by Lynne Graham
Xan dealt with the sudden appearance of the only woman who had ever broken his heart without batting a single eyelash. His first reaction was irritation, because even though Angie would have received an invite, being the bridegroom’s cousin, she should have stayed away because Xan’s family universally loathed her. His second reaction was that, although he despised her, she had worn well in their years apart.
When he received a lingering look of invitation from her, his inventive brain projected an image he very much liked. Two birds...one stone. Revenge and the freedom to move on in one perfect little package, he decided with ice-cold logic. Sometimes doing the right thing could mean doing it by nefarious means. It would be the wisest move he had ever made and would certainly kill at source his family’s ridiculous conviction that he was ready to settle down.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘I’M SO SORRY about Angie showing up,’ Delphina said, as though it were her fault that Xan’s ex-girlfriend had decided to attend her wedding. ‘Takis’s mother insisted that it was only courtesy to send her an invitation but nobody expected her to actually come.’
‘Why are you worrying about it?’ Elvi asked gently. ‘I’m not one bit bothered.’
It was a complete lie but Elvi had already heard enough about Angie Sarantos from Xan’s worried family to last her a lifetime, and Delphina’s embarrassment made her feel guilty because every bride had the right to enjoy her wedding day free of all such concerns.
Apparently, Xan had met Angie when he was twenty-one and had asked her to marry him. Angie, however, had ditched him once it became clear that the Ziakis family was in serious debt following the death of Xan’s father. Within months she had married another man and moved to Switzerland to live and she was now a childless widow. Ariadne, Xan’s adoring mother, was convinced that Angie was broke and on the prowl for a wealthy second husband. But Xan was no fool, Elvi reflected wryly. She just couldn’t see him falling for the charms of an obvious gold-digger.
But if that was true, what was he playing at? He had not neglected Elvi in any way. He had sat beside her throughout the wedding breakfast staged back at the villa and had made very polite conversation, much as though they were chance-met strangers, rather than lovers. But once they were freed from their table and able to mingle, Xan had continually drifted in Angie’s direction, pausing to chat with the other woman at every opportunity, laughing and joking with her as if she were his long-lost best friend. Old friends catching up and able to relive fond memories now that their parting was well behind them?
Maybe so, but Elvi had also noticed the cool distance of Xan’s altered attitude towards herself and, whatever else that change denoted, she was convinced that he had decided that they were over. Why else would he behave in such a way? Besides, Angie Sarantos was absolutely stunning and Elvi knew she couldn’t hold a candle to her.
How any man could travel so fast from wanting her passionately only hours earlier to flirting madly with his ex, she had no idea. But then she wasn’t a transitory sort of person, was she? What she did feel, she felt deeply and the sentiment stayed with her. Xan, however, had only felt lust for her, nothing profound or more lasting.
Bearing those realities in mind, why did she currently feel as if she had been punched in the stomach? Why was she in shock? Why was she hurt? Where had those responses come from? In truth she hurt as much as if Xan had taken a hammer to her heart and smashed it to pieces and she hated herself for that anguished sense of rejection and disillusionment, when instead she knew she should’ve been celebrating the prospect of returning to her own life, the life he had so ruthlessly yanked her out of.
Clearly, beneath the surface show of her hostility, she had contrived to become more emotionally attached to Xan than she had been prepared to acknowledge. That shamed her and put her on her mettle to appear untouched by the little drama of the flirtation that every other wedding guest appeared to find a source of fascination. You couldn’t fall in love with anyone that quickly, she reasoned angrily with herself; it just wasn’t possible. Possibly her pride was hurt, that foolish part of her that had unwisely revelled in Xan’s seemingly overwhelming desire for her ordinary self. Pride cometh before a fall, she reminded herself studiously, trying to keep a smile pinned to her lips, struggling to stop her gaze tracking Xan or Angie round the room.
For that reason, it was a surprise when Xan appeared at her side and suggested they dance. Elvi gave him a pained glance and shook her head. ‘No, thanks,’ she said quietly.
She was pale, her eyes shadowed and for a split second Xan’s resolve almost faltered, but the growing conviction that he was finally doing what he should’ve done some days earlier held him fast. He had to let her go: nothing else was acceptable and dragging out the process would be unnecessarily cruel.
‘Go off and enjoy yourself... I’m quite tired,’ Elvi insisted, not wanting his company if he was only putting on a show for the sake of appearances.
‘If you’re sure...’ Xan straightened back to his full height, avoiding a meaningful look from his brother, the priest, that warned him that Lukas was in the mood to preach. Aware of his family’s censorious appraisals, Xan decided it was time for a break to take care of some work and when the event was at an end he would speak to Elvi about her departure.
Alone again, Elvi walked outside onto the terrace and sat down, ostensibly to take in the panoramic view of the island and the sea. But she couldn’t see anything but Xan inside her head, sleek, darkly beautiful Xan with his dazzling eyes laughing with her, smiling with her, filling her with feelings that felt so natural to her that she had not even realised that she was falling for him.
Angie Sarantos strolled out with a champagne goblet cradled nonchalantly in one slender hand. ‘He’s bored with you,’ she murmured softly.
Elvi clenched her teeth hard. ‘Are you speaking to me?’
‘I imagine you hate my guts,’ Angie remarked. ‘But Xan and I have something special. I didn’t know how special it was until I lost it. Point is, I made a mistake nine years ago and I know it.’
Elvi was reluctant to engage with the brunette in any way. ‘It’s none of my business—’
‘It’s not,’ Angie agreed. ‘But I won’t let anyone come between me and Xan.’
Elvi’s phone vibrated with a text and she pulled it out as an excuse and stood up. ‘Excuse me, I have to take this—’
Stepping back into the cool air-conditioned interior, Elvi read the text from her mother and a wave of dizziness ran over her, perspiration beading her upper lip. Her brother, Daniel, had been injured in a car accident and he was in hospital. Suddenly, Elvi was desperate to get home and be with her family.
‘Are you all right?’ Hana asked her worriedly. ‘You’re as white as a sheet. Sit down for a moment—’
‘No, I need to speak to Xan,’ Elvi broke in apologetically. ‘Do you know where he is?’
Minutes later, Elvi entered Xan’s office on the ground floor. He was standing by the window, talking in French on the phone. Some words she vaguely recognised from school but most were incomprehensible as she hovered just over the threshold staring at him. For probably the last time, she reasoned numbly.
‘I want to go home,’ she declared shakily. ‘My brother’s in hospital.’
And from that point on, everything moved on oiled wheels. In fact, she had the feeling that Xan couldn’t get her off the island of Thira fast enough because he could not have been more helpful. He insisted that she travel back on his private jet, instructed the staff to pack for her while also informing her that he had organised accommodation in London for her and that he would place money in her bank account.
‘But I don’t need accommodation or money!’
‘Of course, you do,’ Xan overruled without hesitation. ‘It’s my fault that you don’t have employment to return to and you need support to get back on your feet again. The apartment you
originally moved into is up for sale at present, so naturally I will provide somewhere else for you to stay.’
And at that point Elvi simply stopped arguing because arguing with Xan was exhausting. He would regroup and address the topic from another angle, usually one she hadn’t yet thought of. What did strike her like a blow was his eagerness to speed her on her way and ease her passage with his wealth.
‘You don’t need to feel guilty that we’re over,’ Elvi told him abruptly, the reproof literally leaping straight from her brain onto her tongue. ‘We didn’t suit. We’re like oil and water—’
Xan froze, his lean, powerful physique pulling taut, and his magnificent eyes flashed pure gold. ‘I’m not feeling guilty. Why would I feel guilty?’
Her stomach already rolling with nausea, Elvi decided not to mention Angie. Why go there when she didn’t have to and her family emergency had given Xan a ready excuse to move her back out of his life again as fast as he had dragged her into it?
‘Look after yourself,’ Xan urged grimly. ‘And if you ever need anything, call me—’
Elvi dealt him a rueful grimace. ‘Like that’s going to happen,’ she derided with newly learned cynicism. ‘Goodbye, Xan.’
* * *
‘Daniel’s going to be fine. Your mother says he looks like he’s been beaten up and he’s sprained his ankle but that’s all, so you don’t need to worry,’ Dmitri declared, letting her know that he too was in regular contact with her parent as he accompanied her out to the helicopter waiting in the grounds of the villa. ‘I hope you know you’re very welcome to move to Oxford with your family—’
Elvi smiled warmly at the older man. ‘Thanks. I’m going to tell Mum the truth when I get back, well...almost the truth,’ she adjusted with a slight wince. ‘I won’t tell her anything that upsets her.’
At noon the next day, after a sleepless flight on Xan’s opulent jet and a harried arrival at yet another very fancy apartment, where she left her luggage stacked, Elvi went straight to the hospital and met her mother in the waiting area. Her eyes were burning in her head from exhaustion and the battle to stay in control of her emotions. It’s over. The phrase kept on crashing into her head like an alarm bell shrilling and lacing her every thought with far too much drama. No, no, I’m not in love with him, this is a crush, a long-overdue crush and it is manageable, she told herself firmly.
‘You were with Mr Ziakis...in Greece?’ Sally Cartwright repeated in disbelief. ‘What on earth—?’
‘I went to see him after you were arrested and...then we had dinner and somehow we ended up getting involved,’ Elvi admitted starkly. ‘It was crazy and it all happened terribly fast...of course, it was never going to last—’
‘But that’s why he dropped the theft charge, I imagine.’ Her mother wrapped her arms round her trembling daughter and muttered soothing things, seeing far more than Elvi would ever have admitted in the hollowness of the younger woman’s eyes and her drawn pallor.
The lies swept away, Elvi hoped she would feel better but her mood remained flat as a pancake. As Dmitri had forecast, Daniel was fine, his face badly bruised and swollen and his ankle sprained. Her sibling would be returning home with them on crutches.
Two weeks dragged past. Dmitri hired a van and moved Sally’s family to his terraced house in Oxford. The property was beautifully renovated and a vast improvement on their previous home. Elvi finally got her own bedroom while her mother enthused about the freedom of having a garden again. Elvi, however, had more pressing things on her mind because her period was late. In a sombre mood, she went out to buy a pregnancy test, anxiously counting days on her fingers, striving to be optimistic as she recalled Xan’s lack of concern over that contraceptive mishap.
Thinking about Xan only upset her and she tried not to do it but late at night, lying sleepless in bed, there was nothing else to think about. Xan hadn’t had to say the words in the end but he had found her wanting and he had dumped her like an old shoe within days of taking her to bed for the first time. Her self-esteem at rock-bottom, Elvi threw herself into organising their new home with her mother and looking up training courses online in an attempt to find something that truly interested her rather than settling for the first job available. Unhappily, the pregnancy scare hit her like an express train just when she was trying to move beyond heartbreak.
She sat in the bathroom clutching the wand before she even went downstairs to breakfast. Her brain was running at a thousand knots a minute. How could she be pregnant? How could a single oversight result in such a life-changing event? Yes, she knew the facts of life, but her hazy recollection of that first time with Xan seemed more about passion than anything else. The confirmation of a positive test came up and, in a panic, she reread the instructions all over again. She felt sick and dizzy, overwhelmed by fear of the unknown. She was pregnant, she acknowledged in shock; she was actually going to have Xan’s baby.
She dragged in a steadying breath of oxygen. Naturally she knew there were alternatives but the idea of surrendering her baby to adoption had no appeal for her and she couldn’t bring herself to consider a termination. She would have to tell Xan because he had the right to know: this was his child too. Before she could lose her nerve, she pulled out her phone to text him.
I need to see you. Something to tell you.
Xan read the text in the middle of a meeting. Elvi.
Meet for lunch?
His intelligence warned him that lunch was a very bad idea. Going cold turkey to kill an obsession was a basic ground rule. His hunger for Elvi was persistent, there in the morning when he awoke, there at night when he tried to shut down his thoughts and sleep. Somehow Elvi and her glorious curves had become an obsession, rarely out of his mind. What the hell would she want to see him about? Probably some problem relating to her family, he reasoned grimly, recalling that he had urged her to contact him at any time and could hardly complain if she had decided to take him up on the invitation.
Can’t make it to lunch in time. Living in Oxford now.
Xan froze. She wasn’t even occupying the apartment he had bought her? What the hell was she doing in Oxford? He asked her to meet him that afternoon at her apartment, the one she wasn’t using, he clarified with controlled sarcasm.
It was ages before she assented with a grudging OK and promised to text him once she had worked out what time she would be there.
* * *
Elvi wouldn’t allow herself to dress up for her meeting with Xan. He was the father of her unborn child, not a lover, not someone she wanted to impress, not anything really. In jeans and a purple filmy top, her hair confined in a long braid that snaked down her slender spine, she caught the train and battled every intimate memory that tried to sneak back into her mind. But she had forgotten nothing about Xan from the way he liked to check stocks and shares and eat in silence over breakfast to the provocative blaze of his stunning golden eyes when he was hungry for her.
Had he reconciled with Angie Sarantos? Or had that flirtation simply been a symptom of his restive boredom in Elvi’s company? She allowed herself to think along those lines because it was realistic thinking and naturally she was curious. It was also best not to dwell in advance on Xan’s likely horror at the news that she had conceived because she was well aware that he had not seriously entertained that possibility.
She texted Xan as soon as she arrived at the apartment and anxiously paced the living area while she waited. The shrill of the doorbell took her by surprise because she had assumed he would have a key for the second apartment as he had had for the first.
‘Don’t you have a key?’ she asked as she pulled open the door and fell back a step.
‘No, this apartment is in your name. I have no right of entry here,’ Xan told her quietly.
‘Are you saying you bought it for me? An apartment?’ Elvi gasped incredulously as she went into instant retreat, intimidated by the height
of him towering over her that close. Nor could she believe what she was hearing. He had moved her out of the other apartment to put her into a new one but she had no idea why. In any case, why on earth would he buy her an apartment?
Xan jerked a casual shoulder, dismissing the guilty conscience that had powered the purchase. ‘I wanted you to be secure—’
‘But you don’t buy someone you barely know an apartment!’ Elvi bleated, so disconcerted by what he had told her that she could think of nothing else. ‘Obviously I assumed you’d rented it for me and I planned to let you know that I was back living with my family, only I hadn’t got around to it yet....’
Xan wasn’t listening although his attention was locked to her. He noticed that she had gone back to wearing her own clothing, tacitly rejecting the new wardrobe he had also given her, but just at that moment he didn’t care. Indeed, given even the most minimal encouragement, he would have carted her off to the bedroom, unbraided her beautiful hair and laid her out like a banquet for his delectation. One look at her flushed face, evasive blue eyes and the curves no top in creation could have concealed and he was painfully aroused and...and obsessed again? He froze and then swung round to close the door behind him, utilising that moment to suppress his baser urges.
‘You’d better come in,’ Elvi muttered belatedly. ‘I’ve got something to tell you—’
Xan moved warily to the threshold of the living area and lodged there, carefully maintaining his distance. ‘So, tell me... I sent my limo round the block. I wasn’t expecting to be here for long.’
‘I’m... I’m pregnant,’ Elvi announced in a hoarse undertone.
Deprived of speech and reaction for possibly the very first time in his life, Xan stared back at her in unconcealed shock, his strong features tightening and paling as the gravity of her admission sank in on him.