Ella watched him lift a small shallow case from the desk. Her smooth brow pleated.
‘Come here,’ he urged with his usual impatience. ‘You can’t go out without jewels.’
‘I don’t have any,’ she confided with an uneasy laugh.
‘I’m starting off your collection, glikia mou.’ Aristandros detached the glittering diamond necklace from its velvet bed as she approached him on stiff legs. ‘Turn round.’
‘I don’t want it!’ Ella told him sharply for, while she had tolerated the clothing, a dazzling river of diamonds felt too much like the biblical wages of sin. Her principles had already taken enough of a hit.
‘But it is my wish that you wear it,’ Aristandros spelt out, purposeful fingers curving to her shoulder to flip her round. The jewels felt very cold against her skin. She shivered as his fingertips brushed her nape. He spun her back round and, with a satisfaction undiminished by her bleak expression, surveyed the glittering tracery of jewels encircling her throat
Ella was surprised by the crush at the gallery opening. She had never dreamt that she would see so many well-dressed people and famous celebrity faces grouped in the same place. Nor had she ever received quite so much personal attention for, the moment she entered the room by Aristandros’s side, every female head seemed to swivel in their direction. An audible buzz of conjecture accompanied their passage through the crowds. While Ari was engaged in discussing a sculpture with its creator, Ella strayed across the room. She was studying an enchanting painting of the seashore when she was accosted by a tall, leggy redhead whose perfect body was adorned by a tiny white satin dress.
‘So, you’re my replacement!’ the woman snapped, settling her furious and accusing green gaze on Ella. ‘Who the hell are you? Exactly when did Aristandros meet you?’
Ella knew exactly who the beautiful redhead was. Her name was Milly, she was a top model and probably Aristandros’s most recent ex. Ella said nothing, for she had seen the tears in the other woman’s eyes and recognised her distress.
‘You won’t get any warning that it’s over. One day you’re in, and the world’s your oyster, and the next you’re out and there’s nothing you can do about it. He doesn’t take your calls any more,’ Milly recited chokily. ‘Every door slams in your face!’
‘There has to be many safer and more rewarding options for a woman as young and beautiful as you are,’ Ella told her bracingly. ‘Don’t give him the satisfaction of knowing that you care.’
Milly studied her in wide-eyed bewilderment. ‘You’re being nice to me? Aren’t you jealous?’
‘No,’ Ella declared with innate dignity. ‘I’m not the jealous sort.’
Too late, she saw that the redhead’s attention had shifted from her.
‘Milly.’ From behind Ella, Aristandros greeted the other woman politely.
‘You’re not jealous?’ Aristandros queried in near disbelief as his ex-girlfriend vanished speedily back into the crush, unnerved by his ice-cold appraisal.
‘Of course not,’ Ella assured him, thinking of the seven years she had spent reading about his exploits with countless other women. Familiarity, she was convinced, had brought tolerance and common sense to her outlook. Everywhere Aristandros went, he was a target for ambitious women. That was a fact of life, and as long as he remained fabulously rich and gorgeous, the situation wasn’t likely to change any time soon.
Dark eyes sardonic, Aristandros guided her back to the landscape of the seashore. ‘It reminds me of Lykos … the beach below the house,’ he remarked, inclining his imperious head to the gallery owner hovering a few feet away. ‘We’ll take it.’
Aristandros had inherited the Greek island of Lykos from his mother’s side of the family. Once Ella had had a picnic there with him, and suddenly the years were rolling back inside her head and she was remembering how the breeze had whipped wildly at her hair while they ate. Wrapped up warm for the winter temperatures, she had listened with interest while Aristandros had outlined his plans to revitalise the island’s failing economy and prevent the population from falling any further. His sense of responsibility for the small, isolated community living on Lykos had impressed her a great deal.
‘Where will you hang the seascape?’ Aristandros asked as they left the gallery.
‘Where will I hang it?’ she stressed in confusion. ‘Are you saying that you are buying it for me?’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I don’t want you buying stuff like that for me; the way you’re splashing out cash on me is indecent!’ Ella hissed frantically under her breath as they headed across the pavement to the silver limousine awaiting them. Crash barriers prevented the gathered members of the press from getting too close.
Her spine rigid, Ella blinked like an owl while cameras went off all around them, and questions and comments were hurled at Aristandros. Uppermost were the demands to know the identity of his new companion. But, in every way, Aristandros remained gloriously impervious to the media presence, settling into the limo beside her, ‘Of course I’m going to buy you things; get used to it!’
‘I’m only here with you because of Callie. Contact with her is the only reward I want,’ Ella proclaimed, uneasy fingers brushing the diamond necklace in meaningful emphasis of the point.
The smooth planes of his lean features took on a cold, sardonic light, his brilliant gaze narrowing. ‘No man wants to be told that his only attraction is an eighteen-month-old baby, khriso mou.’
Ella lifted her pale head high. ‘Even if it’s the truth?’
‘But it’s not the truth, it’s an outright lie for which you should hang your head in shame,’ Aristandros traded without hesitation, his beautifully shaped mouth curling with derision. ‘You want me as much now as you wanted me seven years ago. Don’t make the child your excuse.’
Ella had lost colour. ‘It’s not an excuse. I may occasionally find you … attractive, but I wouldn’t have done anything about it.’
‘Too spineless?’ Aristandros sent her a contemptuous glance. ‘I didn’t meet your narrow-minded requirements, so the fact that you wanted me and I wanted you meant nothing to you.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous … of course it meant something!’ Ella flashed back. ‘But you wanted me to be something I couldn’t be.’
Aristandros closed a strong hand over hers to force her to turn and look at him. ‘I only wanted you to be a woman, not a strident feminist—’
Ella sent him a flaming look of bone-deep resentment. ‘I was never strident. I was sensible. We wanted totally different things out of life. It could never have worked.’
‘No doubt time will tell,’ Aristandros fielded very drily, releasing his hold on her hand.
The silence that laced their return to the penthouse gnawed at Ella’s nerves. She was already wishing that she didn’t speak first and think later. They were about to share the same bed, and she could barely believe that, never mind accept the idea in the mood she was in. ‘If the painting’s to be mine, I’ll be hanging it here somewhere,’ she told him abruptly, surrendering to a sudden need to bridge an atmosphere filled with tense, uneasy undertones. ‘Because I don’t have anywhere else to live at present.’
Aristandros sent her a sudden, satisfied smile, as if that bleak assurance was a heart warming plus on his terms. ‘You live where I live now.’
An involuntary shiver ran down her taut spine as the level of dependency that that statement suggested continued to chill Ella and her independent soul to the marrow.
The tall, powerful Greek closed his hands over hers to turn her back to face him. Brilliant golden-brown eyes