by Lynne Graham
‘A change of plan—we’re flying to Paris in an hour,’ Aristandros announced when she joined him.
‘Paris?’ Her eyes homed in on him straight away and involuntarily clung to his compellingly handsome features. Even in the formal garb of a black pinstripe business-suit and dark silk tie, he emanated a charge of raw sexuality and animal energy that made her mouth run dry as a bone. ‘Why?’
‘Some friends are having a party, and I’m looking forward to showing you off.’
‘But Callie’s in bed and exhausted. She’s just flown in from Greece,’ Ella reminded him uncomfortably.
‘She can sleep during the flight.’ Aristandros shrugged, instantly dismissing her protest. ‘Children are very resilient. I must have travelled round the world with my parents a score of times by her age. How did you get on with her?’
‘We got on great, but it’ll take time for her to bond with me.’
‘You’ll still be a better mother than Susie ever was,’ Aristandros forecast with a hint of derision.
Astonishment and annoyance at that criticism flared through Ella in defence of her late sister. ‘What on earth makes you say that?’
Engaged in flicking through a business file, Aristandros raised a sleek ebony brow and glanced up again. ‘I’m not afraid of the truth, and death doesn’t purchase sainthood. You should never have agreed to your sister’s request that you donate eggs to enable her to become pregnant. Susie couldn’t handle it. An anonymous donor would have been a safer bet.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Ella demanded angrily.
Aristandros dealt her an impatient look. ‘Don’t tell me that you never realised that as far as Susie was concerned you were the kid sister from hell? You outshone her in looks and intelligence, and compounded your sins by attracting my interest.’
‘That’s complete nonsense!’
‘It’s not. Susie tried to lure me long before she ever looked at Timon, but I didn’t bite.’
Ella was shattered by a piece of information that had never come her way before. Susie had been attracted to Aristandros? That possibility, that very private and dangerous little fact, had never once occurred to her. ‘Is that honestly the truth?’
Aristandros frowned. ‘Why would I lie about it? I wasn’t pleased when Susie started dating Timon, but he fell hook, line and sinker for her.’
Ella had lost colour, the fine bones of her profile prominent below her creamy skin. All of a sudden things that she had not understood but which had given her an uneasy feeling were being explained—her sister’s constant, tactless carping about Ari’s inability to stay faithful throughout the period when Ella had been seeing him; her repeated angry accusations that Ella didn’t appreciate just how lucky she was.
‘No matter what your sister did, Timon forgave her because he loved her. But, when you made it possible for them to have a child together and Susie turned her back on that child, Timon couldn’t accept it.’
Ella gave him a stricken appraisal. ‘Susie turned her back on Callie? How?’
‘She left their staff to take care of her. Having got the baby she insisted she could not live without, she rejected her. Timon was at his wit’s end. He consulted doctors on her behalf. Susie refused to see them, and finally Timon began to talk about divorcing Susie and applying for sole custody of Callie. Their marriage was very much on the rocks when they died.’
Her consternation and sadness at that news palpable, Ella sank heavily down on a chair. ‘I had no idea that the situation was so serious. If only I had known, if only Susie had been willing to see me and talk to me after Callie’s birth, maybe I could have—’
‘You were the last person who could have helped her. She was too jealous of you.’
‘It’s perfectly possible that Susie was suffering from severe post-natal depression. Didn’t my family try to help her?’ Ella prompted feverishly.
‘I don’t think they recognised the extent of the problem, or that they wanted to get involved once they realised that Susie’s marriage was in grave trouble,’ Aristandros said flatly.
Ella knew that in such circumstances her domineering stepfather would have urged her mother to mind her own business, and that her mother would not have had the backbone to stand up to him even if she’d disagreed. She felt unbearably sad. Had Susie been suffering from depression? Evidently, however, even Timon had been unable to persuade her sibling to seek professional help. Poor Callie had had a troubled and insecure life right from the moment of her birth. Ella thought that it was hardly surprising that the little girl was quiet and somewhat behind in her development.
‘How much time have you spent with Callie?’ Ella asked Aristandros.
His well-defined black brows pleated, as if he suspected a trick question. ‘I see her every day that we’re under the same roof.’
‘But do you play with her? Talk to her? Hold her?’
Aristandros winced at those blunt questions. ‘I’m not a touchy-feely guy. That’s what you’re here for.’
Ella breathed in deep and stood up. ‘I don’t want to offend you, but I have to be frank. At the moment, all you seem to do is wave at her from the doorway of her nursery once or twice a day.’
Aristandros frowned and threw up his hands in objection at her censorious tone. ‘It’s a little game we play. What harm does it do?’
Ella was hanging on to her temper only by a hair’s breadth. He was not that obtuse. He could hardly believe that he was playing father of the year with a long-distance wave. ‘Callie needs to be touched and talked to and played with. The reason she didn’t rush to greet you today is because you’ve got her accustomed to only seeing you at a distance—and that’s how you like it, isn’t it? Hands-off parenting? But she needs real contact with you—’
‘What am I supposed to do with a baby?’ Lean, strong face hard with impatience and hauteur, Aristandros ground out that demand, clearly offended by her criticism. ‘I’m a very busy man and I’m doing my best.’
‘I know you are. You just need a little direction,’ Ella murmured, suddenly wondering if the closest he had ever got to his own dysfunctional parents was a breezy, noncommittal wave from the nursery door. ‘And then you’d be brilliant, because you always do well at anything you set out to do.’
His dark eyes gleamed at that assurance while a wicked slow-burning smile tilted his beautiful mouth. ‘Flattery will get you nowhere, glikia mou.’
‘Will you think again about flying to Paris—for Callie’s sake?’ Ella pressed softly.
‘You don’t do sweet and submissive well.’
Mortified by the derisive tone that let her know that he had seen straight through her attempt to talk him round to her way of thinking, Ella stood straight as a blade, colour burnishing her cheeks. ‘I was trying to be tactful.’
‘I don’t like it. It doesn’t suit you,’ Aristandros spelt out without skipping a beat. ‘On the very first day you meet Callie, do I need to remind you that I make all the decisions where she’s concerned?’
Ella turned very pale at that blunt reminder. She met cold eyes, the warning look of a strong male who had no intention of allowing his authority to be challenged. Her tummy flipped. He made her appreciate all over again that he was the one in control, and that she was walking a dangerous path from which she could not afford to stray. It was clear that he intended to hold her to the very letter of the agreement he had made her sign. She had promised not to interfere in Callie’s upbringing. All of a sudden she was appreciating just how difficult it was likely to be to take care of Callie while following his rules.
‘We come first in this instance, not the child. Don’t let her come between us and cause discord,’ Aristandros advised her with forbidding emphasis.
Ella wanted to tell him how selfish and unreasonable he was being, but he had just delineated her boundaries as a warning and she did not dare. Aristandros Xenakis had spent thirty-two years on the earth doing exactly what he liked at all times. She might try to guide,
but he would never allow her to lead. Who was she to think she could change him? The chill in the atmosphere raised gooseflesh on her bare arms and she turned to leave.
‘Where are you going?’
Her spine prickled with apprehension. ‘I, er, need to work out what I’m going to wear this evening.’
‘No need. As yet you don’t have a proper wardrobe. My staff will organise a selection of dresses to be brought to my Paris home for you, and your maid will do your packing. There’s very little that you need to do for yourself now.’
Ella flipped back round. ‘Sometimes you scare me…’ And the instant she voiced that admission she regretted it, but there it was: the complete unvarnished truth.
Aristandros cast aside the file and vaulted upright. His astute eyes were unreadable, his fabulous bone-structure taut. ‘I don’t want that.’
Ella pinned her tremulous lips closed. ‘I can’t help the way I feel.’
‘You’re one of the strongest women I’ve ever known,’ Aristandros countered.
But he was making a coward of her because if she spoke her mind she stood to lose too much, Ella conceded bitterly. Aristandros closed a hand over hers and tugged her closer. With an imperious shift of his handsome head, he smoothed her fingers straight and linked their hands. ‘If it’s that important, I’ll make more effort with Callie.’ Unusually he hesitated, his wide, sensual mouth compressing. ‘I don’t know how to go about it, though. I didn’t have a conventional childhood.’
Ella was well aware that even that minor admission of ignorance was a major step for him, and that any sort of change of heart on his part was to be warmly appreciated and encouraged, but she was still so tense and worked up that her hand trembled in his. ‘I know,’ she said feelingly, her heart lurching inside her, for his cruelly troubled childhood had been lived out in the full glare of the media spotlight thanks to his larger-than-life parents and was very well documented.
‘My earliest memory is of my father shouting at my mother when I almost drowned in a swimming pool. They were either drunk or high…’ A broad shoulder shifted, his strong face hardening. ‘They were so busy fighting they left me out on the terrace and forgot about me again. I know what not to do if you have a child.’
‘Yes, of course you do,’ she agreed. ‘When you’re a kid it’s so frightening when you see adults fighting and out of control. The first time I saw Theo hit my mother, I thought the world was going to end…’ As Ella realised what she had inadvertently revealed, she was appalled by her carelessness, and she fell silent.
‘Repeat that,’ Aristandros urged, his narrowed gaze reflecting his stunned reaction. ‘The first time you saw your stepfather hit your mother?’
Ella was aghast at what she had let drop. ‘I don’t want to talk about it. I really didn’t mean to say that!’
Aristandros lifted a hand to tip up her chin so that her eyes were forced to meet his. ‘But now that you have, there’s no going back or denying it. Theo Sardelos is in the habit of hitting your mother?’
Ella was pale as death, and full of the shame she had never been able to shake over that sordid reality. ‘I don’t think the violence happens as much now as it once did…at least, I would hope not,’ she confided jerkily. ‘But it’s been so long since I had any contact with them, I really have no idea.’
‘Did he ever hit you?’ Aristandros growled.
‘No, only my mother. It’s a pity he didn’t have a legal agreement drawn up like you did before they got married, though I’m not sure she would have signed up if she’d known what she was in for!’
‘What the hell are you saying?’ Aristandros grated.
‘Well, that’s why he beat her up—she objected when he didn’t come home at night. He was always with other women,’ Ella explained grudgingly. ‘I think he had affairs with every secretary he ever had, as well as with some of the friends Mum made over the years. Like you, he’s very attractive to the opposite sex and an incorrigible womaniser.’
Brilliant dark eyes assailed hers with cold, hostile force. ‘I’ve never hurt a woman in my life, nor would I.’
‘I didn’t insinuate that you would. That’s not why you scare me,’ Ella extended tightly. ‘You scare me because you’re so cold-blooded, so tough and determined to win every bout. It’s your way or the highway, and trying not to fall foul of that is a constant challenge.’
‘I don’t want you to feel like that, but I can’t change what I am.’ Aristandros breathed, with a raw edge to his deep drawl. ‘The fact you compared me to Theo Sardelos is revealing. You see us as similar personalities, a comparison which I absolutely reject. But I am shocked by what I have just learned. I can hardly credit that you never breathed a word to me about what was going on in your own home seven years ago.’
‘It was a private matter. I grew up with a mother who swore me and my siblings to silence. We were brought up to be ashamed of it and keep it hidden. The violence was never, ever discussed. Everybody tried to pretend it didn’t happen.’
‘Even your brothers?’ Aristandros prompted with growing incredulity. ‘Susie never mentioned it to Timon either.’
‘Susie just ignored it, and the twins were still quite young when I left home to go to university. I don’t know how things stand now. I’ve always hoped it stopped, but I suspect that was rather foolish wishful thinking,’ she muttered heavily. ‘Look, can we please drop this subject?’
Unsympathetic to that plea, Aristandros settled his smouldering gaze on her. ‘You thought I might be like your stepfather, didn’t you? That’s one of the reasons you wouldn’t marry me.’
‘I don’t want to discuss this any more,’ Ella told him quietly, and she turned on her heel and simply walked out of the salon. She was shaking like a leaf and cursing her unwary tongue. There was no way she could tell him the truth. Of course she had seen a similarity between him and her stepfather. But with Aristandros it had not been violence she feared, but the terrible pain, constant fear and suspicion of living with an unfaithful partner. She had loved him too much to face that prospect.
Ella was overseeing her packing when Aristandros strode into the state room. With a casual movement of one hand he dismissed the maid while wrenching off his tie with the other. ‘You’ve kept too many secrets from me, moli mou,’ he delivered harshly. ‘I don’t like that. I will tell you now—that has to change.’
Ella slanted a feathery brow. ‘Just like that?’
Inflexible dark-golden eyes clashed with her defiant gaze. ‘Just like that. Don’t try to keep me out of the loop.’
‘Ari…threats and warnings don’t create the kind of atmosphere that encourages trust and the sharing of confidences,’ Ella countered, the flush on her cheekbones accentuating the sapphire brightness of her eyes.
Aristandros shrugged off his jacket. ‘Exactly when were you planning to tell me that you have had no contact with your family for years?’
Ella stiffened. ‘I already told you that when I admitted that nobody contacted me to tell me that Susie and Timon had died. There was a huge row the night I said I wouldn’t marry you. I haven’t seen my family since then.’
Aristandros frowned. ‘The rift developed that far back?’
‘Yes. As far as Theo was concerned, it was my duty to marry you for the good of the family. He was livid. My brothers thought I was insane to say no, as well. They took your side, not mine, because you’re filthy rich and a profitable business connection and I’m not,’ she advanced bitterly. ‘If it had happened a couple of centuries ago, they would have cheerfully locked me up in a convent and left me there to rot for the rest of my life!’
‘I didn’t know your family had reacted that strongly. Timon did mention that you didn’t come home any more, but I assumed that that was because you were too busy with your training,’ Aristandros admitted. ‘Now that you’re with me and Callie, they can hardly continue to behave as if you don’t exist.’
‘Don’t you believe it. I don’t get on with Theo. I ne
ver did.’
‘You don’t need to get on with him or anyone else you dislike now,’ Aristandros informed her lazily. ‘My guest lists are extremely select.’
Ella tried not to think of her stepfather’s rage if he found himself suddenly excluded from the Xenakis social circle, and stilled a shiver. She watched Ari peel off his shirt to reveal the rugged musculature of his powerful chest and flat, hard stomach. He really did have the most beautiful body, she acknowledged helplessly. Her nipples tightened into taut, swollen buds beneath her bra. A clenching tight sensation between her thighs made her tense. She was remembering the smooth, steely heat of his skin when she touched him, the tormentingly sexy slide of his strong, hard body against hers. The palms of her hands prickled. The tender flesh at the heart of her throbbed with awareness.
Aristandros surveyed her with a sardonic amusement that was shockingly aware. ‘No,’ he breathed. ‘We haven’t got the time. Pleasure is all the sweeter when deferred, glikia mou.’
When Ella registered that he had realised just how she was feeling at that moment, she boiled alive with embarrassment and self-loathing. Did she really find him that irresistible? How could her body get so out of step with her pride that it betrayed her? Was she really such a sexual pushover that she could hardly wait for him to touch her again? Could the experience of physical pleasure change her so much, or make her feel so disgustingly needy? Ella stifled an inner shudder of distaste at that image. What was happening to her? All of a sudden she felt like a hormonal teenager suffering from an embarrassing crush that had got out of control.