‘How could a boy as smart as Daniel be that dumb?’ Joel demanded, smoking while they sat outside a bar close to where she worked.
‘Clever people don’t always have common sense,’ Elvi pointed out, leaning across the table to add, ‘You’re getting eyed up by that beautiful blonde over there. I think it’s time I went back to work—’
‘No!’ Joel protested, closing an imprisoning hand over the one she had braced on the tabletop to rise. ‘I’m not interested—’
‘You haven’t even looked yet,’ Elvi rebuked as she met his brown eyes and wondered how his could be so different from Xan’s, because they did not make her melt or heat up to even the smallest degree. Yet, Joel was tall and attractive with tousled dark curls. He was also an up-and-coming successful painter, already being singled out for his talent with portraits. But then Joel’s life had gone much more smoothly than her own, she reflected ruefully, and sometimes she marvelled that he still stayed in touch with her because they now led such divergent lives.
‘All I want to do right now is give you some cash to help out,’ Joel told her ruefully. ‘You earn a pittance and with Sally out of work—’
‘No, thanks,’ Elvi cut in hastily. ‘Thanks for offering but no, thanks—’
‘Don’t you ever just want to walk away from the two of them and their problems?’ her friend enquired ruefully. ‘You could’ve been so much more without them holding you back—’
‘You’re talking about my mother and my brother,’ Elvi reminded him tartly. ‘I love them and they love me and you don’t turn your back on that kind of love and support—’
‘But you’re always supporting them, not yourself!’ Joel argued.
He didn’t understand, he never had understood, Elvi reflected wryly, because his was not a close family. Elvi, however, knew that, no matter what happened to her, her mother and her brother would always be there for her just as she was for them. That made her feel warm and complete inside herself in a way she couldn’t have described even to her longest-standing friend.
‘I’m wasting my breath,’ Joel recognised impatiently as Elvi slid back into her black jacket. ‘For some bizarre reason you don’t want the stuff other women want...the new clothes, the parties, the fun—’
‘I’d give anything to own a dog,’ she confided, and not for the first time.
‘A dog would just be another burden,’ Joel reproved.
Didn’t stop her wanting one, Elvi reasoned wryly as she got off the bus to go home that evening. A dog to walk and cuddle when she felt lonely. A cat was a possibility but cats weren’t necessarily cuddly, being more independent. As usual the lift was out of service and she had to climb flight after flight of stairs to the tenth floor, telling herself all the while that the exercise was keeping her fit even if she was wheezing like an old lady by the time she walked into the kitchen. That lighter mood didn’t last once she saw her mother and brother standing there, clearly in the middle of a rare argument.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked tightly.
‘Look, what I did wrecked everything for all of us,’ Daniel declared forthrightly. ‘Mum can’t find work now, and you hardly earn anything. How are we going to live? Obviously I have to find a permanent job—’
‘No, that’s not what this is all about,’ Elvi cut in hastily. ‘That would make what Mum did pointless, Daniel. We want you to go to university and train to be a doctor—’
‘I did this. This is my responsibility and I’m old enough to behave like a man,’ her little but very tall baby brother announced. ‘A man doesn’t turn his back on his family and just go off and become a student without thinking about how they are going to survive!’
Elvi thought a very rude word inside her head, her shoulders slumping, and passed on by into the bedroom to sink down on her bed. Daniel was like a mule when he set his heart on anything and now he too was in full sacrificial mode, just like her mother. What now? If Daniel threw away his chance, it wouldn’t come around again, and if he did that Sally Cartwright would self-destruct because her son going to medical school was the one thing she had in life to focus on and be proud of.
Xan Ziakis had won, Elvi reflected wretchedly, because her family was falling apart before her very eyes. From the kitchen she could hear the distressing noise of her mother and her brother having a major row as Sally tried to dissuade him from his plans and he fought back loudly. She pulled the business card out of her bag and reached for her phone. She didn’t want to speak to a man she hated, a man who was forcing her into a choice that went against everything she had ever valued, so she texted him instead.
Rethink on mistress as you forecast. Need to discuss conditions of servitude.
Across London, Xan checked his phone and laughed out loud, something he didn’t do very often and which spooked him with its unfamiliarity. He had won. He always won, he reminded himself with satisfaction. But even so there was a sweeter taste to this victory than most.
Meet you for dinner at eight...
And he gave her the address, telling her to ask for his table.
ELVI WENT INTO her slender wardrobe to withdraw a pair of black velour leggings and a black, rather glittery festive top she had received for Christmas the year before. The outfit would have to do because she didn’t have anything else to wear.
‘Where on earth are you going dressed like that?’ Sally Cartwright demanded boldly as her daughter passed through the kitchen, wearing actual lip gloss and mascara to her mother’s wonderment.
‘I’ve got a date for dinner,’ Elvi admitted, having reasoned that she had to make a start on her cover story.
‘A...date?’ her mother exclaimed in astonishment.
‘Yes, he’s handsome, he’s rich, he can give me a good time, what’s not to like?’ she asked the older woman wryly. ‘I’m twenty-two and I never go out. Isn’t it time I got a life?’
‘Of course, it is,’ Sally agreed uneasily. ‘I was only surprised, not questioning you.’
‘I don’t know if I’ll be back tonight,’ Elvi announced uncomfortably, her face flaming, but she had to work on her cover story.
‘Elvi...?’ her mother pronounced in a shaken tone, but she compressed her lips and said nothing more, accepting that her daughter was an adult woman.
Only Elvi felt nothing like an adult woman as she entered an exclusive restaurant, maddeningly conscious that she was underdressed, and where she was looked up and down in open dismissal before the mention of Xan’s name produced a very different reaction and suddenly she was ‘Madam...’ and being escorted by the head waiter to the promised table where Xan was already seated, perusing the extensive wine list.
Xan leapt upright. He was a four-letter word of a man but someone some time had trained him well in courtesy, Elvi acknowledged, bending to set down her bag before deigning to take a seat in the chair pulled out for her occupation.
Xan was transfixed by his view of her. She was very poorly clothed, but the instant she bent down and he caught a glimpse of her rounded derriere outlined in clinging velour he became a spontaneous fan of clingy leggings that outlined the female form. A bottom as deliciously curvy and ripe as a peach met his attention and the stirring at his groin was even more immediate. He asked himself how he could possibly have reached thirty years of age without appreciating that he found curvaceous women more sexually appealing than their thinner cousins. Or was it only her? Something weird about her? That mane of long hair?
‘Elvi,’