The Mills & Boon Christmas Wishes Collection. Maisey Yates
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.
‘I bet I could get you to break the law,’ Apollo murmured soft and low, all untamed masculinity and dominance. ‘I bet I could get you to do just about anything I wanted you to. I even bet that I could make you enjoy breaking the rules…’
Her knees were trembling, her feet welded to the floor by the mesmeric effect of those stunning green eyes firing down into her own. ‘You’d like to think so.’
Her pupils were fully dilated, her breathing was audible. Her nipples were making tiny indentations in her top and Apollo was hard as a rock. He bent his head a fraction more and traced her stubborn little mouth with his. She jerked almost off balance and his arms snapped round her to steady her. She couldn’t breathe then for excitement. It was the most extraordinary sensation. Suddenly she wanted what she hadn’t wanted until that moment. She wanted to stretch up on tiptoe and claim the kiss he had teased her with and refused to give.
Apollo bit out a laugh, perceptive eyes mocking her. ‘Stubborn and proud. That’s dangerous in my vicinity because I’m stubborn and proud as hell too. We’d clash but we’d also have fireworks, not something I usually look for with a woman but I’d make an exception for you, koukla mou. I would enjoy making you eat every word of your defiance and your denial…’
Her blood ran cold in her veins because she believed him. Below the bed Hector uttered a soft little growl that she had never heard from him before.
Apollo laughed again with genuine appreciation. ‘Aw, stop kidding yourself, dog! You’re not going to attack. You’re too scared even to come out from under the bed. What do you call him?’ he asked, disconcerting her with that sudden change of subject.
‘Hector.’
‘Hector was a Trojan prince and a great army commander in Greek mythology. Did you know that?’ he enquired lazily as he strolled out of the door.
‘No,