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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.”
“But Papa is here.”
“Yes.” Polly didn’t know what that had to do with her being sick.
“Lunch is for Mama and dinner is for Papa.”
Polly tilted her head to the side. “But, Helena, your father is here during lunch on the weekends. Sometimes.”
Alexandros winced at the sometimes. “I will be here more. I miss you and your mama, koritsi mou.”
That was news to Polly. And she wasn’t sure she believed it.
