The Mills & Boon Ultimate Christmas Collection. Kate Hardy

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       EPILOGUE

      AT SIXTEEN MONTHS OLD, Sofia Metraxis was a force to be reckoned with. She ran over to her brother, Tobias, swiped his toy truck off him and sat back to bat away his attempts to retrieve it.

      ‘That wasn’t nice,’ Pixie said, scooping up Tobias, who was crying over the loss of his favourite toy.

      ‘You don’t do nice, do you, Alpha baby?’ Apollo chuckled, lifting his daughter and exchanging the truck for another toy to return it to Tobias.

      ‘She’s just cheeky,’ Pixie contended.

      ‘And bossy…wonder where she gets that from,’ Apollo teased, watching Tobias stop crying to play with his truck. ‘I can’t get over how different they are.’

      And the twins were. Tobias was the quieter twin, clever and thoughtful and methodical even in play. Sofia was all bells and whistles and complaints and needed rather less sleep. Together the two children had transformed their parents’ lives, ensuring that Apollo and Pixie spent more time enjoying the wide open spaces and beaches available on Nexos than in their comfortable London town house.

      Pixie had spent all of her pregnancy in London. Only after the birth of the twins had Apollo admitted that his own mother had died in childbirth and that that was the main reason he had been so concerned about her. Luckily the twins had been born only a couple of weeks early by a C-section and neither they nor Pixie had had any health concerns. Her brother’s little boy had been born in the summer and Patrick and his little family now lived in Scotland where Apollo had found her brother a better-paying job. Patrick was still attending Gamblers Anonymous meetings regularly.

      Springing upright, Apollo closed a hand over Pixie’s and walked her out to the landing, leaving the twins in the care of their nannies. ‘I have a present for you,’ he proffered.

      ‘Now? But tomorrow is Christmas Day!’ she protested.

      ‘Every day feels like Christmas with you, agapi mou,’ Apollo traded. ‘And Vito and Holly will be arriving in a couple of hours.’

      ‘My goodness, is it that time already?’ Pixie asked in an anxious voice. ‘I should check the—’

      ‘No,’ Apollo stated firmly. ‘You don’t need to check anything. The house is decked out like a Christmas fair. The gifts are wrapped and our staff have mealtimes covered.’

      Pixie gazed down at her gorgeous sparkling Christmas tree in the hall and she slowly smiled. He was right. Everything was done. It had become a tradition that every year the two young families shared Christmas and this year it was Apollo and Pixie who were playing host because Holly was pregnant again with her third child and she wanted to take it easy and be a guest. And although Pixie and Holly didn’t compete over who could put on the best festive show, high expectations did add a certain inevitable stress to the preparations. In any case, the whole house was looking marvellous. Holly was good at design and she had put together some colour schemes for the island villa and it was a much more welcoming house now that the bland beiges had been swept away and replaced with clear bright and subtle colours.

      ‘Bed?’ Pixie whispered to her husband because the arrival of guests, even if they were best friends, did put certain restrictions on what they could and couldn’t do.

      ‘You see, this is why I want to be married to you for ever and ever,’ Apollo declared as he swept her up into his arms. ‘You think like I do…’

      Sometimes he was naïve, Pixie thought fondly. It wasn’t that she thought the same way as he did. It was more simply that she could never resist his sex appeal. He was dressed down for the day too in well-washed jeans and a sweater, but her amazing male still took her breath away with one wicked, wolfish smile. He just made her happy. In bed, out of bed, as a husband, as a father, he was all she had ever dreamt of and a couple of years of marriage had only increased his pulling power. His patient approach with Hector had taught her a lot about the man she had married. At heart he was kind and loving and good.

      Hector and his little Greek shadow, another terrier called Sausage, followed them upstairs.

      Apollo slid a diamond eternity ring onto Pixie’s already crowded finger. Her hands sparkled with a plethora of rings and she chose which ones to wear every morning. He liked to buy her stuff and she knew it was because she was rarely out of her husband’s thoughts when he was away from her. He kept his business trips brief and, if he could, took them all out on the yacht and did business on Circe where he could still have his family around him.

      ‘It’s beautiful,’ she told him gently, grey eyes silver bright with love and understanding because she had gradually come to see that having his own family meant everything to Apollo. He had longed to have a loving family when he was a child and had been sadly disillusioned by his father’s disastrous remarriages. Creating his own family as an adult had given him a kind of rebirth, allowing him to grow into the man he might have become had he had a less dysfunctional childhood.

      ‘No, you’re the jewel who outshines every setting,’ Apollo insisted, claiming her soft mouth in a hungry, demanding kiss that sent little shivers quivering through her. He pinned her to the bed, gazing down at her with unashamed satisfaction. ‘Do you think Vito and Holly are aiming for a football team in the kid department?’ he asked curiously.

      ‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ she said with a grin. ‘But it’ll be a year or two before I want another one. Tobias and Sofia are exhausting.’

      ‘Almost as demanding as their mother,’ Apollo groaned, intercepting the fingers running along a lean, muscular thigh and carrying her tiny hand to a rather more responsive area. ‘But I love that about you.’

      Pixie looked up into glittering green enticement fringed by black. ‘I love you, Apollo.’

      ‘Isn’t that fortunate? Because I’m keeping you for ever,’ he admitted thickly.

      And later when their guests had arrived and every room seemed to be awash with overexcited exploring children and equally excited dogs, the adults settled down with drinks and snacks and Pixie curled comfortably up beneath Apollo’s protective arm and admired the sparkling lanterns glowing on the Christmas tree. It promised to be another wonderful Christmas and she was sincerely grateful for the happy ending she had found with the man she loved.

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