He didn’t believe that, but clearly he hadn’t just failed, he’d destroyed the fragile bonds of trust between them. All right. Okay. He’d taken over businesses that looked like they could never be revived. Some of those companies were his biggest earners now.
Let the rescue bid for his marriage commence.
When they were going over her schedule during breakfast on Wednesday, without another unexpected turn-up of Alexandros, Beryl told Polly not to worry about preparing for travel to her appointments with the doctors that Alexandros had set up.
Apparently, he had arranged for the appointments to take place at the mansion. There was already a massage table in the room off their personal gym, used by both her and Alexandros’s personal trainers.
She wondered if Alexandros knew that Polly had stopped seeing her personal trainer the second month of her current pregnancy.
And then reminded herself she didn’t care. Polly did what she had to in order to keep the peace, but no more. She’d built a life for herself in Greece that resembled the life he expected her to lead, but was not actually that life.
Except for a very superficial resemblance.
She was on charity committees, but not the flavor of the month, only the ones that really resonated with her. Most did not have the wherewithal to throw the glittery balls her mother and sister-in-law were so fond of. She’d made friends from those charities, not others from Alexandros’s set, but normal people who cared enough to sacrifice time and money for causes they believed in.
Polly wore designer clothes and used a car and driver like Alexandros insisted. But she donated from her wardrobe twice yearly to charity auctions and only bought exactly what she would need for each season. Her walk-in closet never getting more than half-full. Her driver was a retired veteran with a disability that still allowed him to drive, but not a lot else to earn a living. Her car was the same one bought for her use the first year she married Alexandros.
Alexandros arranged for a new car for her every other year and she donated them for the use of the directors of the charities she knew needed them most.
Polly attended only the functions with her husband that she could not get out of and never gave up dinnertime with her daughter. She didn’t fight about it; she simply didn’t show up, and her husband had learned that time with their daughter was sacrosanct to Polly.
She wasn’t unhappy. She loved being a mom. Loved her husband even if she knew he did not really love her. She did believe he was faithful. That moment in the car had been all pregnancy hormones, but he’d taken her seriously and that in itself had been a novel experience.
It had also cemented the belief she already had that he would not take a mistress.
No matter what Stacia said, Alexandros Kristalakis was not the type to keep a pillow friend.
He never broke his word on purpose. She didn’t trust him, not because she thought he lied to get what he wanted but because he lied without meaning to, and that was in her view even more dangerous.
Polly knew that she and Helena were important to him, if not of utmost importance.
It was more than a lot of women had.
Maybe not all that Polly had wanted, or even believed she had when she agreed to marry the Greek tycoon, but not a bad life.
She looked across the table at her daughter and smiled. No, not a bad life at all.
Polly and Helena were in their saltwater pool, playing before lunch, when the sound of an arriving helicopter sent Polly’s gaze winging upward.
It was Alexandros’s helicopter, but she was sure he wasn’t on it. It must be the transportation he’d arranged for the doctors. Her appointments weren’t for another two hours though. Perhaps they needed time to set up?
She could have cut her time in the water with her daughter short, but there was a housekeeper to meet them and make sure they had what they needed.
Going back to the game intended to increase her daughter’s comfort with putting her face under the water for swimming, Polly dismissed the arriving helicopter from her mind.
“Now, that is a beautiful sight.” Humor and masculine appreciation filled her husband’s voice.
Startled into immobility, Polly stared at the apparition standing on the pool deck. “Alexandros! What are you doing here?”
At the same time as she spoke, her daughter realized who was there and tried to leap away from her mother and toward her father, arms outstretched. “Papa!”
Six feet four inches of sartorial masculine gorgeousness leaned toward his daughter like the effect of salt water on his suit was of no concern.
Swooping Helena up as a maid strategically wrapped a towel around the little girl, he gave Polly a slashing grin. “I’m having lunch with my two favorite females and then working the rest of the day from home.”
Like a landed fish, Polly stood there her mouth opening and closing, but with no words making their way past her lips. What was he doing here? His favorite females? Really?
“Not if your mom and sister are in the running.” Polly snapped her mouth shut so hard, her teeth clicked.
She had not meant to say that. Hadn’t made a comment like that since before Helena’s birth. Not after he’d told her that the world did not revolve around her, that Polly would have to get over her unnatural jealousy of his family if their marriage was going to work.
Instead of getting angry as he used to do, her husband gave her another heart-stopping smile. “There is no competition, yineka mou. You are my wife and Helena is my daughter. No one is more important to me.”
“Since when?”
But he just smiled again, shook his head and said, “Are you getting out? I thought Helena needed lunch so she could nap.”
“She does, of course. We were only playing for ten more minutes.”
“By all means, stay in the water. I like the view.”
She looked down at her pregnancy-distended belly in the simple, but bright one-piece Polly had purchased for swimming in her final months before their baby’s birth. What was there about this view for him to like? In that way? Because he was giving her a look over their daughter’s shoulder that sent sensations she preferred to keep confined to their nights in bed together zinging through her body.
Regardless, the opportunity to swim a few laps without having to watch her daughter was all too appealing. Polly spent as much time in the pool as she could because it relieved the pressure in both her lower back and pelvis.
“If you’re sure you’re okay with her?” she asked him.
“Of course.”
She didn’t ask again, just turned and took a standing dive into the water, pushing for the other end of the pool.
Reveling in the freedom to swim unencumbered, Polly did a few leisurely laps before climbing out of the pool and grabbing a towel. She could have stayed in longer, but she couldn’t stay away from the sweet tableau of father—suit jacket and tie now missing—and daughter—wearing her little terry cover-up—talking earnestly on one of the loungers closest to the pool edge.