Pixie felt a little dizzy at the confirmation that she was going to be a mother and she sat down hurriedly, her attention locked to Apollo’s lean, strong face. He froze, betraying nothing, neither smiling nor even wincing in reaction and she wanted to slap him for it. Apollo explained about the blood test and Pixie stood up a little nervously because she didn’t like needles. Indeed Dr Floros only got as far as flourishing his syringe before Pixie felt faint, her knees wobbling so obviously that Apollo gripped her to steady her.
‘Are you all right?’
And no, she wasn’t all right because at that point she fainted and resurfaced lying on a sofa.
‘Don’t look at the needle...’ Apollo urged, quick as always to identify the source of her fear, and he crouched down beside her and held her hand as tightly as if she were drowning.
The test was done. She apologised to the doctor and he said it was probably the combination of the good news and stress that had made her pass out. Dr Floros departed and Apollo reappeared with Olympia carrying a pot of tea.
‘You could say something now,’ Pixie prompted when they were finally alone.
Apollo frowned. ‘About what?’
‘Well, it did only take us six weeks...you could look happy, look pleased!’ Pixie emphasised in annoyance.
‘I am pleased,’ Apollo assured her unconvincingly. ‘But not if it makes you ill and you collapse like that. That was scary.’
‘I didn’t exactly enjoy it. I hate needles and injections and I felt so dizzy and then everything went dark,’ Pixie explained rather curtly. ‘I’m not about to be ill. I’m simply pregnant and there are a few symptoms that come with that. Dizziness is one of them. Holly was always getting light-headed.’
‘Luckily we have a lift, so you won’t have to use the stairs.’
Pixie studied him in wonderment. ‘You expect me to use a lift to go up or down one floor? Are you crazy?’
‘You could fall on the stairs,’ Apollo traded with deadly seriousness.
‘Thank you, Mr Cheerful.’ Pixie rested her head back and tried to imagine becoming a mother. She wasn’t about to let Apollo’s strange lack of enthusiasm take the edge off her sense of joy and achievement. A baby, a darling, gorgeous little baby who was hers and his. She couldn’t keep Apollo but she could keep their baby. She was happy, really, really happy about that aspect and suspected it would be something of a comfort in the future when Apollo was no longer a constant part of her life.
There would be a divorce first, she reminded herself doggedly. Then she would have to get accustomed to seeing him with other women in tabloid pictures, knowing he was sharing a bed with them while also knowing exactly what he was doing with them there. Doubtless he would phone her to keep up to date with their child’s development and from time to time he would visit in person until the child was old enough to go and visit him. It would all be very civilised and polite but she was already painfully aware that losing Apollo would smash her heart to smithereens!
Apollo studied the tears rolling down Pixie’s cheeks as she stared up at the ceiling. She wasn’t happy about being pregnant and he wondered why he had expected otherwise. She liked kids, he knew she did, but then they weren’t having a child in the most ideal circumstances, he reminded himself grimly. She was having a child she would pretty much raise alone and possibly she felt trapped because at her age most women were young, single and free as the air.
A chilling shot of rage assailed Apollo at the image of Pixie reclaiming her freedom after a divorce and becoming intimate with another man. He had the strangest possessive feelings where she was concerned, he conceded in bemusement. For some reason too he was feeling as exhausted as if he had climbed a mountain. Somehow Pixie being pregnant was incredibly stressful. No, worse than stressful, frightening, he adjusted in consternation. For the first time it occurred to him that Vito had been saved from such concerns by only entering his son Angelo’s life when the baby was already six months old. Was it normal for a first-time father to feel on the edge of panic? He crushed the reaction and went into denial.
‘By the way, we’re having a big party here in a few weeks,’ Apollo announced in a determined change of subject. ‘I organised it last month.’
‘Thanks for sharing after the event,’ Pixie said sarcastically.
‘I’ve invited friends and family here to celebrate our marriage but I didn’t fancy a wedding-type event,’ Apollo confided with a cynical twist of his mouth. ‘I settled on a fancy-dress party for a theme.’
‘Oh, joy...’ Pixie mumbled sleepily as she turned her face into a cushion, presenting him with her narrow back.
‘I’ve taken care of our outfits,’ Apollo told her with pride, relieved she would not be put to the worry of wondering what she should wear and very much hoping that she would appreciate the amount of trouble he had gone to.
‘Your way or the highway,’ Pixie whispered unappreciatively. ‘Don’t worry. I knew what a control freak you were the day I married you.’
Apollo surveyed Hector, who was seated on the rug, his little face seemingly anxious. You and me too, buddy, Apollo thought wryly while he wondered if it was possible that Pixie could roll off the sofa and hurt herself while she slept. For the first time in his life concern was weighing him down like a big grey cloud closing out the sun. He had never truly had to worry about anyone but his father but now he had a wife and a child on the way. He thought it extraordinary that achieving the pregnancy required to fulfil the terms of his father’s will should suddenly and quite inexplicably feel, not like a prize, but more like a poisoned chalice.
* * *
Apollo came to bed in the early hours. Having persuaded herself that he might not even choose to still share the same room, Pixie was lying sleepless watching the moonlight glimmer through the shadows. She listened to him in the shower, watched him stride naked towards the bed and sensual heat curled low in her body because she could see that he was aroused.
Apollo slid quietly into bed and lay there, thoroughly irritated by the throbbing at his groin. Pixie was pregnant, fragile and definitely off-limits. But it was as if she had lit a fire in him the first time they had had sex. It was a fire only she could seem to cool and that knowledge seriously disturbed him. Throughout his adult life Apollo had viewed sex as a casual diversion from more important activities. Sex had always been easily available and his libido had never homed in on one particular woman. His life had been wonderfully simple, he reflected grimly. He would see a woman he wanted, enjoy her for a while and when he got bored move on to the next. And now, for some peculiar reason, he wasn’t getting bored any more...and he was feeling urges he had no desire to feel.
Pixie shifted across the bed inch by inch, wishing it weren’t quite so big. Her hand settled on the male shoulder furthest from her and slowly drifted down over Apollo’s magnificent torso. She smiled as she felt his hard muscles ripple and tense across his abdomen.
He turned towards her and his eyes glittered in the moonlight. ‘We shouldn’t,’ he breathed with sudden amusement.
‘Don’t be silly,’ Pixie whispered, her tiny hand heading further south to find the long, jutting length of him and stroke. ‘I’m pregnant, not breakable.’
Apollo groaned out loud and arched his lean hips while watching her slide below the sheet to administer an even more potent invitation and that fast his once renowned self-control broke like a dam breaking its banks. He tugged Pixie up to him with shuddering impatience and rolled her under him while his hungry mouth tasted hers with heated urgency.
‘That’s more like it,’ Pixie commented a shade smugly as she gazed up at him, her fingers skimming caressingly through his damp, tousled hair. She felt lighter than air at the ego-boosting confirmation that he still wanted her. Intelligence warned her that he was a young healthy male, who was usually in the mood for sex, but she refused to think about that angle, choosing to concentrate instead on the soothing conviction that pregnancy wasn’t quite the turn-off she had feared.
‘There is only one way this can continue,’ Apollo decreed, resting her back against the pillows. ‘You lie there... I do the work, koukla mou.’
And it was amazing, she thought much later, drifting into an exhausted and gratified sleep, but then it always was amazing with Apollo.
Apollo held her while she slept and marvelled at how natural it had become to hold her close. One large hand splayed across her flat stomach. How had he ever believed that he could walk away untouched after conception occurred? How had he credited that he could bring a child into the world and not want to play a full part in his son or daughter’s life? The unquestioning arrogance of those selfish assumptions belatedly savaged his view of himself. As fond memories of moments with his own father while he was still a little boy drifted through his mind he finally understood Vassilis Metraxis’s almost primitive need to safeguard the continuation of the family line, and he also grasped that walking away at any stage from his own child wasn’t an option he would ever be able to live with.
CHAPTER TEN
THREE WEEKS LATER, Pixie blinked sleepily into wakefulness and finally sat up to make a grab for the phone ringing while ruefully contemplating the empty space beside her. It was forty-eight hours since Apollo had flown to London on business. Pixie would have accompanied him had the whole household not been in chaos getting ready for the big party the following day. With the housekeeper, Olympia, presenting Pixie with query after query it had slowly dawned on her that she needed to stay on Nexos to take charge.