The Greek's Christmas Bride. Lynne Graham

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?