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The phone went dead with wounding emphasis, denying Ella the chance to defend herself further. A little voice asked her wryly what more she could possibly have said when it was so clear that her parent wouldn’t have been prepared to listen. Numb and sick inside, and with her mother’s angry accusations still ringing in her ears, Ella replaced the phone in her clutch bag. A whore: it was not a word she had ever heard on her rather prim mother’s lips before. But she knew who would have voiced that abusive word in the first instance: her stepfather. Theo would have stormed and shouted until his wife was upset enough to call her daughter and pass on the official family opinion personally. It would not have been the first time that Theo had used her mother as his mouthpiece.
Gabrielle Ferrand approached and addressed Ella with a strained look on her lovely face. ‘I think you’d better go and rescue Ari before a catfight breaks out over him.’
Frowning and totally distracted after her upsetting phone call, Ella followed the brunette and saw Aristandros seated in a lazy sprawl across a sofa. Three gorgeous women literally had him surrounded. They were all over him like a rash, laughing and chattering and giving him looks, little touches and signals that were blatant sexual invitations. Ella felt nauseous just watching the scene, and she waited for Aristandros to take back his own space. If ever a guy had been born to look after himself without any help from anyone else, it was Aristandros. But he made no move to rebut the advances coming his way, and when one of the women sprang up he accompanied her on to the dance floor.
‘He’s been on his own almost all evening,’ Gabrielle muttered frantically. ‘He’s not used to being neglected.’
‘You’re saying I’ve neglected him?’ Ella queried while she watched Aristandros and a sexy redhead salsa-dancing with considerable dexterity and enjoyment. She hadn’t even known he could move like that. Seeing him smile and allow his body to connect intimately with another woman’s hurt like a knife cutting through tender skin. There was an enormous amount of flirtation going on. She was glued to the spot, trapped by ghoulish curiosity and tormented by more pain than she could have believed possible.
‘I didn’t mean to sound critical,’ her companion retorted uncomfortably.
‘Don’t worry about it. Ari has more than his fair share of charisma. Women always make excuses for him when he behaves badly,’ Ella commented, having met with that female reaction to Aristandros on many occasions seven years earlier. ‘But I’m afraid I don’t.’
Unfortunately, Aristandros was simply being himself—an unapologetic womaniser set on amusement. Ella, however, could not bear to have that fact paraded right under her nose, particularly when her mother’s condemnation of their affair was stuck like a giant immoveable rock in the middle of her every thought and reaction. Surely only a woman worthy of the label ‘whore’ would stand by and just accept Ari’s behaviour?
‘I can’t stay, Gabrielle. Will you tell Ari I’ve left? But don’t rush to do it,’ Ella advised, turning on her heel to move towards the front door.
‘Don’t do it, Ella. I really like you, and he’ll be furious if you walk out on him,’ the other woman protested. ‘I’m sure you’re right. He’s only flirting…it means absolutely nothing to him. Women of that sort come onto him every day. But you’re different, not least because you happen to be wearing the Xenakis sapphires and possess a brain.’
Ella glanced back at Aristandros and the redhead. She felt sick with rage and hurt, and the depth of her reaction terrified her. The hand she employed to push her hair off her hot, damp brow was trembling. She travelled down in the lift to the ground floor where the concierge called a taxi for her. Cameras flared as she departed alone and in considerably less state than she had arrived. By then she was willing to acknowledge that she was running away from her own feelings as much as she was turning her back on a scene of public humiliation. But she was horrified by her over-sensitivity and the powerful emotions churning around inside her. Why should it matter to her so much what Aristandros did? Wasn’t she capable of switching off her emotional responses to him? Just then she didn’t care about the agreement she had signed. She refused to act like some whore he owned and to do as he expected regardless of how he himself behaved. A dignified departure from the party was truly the only option she could live with.
Back at the townhouse she headed straight for the nursery. Callie was slumbering peacefully, while Kasma was also asleep in her bed in the next-door bedroom with the door ajar. Ella gazed down at the little girl with a volcanic mixture of relief, love and pain rocketing through her. She reminded herself that Callie had managed fine before she was around, and would scarcely miss her, and that while she stayed her mother would refuse to visit her granddaughter. How could she allow that to happen?
