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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.’
