by Lynne Graham
Why was she getting upset over being at odds with him? At least she had spoken her mind on the trust issue. She had trusted him once seven years back and look where that had got her—dumped, heartbroken and rejected by her family. Aristandros, however, had picked himself up in time-honoured Xenakis style from the debacle of the engagement that had only lasted five minutes with a widely reported cruise round the Mediterranean, where he had stopped off at various ports to booze and carouse non-stop with promiscuous women. Ella struck the mattress with a clenched fist. She was still so angry she wanted to scream. She hated him; she truly hated him!
But it was almost time for Callie to have her evening meal, and Ella cherished her bedtime routine with the toddler. She hauled herself off the bed and groaned out loud when she saw her swollen eyes and ruined make-up. No longer having access to the beautician’s tools, and in possession of very few cosmetics of her own, Ella did her best to conceal the ravages of her uncontrolled crying-jag.
Callie was a delight and a consolation that evening. Ella played with her in her bath, dried her little wriggling body and cuddled the little girl while she read her a story.
Callie was happily making quacking sounds when Aristandros appeared on the nursery threshold. ‘I fancy eating out tonight,’ he announced.
‘I don’t care if I never eat again,’ Ella lied, for in truth she was starving, but could not have borne letting him get away with pretending that nothing had happened—even if she did suspect that that might be a wiser approach than running the risk of a post mortem about the row.
Callie slid off her knee and padded barefoot over to him, holding her arms up and demanding to be lifted. Possibly relieved that someone appeared to appreciate his presence, Aristandros crouched down and swept her up into his arms as if he’d been doing it for years. But in fact he had never done it before, and Ella watched slyly from beneath her lashes as Callie explored his hair, smothered him in wet kisses and yanked at his tie before settling down happily, trying to steal one of his shiny gold cuff-links.
‘Quack,’ Callie told him importantly, and then she stuck out a foot. ‘Socks,’ she added.
‘You’re not wearing any,’ Aristandros pointed out.
Callie pouted. ‘Shoos.’
‘You’re not wearing shoes either.’
‘She’s trying to dazzle you with her new words, not have a conversation,’ Ella explained.
‘It’s more appealing than conversation,’ Aristandros remarked, shrewd dark eyes skimming from Callie’s smiling little face to Ella’s frozen expression. ‘You’re sulking again.’
‘I’m not sulking,’ Ella pronounced through gritted teeth. ‘I’m just can’t think of anything to say to you.’
‘Is there a difference?’ Aristandros strolled across the room to lower Callie gently back down on to Ella’s lap. As their eyes connected in an unexpected encounter, she was shockingly aware of the raw charge of his masculinity, and her mouth ran dry.
‘I’m going out,’ he said casually.
Ella almost called him back to say that she would go out after all. Watching him go out alone had no appeal whatsoever. Her contentment at her relaxing session with Callie ebbed fast. No woman in their right mind would encourage Aristandros to go out by himself—but no woman with any pride would accompany him after the day that had just passed and the words that had been exchanged, Ella reasoned with spirit. When Callie was safely asleep she went downstairs and ate a light meal without appetite, while she watched the clock and wondered how long he would stay out and who he was with. Athens was a lively, cosmopolitan city with many clubs.
Having decided on an early night, she went for a bath, then phoned Lily and finally told her friend everything she had previously withheld.
‘He’s a total bastard!’ Lily hissed in disgust.
Ella winced, finding that opinion not as much to her taste as she might have hoped. ‘Occasionally he’s…very challenging.’
‘I don’t believe what I’m hearing. You’re making excuses for him?’
‘That wasn’t an excuse,’ Ella protested uncomfortably.
‘Ella…in all the years of our friendship I have never understood your essential indifference to men. Now, finally, I do. You’re insanely in love with Ari Xenakis—and I do mean insane, because by the sound of it he’s already running rings round you!’
‘Of course I’m not in love with him,’ Ella retorted crisply. ‘We have absolutely nothing in common. He’s cold, selfish and arrogant, and I could never care about a man like that!’
‘On the other hand,’ Aristandros added lazily, striding into the bedroom without warning and startling her into dropping the phone, ‘I’m very rich, very clever and very good in bed—a combination of traits which seems to keep you very well entertained, khriso mou.’
Ella fumbled clumsily for the phone again.
‘It’s okay…I heard,’ Lily admitted. ‘I think you’ve just met your match, Ella.’
Ella replaced the phone and stared at Aristandros. Her nipples stirred and peaked below her nightdress, becoming uncomfortably sensitive. His scrutiny burned like molten gold over her upturned face, and pink colour warmed her cheeks while her tummy performed a wicked little somersault of response. The atmosphere sizzled. She closed her eyes tight and snuggled down beneath the sheet, awesomely conscious of his presence, and tensing to the rigidity of an iron bar when the mattress gave under his weight
‘Se thelo…I want you,’ Aristandros breathed thickly as he eased her back into his arms.
‘I thought you’d be out half the night,’ she framed flatly, staying stiff and unresponsive against the hard, muscular heat of him.
‘Not when you’re in my bed waiting for me, moli mou.’
‘I wasn’t waiting for you!’ she yelped.
Brushing back her tumbled silvery-blonde hair, he pressed his sensual mouth to the slender column of her neck, and she quivered beneath the erotic brush of his lips across her skin. ‘Of course you were. Do you think I don’t know when a woman wants me?’
‘Quack,’ Ella pronounced flatly.
Aristandros vented a husky laugh above her head. ‘Meaning?’
‘That normal dialogue is a waste of breath with a guy as vain and arrogant as you are.’
Aristandros extracted her from her nightdress without receiving or even appearing to need the smallest assistance from her. He proved that he was more than capable of rolling with the punches of that negative character-assessment. He nibbled at the tender skin below her ear, while his hands roved from the urgent jut of her swollen nipples to the slick, wet flesh between her thighs. She clenched her teeth and gasped, striving to resist temptation until he teased the tiny nub of arousal below her feminine mound, and suddenly resistance was more than she could bear. She twisted round in a violent movement and found his tormenting mouth for herself, burning for him and burning with shame simultaneously. He held her to him with strong hands and plundered her parted lips until she was breathless with desire. Then he lifted her over him and pushed up into her slick, tight depths with a long, guttural groan of pleasure.
‘As long as you know that I still hate you,’ Ella mumbled shakily, struggling not to lose herself entirely in the pleasure he had unleashed.
‘I love the way you hate me,’ Aristandros husked, long, brown fingers on her hips controlling her rhythm, and then rising to cup her swaying breasts and roll the sensitive crests.
She was dizzy with excitement and beyond thought. The waves of pulsating pleasure began low in her pelvis and slowly spread out in ever-increasing circles in a white-hot surge of shattering pleasure. She cried out, and her head fell back on her shoulders as the wild convulsions of ecstasy engulfed her.
Aristandros cradled her limp body and rolled over to a cooler spot in the big bed. ‘Tomorrow we’ll be on Lykos, and I don’t think I’ll let you out of bed for a week. You make me insatiable, khriso mou.’
Her brain kicked back into gear and she flinched, loathing herself for
surrendering to the passion. ‘I meant everything I said,’ she told him doggedly.
‘What a temper you have,’ Aristandros mused lazily, his unconcern on that score palpable.
Her body still throbbing from the primal urgency of his possession, Ella pulled free of him and shifted over to the far side of the bed.
‘No,’ Aristandros said succinctly, and he reached for her with hands that brooked no argument and hauled her bodily back into contact with his long, powerful body. ‘What you sow, you must reap, and I’m not finished yet.’
‘I am!’ But, as she spoke, the familiar signature tune she used on her mobile phone broke out in the tense silence.
‘Ignore it,’ Aristandros instructed. ‘It’s after midnight.’
Ella, by comparison, was accustomed to reacting with urgency to calls during the night, and she broke from his loosened hold and snatched up the flashing mobile-phone on the bedside table to answer it. An instant later, she threw her legs off the side of the bed and stood up to switch on the lamp. Although she couldn’t yet understand what her mother was saying, she realised that the older woman was crying and that something was badly wrong.
‘Calm down; I can’t follow what you’re saying. What happened? Did he hit you?’
Ella felt Aristandros pull himself up behind her. ‘Are you still in the house?’ she prompted her parent. ‘Where is Theo? Look, whatever you do, don’t go back in there,’ Ella warned the weeping older woman. ‘Stay where you are and I’ll come and get you. No, of course it isn’t a problem. Don’t be silly, Mum. All I care about is you.’ Putting her phone down, she turned to Aristandros. ‘I need a car.’
Aristandros was already talking into the house phone and getting out of bed. He broke off to demand, ‘Did Sardelos attack your mother? What happened?’
‘What always happens,’ Ella responded wearily. ‘He has a few drinks, blames her for everything wrong in his life and hits her. He’s in bed. She’s in the park across the street. Why are you getting dressed?’
‘I’m coming with you.’
Ella was already pulling on a pair of trousers. ‘That’s not a good idea.’
His handsome features were grim. ‘I’m not leaving you to handle this alone. Your stepfather left my house in a rage this evening, and I was to blame for that.’
‘You’re not to blame for anything. Theo is the baddie here. I warn you: Mum won’t report him to the police. I’ve tried a dozen times to persuade her to have him charged, but she won’t, so he gets away with it every time. She’s like an addict,’ Ella muttered heavily. ‘She won’t give him up.’
‘Are you planning to call your brothers?’
‘I’ll do what Mum wants me to do. I notice she phoned me rather than either of her sons.’
Twenty minutes later, Ella was approaching the park bench where her mother was huddled like an old discarded rug, her shoulders hunched, her head bent, so that even in the street light her face couldn’t be seen. When Ella got her first proper look at her, she had to bite back an exclamation. Her face swollen and puffy with one eye almost sealed shut, Jane Sardelos was almost unrecognisable. Her lip was cut and distended, and she was cradling one arm as though it was hurting her.
‘What’s up with your arm?’ Ella asked.
‘Let’s get her into the car first,’ Aristandros urged.
‘You brought him with you?’ the older woman gasped in horror.
‘I couldn’t shake him off.’ Ella helped her mother stand up and guided her towards the waiting limo. Once they were safe in the passenger seat, she bent to examine the arm and realised that the older woman’s wrist was badly broken. ‘We’ll have to go to the hospital.’
‘No hospital…I’ll go to a hotel or something.’
‘You don’t have a choice,’ Ella broke in. ‘I think your wrist needs surgery, and the sooner it’s done the better. Do you want me to call the boys?’
Jane shook her head in an urgent negative. ‘No point in upsetting them as well.’
Aristandros raised a brow but made no comment. During the drive to the hospital and then their subsequent arrival, after he had called in advance, she was surprised by how gentle he was with her battered mother, who had never been one of his biggest fans. She was wryly amused when his natural charm began to draw the older woman out of her shell.
It was a very long night. After the x-rays had been carried out, Jane was given a thorough examination, and Ella was appalled by the bruising she saw on her parent’s thin body. It was obvious to her that, if anything, her stepfather’s attacks had become even more violent over the years. Surgery was immediately scheduled for her wrist. The police arrived beforehand, and Ella braced herself for her mother’s usual evasive efforts to shield her husband from arrest and prosecution. Aristandros asked if he could speak to Jane privately for a moment and Ella stepped outside the room, curious as to his motive, but so sleepy that she was grateful for the chance to move around and wake up a bit.
She was shocked when she realised on her return that her mother was finally willing to give a true statement of events and press charges against Theo. She also seemed stronger, steadier and less afraid than she had been. While she was in the operating theatre, Aristandros made a series of phone calls.
‘What did you talk about with Mum?’ Ella asked.
‘She wants a fresh start, and I pointed out that she can’t have it without having Sardelos charged with assault, because only that will make him leave her alone. I also pointed out that she could well die during one of his assaults. I asked her to accompany us to Lykos to recuperate, but she wants to stay with your brothers until she’s feeling better. I called them. They should be here soon.’
Ella was disappointed that Jane wouldn’t be coming to the island, but she knew that her mother would very much enjoy fussing over her adult sons for a few weeks. She was amazed that Aristandros had triumphed where she had so often tried and failed. Her stepfather was finally going to be taken to court, and that was a source of tremendous relief to Ella. But perhaps it wasn’t so strange, she conceded. Jane was always more easily impressed by a strong man than she was by a strong woman, and Ari’s intervention and advice had been warmly appreciated and respected.
They remained at the hospital until Jane emerged from the operating theatre and had regained consciousness in the recovery room. The surgery had been long and complicated but successful. Ella fell asleep in the limousine, and wakened only when Aristandros settled her down on the bed.
‘You were really great tonight with Mum,’ she mumbled drowsily. ‘I wasn’t expecting that.’
‘I’m not always the bastard you like to think I am,’ Aristandros retorted with level cool.
Her heavy limbs sinking into the comfortable mattress, Ella focused wryly on his lean, compellingly handsome face. ‘I’m not stupid,’ she told him. ‘Leopards don’t change their spots.’
CHAPTER NINE
THE island of Lykos had undergone some changes since Ella’s last visit seven years earlier. Aristandros had made the harbour much bigger and deeper to accommodate his yachts. The fishing boats looked like colourful children’s toys beside Hellenic Lady. The island’s little town, composed of lime-washed white houses adorned with traditional blue paintwork, stretched up the hill in neat tiers behind the harbour. The wedding-cake church with its ornamental bell tower sat in the shade of the plane trees edging the main square, and a windmill, long defunct but nonetheless charming, punctuated the winding road that led down to the far end of the island and the Xenakis house. Beyond the town stretched lush green hills studded with cypresses and olive groves and rather more buildings than she recalled.
‘The last time we were here you told me that you wanted to get married in a church exactly like that,’ Aristandros murmured.
‘Did I…really?’ Standing by the rail as the yacht docked, Ella was still suffering from the loss of the previous night’s sleep. That reminder almost made her choke on the coffee she was drinking to wake herself up, and
she secretly cringed over the knowledge that she could ever have been that gauche. ‘I don’t remember that.’
‘I liked the fact that you didn’t watch your every word around me. My parents got married here in the church of Ayia Sophia. My mother thought it was cute as well.’
‘Lykos originally belonged to her family, didn’t it?’
‘Yes. She was an only child and a great disappointment to a shipping family, who longed for a son.’
‘I just remember the portrait of her in the house. She was absolutely gorgeous.’
‘She still holds the trophy for being the vainest woman I ever knew,’ Aristandros remarked with a cynical shake of his proud dark head. ‘In many ways she was lucky to die young. She could never have handled growing old.’
Ella thought it was sad that he could be so detached from the memory of his mother, a habit he had probably acquired for self-protection when he was a boy, cursed by not one but two wildly irresponsible parents who had refused to grow up and behave like adults. Too alike to stand each other for long, the warring pair had divorced by the time he was five years old.
Although Doria Xenakis had grown up with great beauty and wealth, both attributes had only been a means to an end for a young woman obsessed by her dream of becoming a famous actress. While his mother had chased endless drama-classes and roles, and thrown constant parties to entertain influential celebrities, Aristandros had been seriously neglected. He had twice been removed from her home by social workers for his own safety. Doria had finally died of a drug overdose at the age of thirty, and was only remembered in the film world for having starred in some of the worst movies ever made. Ari’s father, Achilles Xenakis, an inveterate gambler, womaniser and drunk, had worked his way through multiple partners and repeated visits to rehabilitation centres after an unending succession of financial and sexual scandals. Achilles had died when he crashed his speedboat. Orphaned, Aristandros had moved in with Drakon at the age of fourteen.