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However, he’d just promised he would give his wife what she needed so they could work on their marriage.
He could make the same choices he always had in the past and expect Polly to go along with his family’s norms, or he could do something different. Something that proved she mattered more than anything or anyone to him.
“You do not want to see my mother at all, even at our son’s birth?” he asked, rather than reacting with his first instincts. His mother would be devastated. “What about her seeing Helena?”
“I will not allow our daughter to be hurt,” Pollyanna said, as if that should be obvious.
“Then what?”
“I trust Corrina to supervise visits with your mother.”
“And the birth of our son?” It was only ten weeks away, give or take.
“I don’t want your mother or your sister anywhere around me during that time.” The implacability in Pollyanna’s manner could not be ignored. She wasn’t going to move on this matter. “I don’t want them visiting me, or our baby in the hospital.”
“My mother will be very hurt.” He wasn’t going to argue with his wife, but he needed to point out the consequences of such a course of actions.
Pollyanna’s wry gaze said she was fully aware. “Tell me something, Alexandros. If a company that relied on your goodwill did everything it could to undermine you in the market and talk Kristalakis Inc. down, what would you do?”
“Destroy it.” He sighed, fully aware of how quickly and unhesitatingly he had answered. “But this is family, Pollyanna, not a business rival.”
“I didn’t say a rival. I said a company that should be your ally, but for reasons of their own decided not to be.”
He nodded, acknowledging the point.
“And I don’t want to destroy your mother, but I do want her to stop and think about the cost of her behavior. If I had left you as she wanted, I would have raised Helena in America and this baby would never have come to be. Athena would rarely have seen her granddaughter and she never would have gotten the chance to know her grandson.”
All the air whooshed out of Alexandros’s body. “You are not leaving me.” He swallowed back the tightness in his throat. “Please, do not leave me.”
“I have no plans to do so, but if your mother had gotten her way, I already would have.”
“She didn’t believe you were the right woman for me.” Alexandros had no choice but to acknowledge that.
His mother had baldly admitted as much to him when she’d come to his office to apologize.
“That implies she’s had a change of heart.”
“She has.”
“I hope that’s true, but my six-month moratorium stays. And I don’t want you seeing her either.”
“What? You do not mean that.”
“I do.”
“But Polly, my father is gone. It is my duty to look after my mother.” He could not abandon the older woman entirely, no matter how angry she made him.
Which said what about the threat he’d been so sure he meant about cutting her out of his life if he lost his wife?
“Your brother can do the looking after for a while. I don’t want to wonder if your actions are driven by your own feelings or hers. I want a chance to get to know each other again without poisonous whispers making things that should be beautiful ugly.”
Pollyanna leaned toward him earnestly. “I believe if we are both willing to work at it, if we truly do focus on our marriage for the next six months, then maybe you’ll be in a place where you won’t put her feelings above mine and maybe I’ll be in a place to trust you not to.”
There was that word, trust. The one thing besides her love that Alexandros most wanted from the beautiful, vibrant woman he had married.
“Petros was very smart to move into the penthouse after marriage, wasn’t he?” Alexandros asked ruefully.
He’d thought his brother had been wrong to refuse to postpone his own wedding on their mother’s whim; now Alexandros realized just how wrong he’d been about so many things.
