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Ella sent him a fiery look of sheer loathing. ‘You don’t need to send me any place. I’m leaving. But, my word, you are good at turning the tables, You haven’t said one word about your own inappropriate behaviour, except to imply that you were giving other women encouraging signals purely to rile me.’
Aristandros laughed out loud, the unexpected sound of his amusement shattering the tense atmosphere in the room. ‘Not to rile you.’
‘I don’t give a damn what you do,’ Ella hissed, slamming the case shut and closing it.
‘Liar,’ Aristandros framed silkily. ‘For a woman who doesn’t do jealousy, you were red-hot with it tonight.’
Ella went rigid, shot him a fuming appraisal and swung the case down. She was so mad she wanted to throw things at him. How dared he accuse her of being jealous? How dared he have the power to divine feelings she had not even admitted to herself? As she stalked across the room in a rage, he cut across her path and snatched the case off her. ‘What the heck do you think you’re doing?’ she shouted at him.
‘I’m preventing you from doing something very stupid, moli mou,’ Aristandros growled, throwing open the door of the dressing room and slinging the case in there with a resounding crash.
‘I’m not some whore who’s going to take whatever you throw at her!’ Ella flung at him wrathfully, adrenalin pumping like crazy through her veins and making it impossible for her to stay still or even think with any rationality. ‘I’m not interested in your money or what you can buy me. I’m not impressed. Nothing you could give me would persuade me to tolerate the kind of treatment you gave me tonight!’
‘Even if I admit that the only woman I want is you?’ Aristandros chided, leaning elegantly back against the door to close it. ‘Yes, I conducted an experiment tonight, I wanted a reaction.’
‘An experiment?’ Ella parrotted with raw incredulity.
‘A harmless one. Only a very possessive woman would get so worked up at the sight of me dancing with another woman.’
Her slim hands clenched into fists. So much emotion was hurtling round inside her that she felt frighteningly violent, and yet terrifyingly vulnerable at the same time.
‘But that’s all that I did,’ Aristandros continued steadily. ‘Nothing else.’
The hard truth of that statement struck Ella like an avalanche powerful enough to knock her off her feet. So he had danced with another woman and smiled and laughed…big deal! Social interactions of that ilk were normal at parties. What had made her overreact to such an extent? Why did she feel like rage was ready to explode out of her because she couldn’t contain it? He had wanted a reaction and she had given it to him. Only a very possessive woman…And in spite of all her denials she was possessive, wasn’t she? Violently possessive, with feelings and responses born from years of sitting by on the sidelines looking at photos of Ari with other women and reading about his affairs. Lily had suggested it was an unhealthy obsession, and so it was, for it had fostered a bone-deep streak of jealousy that she had not even recognised for what it was.
‘Maybe I overreacted.’ Ella voiced those words as though they were composed in a foreign language she found hard to pronounce. It was an acknowledgement of folly which cost her pride dear. For a moment she was standing outside herself and wondering in horror at the raging mindless jealousy that had consumed her and almost persuaded her to burn every one of her boats. Had she truly been willing to sacrifice Callie in that conflagration as well? She was genuinely appalled.
The silence stretched, drawn tight by her strain.
Ella focused on Ari’s lean, classic profile, her nervous tension at an incredible high. He had set her up to see how she would react to his flirtation, and he would have had to torture her to get an apology out of her. She hated him, not only for doing that to her, but also for appreciating that what he had made her feel scared her. Suddenly she did not want to probe the precise nature and cause of the madness that had overpowered her common sense. ‘The last couple of days—all the changes in my life—have been an incredible strain,’ she said instead, her low voice tight and stilted, because her pride was cringing at the excuse she was using.
‘Of course,’ Aristandros breathed with an almost instantaneous agreement of that explanation that took her aback.
She was standing beside a mirror, and she looked at herself. The illusion of perfection was gone now, replaced by tousled hair, smudged mascara, lipstick and a T-shirt bought at a rock concert.
‘Sometimes I push too hard.’ Aristandros murmured that concession without any expression at all. ‘But don’t ever walk out on me like that again.’
