A good Greek wife...

Coldly ruthless and deeply cynical, Apollo Metraxis has made a career of bachelorhood. But when the inheritance of his father’s estate is conditional on a marriage and a child, he is forced to do the unthinkable!

Unpolished Pixie Robinson is the world’s worst choice of a wife for Apollo. Yet her family’s mounting debts leave her defenseless and therefore uniquely suitable. But when the wedding night exposes Pixie’s untouched vulnerability, striking a chord in the dark reaches of his heart, Apollo is forced to think again.

And that’s before he discovers that she’s carrying not one but two Metraxis heirs!

‘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 asked with a frown of dismay towards Apollo. “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.’

‘You do indeed have a problem,’ she commented, with a certain amount of amusement at Apollo’s 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.

Christmas with a Tycoon

Mediterranean billionaires under the mistletoe

Christmas might be a time for giving, but these billionaires are thinking only of what they can take!

Vito Zaffari might have a ruthless reputation, but when Holly crashes his festive hideaway she leaves with an unexpected Christmas gift...

Apollo Metraxis has made a career of bachelorhood, but the conditions of his father’s will force him to choose a bride. Pixie might be the last wife he’d ever choose, but she’s soon the only one he wants!

Don’t miss either of these fabulous festive stories!

The Italian’s Christmas Child

November 2016

The Greek’s Christmas Bride

December 2016

Available now!

The Greek’s Christmas Bride

Lynne Graham

www.millsandboon.co.uk

LYNNE GRAHAM was born in Northern Ireland and has been a keen romance reader since her teens. She is very happily married to an understanding husband who has learned to cook since she started to write! Her five children keep her on her toes. She has a very large dog who knocks everything over, a very small terrier who barks a lot, and two cats. When time allows, Lynne is a keen gardener.

I do enjoy an alpha male, but none of them is a match for my husband. This one is for you.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Christmas with a Tycoon

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

EPILOGUE

Extract

Copyright

PROLOGUE

THE MALE VOICES drifted in from the balcony while Holly hovered, waiting uneasily for the right moment to join the conversation. That was a challenge when she knew she was never particularly welcome in Apollo’s radius.

But there wasn’t much she could do about that when she was married to Vito, Apollo’s best friend. Only recently had she come to appreciate just how close the two men were and how often they talked no matter where they were in the world. Friends from a childhood spent at boarding school, they were as close as brothers and Apollo had distrusted Holly from the outset because she was a poor woman marrying a very rich man. Aware of that fact, she had offered to stay home instead of attending the funeral of Apollo’s father but Vito had been shocked at that suggestion.

So far, their visit to the privately owned island of Nexos and the Metraxis compound had been anything but pleasant. The funeral had been massive. Every one of Apollo’s former stepmothers and their children had attended. Earlier today the reading of the will had taken place and Apollo had stormed out in a passion, having learned that he needed a wife to inherit the vast empire he had been running for several years on his ailing father’s behalf. Vito had shared only that bare detail with his wife, clearly uncomfortable at divulging even that much. But as virtually anybody who knew Apollo also knew of his aversion to matrimony, it was obvious that his father’s last will and testament had put him between a rock and a hard place.

‘So, you pick one of your women and marry her,’ Vito breathed, sounding not at all like the loving husband Holly knew and adored. ‘Dio mio, there’s a long enough list. You marry her, stay married as long as you can bear it, and—’

‘And how am I going to get rid of her again?’ Apollo growled. ‘Women cling to me like superglue. How am I going to trust her to keep her mouth shut? If word escapes that it’s a fake marriage, the stepfamilies will go to court and try and take my inheritance off me. If you tell a woman you don’t want her, she’s insulted and she wants revenge.’

‘That’s why you need to hire a wife as if you’re interviewing one for a job. You need a woman with no personal axe to grind. Considering your popularity with the opposite sex and your bad reputation, finding her could be a challenge.’

Reckoning that it was now or never, Holly stepped out onto the terrace. ‘Hiring a wife sounds like the best idea,’ she opined nervously.

Even sheathed in an elegant dark suit, Apollo Metraxis looked every inch the bad boy he was. With shoulder-length black hair, startling green eyes and an elaborate dragon tattoo peeping out of a white shirt cuff, Apollo was volatile, unconventional and arrogant, the direct opposite of Holly’s conservative husband.

‘I don’t believe you were invited to join this conversation,’ Apollo countered very drily.

‘Three heads are better than two,’ Holly parried, forcing herself down stiffly into a seat.

Apollo elevated a sardonic brow. ‘You think so?’

Holly refused to be excluded. ‘Stop dramatising yourself—’

‘Holly!’ Vito interrupted sharply.

‘Well, Apollo can’t help himself. He’s always doing it,’ Holly argued. ‘Not every woman is going to cling to you like superglue!’

‘Name me one who won’t,’ Apollo invited.

Holly blinked and thought very hard because Apollo was universally acknowledged to be a gorgeous, super-wealthy stud and nine out of ten women followed him round a room with hungry eyes. ‘Well, my friend Pixie for a start,’ she pronounced with satisfaction. ‘She can’t stand you and if she can’t, there’s got to be others.’

A very faint flush accentuated Apollo’s supermodel cheekbones.

‘Pixie wouldn’t quite meet the parameters of what is required,’ Vito interposed hastily, meeting his friend’s appalled gaze in a look of mutual understanding because he had not told his wife the exact terms of the will. Ignorant as Holly was of those terms, she could not know how impossible her suggestion was.

Apollo was outraged by the reference to Holly’s friend, Pixie, who was a hairdresser and poor as a peasant. Apollo already knew everything there was to know about Holly and Pixie because he had had the two women thoroughly investigated as soon as Holly appeared out of nowhere to announce that she had given birth to Vito’s son, Angelo. Apollo had been appalled by Pixie’s grubby criminal background and the debts her unsavoury brother had accrued and which she for some strange reason had chosen to take on as her own. Those debts had resulted in her brother’s punishment beating and her attempt to interfere with that had put Pixie in a wheelchair with two broken legs.

Was it any wonder that when her friend had such a bad background he had instinctively distrusted Holly and marvelled at his friend’s eagerness to marry the mother of his child? Indeed Apollo had been waiting on the sidelines ever since for Pixie to try and take advantage of her friendship with Holly by approaching her friend for financial help. To date, however, she had not done so and Apollo had been relieved for he had no desire to interfere again, knowing how much that would be resented. And thanks to his ungenerous attitude at their wedding, Holly already resented Apollo quite enough.

Pixie Robinson, Apollo thought again in wonderment as Vito and Holly retreated indoors to change for dinner. He was unlikely to forget the tiny doll-like blonde in the wheelchair at Vito’s wedding. She had given Apollo nothing but dirty looks throughout the day and had really irritated him. Holly was insane. Of course she was biased, Pixie being her best friend and all that, but even so, could she really imagine Apollo marrying Pixie and them producing an heir together? Apollo almost shuddered before he reminded himself that Holly didn’t know about that most outrageous demand in his father’s will.

He had seriously underestimated the older man, Apollo conceded angrily. Vassilis Metraxis had always had a bee in his bonnet about the continuation of the family name, hence his six marriages and unsuccessful attempts to have another child. At thirty, Apollo was an only child. His father had urged his son to marry many times and Apollo had been blunt and honest about his resolve to remain single and childless. In spite of the depredations of the manipulative, grasping stepmothers and the greedy stepchildren that had come with those marriages, Apollo had always enjoyed a relatively close and loving relationship with his father. For that reason, the terms of Vassilis’s will had come as a very nasty shock.

According to the will, Apollo was to continue running his father’s empire and enjoying his possessions but that state of affairs was guaranteed to continue only for the next five years. Within that period Apollo had to legally marry and produce a child if he wanted to retain his inheritance. If he failed on either count, the Metraxis wealth would be shared out amongst his father’s ex-wives and former stepchildren even though they had all been richly rewarded while his father was still alive.

Apollo could not credit that his father had been so foolish as to try and blackmail his son from beyond the grave. And yet wasn’t it proving most effective? Rigid with tension as he made that sudden leap in understanding, Apollo stood on the terrace looking out to sea and watching the stormy waves batter the cliffs. His grandfather had bought the island of Nexos and built the villa for family use. Every Metraxis since then had been buried in the little graveyard down by the village church, including Apollo’s mother, who had died in childbirth.

The island was Apollo’s home, the only real home he had ever known, and he was disconcerted to realise that he literally could not bear the idea of his home being sold off, which would mean that he could never visit it or his memories again. He was discovering way too late to change anything that he was far more attached to the family name and the family property than he had ever dreamt. He had fought the prospect of marriage, habitually mocking the institution and rubbishing his father’s unsuccessful attempts to recreate a normal family circle. He had sworn that he would never father a child, for as a child Apollo had suffered a great deal and he had genuinely believed that it would be wrong to subject any child to what he had endured. Yet from beyond the grave his father had contrived to call his bluff...

For when it came down to it, Apollo could not contemplate losing the world he took for granted even though he knew that fighting to retain it would be a hellish struggle. A struggle against his own volatile inclinations and his innate love of freedom, a struggle against being forced to live with a woman, forced to have sex with her, forced to have a child he didn’t want.

And how best could he achieve that? Unfortunately, Vito was right: Apollo needed to hire a woman, one who was willing to marry him solely for money. But how could he trust such a woman not to go to the media to spill all or to confide his secrets in the wrong person? He would need a hold on the woman he married, some sort of a hold that meant she needed him as much as he needed her and would have good reason to follow any rules he laid down.

Although he would never consider her as a possibility, he needed a woman like Pixie Robinson. In her case he could have bought up her brother’s debt and used it to put pressure on her, thereby ensuring that it was in her best interests to keep her mouth shut and give him exactly what he needed to retain his family empire. How was he supposed to find another woman in that kind of situation?

Of course, had he trusted women generally, he might have been less cautious. But Apollo, his cynical distrust honed over no fewer than six stepmothers and countless lovers, had never trusted a woman in his life. In fact trust was a real issue for him.

His first stepmother had sent him off to boarding school at the age of four. His second stepmother had beaten him bloody. His third had seduced him. His fourth stepmother had had his beloved dog put down. His fifth stepmother had tried to foist another man’s child on his father.

Add in the innumerable women whom Apollo had bedded over the years. Beautiful, sexually adventurous women and gold-diggers, who had endeavoured to enrich themselves as much as possible during their brief affairs with him. He had never known any other kind of woman, couldn’t quite believe that any other type existed. Holly was different though, he acknowledged grudgingly. He could see that she adored Vito and their child. So, there was another category out there: women who loved. Not that he would be looking for one of those. Love would trap him, inhibit him and suffocate him with the dos and don’ts he despised. He suppressed a shudder. Life was too short to make such a mistake.

But in the short term he still needed a wife. A wife he could control was the only sort of wife he would be able to tolerate. He thought about Pixie again. Pixie and her weak, feckless brother’s financial problems. She had to be pretty stupid, he reflected helplessly, to mess up her life by taking on her sibling’s problems. Why would you do that? Never having had a brother or a sister, Apollo was mystified by the concept of such thankless sacrifice. But just how far would Pixie Robinson go to save her brother’s skin?

It amused Apollo to know so much more than Holly did about her best friend’s problems. It amused him even more that Holly had cheerfully assured him that Pixie couldn’t stand him. Holly had to be blind. Obviously Holly hadn’t noticed that, in spite of the dirty looks, Pixie had covertly watched Apollo’s every move at her friend’s wedding.

The beginnings of a smile softened the hard line of Apollo’s wide sensual mouth. Maybe he should take a closer look at the miniature blonde and work out whether or not she could be of use to him...what did he have to lose?

CHAPTER ONE

‘MORNING, HECTOR,’ PIXIE mumbled as she woke up with a tousled bundle of terrier plastered to her ribs.

Smothering a yawn, she steeled herself to get up and out. She got out of bed to head to the bathroom she shared with the other tenants on the same floor before returning washed and dressed to snap a leash on Hector’s faded red collar and take her pet out for his morning walk.

Hector trotted along the road, little round eyes reflecting anxiety. He flinched when he noticed another dog across the street. Hector was scared of just about everything life threw at him. People, other animals, traffic and loud noises all made the whites of his eyes gleam with an edge of panic. Calm and untroubled the rest of the time, he was very quiet and had never been known to bark.

‘Probably learned not to as a puppy,’ the vet next door to the hair salon had opined when Pixie had asked. ‘He’s scared of attracting attention to himself in any way. Abuse does that to an animal. But in spite of his injuries he’s young and healthy and should have a long life ahead of him.’

Pixie still marvelled at the fact that regardless of her own problems she had chosen to adopt Hector. But then, Pixie had triumphed over adversity many times in life and so had the little terrier. Hector had repaid her generosity a thousand times over. He comforted her and warmed her heart with his shy little ways and eccentricities. He had filled some of the giant hole that had opened up in Pixie’s world when Holly and Angelo had moved to Italy.

She had lost her best friend to marriage and motherhood but their friendship had been more damaged by the secrets Pixie had been forced to keep. There was no way she could tell Holly about her brother Patrick’s gambling debts without Holly offering to settle those debts for them. Holly was very generous but Patrick was not Holly or Vito’s responsibility, he was Pixie’s and had been since the day of their mother’s death.

‘Promise me you’ll look after your little brother,’ Margery Robinson had pleaded. ‘Always do your best for Patrick, Pixie. He’s a gentle soul and he’s the only family you have left.’

But looking after Patrick had been near impossible when the siblings had invariably ended up living in different foster homes. During the important teenaged years, Pixie had only met up with her brother a handful of times and until she’d finished training and achieved independence her bond with her kid brother had been limited by time, distance and a shortage of money. Once she was working she had tried to change all that by regularly visiting Patrick in London.

Initially Patrick had done well. He was an electrician working for a big construction firm. He had found a girlfriend and settled down. But he had also got involved in high-stake card games and had lost a lot of money to a very dangerous man. Pixie had duly cut down her own expenses, moving out of the comfortable terraced house she had once shared with Holly into a much cheaper bedsit. Every week she sent as much money as she could afford to Patrick to help him pay off his debts but as interest was added that debt just seemed to be getting bigger and if he missed a payment he would be beaten up...or worse. Pixie genuinely feared that her brother’s debts would get him killed.

Pixie still came out in a cold sweat remembering the night the debt collectors had arrived when she had been visiting her brother. Two big brutish men had come to the door of Patrick’s flat to demand money. Threatening to kill him, they had beaten him up when he was unable to pay his dues. Attempting to intervene in the ensuing struggle, Pixie had fallen down the stairs and broken both her legs. The consequences of that accident had been horrendous because Pixie had been unable to work and had been forced to claim benefits during her recovery. Now, six months on, she was just beginning to get back to normal but unhappily there seemed to be no light gleaming at the end of the tunnel because Patrick’s debt situation seemed insurmountable and his life was still definitely at risk. The man he owed wasn’t the type to wait indefinitely for settlement. He would want his pound of flesh or he would want to make an example of her brother to intimidate his other debtors.

Settling Hector into his basket, Pixie set off down the street to the hair salon. She missed her car but selling Clementine had been her first sacrifice because she had no real need for personal transport in the small Devon town where she could walk most places. She would return home to take Hector out for a walk during her lunch break and grab a sandwich at the same time.

Entering the salon, she exchanged greetings with her co-workers and her boss, Sally. After hurriedly stowing her bag in her staff locker she caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror and winced. It had been a while since she had looked her best. When had she got so boring? She was only twenty-three years old. Unfortunately cutting costs had entailed wearing her clothes for longer and her jeans and black top had seen better days. She had good skin and didn’t wear much make-up but she always wore loads of grey eyeliner because black liner was too stark against the blonde hair that fell simply to just below her shoulders. She had left behind her more adventurous days of playing with different styles and colours because she had soon come to appreciate that most of her clients had conservative tastes and were nervous of a hairdresser who had done anything eye-catching to her own hair.

She cleaned up after her third client had departed. She regretted the reality that yet another junior had walked out, leaving the stylists to deal with answering the phone, washing hair and sweeping up. She checked the appointment book for her next booking and, unusually, she didn’t recognise the name. It was a guy though and she was surprised he hadn’t asked for the only male stylist in the salon. And then, without the smallest warning, Apollo Metraxis walked in and as every female jaw literally dropped in wonderment and silence spread like the plague he strode up to Pixie and announced, ‘I’m your twelve o’clock appointment.’

Pixie gaped at him, not quite sure it could actually be him in the flesh. ‘What the heck are you doing here? Has something happened to Holly or Vito?’ she demanded apprehensively.

‘I need a trim,’ Apollo announced levelly, perfectly comfortable with the fact that he was the cynosure of every eye in the place. Clad in a black biker jacket, tight jeans and boots, he seemed impossibly tall as he towered over her, bright green eyes strikingly noticeable in his lean bronzed face.

‘Holly? Vito? Angelo?’ Pixie pressed with staccato effect, her attention glued to his broad chest and the tee shirt plastered to his six-pack abs.

‘As far as I know they’re all well,’ Apollo retorted impatiently.

But that still didn’t explain what a Greek billionaire was doing walking into a high-street hair salon in a small country town where as far as she was aware he knew nobody. And she couldn’t be counted because he had never spoken to her, never even so much as glanced at her on the day of Holly’s wedding. The memory rankled because she was only human, whether she liked it or not. After trying to ruin Holly’s wedding for her by making an embarrassing speech in his role of best man, he had royally ignored Pixie as if she was beneath his lofty notice.

‘I’m afraid I have another appointment.’

‘That’s me. John Smith? Didn’t you smell a rat?’ he mocked.

In actuality the only thing Pixie could smell that close to Apollo was Apollo and the alluring scent of some no doubt very expensive citrusy designer cologne.

‘Let me take your jacket,’ she said jerkily, struggling to regain her composure and behave normally.

He shrugged it off, more powerful muscles bunching and flexing with his every movement. He exposed the bare arm with the intricate dragon tattoo that had made her stare at her friend’s wedding. Then she hurriedly turned away and hung the heavy leather jacket on the coat stand beside the reception desk.

‘Come over to the sinks,’ Pixie urged, alarmingly short of breath at the prospect of laying actual hands on him.

Apollo stared down at her. She was even smaller than he had expected, barely reaching his chest and very delicate in build. He had seen boards with more curves. But she had amazing eyes, a light grey that glittered like stolen starlight in her expressive face. She had an undistinguished button nose and a full rosebud mouth while her flawless skin had the translucent glow of the finest porcelain. She was much more natural than the women he was accustomed to. Definitely no breast enhancements, no fake tan and even her mouth appeared to be all her own.

As he sat down Pixie whisked a cape round him and then a towel, determined not to be intimidated by him. ‘So, what on earth are you doing here?’

‘You’ll never guess,’ Apollo intoned, tilting his head back for her.

Pixie ran the water while noting that he had the most magnificent head of hair. Layers and layers of luxuriant blue-black glossy strands. His mocking response tightened her mouth and frustration gripped her. ‘When did you last see our mutual friends?’ she asked instead.

‘At my father’s funeral last week,’ Apollo advanced.

Pixie stiffened. ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ she said immediately.

‘Why should you be sorry?’ Apollo asked with unsettling derision. ‘You didn’t know him and you don’t know me.’

Her teeth gritted at that scornful dismissal as she shampooed his hair. ‘It’s just what people say to show sympathy.’

‘Are you sympathetic?’

Pixie was tempted to drench him with the shower head she was using. Her teeth ground together even tighter. ‘I’m sympathetic to anyone who’s lost a family member.’

‘He was dying for a long time,’ Apollo admitted flatly. ‘It wasn’t unexpected.’

His outrageously long fringe of black lashes flicked down over his striking eyes and she got on with her job on automatic pilot while her mind seethed with questions. What did he want with her? Was it foolish of her to think that his descent on the place where she worked had to relate to her personally? Yet how could it relate to her? Outside her ties to Holly and Vito, there was no possible connection.

‘Tell me about you,’ Apollo invited, disconcerting her.

‘Why would I?’

‘Because I asked...because it’s polite?’ he prompted, his posh British upper-class accent smooth as glass.

‘Let’s talk about you instead,’ she suggested. ‘What are you doing in England?’

‘A little business, a little socialising. Visiting friends,’ he responded carelessly.

She applied conditioner and embarked on a head massage with tautly nervous fingers. A second after she began she realised she had not asked him if he wanted one but she kept going all the same, desperate to take charge of the encounter and keep busy.

Apollo relaxed while lazily wondering if she did any other kind of massage. The file hadn’t shed much light on her sex life or her habits but then two broken legs had kept her close to home for months. As her slender fingers moved rhythmically across his skull he pictured her administering to him buck naked and the sudden tightening at his groin warned him to give it a rest.

Irritated by the effect she was having on his highly tense body, Apollo thought about how much he needed sex to wind down. His last liaison had ended before his father’s funeral and he had not been with anyone since then. Unlike Vito, Apollo never went without sex. A couple of weeks was a very long time for him. Had he found Pixie unattractive, he would’ve backed off straight away; however that wasn’t the case. But—Diavole!—she was teeny, tiny as a doll and he was a big guy in every way. She rinsed his hair and towelled him dry while he thought about her hands on his body and that ripe bee-stung mouth taking him to climax. It was a relief to move and settle down in another chair.

‘What do you want done?’ she asked him after she had combed his hair.

He almost told her because he was all revved up and ready to go and he had never before reacted to a woman with such unsophisticated schoolboyish enthusiasm. ‘A trim...but leave it long,’ he warned her while he wondered what the secret of her attraction was.

Novelty value? He was tall and he generally went for tall, curvy blondes. But possibly he had got bored with a steady diet of women so similar they had become almost interchangeable. Vito had raved about how down-to-earth and unspoilt Holly was but Apollo was a great deal less high flown in his expectations. If Pixie pleased him in bed, he would count her a prize. If she got pregnant quickly he would treat her like a princess. If she gave him a child, she would live like a lottery winner. Apollo believed in only rewarding results.

Of course, she might turn him down. A woman had never turned him down before but he knew there had to be a first time and it was not as though he were in the habit of asking women to have a child with him. And if he spilled all to Pixie then he would be vulnerable because she might choose to share his secrets with the media for a handsome price and that would scupper his plans. So, however she reacted, he would be stuck having to pay her to keep quiet and that reality and the risk involved annoyed him.

Momentarily, Pixie stepped away to right the swaying coat stand, knocked off balance by an elderly woman. In the mirror, Apollo watched as Pixie bent down to pick up and hang the coats that had fallen and he was riveted by a glimpse of her curvy little rump before she straightened and returned to his side.

Her scissors went snip-snip. She was confident with what she did and every so often her fingers would smooth through his hair in a gesture almost like a caress. He glanced at her from below his lashes, wondering if it was a come-on, but her heart-shaped face was intent on her task, her eyes veiled, her mouth a tense line. It didn’t stop Apollo imagining those touchy-feely hands roaming freely over him. In fact the more he thought about that, the hotter he got.

When she wielded the drier over him, Apollo tried to take it off her. He usually dried his own hair and then damped it down again to make it presentable but Pixie swore she would do nothing fancy and withheld the drier, determined to personally tame his messy mane.

Until she had had the experience of cutting Apollo’s hair it had never crossed Pixie’s mind that her job could be an unsettlingly intimate one. But touching Apollo’s surprisingly silky hair disturbed her, making her aware of him on a level she was very uncomfortable with. He smelled so damned good she wanted to sniff him in like an intoxicating draught of sunshine. Wide shoulders flexed as he settled back in the chair and she sucked in a slow steadying breath. She had never been so on edge with a customer in her life. Her nipples were tight inside her bra and she felt embarrassingly damp between her thighs.

No, she absolutely was not attracted to Apollo. It was simply that he made her very nervous. The guy was a literal celebrity, an international playboy adored by the media for his jet-set womanising lifestyle. Any normal woman would feel overwhelmed by his sudden appearance. It was like having a lion walk into the room, she reflected wildly. You couldn’t stop staring, you couldn’t do less than admire his animal beauty and magnificence but not far underneath lurked a ferocious fear of what he might do next.

Apollo sprang upright and Pixie hastened to retrieve his jacket and hand it to him. He stilled at the reception desk and dug inside it while she waited for him to pay. He frowned, black brows pleating, and stared at her. ‘My wallet’s gone,’ he told her.

‘Oh, dear...’ Pixie muttered blankly.

His green eyes narrowed to shards of emerald cutting glass ready to draw blood. ‘Did you take it?’

‘Did I take your wallet?’ In the wake of that echo of an answer, Pixie’s mouth dropped open in shock because her brain was telling her that he could not possibly have accused her of stealing from him.

‘You’re the only person who touched my jacket,’ Apollo condemned loud enough to turn heads nearby. ‘Give it back and I’ll take no action.’

‘You’ve got to be out of your mind to think that I would steal from you!’ Pixie exclaimed, stricken, as her boss, Sally, came rushing across the salon.

‘I want the police called,’ he informed the older woman grimly.

The dizziness of shock engulfed Pixie and she turned pale as death. She couldn’t credit that Apollo was accusing her of theft in public. In fact her first thought was insane because she found herself wondering if he had come to the salon deliberately to set her up for such an accusation. All he had to do would be to leave his wallet behind and then accuse her of stealing from him. And who would believe her word against the word of someone of his wealth and importance?

Her stomach heaved and with a muffled groan she fled to the cloakroom to lose her breakfast. Apollo was subjecting her to her worst possible nightmare. Pixie had always had a pronounced horror of theft and dishonesty. Her father had been a serial burglar, in and out of prison all his life. Her mother had been a professional shoplifter, who stole to order. If Pixie had stumbled across a purse lying on the ground she would have walked past it, too terrified to pick it up and hand it in in case someone accused her of trying to steal it. It was a hangover from her shame-filled childhood and she had never yet contrived to overcome her greatest fear.

CHAPTER TWO

THE POLICEMAN WHO arrived was familiar—a middle-aged man who patrolled the streets of the small town. Pixie had seen him around but had never spoken to him because she gave the police a wide berth. Acquainted with most of the local traders, however, he was on comfortable terms with her boss, Sally.

By the time Apollo had been asked to give his name and details he was beginning to wonder if it had been a mistake to call in officialdom. He didn’t want to be identified. He didn’t want to risk the media getting involved. And if she had taken his wallet wasn’t it really only the sort of behaviour he had expected from Pixie Robinson? She was desperate for money and he was well aware of the fact that his wallet would offer a bigger haul than most. The constable viewed him in astonishment when he admitted how much cash he had been carrying.

Pixie gave her name and address in a voice that trembled in spite of her attempt to keep it level. Sick with nerves, she shifted from one foot onto the other and then back again, unable to stay still, unable to meet anyone’s eyes lest they recognise the panic consuming her. Perspiration beaded her short upper lip as the police officer asked her what had happened from the moment of Apollo’s arrival. While she spoke she couldn’t help noticing Apollo lounging back in an attitude of extravagant relaxation against the edge of the desk and occasionally glancing at his gold watch as though he had somewhere more important to be.

She had never been violent but Apollo filled her with vicious and aggressive reactions. How could he be so hateful and Vito still be friends with him? She had known Apollo wasn’t a nice person on the day of Holly’s wedding when his speech had made it obvious that Holly and Vito’s son had been conceived from a one-night stand. Since then she had read more about him online. He was a womaniser who essentially didn’t like women. She had recognised that reality straight off. His affairs never lasted longer than a couple of weeks. He got bored very quickly, never committed, indeed never got involved beyond the most superficial level.

‘Don’t forget to mention that you went back to the coat stand when the old lady knocked some of the coats to the floor,’ Apollo reminded her in a languorous drawl.

‘And you’re suggesting that that’s when I took your wallet?’ Pixie snapped, studying him with eyes bright silver with loathing.

‘Could it have fallen out of the jacket?’ the police officer asked hopefully, tugging a couple of chairs out from the wall to glance behind them. ‘Have you looked under the desk?’

‘Not very likely,’ Apollo traded levelly. ‘Is no one going to search this woman? Her bag even?’

‘Let’s not jump to conclusions, Mr Metraxis,’ the policeman countered quellingly as he lifted the rubbish bin.

Apollo raised an unimpressed brow. He was so judgemental and so confident that he was right, Pixie thought in consternation. He was absolutely convinced that she had stolen his wallet and it would take an earthquake to shift him. Her stomach lurched again and she crossed her arms defensively, the sick dizziness of fear assailing her once more. She didn’t have his wallet but mud would stick. By tea time everyone local would know that the blonde stylist at Sally’s had been accused of theft. At the very least she could lose her job. She wasn’t so senior or talented that Sally would risk losing clients to her nearest competitor.

The policeman lifted the newspaper lying in the bin and, with an exclamation, he reached beneath it and lifted out a brown hide wallet. ‘Is this it?’

Visibly surprised, Apollo extended his hand. ‘Yes...’

‘When the coat stand tipped, your wallet must’ve fallen out into the bin,’ Sally suggested with a bright smile of relief at that sensible explanation.

‘Or Pixie hid it in the bin to retrieve at a more convenient time,’ Apollo murmured.

‘This situation need not have arisen had a proper search been conducted before I was called in,’ the policeman remarked. ‘You were very quick to make an accusation, Mr Metraxis.’

Impervious to the hint of censure, Apollo angled his arrogant dark head back. ‘I’m still not convinced my wallet ended up in the bin by accident,’ he admitted. ‘Pixie has a criminal background.’

Pixie froze in shocked mortification. How did Apollo Metraxis know that about her? That was private, that was her past and she had left it behind her a long time ago. ‘But not a criminal record!’ she flung back curtly, watching Apollo settle a bank note down on the desk and Sally hastily passing him his change.

‘We shouldn’t be discussing such things in public,’ the policeman said drily and took his leave.

‘Take the rest of the day off, Pixie,’ Sally urged uncomfortably. ‘I’m sorry I was so quick to call the police...but—’

‘It’s OK,’ Pixie said chokily, well aware that her employer’s business mantra was that the customer was always right and such an accusation had required immediate serious attention.

It was over. A faint shudder racked Pixie’s slender frame. The nightmare was truly over. Apollo had his wallet back even though he still couldn’t quite bring himself to accept that she hadn’t stolen it and hidden it in the rubbish bin. But it was over and the policeman had departed satisfied. The fierce tension that had held Pixie still left her in a sudden rush and she could feel herself crumpling like rice paper inside and out as a belated surge of tears washed the backs of her eyelids.

‘Excuse me,’ she mumbled and fled to the back room to pull herself together and collect her bag.

She sniffed and wiped her eyes, knowing she was messing up her eyeliner and not even caring. She wanted to go home and hug Hector. Pulling on her jacket, she walked back through the salon, trying not to be self-conscious about the fact that the customers who had witnessed the little drama were all staring at her. A couple who knew her called out encouraging things but Pixie’s entire attention was welded to the very tall male she could see waiting outside on the pavement. Why was Apollo still hanging around?

Of course, he wanted to apologise, she assumed. Why else would he be waiting? She stalked out of the door.

‘Pixie?’

‘You bastard!’ she hissed at him in a raw undertone. ‘Leave me alone!’

‘I came here to speak to you—’

‘Well, you’ve spoken to me and now you can...’ Pixie swore at him, colliding with his scorching green eyes and almost reeling back from the anger she saw there.

‘Get in the car. I’ll take you home,’ he said curtly.

Pixie swore at him again and, with a spluttering Greek curse and before she could even guess his intention, Apollo stooped and snatched her off her feet to carry her across the street.

Pixie thumped him so hard with her clenched fist, she hurt her knuckles.

‘You’re a violent little thing, aren’t you?’ Apollo framed rawly as he stuffed her in the back seat of the waiting limo.

‘Let me out of this car!’ Pixie gasped, flinging herself at the door on the opposite side as he slid in beside her.

‘I’m taking you home,’ Apollo countered, rubbing his cheekbone where it was turning slightly pink from her punch.

‘I hope you get a black eye!’ Pixie spat. ‘Stop the car...let me out! This is kidnapping!’

‘Do you really want to walk down the street with your make-up smeared all over your face?’

‘Yes, if the alternative is getting a lift from you!’

But the limousine was already turning a corner to draw up outside the shabby building where she lived, so the argument was academic. As the doors unlocked, Pixie leapt out onto the pavement.

She might be petite in appearance but she was wiry and strong, Apollo acknowledged, and, not only did she know how to land a good punch, she also moved like greased lightning. He climbed out of the car at a more relaxed pace.

Breathing rapidly, Pixie paused in the hall with the door she had unlocked ajar. ‘How did you know that about my background?’

‘I’ll tell you if you invite me in.’

‘Why would I invite you in? I don’t like you.’

‘You know I can only be here to see you and you have to be curious,’ Apollo responded with confidence.

‘I can live with being curious,’ Pixie told him, stepping into her room and starting to snap the door shut.

‘But evidently you don’t think you can live without your foolish little brother...do you?’ Apollo drawled and the door stopped an inch off closing and slowing opened up again.

‘What do you know about Patrick?’ Pixie asked angrily.

Apollo strode in. ‘I know everything there is to know about you, your brother, your background and your friend Holly. I had you both privately investigated when Holly first appeared out of nowhere with baby Angelo.’

Pixie studied him in shock and backed away several feet, which took her to the side of her bed. Even with the bed pushed up against one wall it was a small room. She had sold off much of the surplus stuff she had gathered up over the years before moving in. ‘Why would you have us both investigated?’ she exclaimed.

‘I’m more cautious than Vito. I wanted to know who he was dealing with so that if necessary I could advise and protect him,’ Apollo retorted with a slight shrug of a broad shoulder as he peered into a dark corner where something pale with glimmering eyes was trying to shrink into the wall.

‘Just ignore Hector. Visitors, particularly male ones, freak him out,’ Pixie told him thinly. ‘I should think that Vito is old enough to protect himself.’

‘Vito doesn’t know much about the dark side of life.’

It was no surprise that Apollo considered himself superior in that regard, Pixie conceded. From childhood, scandal had illuminated Apollo’s life to the outside world: his family’s wealth, his father’s many marriages to beautiful women half his age, the break-ups, the divorces and the court battles that had followed. Apollo’s whole life had been lived in a histrionic headline-grabbing storm of publicity.

And there he stood in her little room, the perfect figurehead for a Greek billionaire, a living legend of a playboy with a yacht known to attract an exceptional number of gorgeous half-naked women. It seemed unfair that a male with such wealth and possessed of such undoubted intelligence should also have been blessed with such intense good looks. Apollo, like his namesake the sun god, was breathtakingly handsome. And he had undeniably taken Pixie’s breath away the first time she’d seen him at Holly’s wedding.

Apollo might be a toxic personality but when he was around he would always be the centre of attention. He had sleek dark brows, glorious green eyes, a classic nose and a stubborn, wilful mouth that could only be described as sensual. His sex appeal was electrifying and it was a sex appeal that Pixie would very much have liked to be impervious to. Sadly, however, she was a normal living, breathing woman with the usual healthy dose of hormones. And that was all it was...the breathlessness, the crazy race of her heartbeat, the tight fullness of her breasts and that strange squirmy, sensitive feeling low in her pelvis. It was all hormonal and as reflexive and trivial in Apollo’s radius as her liking for chocolate, not something she needed to beat herself up about.

A faint little pleading whine emanated from the shadows and recalled Pixie to rationality. As she realised she had been standing dumbly gaping at Apollo while she thought about him an angry flush crept up her face. In a sudden move, she reached for Hector’s leash. ‘Look, I don’t know what you’re doing here but right now I have to take my dog out for a walk.’

Apollo watched her drag...literally drag...a tattered-looking and clearly terrified little dog out of the corner to clip it onto a leash and lift it into her arms, where she rubbed her chin over the crown of its head and muttered soothingly to it as if it were a baby.

‘I have to talk to you. I’ll come with you.’

‘I don’t want you with me and if you have to talk to me about anything I have to say that accusing me of theft and utterly humiliating me where I work wasn’t a good opening.’

‘I know how desperate you must be for money. That’s why I assumed—’

Pixie spun angrily, her little pearly teeth gripped tightly together. ‘That’s why it doesn’t pay to assume anything about someone you don’t know!’

‘Are you always this argumentative? This ready to take offence?’

‘Only around you,’ Pixie told him truthfully. ‘Look, you can wait here while I’m out. I’ll be about fifteen minutes,’ she said briskly and walked out of the door.

Two steps along the pavement she couldn’t quite believe she had had the nerve. After all, the way he talked he knew about Patrick’s gambling debts and the threat against his continuing health. She broke out in a cold sweat just thinking about that reality because she really did love her little brother. Patrick didn’t have a bad bone in his body. He had made a mistake. He had tried too hard to be one of the boys when he took up playing cards and instead of stopping the habit when he lost money he had gone on gambling in the foolish belief that he could not continue on a losing streak for ever. By the time he had realised his mistake, he had built up a huge debt. But Patrick was working very hard to try and stay on top of that debt. He was an electrician during the day and a bartender at night.

Apollo had dangled a carrot and that she could have walked away even temporarily from the vaguest possibility of help for Patrick shook Pixie. But was Apollo offering to help them? No, that was highly unlikely. Why would he help them? He wasn’t the benevolent, sympathetic type. Yet why had he come to the salon in the first place and sought her out personally? And then accused her of theft? Her head aching with pointless conjecture, she sighed. Apollo was very complicated. He was also unreadable and impulsive. There was no way she could guess what he had in mind before he chose to tell her.

* * *

Apollo examined the grim little room and vented a curse. Women did not as a rule walk out on him, no, not even briefly. But Pixie was headstrong and defiant. Not exactly submissive wife material, a little voice pointed out in his head but he ignored it. He trailed a finger along the worn paperback books on the shelf above the bed and pulled out one to see what she liked to read. It was informative: a pirate in top boots wielding a sword. A reluctant grin of amusement slashed Apollo’s lean, darkly handsome features. Just as a book should never be judged by its cover, neither apparently should Pixie be. She was a closet romantic with a taste for the colourful.

Registering that he was hungry, he dug out his cell phone to order lunch for the two of them.

Walking back into her room, Pixie unclipped Hector’s leash and watched her pet race under the bed to hide.

Apollo was sprawled in the room’s single armchair, long, muscular, jeans-clad legs spread apart, his black hair feathering round his lean strong face, accentuating the brilliance of eyes that burned like emerald fire. ‘Does your dog always behave like that?’ he demanded, frowning.

‘Yes. He’s scared of everything but he’s most afraid of men. He was ill-treated,’ she murmured wryly. ‘So, tell me why you’re here.’

‘You’re in a bind and I am as well. I think it’s possible that we could work out something that settles both our problems,’ Apollo advanced guardedly.

Her smooth brow indented. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘For starters, I will pay you if necessary to keep quiet about what I am about to tell you because it’s highly confidential information,’ Apollo volunteered.

Faint colour rose over Pixie’s cheekbones. ‘I don’t need to be paid to keep your secrets. In spite of what you appear to think, I’m not that malicious or grasping.’

‘No, but you are in need of money and the press put a high value on stories about me,’ Apollo pointed out, compressing his lips. ‘You could sell the story.’

‘Has that happened to you before? Someone selling a story about you?’ she shot at him with sudden curiosity.

‘At least half a dozen times. Employees, exes...’ Apollo leant back into the chair, his strong jaw line taut, dark stubble highlighting his full sculptured mouth. ‘That’s the world I live in. That’s why I have a carload of bodyguards follow me everywhere I go.’

Pixie had noticed the sleek and expensive car parked across the street and a man in a suit leaning against the bonnet while he talked into an earpiece and her grey eyes widened in wonderment. ‘You don’t trust anybody, do you?’

‘I trust Vito. I trusted my father as well but he let me down many times over the years and not least with the terms of his will.’

Belatedly, Pixie recalled the recent death of his parent and the reference to the older man’s will made her suspect that they were finally approaching the crux of the matter that had put Apollo ‘in a bind’. It was, however, hard for her to credit that anything could trap Apollo Metraxis in a tight corner. He was a force of nature and very rich. He had choices most people never even got to dream of having and he had always had them.

‘I have no idea where you’re going with this,’ she muttered uncomfortably. ‘I can’t even begin to imagine any set of circumstances where you and I could somehow settle our...er...problems. Are you asking me for some sort of favour or something?’

‘I don’t ask people for favours. I pay them to do things for me.’

‘So there’s something that you think I could do for you that you’d be willing to pay for...is that right?’ Pixie pressed in frustration as a knock sounded on the door.

Apollo sprang upright, all leaping energy and strength, startling her into backing away several steps. He didn’t want to get to the point, she registered in wonderment. He was skating along the edge of what he wanted to ask her, reluctant to give her that much information.

And Pixie understood that feeling very well. Trust had never come easily to her either. She loved Holly and her brother and Holly’s baby and would have done anything for them. Once won, her loyalty was unshakeable and it had caused her a great deal of pain in recent months that she had had to step back from her friendship with Holly because it was simply impossible to be honest about the reasons why she had been more distant and why she had yet to visit Holly and Vito in Italy. Holly would be determined to help and there was no way Pixie could allow herself to take advantage of Holly’s newfound wealth and still look herself in the face. Instead she was dealing with her problems as she always did...alone.

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.

‘I told you that I prefer to choose a woman I can pay to marry me. I also want to be in control of the whole arrangement and the way I would set this up would mean that you had to follow the rules until our arrangement ends. That feels safer to me. It wouldn’t be in your interests or your brother’s to cross me or to admit to anyone that our marriage was phony,’ he pointed out with assurance. ‘Were you to admit that to the wrong person I could be challenged in a courtroom and I could lose my father’s estate for ever. If you did betray me, you would be breaking the terms of our agreement and you would land you and your brother straight back into the same trouble that you’re in right now.’

It was quite a speech, a sobering and intimidating speech that told her a lot she would rather not have known about exactly how Apollo’s mind worked. He wanted a woman over whom he had total control, a woman who had to strictly adhere to his conditions or lose all benefits from the arrangement.

‘I hear what you’re saying,’ Pixie breathed tautly, ‘but I think it’s twisted. You want a wife you can blackmail into doing what you want her to do, someone powerless. I could not be that woman.’

‘Oh, don’t underestimate yourself. I think you’re gutsy enough to take me on,’ Apollo told her with grudging amusement in his gaze. ‘Did you or did you not grasp the fact that I am offering to save you and your brother from the consequences of his stupidity?’

Pixie reddened. Silence fell. In the interim, Apollo made use of his cell phone and spoke in what she assumed was rapid Greek.

‘You’re serious about this...?’ she almost whispered in sheer bewilderment. ‘But you said you need to have a child as well, and—’

‘If you fail to conceive the marriage would end in divorce within eighteen months. I can’t afford to waste more time than that,’ Apollo imparted without hesitation. ‘However, you would still get the same financial payoff. In that way, whether you have a child or not, you would still benefit from a debt-free future. ‘

A knock came on the door again. This time it was Pixie who rushed to answer it because she desperately needed a breathing space to get her thoughts in order and was thinking of diving for the bathroom again. Two men entered and deftly cleared away the dishes, leaving behind only the wine and the glasses.

‘There’s no way on earth I could go to bed with you!’ Pixie spluttered out bluntly without meaning to as soon as the door had shut on the men’s exit.

Apollo studied her in open astonishment and then he flung his handsome dark head back and roared with unfettered amusement. In fact he laughed so hard he almost tipped the chair back while she stared at him in disbelief.

‘I really don’t understand how you can find that so funny,’ Pixie snapped when he had regained control of himself. ‘You’re talking about me having sex with a stranger and that may be something you do on a fairly regular basis but it’s not something I would do! You’re also talking about having an awful lot of sex,’ she told him half an octave higher, her voice thinning with extreme stress and embarrassment. ‘Because it could take months and months to conceive a child. I couldn’t do it. There’s absolutely no way I could do that with you!’

‘You sound a little hysterical and I’m surprised,’ Apollo admitted. ‘Holly’s the starry-eyed type but you struck me as more sensible. Marry me and try to have a child and you won’t be struggling in a dump like this to save your brother and make a decent life. All the bad things will go away... I can make that happen. You won’t get a better offer.’

Mortification had claimed Pixie because she knew she had sounded panic-stricken. Face hot, she retreated to the bed and sank down on the edge of the mattress. In truth the thought of having sex with Apollo drove every sensible thought from her mind and only provoked a giant ‘no’ from every corner of her being. A long, long time ago she had promised herself that sex would only ever be combined with love in her life. She hadn’t saved her virginity simply to throw it away in some immoral arrangement with Apollo Metraxis intended to conceive a child and moreover a child he didn’t really want.

Apollo studied her in frustration. He didn’t understand what was wrong. A woman had never found him unattractive before. He knew she didn’t like him but he didn’t consider liking necessary to a successful sexual liaison. Sex was like food in Apollo’s life, something he enjoyed on a frequent basis and wasted little time thinking about. He was amazed that she had concentrated her objections on the need for a sexual relationship. Head down bent, she sat on the side of the bed in a rigid position with one arm stretched 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.

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