Kitabı oku: «The Greek's Christmas Bride»

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.