. ‘I don’t want to end up with one who will cling.’
Pixie rolled her eyes and laughed. ‘When a woman knows she’s not wanted, she’s rarely clingy.’
‘Then you’d be surprised to learn how hard I find it to prise myself free of even the shortest liaison. Women who become accustomed to my lifestyle don’t want to give it up.’
Pixie set down her plate and lifted the wine glass he had filled. ‘You do indeed have a problem,’ she commented with a certain amount of amusement at his predicament. ‘But I really don’t understand why you’re confiding in me of all people!’
‘Are you always this slow on the uptake?’
Her smooth brow indented as she sipped her wine and looked up at him enquiringly from below her spidery lashes. ‘What do you mean?’
She had beautiful eyes, Apollo acknowledged in surprise, eyes of a luminous clear grey that shone like polished silver in certain lights. ‘What do you think I’m doing here with you?’ he prompted huskily.
Green eyes met bemused grey and an arrow of forbidden heat shot to the heart of Pixie. She froze into uneasy stillness, her heart banging inside her chest like a panic button that had been stabbed because all of a sudden she felt vulnerable...vulnerable and...needy, the very worst word in her vocabulary when it related to a man.
‘I believe that for the right price you could be the woman I marry and divorce,’ Apollo spelt out smoothly. ‘I would get a wife, who knows and accepts that the marriage is a temporary arrangement, and you would get your brother off the hook and a much more comfortable and secure life afterwards.’
As Pixie’s throat convulsed, her wine went down the wrong way and she set the glass down on the low table with a jarring snap as she went off into a coughing, choking fit. He was thinking of her? Her? Her and him, the ultimate mismatch? The woman he had accused of being a thief? Was he certifiably insane? Or simply madly eccentric?
CHAPTER THREE
SPLUTTERING AND GASPING for breath, Pixie waved a silencing hand and rushed out of her room to the bathroom. There she got control of the coughing and rinsed her mouth with water taken from her cupped hand. In the mirror over the sink she saw her sad, watering panda eyes and groaned out loud. She looked dreadful. Her eyeliner was rubbed all round her eyes and there was even a smear across one cheek. She did her best with what little there was in the bathroom to tidy herself up.
Apollo Metraxis was offering to rescue Patrick from the debts he was drowning in if she married him in a pretend marriage. And had a child with him. Don’t forget the child, she told herself while she clutched the sink to keep herself upright. She was blown away entirely by the crazy prospect of having a child with Apollo, having sex with Apollo... Swallowing hard, she breathed in deep. It was the most insane idea she had ever heard and she couldn’t work out how or why he had decided to approach her with it.
Was he nuts? Temporarily off his rocker after the death of his father? Grounded again, she returned to her room and stared at him.
‘That has to be the most ridiculous idea I’ve ever heard and I can’t believe you’re serious. I mean...’ Pixie paused ‘...you don’t even know me.’
‘I’m not suggesting a normal marriage. I know what I need to know about you.’
‘Little more than an hour ago you accused me of stealing your wallet!’ Pixie fired back at him unimpressed.
‘Because I know how desperate you have to be for money. You know that if your brother fails to make a payment or doesn’t pay what he’s supposed to pay his life could be on the line. He owes that money to a thug, who rules with fear and intimidation,’ Apollo countered levelly. ‘He could choose to make an example of your brother to deter others from making the same mistake.’
Apollo did indeed know exactly how precarious her brother’s position was. Her tummy churned sickly at his confirmation that Patrick’s creditor was a violent man because regardless of the beating Patrick had received she had hoped that that was the worst that would be done to him. She paled. ‘But that still doesn’t explain why you would approach someone like me!’ she gasped.
‘I told you that I prefer to choose a woman I can pay to marry me. I also want to be in control of the whole arrangement and the way I would set this up would mean that you had to follow the rules until our arrangement ends. That feels safer to me. It wouldn’t be in your interests or your brother’s to cross me or to admit to anyone that our marriage was phony,’ he pointed out with assurance. ‘Were you to admit that to the wrong person I could be challenged in a courtroom and I could lose my father’s estate for ever. If you did betray me, you would be breaking the terms of our agreement and you would land you and your brother straight back into the same trouble that you’re in right now.’
It was quite a speech, a sobering and intimidating speech that told her a lot she would rather not have known about exactly how Apollo’s mind worked. He wanted a woman over whom he had total control, a woman who had to strictly adhere to his conditions or lose all benefits from the arrangement.
‘I hear what you’re saying,’ Pixie breathed tautly, ‘but I think it’s twisted. You want a wife you can blackmail into doing what you want her to do, someone powerless. I could not be that woman.’
‘Oh, don’t underestimate yourself. I think you’re gutsy enough to take me on,’ Apollo told her with grudging amusement in his gaze. ‘Did you or did you not grasp the fact that I am offering to save you and your brother from the consequences of his stupidity?’
Pixie reddened. Silence fell. In the interim, Apollo made use of his cell phone and spoke in what she assumed was rapid Greek.
‘You’re serious about this...?’ she almost whispered in sheer bewilderment. ‘But you said you need to have a child as well, and—’
‘If you fail to conceive the marriage would end in divorce within eighteen months. I can’t afford to waste more time than that,’ Apollo imparted without hesitation. ‘However, you would still get the same financial payoff. In that way, whether you have a child or not, you would still benefit from a debt-free future. ‘
A knock came on the door again. This time it was Pixie who rushed to answer it because she desperately needed a breathing space to get her thoughts in order and was thinking of diving for the bathroom again. Two men entered and deftly cleared away the dishes, leaving behind only the wine and the glasses.
‘There’s no way on earth I could go to bed with you!’ Pixie spluttered out bluntly without meaning to as soon as the door had shut on the men’s exit.
Apollo studied her in open astonishment and then he flung his handsome dark head back and roared with unfettered amusement. In fact he laughed so hard he almost tipped the chair back while she stared at him in disbelief.
‘I really don’t understand how you can find that so funny,’ Pixie snapped when he had regained control of himself. ‘You’re talking about me having sex with a stranger and that may be something you do on a fairly regular basis but it’s not something I would do! You’re also talking about having an awful lot of sex,’ she told him half an octave higher, her voice thinning with extreme stress and embarrassment. ‘Because it could take months and months to conceive a child. I couldn’t do it. There’s absolutely no way I could do that with you!’
‘You sound a little hysterical and I’m surprised,’ Apollo admitted. ‘Holly’s the starry-eyed type but you struck me as more sensible. Marry me and try to have a child and you won’t be struggling in a dump like this to save your brother and make a decent life. All the bad things will go away... I can make that happen. You won’t get a better offer.’
Mortification had claimed Pixie because she knew she had sounded panic-stricken. Face hot, she retreated to the bed and sank down on the edge of the mattress. In truth the thought of having sex with Apollo drove every sensible thought from her mind and only provoked a giant ‘no’ from every corner of her being. A long, long time ago she had promised herself that sex would only ever be combined with love in her life. She hadn’t saved her virginity simply to throw it away in some immoral arrangement with Apollo Metraxis intended to conceive a child and moreover a child he didn’t really want.
Apollo studied her in frustration. He didn’t understand what was wrong. A woman had never found him unattractive before. He knew she didn’t like him but he didn’t consider liking necessary to a successful sexual liaison. Sex was like food in Apollo’s life, something he enjoyed on a frequent basis and wasted little time thinking about. He was amazed that she had concentrated her objections on the need for a sexual relationship. Head down bent, she sat on the side of the bed in a rigid position with one arm stretched down in an unavailing attempt to lure the terrified dog out from underneath the bed. But the dog was too wary of Apollo’s presence to emerge. He could see its beady little eyes gleaming watchfully from deep under the mattress.
‘Tell me what the problem is...’ he invited impatiently.
‘I don’t want to have a baby with someone who doesn’t love me or my child,’ Pixie muttered in a rush. ‘That’s way too like what I had growing up with the parents from hell!’
Apollo was taken aback. ‘I don’t want a woman who loves me because she might well want to stay married to me and I will want my freedom back as soon as I have fulfilled the terms of the will. Rejecting a wife who loved me could well lead to her breaking our agreement and telling someone that the marriage was a fake created to circumvent the will and allow me to inherit. And speaking for myself, I can’t put love on the table for any woman. But, I would hope and expect to love my child.’
That admission soothed only one of Pixie’s concerns because her brain could not surmount the unimaginable challenge of going to bed with Apollo again and again and again. A trickle of heat sidled through her slender frame as she lifted her head a few inches higher and focussed on her tormentor. He was gorgeous and he knew it but that did not mean he would be kind or considerate in bed. What did she feel like? A medieval maiden being auctioned off for a good price? That was nonsense because the choice, the decision was hers alone. And women had been marrying men for reasons far removed from love for centuries. Some women married to have children, some for money, some for security and some to please their families. She was making too much of a fuss over the sexual component. Sex was a physical pastime, not a mental one.
So, did that mean that she was actually considering Apollo’s ridiculous proposition? She took a mental look at her life as it was. She was drowning in her brother’s debt. She didn’t have a life. She couldn’t afford to have a life. She went to work, she came home, ate as cheaply as she could and saved every possible penny. Aside from Hector, whom she adored, it was a pretty miserable life for a young woman but sixth sense warned her that Apollo, if displeased, probably had the power to make even the life of a rich wife a great deal more miserable. Even so, when Holly visited the UK, Pixie went to meet her and they would have a meal and a couple of drinks and for a few sunny hours Pixie would forget her worries and enjoy being with her friend again. If she married Apollo, she would surely see much more of Holly, wouldn’t she?
But then nothing could make marrying Apollo for money the right or decent thing to do, she reasoned unhappily. It would be akin to renting out her womb. And although she loved children and very much missed her friend Holly’s adorable son, Angelo, from when they had both lived with her, she had never planned to have a child so young or to raise one alone. To plan to do that would be wrong, she thought with a shudder of distaste. And Apollo had also reminded her that circumventing his father’s will would be breaking the law and she refused to be involved in anything of that nature.
‘I can’t believe you are willing to go to such lengths just for money...but then I’ve never had enough money to miss,’ Pixie admitted wryly. ‘I guess it’s different for you.’
‘I’m already a very rich man in my own right,’ Apollo contradicted drily. ‘But there is more to this than money. There is my family home on the island where all my relatives are buried. There are the businesses originally founded by my grandfather and my great-grandfather, the very roots of my family. It took my father’s death for me to appreciate that I’m much more attached to those roots than I was ever willing to admit even to myself.’
His obvious sincerity disconcerted Pixie. She understood that he had taken those things for granted until he was forced to confront the threat of losing them.
‘Lying and pretending wouldn’t come naturally to me,’ she told him flatly. ‘And faking the marriage would also be breaking the law, which I couldn’t do. I don’t even have a traffic violation on my record,’ she told him truthfully. ‘Because of my experiences growing up I won’t do anything that breaks the law.’
‘But we would be faithfully following the terms of the will, which specifies that I must marry and produce a child—boy or girl—within the space of five years. My intent to eventually go for a divorce is not barred by the will. If the marriage is consummated and we have a child it will be, to all intents and purposes, a normal legal marriage,’ Apollo told her forcefully.
Pixie hovered, her small heart-shaped face pale and stiff. ‘I don’t want to be involved. I realise that you think I’m an easy mark but I couldn’t do it. I won’t discuss this with anyone either. I should think anyone I told would threaten to lock me up and throw away the key because they’d think I was crazy!’
Apollo rose slowly to his feet, dominating the room with his height and breadth. ‘You’re not thinking this through.’ Reaching into his pocket, he withdrew a card and set it down on the table. ‘My private number if you change your mind.’
‘I’m not going to change my mind,’ Pixie told him stonily.
Apollo said nothing. He paused at the door, looking at that soft ripe mouth of hers, his body hardening in response to the imagery flashing through his inventive mind. ‘It would’ve been good in bed. I find you surprisingly attractive.’
‘Can’t say the same,’ Pixie retorted as she yanked open the door with a shaking hand. ‘I don’t like you. You’re arrogant and insensitive and completely ruthless when it comes to getting what you want.’
‘But I still make you hot, which infuriates you,’ Apollo murmured huskily. ‘You’re not very good at faking disinterest.’
Her grey eyes sparkled with anger. ‘You’re not irresistible, Apollo!’
He lifted a lean-fingered hand and tilted up her chin. ‘Are you sure of that?’ he asked thickly, a Greek accent he rarely revealed roughening and lowering his dark drawl to a pitch that vibrated like a storm warning down her stiff spine.
‘One hundred per cent certain,’ she was mumbling as his breath fanned her cheek and the scent of him flared her nostrils and her mouth ran dry while her heartbeat raced into the danger zone.