The Mills & Boon Ultimate Christmas Collection. Kate HardyЧитать онлайн книгу.
He went rigid in her arms and missed a step. Pixie was fighting back tears, reminding herself that they were in the middle of a party, that they were the centre of attention as much because she was a new bride as because the bridegroom had been outed as a cheat little more than forty-eight hours previously.
‘I’ll buy you a house in London…but you stay safe here until I have that organised for you.’
‘I don’t need your help.’
‘I’ll call you when I’ve set up the house and you can fly out and give me your opinion.’
Pixie swallowed back a sudden inexplicable sob because, without warning, Apollo had stopped fighting her and had backed off. Instead of feeling relieved, she felt more lost and alone than ever. They really were splitting up. Their marriage was over.
* * *
The three weeks that followed were a walking blur for Pixie. Apollo had left Nexos as soon as the last of their guests had departed. He had not attempted to have another serious conversation with her. Those last words exchanged on the dance floor, with her ridiculous threat to just walk out, lingered with her. Yes, she could walk out, she conceded, but she couldn’t just walk away from her feelings, the painful feelings that accompanied her everywhere no matter where she was or what she was doing. She couldn’t stop thinking about Apollo or fighting off the suspicion that she had condemned him on the basis of his reputation rather than on the evidence.
So preoccupied was she that she barely noticed that her bouts of sickness were fading away. She had to move into maternity clothes rather sooner than she had hoped because most of her fashionable outfits were too fitted to cope with her swollen breasts and vanishing waistline. She purchased new clothes online, loose-cut separates picked for comfort rather than elegance. With Apollo absent she discovered that she didn’t care what she looked like. He phoned every week to civilly enquire after her health, and when he asked her if she could join him in London on a certain date her heart sank, because once he showed her the house he expected her to occupy she assumed that the dust would settle on their official separation. Evidently he had accepted that their relationship, their intimacy, was over now.
And wasn’t that what she had wanted? How could she move forward without putting their marriage behind her? Apollo had denied infidelity but he hadn’t put up much of a fight against her disbelief, had he? But like a sneaky snake in the grass in the back of her mind lurked the dangerous thought that she could, if she wanted, offer him a second chance. She was so ashamed of that indefensible thought that it woke her up at night in a cold sweat. She understood that her brain was struggling to find a solution to her unending grief and sense of deep loss and she knew that the forgiving approach worked for some couples but she knew it would never work for her. Nor would it work for a male like Apollo, who needed strong boundaries and punishing consequences because he wouldn’t respect anything else.
Pixie arrived back in London late afternoon in late December with Hector in tow. A limo met her at the airport and whisked her back to the penthouse apartment. Apollo was flying in from LA and had told her that he would not be arriving until shortly before their scheduled meeting. That was why it was a surprise for Pixie to be curled up on a sofa with her dog in front of the television and suddenly be told by Manfred that she had visitors. As she stood up Hector bolted for cover under a chair.
A tall man with prematurely greying dark hair walked in with an oddly self-conscious air but Pixie’s attention leapt straight off him towards the highly recognisable youthful blonde accompanying him.
‘I’m Jeremy Slater and I apologise for walking in on you like this but my sister has something she has to say to you,’ the man told her stiffly. ‘Izzy…you have the floor…’
The tall, slender blonde fixed strained blue eyes on Pixie and burst into immediate speech. ‘I’m really sorry for what I did. I set Apollo up as cover. I knew he was married but I didn’t think about that. I’m afraid I was only thinking about what suited me.’
Pixie was frowning in bewilderment. ‘You set Apollo up?’ she repeated blankly.
‘I knew that if I was spotted with Apollo, the paps would assume that we were together and that they wouldn’t look any more closely into who I was staying with in that building,’ she spelled out tautly.
‘What my sister isn’t saying,’ Jeremy interposed drily, ‘is that she has been involved with a famous actor, who keeps an apartment in Apollo’s building. As that man is married, both my sister and he wished to keep their relationship out of the public eye.’
‘I didn’t intend to cause anyone any trouble,’ Izzy said pleadingly.
‘But you weren’t too concerned when you did cause that trouble,’ Pixie pointed out, her stomach churning with shock. ‘I can see that I have your brother to thank for this explanation being made.’
‘I couldn’t stand back and let Apollo take the fall for something he didn’t do,’ Jeremy declared cheerfully. ‘He’s been guilty as charged so often and I’m certain that that means that he suffers in the credibility stakes.’
‘Yes,’ Pixie agreed, her face hot with shame because even she hadn’t really listened to Apollo when he’d said he was innocent.
She hadn’t asked the relevant questions and she hadn’t asked if he could prove his story. In fact she hadn’t given him a fair hearing in any way and in retrospect that acknowledgement humbled her. In common with any other bystander she had indeed assumed that he was guilty as charged, but she had had much less excuse than other people because she had lived with Apollo for months and knew that he was something more, something deeper than the heartless womaniser he appeared to be in public.
Jeremy and Izzy departed soon afterwards with Jeremy remarking that he hoped they would soon meet in more sociable circumstances. His sister, however, said nothing, probably guessing that Pixie never wanted to see her again if she could help it.
After that visit, Pixie went to bed but of course she couldn’t sleep. She had never trusted Apollo and had essentially regarded her distrust as a trait that strengthened her. Only now was she seeing the downside of that outlook. Looking for the worst and always expecting the worst from a man was not a healthy approach and it was unfair. Even worse, using distrust as a first line of defence had crucially blinded her to what was actually happening in their marriage. She should have recognised how far Apollo had already drifted from his original blueprint for a marriage that was a business arrangement. Time after time he had done things, said things that defied that blueprint and she had ignored that reality. After all, she had changed—why shouldn’t he have changed too?
* * *
The next morning it was a struggle for Pixie to eat any breakfast. She had forced a separation on Apollo and had voluntarily given him back his freedom. She had well and truly proved to be her own worst enemy. Pride and distrust had driven her into rejecting the man she loved. Could he forgive her for that? Could he forgive her for misjudging him?
Would her misjudgement and their marriage even matter to him now? After all, his inheritance would soon be fully his because by the time their children were born he would have met the exact terms of his father’s will. Nowhere in that will did it state that Apollo had to be still living with his wife.
A limousine collected her at half past nine, wafting her through streets soon to be thronged with Christmas shoppers. Shop windows were bright with decorations and sparkle. Pixie had dressed with care and not in one of her less than flattering maternity outfits. She had put on a green dress. True it was a little tight over her bust but it gave her a shape and her legs were the same as they had always been. In truth, she reflected unhappily as the car drew up outside a smart city town house in a tree-lined Georgian square with a private park, she would never be able to hold a candle to the likes of Izzy Jerome in looks. On board Circe, she had marvelled at Apollo’s insatiable hunger for her and revelled in it. Now, she had to ask herself if she had anything more substantial to offer a male of his sophistication…
Apollo opened the door of the house himself, which shook her