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‘You just walked away too,’ he reminded her. ‘I was too proud to chase after you, although I thought of looking you up when I was over in London at least fifty times.’
‘There’s never been anyone else for me. I never stopped loving you although I didn’t realise that until recently.’
‘I fell in love with you on our first date. You got drenched with sea spray and you laughed. Every other girl I knew would have thrown a fit.’
‘I’m not vain, but I’m a jealous cat,’ she warned him, cherishing the ease with which he could look back through those years and recall one tiny incident, in much the same way he had remembered her admiring comment about the church on Lykos. The idea that he loved her was becoming more and more real and credible with every passing second. She smiled, and soon discovered that she couldn’t stop smiling.
‘I’ve sown my wild oats, but I didn’t enjoy myself so much that I want to do it again, agapi mou,’ Aristandros confided with blunt sincerity. ‘I wanted a second chance with you. I wanted to hear you say you’d misjudged me. But when I found out about your wife-beating stepfather I got a step closer to understanding why you were so unwilling to trust me. When you threw that jealous scene after the Ferrand party, I was overjoyed, because that proved that you still had feelings for me just as I did for you.’
‘So, what do you want now?’ Ella enquired tightly.
‘All I really want now is more of what we already have. I’m very happy with you. To be frank, I was disappointed that you weren’t pregnant. I want to have a baby with you.’
Ella released a happy sigh at the prospect and beamed at him. ‘How soon can we start trying?’
Aristandros laughed with rich appreciation. ‘Would tonight be too soon?’
Ella regarded him with eyes as starry as the night sky above. ‘No; I’m available without appointment whenever you want.’
‘I should warn you that I want you pretty much all the time, latria mou,’ Aristandros admitted, bending down to press his mouth to hers and kissing her slowly and skilfully until the blood drummed through her veins in a passionate response. ‘It’s an effort to go away on business when I’ve got you in my bed.’
‘I don’t want you going anywhere right now,’ Ella confessed, her hands curling into the lapels of his suit jacket at the mere mention of him needing to go away from her. ‘I want you all to myself. Will we get married on the island?’
‘Yes. And soon,’ he urged. ‘Speaking as a guy who was once engaged for about five minutes, I don’t believe in long engagements.’
‘Neither do I,’ Ella agreed fervently, while she busily thought about wedding dresses and Callie as a little flower girl, not to mention the provision of a baby to keep Callie company. She was so happy at the prospect of those delights that her heart felt as though it was overflowing.
Fourteen months later, Ella watched Kasma tuck Ari’s son and heir, Nikolos, into his cot.
At three months old, Nikolos was already revealing Xenakis traits of character. He was very impatient, and screamed the place down if he wasn’t fed immediately if he felt hungry. He truly adored an audience of female admirers and basked in their attention. He was advanced for his age in size and development. He already looked as though he was likely to be as tall as his father, and he had definitely inherited his father’s heartbreakingly charismatic smile.
These days Drakon Xenakis spent more time on Lykos than in Athens. He was enchanted by his grandson’s perfectly ordinary family life with Ella, Callie and the new baby. It was what he himself had never managed to achieve with his own late wife and children, and he appreciated the commitment it took for such a busy couple to make it work.
The house had been virtually rebuilt during the extensive renovations Ella had organised and was now a much more comfortable family-orientated home. It had not been easy to live in the house while all the work had still been going on, particularly while Ella was pregnant, but with her mother’s help, and that of the staff, Ella had managed.
Jane had got divorced. Theo was still in prison serving time for that final assault on his ex-wife, while Jane lived in a city apartment and enjoyed a healthy circle of friends with whom she shared interests. At least once a month the older woman visited her daughter and, if both Ella and Aristandros were abroad together, she came to stay and took charge of the household.
But actually Aristandros was travelling a great deal less than he once had and worked more from home, while Ella was putting in part-time hours as the island doctor and taking an interest in the charitable endeavours of the Xenakis Foundation. Just as Aristandros had gone to a good deal of trouble to ensure that business rarely parted them, Ella had been equally careful to ensure that her job didn’t steal too big a slice of her time and energy, and after a year she reckoned that she had got the balance exactly right. Plentiful help on the home front had been invaluable, and Callie currently attended a play group in town several mornings a week. That winter the whole family would be moving to the Athens villa to enable Ella to undertake a paediatrics course at the hospital.
