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Her maid helped her remove the dress and the sapphires and brought her a case when she asked. Ella put on jeans and a T-shirt and packed the few personal items she had brought from London. Then the heavy thud of the front door reverberated through the whole house, and she went rigid.
‘Ella!’
Ella gulped at the harsh sound of her name on Aristandros’s lips. ‘I’m up here…’
Aristandros filled the doorway, strong features taut, eyes blazing a challenge. ‘What in hell are you playing at?’
Ella settled bright-blue eyes on him, her chin at a defiant angle. ‘What were you playing at? If you think I’m going to stand around while you carry on with other women in front of me, you have another thought coming!’
‘You don’t walk out on me in a public place…ever!’ Aristandros raked back at her in a tone of fierce condemnation.
‘You can tear up the agreement. I’m leaving you, so all bets are off.’
‘You’re all grown-up now,’ Aristandros lanced back with derision. ‘You’re not allowed to run away when things get too hot for you.’
‘I’ve never run away from anything in my life!’ Ella yelled back at him, her temper unleashing like a dam overflowing.
‘You run from anything that upsets you.’
‘I’m not upset!’ Ella practically screamed at him.
‘This is not the calm, sensible Ella that I know.’
‘But you don’t know me!’
A sleek ebony brow listed. ‘Don’t I?’
‘No, you don’t!’ she repeated squarely.
Aristandros settled scornful dark eyes on her. ‘I have to confess that I didn’t expect quite such a hysterical reaction.’
‘Who are you calling hysterical?’ Ella threw the demand at him furiously. ‘And why the use of that word, “expect”? Are you suggesting that you deliberately chose to flirt with other women to get a reaction out of me?’
His brooding gaze locked to her hectically flushed and lovely face, Aristandros spread brown hands in a graceful gesture that neither confirmed nor denied. ‘Would I do something that calculating?’
‘Yes!’ Ella’s seething gaze was glued to him, her accusing stance unabated. ‘Yes, you would if it amused you, because you are the most naturally devious and manipulative man I have ever met.’
‘I could simply have told you that you were behaving badly,’ Aristandros sliced back. ‘It’s ill-mannered to keep on taking phone calls in company.’
Outraged by that censure of her own behaviour, Ella looked at him in raw disbelief. ‘How dare you tell me that I was behaving badly?’
His sculpted jawline squared even more, and he settled his steady gaze on her with considerable cool. ‘It’s the truth. Your behaviour was atrocious this evening. You went out in a sulk and you never came out of it.’
‘That’s a ridiculous thing to say!’
‘Is it? You didn’t want to leave Callie.’
‘So, I’m human and caring, which is more than anyone could say of your attitude tonight. You didn’t give a damn that she was ill!’ Ella condemned him hotly.
‘Then why did I ensure that I spoke to the doctor who attended her? And why did I check back with Kasma after that?’
Ella ground her teeth together, while giving him a look that would have withered a lesser man. ‘I didn’t know you’d talked to the doctor…you didn’t mention it.’
‘In short, I was as informed as you were, with regard to your many phone conversations,’ Aristandros skimmed back, smooth as glass.
An almost overwhelming desire to slap him threatened Ella’s cracking composure. ‘Maybe you did speak to the doctor.’
Aristandros dealt her a tough look. ‘I’m not lying. I may not get all emotional and dramatic like you do, but that doesn’t mean that I wasn’t also concerned about Callie tonight.’
In receipt of that cutting, hard-hitting reproof, Ella snatched in a deep, steadying breath. ‘I apologise if I misjudged you on that score.’
‘You did,’ Aristandros drawled, rubbing salt in an already open wound.
‘But I do not sulk…and I certainly wasn’t sulking earlier!’ Ella slung back at him angrily.
‘Maybe you have another word for it, but you were definitely in a strop.’
‘I was annoyed with you,’ she admitted grudgingly.
‘I’m not so thick-skinned that I didn’t get the message, but it was juvenile to parade your mood in public.’ Aristandros sent her a grim look. ‘I’m a very private man and I value discretion, but tonight you made a scene for the gossip columns. Do it one more time and I’m sending you back to London.’
