The Mills & Boon Ultimate Christmas Collection. Kate HardyЧитать онлайн книгу.
in the direction she was expected to go and she wanted to jump up and down and scream in frustration. Apollo was making her feel like a glove puppet. Go here, sit there, do that! It was as if he had swallowed the manual of How to be a Control Freak with your Wife at the same moment he was told he was married. She had seriously underestimated how very forceful and domineering he could be unless you did exactly as you were told. And there was no room for complaint, which he ignored.
‘We need to clear the air about your brother,’ Apollo announced, urging her into a room fitted out like an office with built-in cabinets, shelves and a very large desk.
‘I will only tell you this one more time…’ Pixie framed quite shakily but loudly in her rage. ‘My brother is none of your business!’
Once again, Apollo ignored that statement. He extracted a slim file from a drawer in the desk and tossed it across the desk. ‘Patrick is still gambling. Small card games with low stakes but he has a problem and it needs to be dealt with.’
‘That’s a complete lie and very unjust!’ Pixie exclaimed.
‘Pixie, there’s sibling loyalty and then there’s complete stupidity. Show me that you understand the difference and read the file.’
Her face flaming red with angry embarrassment, Pixie grabbed the file and retreated to a chair.
Apollo studied her with an air of exasperation. Why couldn’t she understand that it was his job as a husband to protect her? That was all he was doing, as well as sorting out a problem that would only get worse if it was ignored. He had no personal axe to grind when it came to his brother-in-law. But it was obvious that Patrick was weak and in need of firm guidance. That had to be sorted out before Pixie’s brother got himself into an even bigger mess because Apollo would refuse to settle the younger man’s gambling losses if he got into trouble again.
Pixie’s shoulders hunched as she read the investigation report, which stated that Patrick often played card games in the evening after he finished work. Her heart sank to her toes, the colour draining from her face to leave her stiff and pale. Her brother had lied to her and she was hugely hurt by that reality. He had sworn he would never gamble again, he had sworn he was not addicted but the evidence in the file proved otherwise and it was a total slap in the face for her to have to learn that fact from Apollo, who had all the sensitivity of a hammer blow.
‘I had him investigated only as a precaution. I will not allow Patrick’s difficulties to cause trouble between us. I tackled him today—in a private location, by the way—for your benefit and that of his partner,’ Apollo informed her on a pious note that made his bride’s teeth grit. ‘Your brother has agreed to see an addiction counsellor and after her assessment he will follow the advice he receives. Otherwise his gambling debts will come back to haunt him—’
Pixie leapt upright in consternation. ‘No, but you promised me!’
‘The carrot and the stick approach work, Pixie,’ Apollo cut in very drily. ‘He needs a reason to reform and the child on the way is an excellent source of pressure on him to change his ways.’
‘Holding that debt over him is so cruel, Apollo,’ Pixie framed unevenly, grey eyes wide with stinging tears and accusation.
‘He needs professional treatment and support. You are his sister, not his mother,’ Apollo pronounced with finality. ‘I won’t change my mind about this, so don’t waste your energy arguing about it.’
But Pixie already knew that she was unlikely to get anywhere arguing. Apollo was a steamroller, who travelled in a dead straight line and it was simply your bad luck if you lay in his path because he wouldn’t deviate from his course.
Unhappily, his comment about her being Patrick’s sister and not his mother lingered longest with Pixie, stirring up memories she would have sooner left buried. From an early age Pixie had been urged to look after her little brother. Her mother had loved Patrick in a way she had not seemed able to love her older child and that had stayed true right to the end of the older woman’s life when she’d begged her daughter to always support her younger sibling.
As a child, Patrick had got treats, praise, affection and smiles from their mother while Pixie had been denied all of those things and left wondering what it was about her that made her less loveable. As she’d matured, however, she had come to suspect that her mother had been one of those women who would always have idolised her son in preference to her daughter, indeed who saw something almost magical in the mother-son bond from which she jealously excluded everyone else.
A knock on the door sounded and Apollo yanked it open and four little furry feet surged across the floor to boisterously attack Pixie’s ankles. Damp-eyed, she bent down and lifted Hector, who was crazy happy to be reunited with her after a twenty-four-hour absence. He planted excited doggy kisses over her chin and made her reluctantly laugh as she petted him to calm him down.
‘You need to get changed for dinner now,’ Apollo informed her, gratified to have scored a coup by reintroducing the dog at the optimum moment. But then Apollo very rarely left anything to chance. He had planned that reunion as a soother almost as soon as he’d discovered that Patrick Robinson was still gambling because he had known that he had to confront his bride-to-be with the realities of the situation.
If you knew how to handle women, you could avoid conflict. Apollo had been smoothly and cleverly handling women since he was a child because his comfort had depended on the relationship he had established with his stepmothers. He avoided dramas with lovers in much the same style. An expensive piece of jewellery or a new wardrobe could work a miracle with an angry, resentful woman. Pixie, however, so far seemed infuriatingly indifferent to her new clothes and lifestyle but he had not yet had the chance to test her in that line. She could simply be faking her lack of interest, striving to impress him. He studied her tear-streaked face, the grey eyes soft now as she petted the tatty little dog she undoubtedly loved. He liked that she liked animals. It was the first time in a very long time that Apollo had actively liked anything about a woman and it shook him.
‘You deliberately let me think that Hector and I were going to be apart for weeks,’ Pixie condemned. ‘Why did you do that? The carrot and the stick approach with me as well?’
Apollo shrugged. ‘I dislike arguments. I knew you would be upset about your brother. Hector’s your reward for accepting that I’m doing right by Patrick.’
Pixie’s delicate frame went rigid. ‘Stop trying to manipulate me, Apollo. If you want me to do something just face me with it. Try being honest for a change.’
Even barefoot she contrived to stalk out of the office to join the yacht steward waiting outside for her to show her to the master suite. On the trek there she was shown the gym, the medical centre, the sauna and steam room and the cinema. Circe was a massive vessel with four decks and seemed to contain everything Apollo might require to live on it on a permanent basis. He hadn’t offered to give her a grand tour as she had somehow expected and now she scolded herself for imagining he might want to do something that normal. He didn’t care what she thought of his yacht. He had to know that she had never been on a yacht before and was already utterly overwhelmed by the sheer opulence of her surroundings.
The huge stateroom with the massive bed, private deck and en-suite intimidated her but not as much as the stewardess who greeted her in perfect English as ‘Mrs Metraxis’ and asked her what she intended to wear. From the closets, Pixie picked out a black silky catsuit. So, she had to change for dinner now. Strange the traditions Apollo took for granted, she reflected helplessly as she tried not to let her gaze linger on the giant bed.
She was a bag of nerves but a couple of drinks would steady her, she told herself urgently. This was not the time to fall apart. Apollo wasn’t going to hurt her. He wasn’t going to attack her. In addition, he might be detached and she might only be a means to an end but he wasn’t tactless enough to wrestle her out of her bra and then ask in a disappointed tone where her boobs had gone, as had once happened to Pixie. That experience, added to the guy who had told her that her lack of curves just didn’t rev his engine, had been sufficient to kill Pixie’s desire to get naked with a man simply