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That was a good question. When was the last time Polly had even tried to stand up to the mother-in-law from hell? Before they’d moved to this house, before the birth of her daughter. Once Polly had realized just how little positive motivation lay behind Athena’s machinations and how incredibly blind to that truth Alexandros was, Polly had shifted to oblique maneuvers to avoid rather than confront what she saw as something that could not be changed.
So why confront now?
Was it that watch this space from her husband that had felt so much like a promise?
Or was it simply that Polly was fed up?
“I have said what I needed to say to both of you.” Polly encompassed both her husband and her mother-in-law with a look that Helena could have told them meant Mommy wasn’t joking around here.
Then Polly turned to go inside and find the rest of their guests.
Stacia was pacing restlessly outside the drawing room from which the sounds of the movie could be heard. “Oh, Polly, there you are. Is my mother ready to go?”
“I do not know.”
“Well, I am. This coming to the country once a week is so inconvenient. I do not know why you had to go and convince Alexandros to change our family’s traditional weekly get-together.” Stacia gave Polly a less than pleasant look.
Polly just shook her head. “Alexandros already told you. The change was his idea, but you know something, Stacia? I’m just wondering, when are you going to stop sniping at me? Your brother and I are married, we are staying married and acting like a spiteful cat all the time isn’t going to change that.”
“He deserves better than you, and he only stayed married to you because of Helena.”
“I didn’t even get pregnant with Helena until after we’d been married a year. I don’t know how you worked that one out.”
“He was going to leave you. The move to this house was just the first step, but then you had Helena and he couldn’t leave. A Greek man doesn’t leave his children.”
“An honorable Greek man does not leave his wife, or his children,” Alexandros inserted into the conversation. “I have no idea where you got the idea that us moving to this house was in some way an indication I was finished with my marriage.”
Polly met her mother-in-law’s cool gaze. “I bet I can guess.”
It was Alexandros’s turn to shake his head. “This entire conversation is distasteful to me, and after my warning earlier I wonder, Stacia, how you thought you would get away with staging it.”
“I don’t think she can help herself,” Polly offered. “Sniping at me has become so ingrained in her behavior, I don’t think she knows how to react to me like an equal.”
Alexandros made a sound of disgust. “That is not acceptable to me.”
“You never cared before. I don’t understand why you’re acting like the fact your wife and I don’t like each other matters to you now.” Stacia’s petulant attitude wasn’t going to do her any favors with the man who was already angry.
Didn’t his sister realize that?
He turned to Athena. “It is time you and Stacia left. Next week, do not bring her with you. She is no longer welcome in my home and I have paid the last installment of her allowance that she will receive from me.”
“You can’t do that!” Stacia screeched. “You’re the head of this family. I am your responsibility.”
“And if you ever manage to find someone willing to marry a shrew, I will pay for the wedding, but I’m done financially supporting a woman who treats my wife with such a lack of respect.”
“I’ll sue you!” she shouted.
“On what grounds?”
“Father left the company to you so you could take care of the rest of us.”
“Father left each of us, including our mother, monetary assets as well as shares in the company. The fact that you ran through the lump sum you were awarded already is not my problem. The fact you cannot access your shares or the income from them until you are thirty is something you have to take up with your trustees.”
“Of which you are one!”
“And not one who is going to argue for early dispersal,” he said with freezing calm.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Stacia, you are twenty-six years old, you have a university degree. Get a job,” Polly told her sister-in-law.
