the greek tycoon's blackmailed mistress(15)

‘I believe you’re a doctor?’ Thierry Ferrand remarked.

‘Yes, but I’m no longer practising,’ Ella replied, a touch flatly.

Gabrielle studied her in surprise. ‘But why not?’

‘Ella plans to devote herself to my ward and her niece, Callie,’ Aristandros advanced.

‘It’s not easy to settle into being a lady of leisure,’ Gabrielle remarked. ‘I’m a corporate lawyer, Ella, and by the time my maternity leave was over I was ready to run back to work!’

‘You have a child?’ Ella asked.

Gabrielle needed no further encouragement to part Ella from Aristandros and take her upstairs to show off her adorable ten-month-old daughter who was fast asleep in her cot. The two women chatted.

‘You’re so normal and natural, not Ari’s usual style of companion,’ Gabrielle commented, her curiosity unhidden. ‘Several of his exes are here tonight, and the usual squad of man-hungry singles. I shouldn’t have dragged you away from him. You can’t afford to leave Ari alone for a moment. Women really do go mad for him.’

Ella shrugged, still bone-deep furious with Aristandros at his stony-hearted response to Callie’s illness and his determination that Ella should leave her to attend the party. As far as Ella was concerned, at that moment any woman was welcome to him. ‘Ari is very well able to look after himself,’ she said lightly.

Her mobile phone rang before she rejoined Aristandros, and she stayed out in the hall where it was quieter to talk to Kasma. Callie was still miserable, thirsty, but refusing to drink because of her sore throat. Furthermore, her high temperature remained a source of concern. When Ella put her phone away she registered that Aristandros was watching her. He beckoned her with in an imperious gesture that brooked no refusal. Her full lips compressed; she felt like a disobedient dog having her choke-chain yanked.

Impervious to her mood, Aristandros ran an appreciative forefinger below the pouting line of her lower lip. ‘You look like a queen tonight.’

Her bright-blue eyes gleamed. ‘Worthy of your investment?’

‘Only time will tell,’ Aristandros traded in a typically oblique response. ‘But you’re definitely a trophy. Every man in the room has noticed you.’

‘I’m thrilled,’ Ella fenced in a bored monotone.

An appreciative glint lit his shrewd dark eyes, and smouldering sensuality curved his expressive mouth. ‘Not now, but you will be later. I intend to make the most of the fact that you’re mine to take home, khriso mou.’

With his security team acting as a protective filter, a constant flow of people tried to approach Aristandros. A few were friends, most were interested in talking business opportunities, but an equal number were chancers eager to take advantage of an opportunity to meet one of the richest men in the world. Ella, engaged in watching how other women reacted to him, was constantly amazed by how much blatant encouragement and flirtation came his way, even while she stood there right beside him. He introduced her to only a handful of people.

‘Let’s dance,’ Aristandros urged, predictably getting bored with the social chitchat, and closing his hand over hers to extract her from the crush surrounding him at speed.

It was the first time in over an hour that he had even acknowledged her existence. They had barely reached the edge of the floor when Ella’s mobile phone vibrated its call signal in her clutch bag. Extracting it in spite of Aristandros’s exasperated scrutiny, she left him and returned to the hall to speak to Kasma.

She learned that the doctor had visited and confirmed Ella’s diagnosis of tonsillitis and the treatment she had advised. The medication was finally kicking in to reduce Callie’s fever and ease the pain of her sore throat. Lighter of heart, Ella went off in search of Aristandros, wondering whether he deserved to hear the good news or not.

Gabrielle intercepted her for a chat, and it was just after parting from her that Ella’s phone rang yet again. Ella was astonished when she put the phone back to her ear and heard a voice she had truly believed she might never hear again.

‘Ella…is that you?’ Jane Sardelos was demanding. ‘That friend of yours, Lily, gave me your number.’

‘Mum?’ Ella framed, dry-mouthed with shock, wandering restlessly over to a window and staring out sight-lessly at the lights of Paris.

‘Where are you?’

‘I’m in Paris.’

‘With him? I understand that there was a picture of you in a British newspaper with Aristandros Xenakis. I couldn’t believe it was you, until it was confirmed. What are you doing with him?’ her mother pressed feverishly.

‘I’m living with him and helping to look after Callie,’ Ella admitted with pronounced reluctance.

‘Are you out of your mind? You wouldn’t marry him when he asked you, but seven years on you’re happy to be his whore?’

As that horrible word struck Ella like a physical blow, perspiration dampened her upper lip. ‘It’s not like that, Mum—’

‘Of course it is. It couldn’t be any other way with a Xenakis in a leading role. We’re all disgusted and embarrassed by your behaviour. What do you think this does to our standing in the eyes of family and friends? How could you be so selfish? How could you shame us like this?’

‘Morals have moved on for women since the Middle Ages,’ Ella protested. ‘I’m in a relationship with Aristandros. It doesn’t mean I’ve become a whore.’

‘Your stepfather says that, because of you, we won’t be able to visit Callie now!’ Jane Sardelos complained with a sob. ‘He says that if we do it will look like we’re condoning the situation.’

Ella was pale. ‘That’s untrue and unreasonable. You’re Callie’s grandmother, and your right to see her should not be influenced in any way by my relationship with Ari.’

‘Every picture tells a story, Ella,’ her mother interrupted bitterly. ‘Only last month, Ari Xenakis was with another woman, one of a very long line of other women. Now, all of a sudden, you’re wearing a designer dress and a fortune in diamonds round your throat that you could never have afforded to buy for yourself. So, tell me—if that doesn’t make you a whore, what does?’

The phone went dead with wounding emphasis, denying Ella the chance to defend herself further. A little voice asked her wryly what more she could possibly have said when it was so clear that her parent wouldn’t have been prepared to listen. Numb and sick inside, and with her mother’s angry accusations still ringing in her ears, Ella replaced the phone in her clutch bag. A whore: it was not a word she had ever heard on her rather prim mother’s lips before. But she knew who would have voiced that abusive word in the first instance: her stepfather. Theo would have stormed and shouted until his wife was upset enough to call her daughter and pass on the official family opinion personally. It would not have been the first time that Theo had used her mother as his mouthpiece.

Gabrielle Ferrand approached and addressed Ella with a strained look on her lovely face. ‘I think you’d better go and rescue Ari before a catfight breaks out over him.’

Frowning and totally distracted after her upsetting phone call, Ella followed the brunette and saw Aristandros seated in a lazy sprawl across a sofa. Three gorgeous women literally had him surrounded. They were all over him like a rash, laughing and chattering and giving him looks, little touches and signals that were blatant sexual invitations. Ella felt nauseous just watching the scene, and she waited for Aristandros to take back his own space. If ever a guy had been born to look after himself without any help from anyone else, it was Aristandros. But he made no move to rebut the advances coming his way, and when one of the women sprang up he accompanied her on to the dance floor.

‘He’s been on his own almost all evening,’ Gabrielle muttered frantically. ‘He’s not used to being neglected.’

‘You’re saying I’ve neglected him?’ Ella queried while she watched Aristandros and a sexy redhead salsa-dancing with considerable dexterity and enjoyment. She hadn’t even known he could move like that. Seeing him smile and allow his body to connect intimately with another woman’s hurt like a knife cutting through tender skin. There was an enormous amount of flirtation going on. She was glued to the spot, trapped by ghoulish curiosity and tormented by more pain than she could have believed possible.

‘I didn’t mean to sound critical,’ her companion retorted uncomfortably.

‘Don’t worry about it. Ari has more than his fair share of charisma. Women always make excuses for him when he behaves badly,’ Ella commented, having met with that female reaction to Aristandros on many occasions seven years earlier. ‘But I’m afraid I don’t.’

Unfortunately, Aristandros was simply being himself—an unapologetic womaniser set on amusement. Ella, however, could not bear to have that fact paraded right under her nose, particularly when her mother’s condemnation of their affair was stuck like a giant immoveable rock in the middle of her every thought and reaction. Surely only a woman worthy of the label ‘whore’ would stand by and just accept Ari’s behaviour?