EE will make all his offspring black-based, anyway. So they'll all be smoky black or smoky cream or buckskin or perlino and not chestnut, which is what you need for Apricot. Apricot is chestnut pearl.
Cream is a dominant gene, as are all the rest of the coat modifiers on HEE except Pearl. Pearl is a recessive trait, like red hair in humans. You have to have prlprl to have Pearl. In the real world, Cream and Pearl may actually be alleles, but that's a recent discovery.