The Greek's Christmas Bride(22)

But then, undeniably, Apollo was mercurial and volatile, passionate and outspoken and still in many ways a mystery and a contradiction to Pixie. He was a billionaire with every luxury at his command and yet he could picnic on a beach quite happily with a rough bottle of the village vino, home-baked bread and a salad scattered with the salty local cheese. He clearly loved dogs and could have owned a select pack of pedigreed animals without any need of therapy, but he had not owned a dog since childhood and seemed to prefer to spend his time trying to win Hector’s trust. And Hector was the most ordinary of ordinary little terriers with the scrappy stubborn nature of his breed and he was extremely reluctant to change his defensive habits.

The door opened and Pixie scrambled up as her dog trailed after Apollo into the room. Hector wouldn’t go to Apollo but he was quite happy to follow him at a safe distance. Clad in tailored chino pants and an open-necked black shirt, Apollo slanted her a reproving grin. ‘What’s with all this sleeping in every morning? You didn’t join me for breakfast again,’ he complained.

‘Maybe you’re wearing me out,’ Pixie quipped.

His green eyes gleamed like jewels fringed by lush black lashes in his lean, strong face. ‘Am I too demanding?’ he suddenly asked with a frown.

And Pixie went pink, dismay assailing her because she had been teasing. ‘No more than I am,’ she muttered, her eyes veiling as she remembered wakening him up at some time of the night and taking thorough advantage of his lean, hard body to satisfy the need that never entirely receded in his radius.

Apollo wrapped a careless arm round her shoulders. ‘I do like an honest woman,’ he confessed with husky sensual recollection.

‘No, what you like is being my only object of desire,’ Pixie corrected, her body sliding into the lean, hard embrace of his as if it were programmed to do so.

He bent his dark head and claimed her bee-stung mouth with a hungry thoroughness that tightened her nipples and ran like fire to the heart of her and she trembled against his hard, muscular frame, suddenly weak again in a way she hated. She denied herself the desire to put her arms round him. She didn’t want Apollo to know how she felt about him because that would inevitably make their relationship uncomfortable. Hadn’t she promised him that she wouldn’t turn clingy or needy? And that she had no intention of falling for him? Even worse, she thought painfully, she had truly believed she could deliver on those pledges of faith in his undesirability.

Her incredibly tender breasts ached with a mixture of oversensitivity and swelling desire when he crushed her to him with sudden force and for a split second she knew he could have done anything he wanted with her because she had no resistance and no longer any defences to fall back on to support her.

It was disconcerting when Apollo set her back from him in an uncharacteristic move of restraint. ‘No,’ he breathed in a fractured undertone. ‘I came down to bring you up on deck. I want you to see the island for the first time as we come into harbour.’

And Pixie understood why he had backed off even though it did make her feel a little like an overdose of sugar being rejected by someone who had decided to go on a diet. In truth she had always accepted, she thought ruefully, that Apollo could resist her if he chose to do so and naturally that hurt her pride and her heart, but it was also a fact of life she had better learn to live with. After all, if she had already conceived she suspected their actual future as a couple could be measured in days rather than months.

Furthermore, the island of Nexos, the home of the Metraxis family for several generations, was hugely important to Apollo and probably one of the main reasons he had married her. Without a wife and a child he could not securely claim his heritage.

Pixie stood out on deck with the bright blue sky above her and the sun beating down while Circe powered more slowly than usual towards the island spread before them. Apollo slid his arms round her from behind and she leant back against him to be more comfortable, her keen and curious gaze scanning the pine trees edging the sandy beach at one end of the island and the rocky cliffs towering at the other. In the middle there was greenery and silvery olive groves and a fair-sized village climbing the hill behind the harbour—little white cube houses stretching in all directions while a little domed stone church presided over the flat land at the water’s edge.

‘It’s beautiful,’ she murmured dreamily.

‘I didn’t properly appreciate Nexos as my home until I thought about losing it,’ Apollo intoned grimly. ‘If I’d confided more in my father he would not have left that will as his final testament to me.’

‘It doesn’t matter now, not really,’ Pixie reasoned, hopelessly eager to provide comfort when she recognised the emotional undertow of regret in his dark deep drawl. ‘Maybe your father simply knew what bait to put on the hook.’

Apollo burst out laughing without the smallest warning and gazed down at the top of her golden head. ‘I doubt if he appreciated you would be less than five foot tall and a hairdresser. A talented one though, I must admit, koukla mou,’ he added, clearly worried that he had hurt her feelings and that she had interpreted that reminder of her more humble beginnings as a put-down. ‘As bait you have proved as efficient as a torpedo under the water line.’

Destructive? Was that how he saw her? Was that because he had confided in her about his evil stepmothers? Or because he had shown her that he was as vulnerable as any other human being in childhood? And as amazingly loveable, she conceded wretchedly, worry dragging her down again along with the fear of the separation she saw waiting on the horizon.





CHAPTER NINE

‘YOU SHOULD CHANGE before we disembark,’ Apollo urged. ‘The press will be waiting at the harbour.’

‘The press?’ Pixie emphasised, eyes flying wide. ‘Why would they be waiting?’

‘I issued a press release about our marriage last week,’ Apollo admitted. ‘They’ll want a photo since I saw no reason to be that generous.’

‘I thought Nexos was a private island,’ Pixie admitted tautly, disconcerted at the prospect of camera lenses being trained on her for she had yet to be photographed in Apollo’s company. That was undoubtedly because Apollo hated the paparazzi and knew exactly where to go to avoid attracting that kind of attention.

‘It is but not as private as it was in my grandfather’s day. The islanders need to make a living and my father began letting tourists in twenty years ago. I accelerated that process by building an eco-resort on the other side of the island,’ he revealed calmly. ‘The years of the locals getting by fishing and farming are long gone. Not unnaturally their children want more.’

‘And even if that infringes on your privacy on your island you let them have it,’ Pixie remarked in surprise.

‘It doesn’t infringe. The Metraxis estate is very secure but owning an island with an indigenous population comes with responsibility. The people have to have a future they can count on for their children or the younger generation will leave. My father didn’t really grasp that reality.’

Pixie stepped into the motor launch twenty minutes later, clad in print silk trousers with a toning shirt worn over a camisole and a sunhat that she had to hang onto as the launch sped across the gleaming clear turquoise water into the harbour. She tensed when she saw just how many people seemed to be grouped there ready to greet them. It dawned on her that in her guise as Apollo’s wife she probably seemed a much more important person to the locals than she actually was.

‘Don’t answer any questions whatsoever. Ignore the cameras,’ Apollo urged, lifting her into his arms to carry her off the launch before she could make for the steps under her own steam.

Flushed and uneasy, Pixie regained her feet and Apollo’s bodyguards swung into action to keep the photographers at a careful distance. With the indolent cool of a male accustomed to the press invading his privacy, Apollo dropped an arm round her shoulders and walked her off the marina at an unhurried pace. He exchanged greetings in his own language with several people but he did not once pause in his determined progress towards the four-wheel drive parked in readiness beyond the crush.

Pixie, however, had never been so uneasily conscious of being the centre of attention and she was hopelessly intimidated by the shouted questions and comments in different languages. She felt the wall of stares being directed at her and her tummy gave a sick lurch. She suspected that she had to be a pretty disappointing spectacle for people who had probably expected Apollo to marry an heiress or a model and, at the very least, someone famous, incredibly beautiful and photogenic. Possessing none of those gifts, she felt horribly exposed and all the more aware that she was a fake wife, pregnant or otherwise.

Only when they were inside the car did she breathe again.

‘See...that wasn’t so bad,’ Apollo pointed out with a shrug that perfectly illustrated his indifference to that amount of concentrated interest and speculation.

‘I’ll take your word for it... I found it tough,’ Pixie responded honestly. ‘I’m not used to being looked at like that and knowing I am a totally phony wife doesn’t add to my confidence.’