Polly hated breaking it up, but she had to, or the sweet little girl would turn into a hungry, tired little terror. “Time to get dressed for lunch, poppet.”
“But Mama…” Helena whined.
And Polly knew that tone. Definitely time for lunch and then nap.
“Come. Dora will help you dress while I help Mama.”
“You’re going to help me get dressed?” Polly asked delicately.
The heated look that came her way made her really wish they didn’t have plans to eat with their daughter in a matter of minutes. “Ne.”
Alexandros carried Helena inside and up the stairs, handing her off to Dora when they reached the landing and putting his arm around Polly to walk her to their bedroom.
“Why did you come home again today?” she asked breathlessly as they stepped inside the sanctuary.
He turned her around to face him. “Because I wanted to.” Then he kissed her and she forgot the question and everything else. Just that quickly.
It was always like this. Polly could not resist the physical temptation of her husband. Not for a kiss, or for more. She never had been able to. Even more, she could not resist the emotional connection she felt to him during times of physical intimacy.
She knew it didn’t go both ways or he could not spend as much time traveling as he did.
Because if it was up to Polly she would never have willingly spent a single night away from him.
He pulled her still-damp body right against him, letting her feel how quickly he had responded to the kiss. His hardness pressed against her and she wanted nothing more than to move to the bed so she could explore the hard male body she found such delight in.
Clever masculine fingers were peeling her swimsuit down her arms, exposing her breasts. Already beaded nipples tightened nearly painfully as the air brushed cool against wet skin.
He cursed before cupping her. “You are so beautiful.”
“Pregnant,” she said wryly. “Fat.”
“Ypérochos, énkyos, dikos mou.”
When they’d first married, she hadn’t spoken any Greek, but she’d taken pains to learn. Because now she lived in Greece and it made communication easier, but mostly? Because he used Greek in bed and she’d wanted to know if he was saying he loved her. He didn’t, but he did say stuff like this and it went straight to her heart.
Gorgeous. Pregnant. Mine.
“Yours.” She had no problem admitting a truth she’d never been able to hide.
“Dikos mou. Gia pánta.”
Forever? Yes, she supposed she was, but she didn’t say it. “We have to get dressed,” she said with real regret.
“I need to get undressed and you need a shower,” he corrected.
But she shook her head. “I’ll have to shower after lunch. We’re going to be late to the table as it is.”
“We can phone down. Dora can see to Helena’s lunch, yineka mou.”
“No. Our daughter is expecting us.” Helena saw less of her father because of her sleep schedule than Polly saw of her husband. “It wouldn’t be fair to her.”
“And what of us? Is it fair to eat lunch when we want each other so much?”
“Didn’t you once tell me that anticipation made it all the better?” He’d been talking about the nights they had to spend apart, when they both missed their physical intimacy. “If we’re fast, we can share a shower after lunch and before my appointments.”
“We will take as long as we need after lunch with our daughter.”
And presumably the doctors could wait on the billionaire and his wife. Polly simply shook her head again. She could argue polite behavior after lunch too.
Helena was excitable over lunch, showing off for her papa and pushing to stay up and play rather than take her nap. “But I not tired, Mama.”
“You need your rest, poppet.”
“But Papa will be gone when I wakes up.” Helena burst into floods of tears.
Before Polly could pull her cumbersome body to her feet to go around the table to comfort her daughter, Alexandros had said a not very nice word beneath his breath and leaped to his feet. He pulled their daughter into his arms and promised in both Greek and English that he would be there when she woke from her nap.
Helena’s sobs only increased and Alexandros looked at Polly, his expression stunned.
“I don’t know why she’s crying like this,” Polly admitted, hating that helpless feeling that was such a normal part of parenting.
Their daughter kept chanting Mama, but when Polly got up and came around the table to take her, she clung to Alexandros with all the strength in her little body.
“Come now, agape mou. This crying is not productive. Tell us what is wrong.”
Polly covered the smile on her mouth at the business speak leveled at their three-year-old, but it was all she could do not to laugh.
“I don’t want prod-i-vive,” their daughter wailed.
That was it. Polly bust out laughing, and both father and daughter gave her matching looks of outrage. The wails stopped though.
She tried to get control of herself, but the giggles kept coming.
“Why is Mama laughing? I was crying.” Oh, Helena sounded so offended by that turn of events.
“I do not know why she is laughing any more than I know why you were crying,” the great Alexandros Kristalakis admitted in a driven tone.
CHAPTER FOUR
HELENA’S FACE CRUMPLED, but she didn’t start crying again. “Why you here, Papa?”
“Because he wants to be,” Polly forced out between her inappropriate but cleansing humor.
The tension that had been building throughout lunch—and she wasn’t even sure why—was gone.
“You sound very sure.” The sarcasm was thick in her husband’s tone.
But Polly just shrugged, finally getting her laughter under control and returning to her seat. If she didn’t sound too confident it was because she herself had no clue why her husband was there for lunch for the second day in a row, with the unprecedented promise to work from home for the rest of the day, when he had never come home early in five years of marriage.
Alexandros frowned at Polly, but assured their daughter. “Yes. I want to be.”
“Is Mama sick?” Helena asked her father fearfully.
“No, remember, I explained, honey? Mommy is just making your baby brother in her tummy. I’m not sick.”