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.