by Lucy Monroe
Stacia and his mother wore twin expressions of expectation as they looked at him. Like they had no doubt his mother’s words would change his mind about the new order of things.
“You and the rest of the family are still welcome to have your Sunday evening dinners, but I am a married man with a child and I should have stopped attending when Helena was born. Naturally, my wife and child should come first for me, should always have come first.”
“You and your wife do not need to live in each other’s pockets,” his mother chided gently.
“Is that what you told my father? Only I remember you being very adamant that he spend those Sunday evenings with us, even if he was too busy the rest of the week.”
His mother said nothing, her expression startled. Like she hadn’t expected him to argue.
“Or are you implying that my wife and my daughter should be less important to me than you and our family were to my father?” he asked, beginning to realize the answer to that question was not always what he had assumed it was.
Alexandros had always believed that his mother respected his marriage and role as a father because of the expectations she had placed on his own father. Because family was everything.
But then, had he treated his wife and daughter like they were everything to him?
He wasn’t sure he wanted to acknowledge the true answer to that question either.
“Of course I am not implying that,” his mother said, but with a lack of conviction even Alexandros at his most blind could not have missed.
“Why didn’t you ever suggest a change to our family dinners so you could see your granddaughter on a weekly basis?” he asked his mother.
“I already told you, I found our Sunday dinners a sentimental gathering I did not want to do without.”
“Not even if it meant seeing your only grandchild?”
“Your wife could have arranged to bring the baby to visit,” Stacia said with clear criticism.
“Surely it would have been easier for you to visit here,” Alexandros said to his mother. “You were the one who suggested I move my pregnant wife out of the busy crowds of Athens.”
He’d agreed because he’d thought that moving his wife out of the family home would circumvent the tension that existed between his mother and his wife.
Pollyanna had not reacted as he’d expected her to, accusing him of wanting to exile her to the country, of isolating her from the friends she’d managed to make despite the best efforts of his mother and sister in undermining her place in Athens society.
He’d dismissed the arguments as the result of pregnancy hormones and made it clear he would not tolerate her ongoing, and unnecessary, jealousy of his mother and sister.
Pollyanna was his wife.
There had been no need for her to be jealous of his family.
Or so he had believed.
“I still expected your wife to make the effort to share her daughter with us.”
“Which she does.” Once a month Pollyanna took Helena on the two-hour car ride to have tea with her grandmother. Alexandros did his best to join them when his schedule permitted.
Which admittedly wasn’t as often as he now realized it should have been.
“So, why did we have to change family dinners?” Stacia asked, whining in a way that had been annoying when she was a teen and in adult woman was entirely unpleasant.
“We changed family dinners because if you want to share the time with me and my family, you will do so here and during the afternoon,” Alexandros said implacably.
Neither his mother, nor his sister looked pleased by that response.
Had they always been this difficult?
Or had his policy of giving in to them to keep the peace blinded him to how intransigent and selfish both women could be?
Deciding he’d spent enough time discussing a situation that was not going to change, he stood up and excused himself so he could join the croquet players. Swooping in to scoop his daughter up, he swung her up in the air, loving her joy-filled laughter.
Polly smiled at the way her daughter responded to attention from her father.
Helena adored her papa and Alexandros was a very hands-on dad when he was around. She was really glad to see that having his mother and sister here for lunch did not mean he would ignore his daughter for them.
Weekends were the only time Helena really got to play with her beloved papa, and Polly would have hated to see some of those hours lost because of the change to the Kristalakis once a week family gathering.
On Helena’s next turn it was Alexandros who knelt beside his daughter, coaching her on the use of the mallet to tap the ball.
“I see how it is,” Petros teased. “You saw Helena was winning and decided to horn in on the spoils of her victory.”
“We are an unbeatable team, aren’t we koritsi mou?” Alexandros asked his daughter.
Helena grinned up at her papa and then her uncle. “We’re going to beat you, Uncle Petros.”
Polly grinned at her daughter’s arrogance, so like her father’s. If anyone wondered how she still loved her husband after five years of marriage that had opened her eyes to how unimportant she was to him, all they had to do was look at Helena. How could Polly not love the man who had given her such a beautiful daughter?
More viscerally, how could Polly not love the man who was so like the child that she adored with every fiber of her being?
She saw the best of her husband in her daughter every day.
“Oh-ho, I see how it is. Now that your papa is here to play on your team, Uncle Petros is chopped liver.”
Helena’s tiny little face screwed up in disgust. “I do not like liver, Uncle Petros.” She shivered dramatically and adorably, and looked up at Corrina. “It’s yucky.”
Corrina laughed. “You’re right about that, Helena.”
“Liver is good for you.” His mother’s voice from just behind Polly told her that the wicked witches of the west had joined them on the lawn.
Polly moved so she was on the other side of Petros without even thinking before she did it. When she could, she avoided even proximity with her mother or sister-in-law.
Alexandros whispered something into his daughter’s ear that made Helena laugh and then they took their turn, neither one responding to his mother’s quelling pronouncement.
“I hope you do not allow your daughter to dictate the food served her because she finds it yucky,” Athena said to Polly with that superior tone she liked to take. “A child cannot be allowed to determine what is best for her.”
“My daughter’s diet is balanced and varied,” Polly replied mildly.
“It was not as if you had anything to say about what we ate as children, Mama. That was entirely the nanny’s purview.”
Had those words come from Petros, Polly would only have been slightly surprised, but the fact her husband had made the comment that could be taken as standing up for her was downright shocking.
Her mother-in-law looked every bit as astonished as Polly felt. “Alexandros, naturally, your nanny acted on my instruction.”
“If you say so, but no one of any intelligence would question the care my wife takes of our daughter. She is an exemplary mother in every aspect of that role.”
Warmth burgeoned in Polly’s chest, pleasure at that unequivocal vote of confidence from her husband filling her to bursting.
“I’m sure I wasn’t questioning her mothering skills,” Athena said repressively.
“I don’t want to play anymore,” Helena said from the circle of her father’s arms.
“Why not?” he asked her.
“It’s not fun now.”
Out of the mouths of babes. Athena joined them and sucked the fun right out of the game, but Polly honestly didn’t think her mother-in-law meant to do it. She was just so used to taking dig
s at Polly, she didn’t realize the damage she was doing to her relationship with her granddaughter.
Polly had seen how Athena wanted to have a warmer relationship with Helena, but seemed incapable of understanding how to make that happen.
“Why don’t we get out your Match the Cards game? Your yia-yia likes to play that with you,” Polly suggested to her daughter. Then she turned a conciliatory smile on her husband. “She’s probably getting tired.”
But Alexandros frowned at his mother. “I do not think that is the problem.”
Athena’s expression showed vulnerable confusion, and Polly couldn’t help feeling sorry for the older woman. So many of her machinations had led to final outcomes that were not to the widow’s liking.
A doted-on heiress and then spoiled wife, Athena was used to getting what she wanted from the people in her life.
It had taken a while for both Polly and Athena to realize that Athena’s attempt at excluding Polly from her social circle had backfired on her.
Polly had sought friendship with like-minded people, building the only kind of relationships she knew how. Real and based on shared ideas and attitudes. Those types of relationships engendered loyalty, both from her and the people she shared them with.
So, when Polly avoided social situations that would put her in proximity to Alexandros’s mother or sister, her new friends noticed. And they stopped inviting those two women to whatever the event was if they wanted Polly to come.
She didn’t join committees or charities which Athena or Stacia were attached to, and the same happened.
Athena had once accused her of doing it on purpose, but Polly hadn’t. She wasn’t petty.
No matter how her mother-in-law or sister-in-law had treated her, she had not set out to exclude them. However, by avoiding as many occasions as possible where she had to deal with being sniped at and undermined, it had happened inevitably. And honestly? It had made her life more pleasant.
But it had not been on purpose.
No more than this cooler relationship between her daughter and her yia-yia had been. Polly wanted Athena to enjoy the same pleasure of time spent with Helena as Polly’s mom did.
But despite the fact that Polly’s family only saw Helena a few times a year, the toddler adored them in a way she did not her yia-yia and Theia Stacia.
Because children might not understand the why, but they still picked up on the tension between the adults around them.
Polly was Helena’s person. She was the one grown-up that Helena had trusted since infancy to always be there, to soothe, to play, to care for her.
Over time the fact that Athena made no effort to hide her disdain for her daughter-in-law in her granddaughter’s presence, that attitude eventually affected the amount of trust Helena gave Athena and how much pleasure she found in her yia-yia’s company.
Still, Polly did what she could to facilitate the relationship because ultimately, her daughter deserved it.
Polly put her hand to her lower back, rubbing a little. “I’m tired, even if our daughter isn’t. I wouldn’t mind watching you all play.” Though she felt much better since her chiropractic appointment, playing croquet had maybe not been her best choice.
She did not expect what happened next. How could she?
But Alexandros passed their daughter over to Petros and then swept Polly up into his arms. “Of course you are tired. What were you doing playing croquet in your condition?”
Avoiding his mother and his sister.
“I’m pregnant, not an invalid,” she said as millennia of women no doubt had been saying before her to their macho, overprotective spouses.
Not that she would have ever described Alexandros as overprotective before, but apparently this pregnancy was bringing out his more basic nature.
“Papa is carrying Mommy,” her daughter pronounced in shocked delight and then let loose a peal of laughter.
Polly found herself smiling at her daughter’s clear amusement and noticed that Alexandros was smiling as well. He looked down at her, and their gazes caught, his smile turning sensual, hers growing intimate.
“Watch where you are going, brother, or you are going to trip and drop your pregnant wife.” Petros’s voice was laced with overt amusement.
Alexandros stopped, giving Polly a heart-stopping look. “He is right, but I find looking away from you a challenge.”
“I could always walk on my own,” she teased, when she had not felt like teasing him in a very long time.
His arms tightened around her. “No chance.”
“You’ve grown very protective all of a sudden,” she said just a little breathlessly.
“I have always wanted to protect you.”
She winced and looked away. What was she supposed to say to that? He’d done a rotten job practically from the beginning, and for a man who prided himself on always getting it right, that had always said something to her. Something very negative about any chance that the man she married had really loved her and not just her body.
He cursed under his breath. A really basic word he never said in her presence much less his mother’s.
Polly’s gaze flew back to her husband’s face.
“I failed utterly. That is becoming clear to me.”
She shrugged. He had.
“Keep watching this space, agape mou. Failure is not in my nature.”
CHAPTER FIVE
NO. AND BEING compared unfavorably to his younger brother in the husband stakes was not something Alexandros would take lying down.
Polly wasn’t going to complain. Even if his reasons weren’t the ones she wanted, her husband was finally treating her like she was important, and that was something she’d always wanted.
She’d built a life since her marriage without the need to have that desire filled, but it had always been there.
He carried her onto the terrace and settled her on a lounge chair, bringing her a glass of juice before sitting down at the nearby table to play the matching card game with his daughter, his mother, Petros and Corrina.
Uninterested in the child’s entertainment, Stacia went inside with a comment about how hard her phone was to read outside.
Why her sister-in-law needed to be on her phone during what was supposed to be Kristalakis family time, Polly did not know, but she did not mind at all that the young woman wasn’t expecting Polly to entertain her.
Polly found herself dozing, the sound of her daughter’s and husband’s voices a pleasant buzz in the background of her mind.
She surfaced from her doze to a conversation between her mother-in-law and husband.
“It is obvious she needs more rest than she is getting,” Athena said with a concern Polly could not help doubting.
What was her mother-in-law up to?
“I think Anna is rather frail physically,” Athena added.
Polly frowned. She was not frail, never had been.
“She is fine. A nap does not indicate frailty,” her husband assured his mother.
“I do not know. Perhaps, and this is not something I like to talk about, but you should make sure she is getting a full night’s rest rather than keeping her up.”
Polly woke fully then, so furious she could barely breathe.
Her mother-in-law was trying to drive a wedge between Polly and Alexandros in the one area of their marriage that Polly felt confident of his full attention. The bedroom.
Polly sat up and turned so her feet were on the tile and she was facing to the two people standing near her. “Where is Helena?”
“Petros and Corrina took her inside. She wanted to watch one of her movies.”
Polly knew exactly which one. Helena found the animated story about the Scottish princess who fought for the right to make her own choices obsessively fascinating. Honestly, Polly loved the movie too and didn’t care that it
wasn’t one of the most recent children’s offerings.
However, right now she wasn’t thinking about princesses. She had her own wicked witch to deal with.
“Alexandros?”
“Yes, yineka mou?” He put his hand out to help her up.
She let him lift her, though standing in her flat sandals did not put her anywhere near eye to eye with her six-foot-four-inch husband.
Tilting her head back, she gave him a gimlet stare. “I know that there have been many times you’ve taken your mother’s opinion of what I need over mine.”
He inclined his head, his handsome mouth firming into a line.
“If you do that in this instance, I will not be responsible for my actions,” she warned him.
“This instance?” he asked, while his mother gasped in clear outrage.
“The sex thing. You will not stop having sex with me on her say-so. Do you understand me?” Even her doctor had offered that as long as it was comfortable for Polly, sex was fine.
His eyes widened in obvious shock that she would approach the topic so bluntly.
His mother was saying something about not needing to talk about something that intimate in mixed company.
Polly glared at her mother-in-law, for once doing nothing to hide her anger with the older woman. “Then perhaps you should not have brought it up to my husband. Something that is so very much not any of your business.”
“I was only trying to look out for your well-being,” Athena claimed.
“No, you were trying to drive another wedge between your son and his wife, and I warn you, I have tolerated your interference for the last time in my marriage.” Where the words came from, Polly didn’t know.
But she meant them. And the look she gave her husband said it wasn’t just his warnings that people had better take heed to.
Yes, she’d stopped and eavesdropped outside the drawing room while texting Hero to please bring Helena downstairs.
Athena did a very good impression of a woman mortally offended. “How can you speak to me like that?”
