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‘If you stop looking for problems, you’ll soon find that you can enjoy what we have,’ Aristandros intoned with blistering conviction. ‘We’re sailing back to Greece tomorrow.’
But Ella was already recalling the crazy weeks when she had been twenty-one and madly in love with him. Everybody who was anybody had spent those weeks warning her that Ari Xenakis would quickly lose interest in her. That was his track record, and his appetite for beautiful women ensured that he had an intimidating reputation as a heartbreaker. Ella, however, remembered feeling ridiculously happy during that period. Cool reflection hadn’t got a look-in. She had not continually rehashed their dates in her mind looking for hints that he might be considering a future with her, either, for that possibility had not even occurred to her. She had simply adored being with him and had lived for the moment.
He had taken her out sailing a lot, for long drives and lengthy meals, rarely inviting others to join them. They hadn’t gone to many parties or clubs, and when they had they hadn’t stayed long. They had talked constantly and she had been herself, for she had not known how to be anything else in those days. Hard as it was to credit now, she had believed she had met her soulmate in Ari. The second time she’d called a halt to their love-making he had just laughed and made no further attempt to persuade her into bed. When he’d invited her to his grandfather’s seventy-fifth birthday celebrations, she’d been overjoyed, because she had known how close Drakon was to his grandson and had felt honoured to be invited to meet him.
Now, a good deal older and wiser, she lay in the darkness, dully, painfully, reliving that final evening.
‘I love you,’ Aristandros had told her squarely, and she had responded with the same words. And, although he had afterwards accused her of insincerity, she had really meant what she said.
‘I want to be with you. Will you marry me?’ he had asked.
And her heart had bounced as high as a rubber ball, since it had not occurred to her then that he might have made the offer with sacrificial restrictions attached, a sort of trick question which was likely to come back and haunt her and leave her heartbroken. She had dimly assumed that they would get engaged and that Ari would visit her in London and marry her once she had completed her training. When he had got up to make a speech in honour of his grandfather’s birthday, he had announced their engagement—along with the news that she would be giving up medicine.
Reality had swiftly burst her bubble of happiness. After a ferocious argument he had dumped her, and minutes later retracted the announcement he had made. Her family had taken her home in disgrace, unable to believe or come to terms with the startling idea that she could possibly have refused to marry a Xenakis.
Aristandros catapulted her back into the present by hauling her up against his lithe, muscular frame. Blue eyes very wide, she clashed with his heavily lidded, smouldering, dark-golden gaze. This man, she acknowledged with a fast-beating heart, already had the power to make her feel bitterly jealous and act in an irrational way. He was dangerous, was a very dangerous threat in every way to her peace of mind.
‘Once is not enough,’ he growled sexily, half under his breath. ‘I still want you, moli mou.’
And some very basic element in Ella exulted in her sexual hold over him. In that instant, her heart racing, her pulses quickening and her treacherous body quivering with anticipation, she was a slave to the promise of the pleasure he would give her and she had no time to spare for agonising over the label that other people might affix to her position in his life.
CHAPTER SEVEN
TEN days later, Hellenic Lady arrived in Athens.
Ella was still in bed in the yacht’s magnificent main state-room and she was devouring the British newspapers, several of which contained items about her. It was an extraordinary experience to suddenly see herself appear for the first time in print in the guise of a celebrity. In her case, however, her fame was purely borrowed from association with Aristandros. She was variously described as his ‘new companion, Dr Dazzler’, ‘Calliope’s sexy aunt’ and ‘the family black-sheep’. Her fascination only died when she came on a disturbing couple of paragraphs that suggested that her family had shut the door on her because she was a promiscuous wild-child.
Aristandros strode in, clad today in a dark pinstripe suit of faultless tailoring that made the most of his tall, well-built body. He was said to electrify a room when he walked into it, and Ella was certainly not immune to that effect. She tensed against the heaped-up pillows, sapphire-blue eyes very wide in the heart-shaped delicacy of her face.
