‘When will you listen to me?’ Apollo shot back at her in exasperation. ‘You’re my legal wife!’
Pixie breathed in slow and deep to calm her racing nerves and turned her head to look out of the car windows. Apollo had taught her that a legal wife still wasn’t a real wife.
‘And you will never leave our estate without bodyguards...is that understood? Not even for a walk down into the village,’ Apollo specified.
‘Is that level of security really necessary?’ ‘Our’ estate, he had said, she noted in surprise, and then wrote it off as either a slip of the tongue or a comment designed to make her feel more relaxed about their living arrangements.
‘There’s always a risk of paparazzi in the village or even a tourist photographing you to make a profit. My security team are trained to handle all that and ensure that nobody gets to bother you.’
The car was travelling up a steep incline and electric gates whirred back while Pixie gazed at the big white rambling villa at the top of the hill. It was certainly large but it wasn’t anywhere near as massive as Vito’s giant palazzo in Tuscany and she was relieved. As she stepped out, one of the bodyguards lifted Hector’s carrier from the four-wheel drive and set it down to release him. Hector raced out and gambolled round Pixie’s ankles, relieved to have escaped his brief imprisonment.
They walked into a grand marble-floored space with staircases sweeping down on either side of the hall and a very opulent chandelier. A housekeeper, dressed in black with a white apron, greeted them and was introduced as Olympia. Apollo spoke to her at length in Greek while Pixie succumbed to curiosity and crossed the hall to peep into rooms. She had never seen so many dead white walls in her life or such bland furnishings. Indeed the interior had the appearance of a house that served as a show home.
Apollo frowned as he examined her expressive face. ‘You don’t like it? Then you can change it. I had it all stripped, painted and refurnished while my father was ill. Every one of his wives had different decorating ideas and favourite rooms and the house was a mess of clashing colours and styles. When he was well enough to come down for dinner I realised that the décor awakened unfortunate memories so I wiped the slate clean for his benefit.’
‘Well, all that white and beige is certainly clean,’ Pixie assured him gently, rather touched by his thoughtfulness on his ailing father’s behalf.
‘I’ll show you round,’ he proffered, walking her from room to room, and there really was very little to look at in the big colourless rooms. There were no photographs, no ornaments, only an occasional vase of beautiful flowers.
‘I thought the house would be much larger,’ she confided as he walked her upstairs. ‘Holly said you had a lot of relatives.’
‘Relatives and friends use the guest cottages behind the house. My grandfather and my father preferred to have only family members lodge in the actual house. Vito and Holly stayed here with me for the funeral because Vito is the closest thing I have to a brother,’ he admitted quietly, his handsome mouth quirking. ‘But don’t go repeating that or he’ll get too big for his boots.’
Pixie laughed as he showed her into a spacious bedroom with a balcony running the entire length. The pale curtains beside the open doors streamed back in the breeze coming in off the ocean. She stepped outside to appreciate the incredible bird’s eye view of Nexos and the sea and understood exactly why Apollo’s grandfather had chosen that spot to build his family home. ‘It is really gorgeous,’ she murmured. ‘But this place could definitely do with some pictures on the walls and other stuff just to take the bare look away.’
‘The canvases are stored in the basement but run it by me before you have anything rehung,’ Apollo countered. ‘There are portraits of the ex-wives, which I have no desire to see again...and certain artworks fall into the same category,’ he completed tight-mouthed.
Pixie rested a tiny hand on his. ‘This is your home. The ex-wives are gone now and won’t be coming back, so forget about them.’
Apollo bit out an embittered laugh. ‘Only if I contrive to produce a child...and who knows whether or not that will be possible?’
Pixie pinned her lips together and stared out to sea and then she couldn’t hold the words bubbling on her tongue back any longer. ‘There may be a slim chance that this month...well, don’t go getting excited yet but I am a little late...’
Apollo stared down at her transfixed by even the slender possibility that she had outlined. ‘And you didn’t even mention it to me until now?’ he demanded in seething disbelief.
‘Because we don’t need to put ourselves through some silly false alarm, do we?’ Pixie appealed.
Apollo shook his head as if he couldn’t identify with that attitude. His black hair blew back from his lean bronzed features as he leant back against the glass barrier, his green eyes jewel bright in the sunlight. He dug out his phone, stabbed buttons with impatience and started talking in fast Greek while she watched, frowning in bewilderment.
‘Dr Floros will come up with a test for us this afternoon.’
‘But I’m only a couple of days late,’ Pixie protested.
‘Even I know that that’s usually soon enough to tell us one way or the other,’ Apollo pronounced. ‘Why sit around wondering any longer?’
Well, you chose to open your big mouth and spill, Pixie censured herself unhappily. He would either be very pleased or very disappointed. It was out of her hands now.
‘You have to learn the habit of sharing these things with me,’ Apollo breathed in an almost raw undertone, green eyes veiled and narrowed as he stared down at her.
‘Didn’t I just do that?’
‘Obviously you’ve been thinking about this on your own for a few days and that’s not how I want you to behave, koukla mou. The minute anything worries you bring it to me.’
But even as Apollo gazed down at Pixie, his big frame was stiffening and he was losing colour because ill-starred memories were being stirred up by their predicament. He had quite deliberately closed out the awareness that sometimes women died in childbirth: his mother had. More than once his father, Vassilis had discussed that tragedy with his son. Vassilis had idolised Apollo’s mother and he had never really come to terms with losing her in such terrible circumstances. At the moment when he should have been happiest with his wife and his newborn child he had been plunged into grief.
‘What’s wrong?’ Pixie asked abruptly, watching sharp tension tighten the sculpted lines of Apollo’s lean, hard face.
‘Nothing. I forgot,’ Apollo said equally abruptly, ‘I have a couple of work calls to make. Will you be all right settling in here on your own?’
‘Of course I will be.’
Apollo strode down the stairs like a hungry lion in search of prey. If Pixie was pregnant, there would be no home birth, he reasoned with immediate resolve. No, she was going to a fully equipped hospital regardless of how she felt about that decision. He would also engage a standby medical team. He wouldn’t take any risks with her because he was too conscious that something quite unexpected could happen during a birth. He wouldn’t mention that to Pixie though. He wasn’t that stupid. He didn’t want her worrying and certainly not to the extent he was suddenly worrying.
For a split second he was grudgingly amused by his own attitude. He had married Pixie to have a child and now that there was a chance they might have succeeded at step one, he was suddenly awash with anxiety. She was so small...and the baby could be big as he had been...and now he needed a drink.
By the time Pixie had watched her luggage being unpacked, enjoyed a cup of tea on the shaded terrace alone and even taken Hector for a walk through the meandering gardens with tree-lined paths alone, she had accepted that Apollo was not as excited by the concept of becoming a father as she was excited about becoming a mother. He had vanished like Scotch mist and she felt that they did not have the kind of marriage that empowered her to go looking for him as a normal wife might have done. Looking for Apollo any place struck Pixie as clingy and she refused to act clingy.
Dr Floros arrived, middle-aged and bearded and relentlessly cheerful even in the face of Apollo’s grave demeanour. Yes, Apollo had finally reappeared and Pixie could not help but notice that her husband was as grim as a pall-bearer in comparison to the chirpy medical man. Maybe the actual prospect of a child was a little sobering for a playboy, Pixie reasoned uncertainly as she took the test and vanished into the palatial cloakroom on the ground floor. It would be foolish of her to think that he had lost his original enthusiasm for conception. That wasn’t possible, was it?
‘My wife is very small in size,’ Apollo remarked to the doctor while Pixie was absent.
‘Nature has a wonderful way of taking such differences into account,’ Dr Floros assured him without concern. ‘I’ll take a blood test as well if the result is positive.’
Pixie watched the test wand change colour, but since the packaging and instructions were in Greek she had no idea what was a positive and what was a negative and had to return in continuing ignorance to the two men.
Dr Floros beamed before she even reached them. ‘Congratulations!’ he pronounced in English.