The Mills & Boon Christmas Wishes Collection. Maisey Yates

joyously out from below the bed and danced at her feet. She lifted him up, stroking what remained of his ragged little ears, and cuddled him. ‘A Trojan prince, not just an ordinary dog, Hector. I named you well,’ she whispered, burying her face in his tousled fur, feeling her lips tingle as she thought of that almost-but-not-quite kiss that had left her foolishly, mindlessly craving more.

      Patrick Skyped her that evening, his thin face worn, eyes shadowed. ‘I’ve got bad news,’ he told her heavily. ‘Maria’s pregnant and she’s not well.’

      ‘Pregnant?’ Pixie gasped in dismay.

      Patrick grimaced. ‘It wasn’t planned but we want the baby. We’ve been together three years now,’ he reminded his sister with a weak attempt at a smile. ‘I just wish the pregnancy wasn’t making her so ill because she can’t stand on her feet all day in a shop in her current condition. I’m never here, I’m always working…who’s going to look after her?’

      ‘Give her my congratulations,’ Pixie urged, concealing her feelings because she very well knew that her brother’s pregnant partner could bring his entire debt repayment scheme tumbling down round their ears because it was a struggle for him to make his monthly payment as it was.

      Her brother’s blue eyes glittered. ‘I hate asking but could you manage anything extra this month?’

      ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Pixie said thickly, not wanting him to realise that she could see the tears in his eyes.

      A few minutes later the call was complete and Pixie felt as though she had received a punch in the stomach. Patrick and Maria’s financial situation was as fragile as a house built of cards. If one card fell, they would all fall. She groaned out loud. She couldn’t afford to give Patrick any more money and she should have admitted that upfront. Unfortunately her panic-induced thoughts had flown straight to Apollo because she wanted her little brother to stay alive and in one piece and if he couldn’t keep up those payments, he could well pay with his life.

      Patrick was under threat and now there was Maria and a new baby on the way to consider as well, Pixie reflected wretchedly. How could she ignore their plight? How could she turn her back on them when Apollo had made it clear that if she did as he asked he would make all the bad things go away? And suddenly she was just desperate for those bad things to go away and for life to return to normal again.

      Apollo as saviour? That concept didn’t work. Apollo was more into helping himself than other people. In fact Pixie and her brother were more like chess pieces to be moved strategically on Apollo’s master board. The human cost, the rights and wrongs and emotions didn’t come into it for Apollo and how much simpler that must make his life, she thought enviously. She lifted the card and snatched up her phone.

      I will be your Baby Mama if you settle my brother’s debts, she texted with a sinking heart.

      Ideals, she was learning, wouldn’t be any comfort if her brother or Maria or the baby got hurt or were left alone in the world. Apollo had found her price and she felt humiliated, and even worse manipulated, for he had made her crave his mouth that afternoon and the memory of that unnerved her. It was one thing to defy Apollo, another thing entirely to contemplate being married to him and wholly within his power.

      You won’t regret it. We’ll talk business the next time we meet.

      Business, not marriage, she reflected uneasily, but maybe that was the right way to look at it, as an arrangement rather than a relationship. As a deal between two people rather than the intimacy normal between a married couple. He wouldn’t really be her husband and she wouldn’t really be his wife. Mostly they would be faking it…wouldn’t they? Would that make it easier to bear?