They’d met only once before. When Polly had given birth to Helena. And it had not been a mutual admiration society then. Dr. Hope had been less than impressed when the father-to-be hadn’t shown up until the final few minutes, having come after receiving the call he’d asked for.
One of the bodyguards, who was keeping tabs on what was happening in the birthing suite had let Alexandros know when it was time for Polly to start pushing.
Polly hadn’t been alone though.
Alexandros had made it possible for her parents to come over from the States to stay the last two weeks of Polly’s pregnancy. Her mom had been with her every minute and her dad in and out of her room during Polly’s long labor.
Her father had returned to his job a week after Helena’s birth, but her mom had remained another month. All at Alexandros’s request, she reminded herself.
Considering how often her OB had suggested Polly cut back on her schedule, she probably should have expected Dr. Hope to tell Alexandros off for how tired Polly was, how she was clearly not being taken care of like she needed.
But the litany of reminders of how many ways in which Polly did not get the TLC she so desperately craved from her husband came as an unwelcome shock.
And in a wholly unexpected moment of out of control emotion, Polly ranted, “I don’t know why everyone has to rub in the fact that my husband doesn’t care enough about me to take even the most rudimentary care! Don’t you think I know that? I’m doing the best I can.”
Only maybe she wasn’t. Maybe Polly needed to take a step back from her pride and let some of Alexandros’s money do what he wasn’t ever going to. Take care of her.
Dr. Hope looked pained. “I know you are, Polly.” She cast a very pointed look at Alexandros.
“I do not think she was saying these things to rub it in as you say, yineka mou. She was saying them to me, to tell me what a selfish louse I’ve been, so maybe if enough people say it, I will listen.”
“You’re not a louse.” Though sometimes she thought of him as a rat. Was that any different?
Polly turned her head away, because looking at her husband hurt right then, and she’d thought she’d come to terms with the limitations of their relationship. But he was rewriting the rules and she just didn’t know why.
The rest of the visit went better with Alexandros asking all the questions any concerned husband and second time father-to-be might do. Dr. Hope unbent enough to answer every question patiently and without further condemnation.
Polly waited until they were in the car, the privacy window closed between them and the driver to ask, “Why are you being so nice to me? I just don’t understand.”
Then she had such a horrible, terrible thought, she couldn’t breathe for a few seconds. The one area of her marriage she’d never worried about, was suddenly in doubt. The one thing she thought they got right. Maybe wasn’t right anymore.
She didn’t know why she’d never worried about it before. Maybe because he’d always been such an attentive lover. Maybe because he’d told her he abhorred infidelity and she had believed him. Maybe because she simply had never been able to imagine him as a cliché… The powerful tycoon philanderer.
But right now, with him acting so strangely, with her hormones and emotions all over the place from her pregnancy… Polly did wonder.
Sitting up straight, her body rigid with stress, she accused, “You’ve taken a pillow friend. That’s what you Greek tycoons call them, isn’t it? You’ve got a mistress and you don’t want me to divorce you when I find out!”
“No.” He looked like he wanted to laugh, but then seemed to all of a sudden realize she was very serious and how bad that was for their marriage. “No! Polly, you are the only woman I have touched intimately since our first date.”
“Can I believe you?”
“Have I ever lied to you?”
“Yes.” Pain of an entirely different kind racked her pregnant body. “Your sister warned me, but I thought she was talking nonsense. Trying to hurt me like she found such sport back when I used to let her get to me.”
Alexandros could not believe what he was hearing. “I have failed spectacularly in the husband stakes, but I have never lied to you.”
He could not even deal with what she was saying about how Stacia had treated her because the fact his wife did not trust him was instantly, glaringly obvious. This was not hormonal raving. Pollyanna did not believe him.
“You have,” she disagreed.
“When?”
“When you asked me to marry you. You said you would do anything you had to to make me happy.”
And clearly in her mind, he hadn’t. “I thought giving you anything you wanted would make you happy.”
“But you don’t. Not the things that matter.”
And finally, after five years, he might be starting to understand the distinction. “I’m working on it.”
“But you lied then. You lied when you said you loved me.”
“I did not lie. I just didn’t understand what I needed to do to keep those words true. And I do love you.”
She laughed like that was a great joke, only she didn’t sound happy about it.
“You are my wife, by my choice. I am not lying.” The words sounded hollow to his own ears as he realized just how stopped up the ears were they were falling on.
“A man does not treat a woman the way you’ve treated me when he’s in love with her.” Pollyanna sounded so certain in her own mind, so sure of her interpretation of the years of their marriage he knew denial would be useless.
He said it anyway. “A man too focused on his business and keeping peace within his extended family does.”
A man still grieving the loss of his father and afraid of how close he’d come to losing his mother. Despite how much he wanted to fix what was broken, those words would not leave his lips. Alexandros had never been an emotionally vulnerable person.
It was not his nature.
It was not how his bigger-than-life father had taught him to be.
Unimpressed with the words he had managed to utter, Pollyanna shrugged, turning her head away, and he knew the words again had fallen on deaf ears.
Or maybe they had been the wrong ones.
“I will change,” he promised. Had already started changing, but he didn’t expect her to trust that.
“Not on my account.”
“Naturally on your account, but on mine too. I want what we had in the beginning.”
“It’s dead.”