Possession: The Greek Tycoon's Blackmailed Mistress / His Virgin Acquisition

‘You were the last person who could have helped her. She was too jealous of you.’

‘It’s perfectly possible that Susie was suffering from severe post-natal depression. Didn’t my family try to help her?’ Ella prompted feverishly.

‘I don’t think they recognised the extent of the problem, or that they wanted to get involved once they realised that Susie’s marriage was in grave trouble,’ Aristandros said flatly.

Ella knew that in such circumstances her domineering stepfather would have urged her mother to mind her own business, and that her mother would not have had the backbone to stand up to him even if she’d disagreed. She felt unbearably sad. Had Susie been suffering from depression? Evidently, however, even Timon had been unable to persuade her sibling to seek professional help. Poor Callie had had a troubled and insecure life right from the moment of her birth. Ella thought that it was hardly surprising that the little girl was quiet and somewhat behind in her development.

‘How much time have you spent with Callie?’ Ella asked Aristandros.

His well-defined black brows pleated, as if he suspected a trick question. ‘I see her every day that we’re under the same roof.’

‘But do you play with her? Talk to her? Hold her?’

Aristandros winced at those blunt questions. ‘I’m not a touchy-feely guy. That’s what you’re here for.’

Ella breathed in deep and stood up. ‘I don’t want to offend you, but I have to be frank. At the moment, all you seem to do is wave at her from the doorway of her nursery once or twice a day.’

Aristandros frowned and threw up his hands in objection at her censorious tone. ‘It’s a little game we play. What harm does it do?’

Ella was hanging on to her temper only by a hair’s breadth. He was not that obtuse. He could hardly believe that he was playing father of the year with a long-distance wave. ‘Callie needs to be touched and talked to and played with. The reason she didn’t rush to greet you today is because you’ve got her accustomed to only seeing you at a distance—and that’s how you like it, isn’t it? Handsoff parenting? But she needs real contact with you—’

‘What am I supposed to do with a baby?’ Lean, strong face hard with impatience and hauteur, Aristandros ground out that demand, clearly offended by her criticism. ‘I’m a very busy man and I’m doing my best.’

‘I know you are. You just need a little direction,’ Ella murmured, suddenly wondering if the closest he had ever got to his own dysfunctional parents was a breezy, noncommittal wave from the nursery door. ‘And then you’d be brilliant, because you always do well at anything you set out to do.’

His dark eyes gleamed at that assurance while a wicked slow-burning smile tilted his beautiful mouth. ‘Flattery will get you nowhere, glikia mou.’

‘Will you think again about flying to Paris—for Callie’s sake?’ Ella pressed softly.

‘You don’t do sweet and submissive well.’

Mortified by the derisive tone that let her know that he had seen straight through her attempt to talk him round to her way of thinking, Ella stood straight as a blade, colour burnishing her cheeks. ‘I was trying to be tactful.’

‘I don’t like it. It doesn’t suit you,’ Aristandros spelt out without skipping a beat. ‘On the very first day you meet Callie, do I need to remind you that I make all the decisions where she’s concerned?’

Ella turned very pale at that blunt reminder. She met cold eyes, the warning look of a strong male who had no intention of allowing his authority to be challenged. Her tummy flipped. He made her appreciate all over again that he was the one in control, and that she was walking a dangerous path from which she could not afford to stray. It was clear that he intended to hold her to the very letter of the agreement he had made her sign. She had promised not to interfere in Callie’s upbringing. All of a sudden she was appreciating just how difficult it was likely to be to take care of Callie while following his rules.

‘We come first in this instance, not the child. Don’t let her come between us and cause discord,’ Aristandros advised her with forbidding emphasis.

Ella wanted to tell him how selfish and unreasonable he was being, but he had just delineated her boundaries as a warning and she did not dare. Aristandros Xenakis had spent thirty-two years on the earth doing exactly what he liked at all times. She might try to guide, but he would never allow her to lead. Who was she to think she could change him? The chill in the atmosphere raised gooseflesh on her bare arms and she turned to leave.

‘Where are you going?’

Her spine prickled with apprehension. ‘I, er, need to work out what I’m going to wear this evening.’

‘No need. As yet you don’t have a proper wardrobe. My staff will organise a selection of dresses to be brought to my Paris home for you, and your maid will do your packing. There’s very little that you need to do for yourself now.’

Ella flipped back round. ‘Sometimes you scare me …’ And the instant she voiced that admission she regretted it, but there it was: the complete unvarnished truth.

Aristandros cast aside the file and vaulted upright. His astute eyes were unreadable, his fabulous bone-structure taut. ‘I don’t want that.’

Ella pinned her tremulous lips closed. ‘I can’t help the way I feel.’

‘You’re one of the strongest women I’ve ever known,’ Aristandros countered.

But he was making a coward of her because if she spoke her mind she stood to lose too much, Ella conceded bitterly. Aristandros closed a hand over hers and tugged her closer. With an imperious shift of his handsome head, he smoothed her fingers straight and linked their hands. ‘If it’s that important, I’ll make more effort with Callie.’ Unusually he hesitated, his wide, sensual mouth compressing. ‘I don’t know how to go about it, though. I didn’t have a conventional childhood.’

Ella was well aware that even that minor admission of ignorance was a major step for him, and that any sort of change of heart on his part was to be warmly appreciated and encouraged, but she was still so tense and worked up that her hand trembled in his. ‘I know,’ she said feelingly, her heart lurching inside her, for his cruelly troubled childhood had been lived out in the full glare of the media spotlight thanks to his larger-than-life parents and was very well documented.

‘My earliest memory is of my father shouting at my mother when I almost drowned in a swimming pool. They were either drunk or high …’ A broad shoulder shifted, his strong face hardening. ‘They were so busy fighting they left me out on the terrace and forgot about me again. I know what not to do if you have a child.’

‘Yes, of course you do,’ she agreed. ‘When you’re a kid it’s so frightening when you see adults fighting and out of control. The first time I saw Theo hit my mother, I thought the world was going to end …’ As Ella realised what she had inadvertently revealed, she was appalled by her carelessness, and she fell silent.

‘Repeat that,’ Aristandros urged, his narrowed gaze reflecting his stunned reaction. ‘The first time you saw your stepfather hit your mother?’

Ella was aghast at what she had let drop. ‘I don’t want to talk about it. I really didn’t mean to say that!’

Aristandros lifted a hand to tip up her chin so that her eyes were forced to meet his. ‘But now that you have, there’s no going back or denying it. Theo Sardelos is in the habit of hitting your mother?’

Ella was pale as death, and full of the shame she had never been able to shake over that sordid reality. ‘I don’t think the violence happens as much now as it once did … at least, I would hope not,’ she confided jerkily. ‘But it’s been so long since I had any contact with them, I really have no idea.’

‘Did he ever hit you?’ Aristandros growled.

‘No, only my mother. It’s a pity he didn’t have a legal agreement drawn up like you did before they got married, though I’m not sure she would have signed up if she’d known what she was in for!’

‘What the hell are you saying?’ Aristandros grated.

‘Well, that’s why he beat her up—she objected when he didn’t come home at night. He was always with other women,’ Ella explained grudgingly. ‘I think he had affairs with every secretary he ever had, as well as with some of the friends Mum made over the years. Like you, he’s very attractive to the opposite sex and an incorrigible womaniser.’

Brilliant dark eyes assailed hers with cold, hostile force. ‘I’ve never hurt a woman in my life, nor would I.’

‘I didn’t insinuate that you would. That’s not why you scare me,’ Ella extended tightly. ‘You scare me because you’re so cold-blooded, so tough and determined to win every bout. It’s your way or the highway, and trying not to fall foul of that is a constant challenge.’

‘I don’t want you to feel like that, but I can’t change what I am.’ Aristandros breathed, with a raw edge to his deep drawl. ‘The fact you compared me to Theo Sardelos is revealing. You see us as similar personalities, a comparison which I absolutely reject. But I am shocked by what I have just learned. I can hardly credit that you never breathed a word to me about what was going on in your own home seven years ago.’

‘It was a private matter. I grew up with a mother who swore me and my siblings to silence. We were brought up to be ashamed of it and keep it hidden. The violence was never, ever discussed. Everybody tried to pretend it didn’t happen.’

‘Even your brothers?’ Aristandros prompted with growing incredulity. ‘Susie never mentioned it to Timon either.’

‘Susie just ignored it, and the twins were still quite young when I left home to go to university. I don’t know how things stand now. I’ve always hoped it stopped, but I suspect that was rather foolish wishful thinking,’ she muttered heavily. ‘Look, can we please drop this subject?’

Unsympathetic to that plea, Aristandros settled his smouldering gaze on her. ‘You thought I might be like your stepfather, didn’t you? That’s one of the reasons you wouldn’t marry me.’

‘I don’t want to discuss this any more,’ Ella told him quietly, and she turned on her heel and simply walked out of the salon. She was shaking like a leaf and cursing her unwary tongue. There was no way she could tell him the truth. Of course she had seen a similarity between him and her stepfather. But with Aristandros it had not been violence she feared, but the terrible pain, constant fear and suspicion of living with an unfaithful partner. She had loved him too much to face that prospect.

Ella was overseeing her packing when Aristandros strode into the state room. With a casual movement of one hand he dismissed the maid while wrenching off his tie with the other. ‘You’ve kept too many secrets from me, moli mou,’ he delivered harshly. ‘I don’t like that. I will tell you now—that has to change.’

Ella slanted a feathery brow. ‘Just like that?’