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But Aristandros wasn’t listening. He was frowning darkly. ‘So that’s why you walked out on me in Paris…’
Ella tossed her head, her pale hair fanning back across a flushed cheekbone and brushed away by an impatient hand. ‘That phone call may have made me a little touchier than I should have been.’
He treated her to an austere appraisal. ‘But once again it underlines how little you listen to what I tell you, khriso mou.’
The intimidating tension in the atmosphere was ringing alarm-bells in Ella’s head. Aware of his renewed anger, but at a loss as to its cause, she blinked in bemusement. ‘I’m not sure I know what you’re getting at.’
‘That you should have told me about that phone call that distressed you,’ Aristandros grated impatiently.
‘And don’t you dare tell me that it was none of my business, because your behaviour that night spoke for you! I don’t like the way you keep secrets from me. It’s dishonest.’
Ella sucked in a startled breath at that hard-hitting denunciation. She could not credit what he was saying to her. ‘You have some nerve to say that to me!’ she slung back. ‘Maybe there’s a lot about you I don’t like: a guy who uses lawyers to blackmail me into an indefensible agreement to let him do whatever he likes, while I do only as he likes. Is that what you call having a relationship? No wonder none of them last longer than five minutes! On what basis do you think I would give you my trust?’
‘Stop there before this gets blown out of all proportion,’ Aristandros advised harshly.
But Ella was trembling with pent-up emotion, and she could no more have held back what she was feeling inside than she could have contained a tornado. Her blue eyes were as bright a blue as the heart of a flame. ‘Do you think I could trust a man who once told me he loved me and wanted to marry me, but who dumped me less than an hour later? And why—because I couldn’t match the perfect blueprint of a wife that you had in your head? Because I had the audacity to want something more than love and your money to focus on? Would you have given up business and the art of making money to marry me?’
Aristandros had lost colour below his bronzed skin, and it lent a curious ashen quality to his usual healthy glow. He stared steadily back at her, however, predictably not yielding an inch of ground. ‘We’re not having this conversation,’ he told her.
‘I’m not asking for permission, and I’m not having a conversation. You may not have noticed yet but I’m shouting at you!’ Ella yelled at him at full tilt, inflamed by his stony resistance to her verbal attack and his refusal to respond.
‘Stamates…that is enough,’ Aristandros bit out icily.
‘I hate you…even your grandfather thinks you’re treating me badly…Yes—not content with having lousy manners, I listen outside doors as well!’ Ella threw wildly at him, tears burning her eyes, and rage swelling like a giant balloon inside her to restrict her breathing. ‘I’m definitely not the perfect woman you think is your due. You’d better pray that I’m not fertile!’
And with that final parting shot, which was as low as she could think to sink, Ella fled out past the clutch of his staff in the hall who were trying to act like everything was normal and avoid looking at her. She took the stairs two at a time, with a huge sob locked halfway up her throat, and raced into the master bedroom—her fourth since she had moved in with him.
Ella very rarely cried. A sad film or a book could make the moisture well up, but it took a great deal to make her cry. Now she flung herself across the bed and sobbed her heart out. She was worried about her mother having to go home alone with an enraged and violent man who liked to use her as a punch bag. But, most of all, she was distraught over the row she had just had with Aristandros. It had started out a small argument and just grown and grown until it had torn apart the fragile fabric of the peace they had established, and destroyed the bonds they had somehow contrived to build. Now there could be no hiding from ugly but revealing truths, such as his fear that she might conceive a child he didn’t want.
Why was she getting upset over being at odds with him? At least she had spoken her mind on the trust issue. She had trusted him once seven years back and look where that had got her—dumped, heartbroken and rejected by her family. Aristandros, however, had picked himself up in time-honoured Xenakis style from the debacle of the engagement that had only lasted five minutes with a widely reported cruise round the Mediterranean, where he had stopped off at various ports to booze and carouse non-stop with promiscuous women. Ella struck the mattress with a clenched fist. She was still so angry she wanted to scream. She hated him; she truly hated him!
