Behaving as if there was nothing untoward occurring, the young nurse lifted Callie and took her back upstairs to look for the rabbit.
‘If Callie is Ella’s as you say,’ Drakon Xenakis was thundering in Greek, ‘Give her to Ella and let them both go!’
‘I’m not prepared to let either of them go,’ Aristandros drawled as quietly as if he was in church, his audible calm a striking contrast to his grandfather’s anger. ‘I had a very comprehensive agreement drawn up that suits Ella and I very well—’
‘A legal agreement? Is this what I raised you to do—to corrupt a young woman who only wants access to her own child? Is this what it takes to appeal to your jaded appetites now, Ari? If you had a single streak of decency left, you would marry her, for you’ve destroyed her reputation!’
‘The days when women needed to be whiter than white are long gone, Drakon. Thankfully I live in a world with far more enlightened sexual mores,’ Aristandros retorted bitingly. ‘Whether you believe it or otherwise, Ella is happy with me—’
‘She’s worth more than any of the gold-digging sluts you specialise in, and you’re treating her worse than all of them! The only thing I see in this scenario is revenge, Ari…and it’s ugly and unworthy of you.’
Nausea stirring in her stomach, and her blood running cold in her veins, Ella stumbled away from the partly open door before she could be caught in the act of eavesdropping. Drakon’s opinion hit her as hard as a physical blow, because Ari’s grandfather knew him well, indeed far better than she did. She had been quick to discard the idea of Aristandros acting in revenge—too quick? Certainly she had much preferred to believe that the secret of her ongoing attraction was more her being a femme fatale whom he had never forgotten. But how likely was that interpretation? Was it not more likely that Aristandros was taking revenge for her rejection all those years ago? He had made her walk away from her career, her home and even her principles. He had made her enjoy her captivity in the gilded cage of his life. No; he hadn’t made her do anything, she acknowledged, trying to be honest with herself—she had made the choices she’d had to make to be with Callie, the daughter of her heart, and to be fair he had kept his promises.
Even so, revenge struck her as the more apt explanation for Ari’s continuing interest in her. Why else would a man who could have the most beautiful women in the world settle for an inexperienced and unsophisticated doctor who was ill at ease with a party lifestyle? He would not have sacrificed his own desires and preferences for Callie’s benefit. In fact, most probably Callie had merely been used as a weapon to put pressure on her biological mother. Having acquired the child, he had also acquired the perfect means to make Ella dance to his chosen tune, and that was exactly what he had done.
In the shaken-up state she was now in, it was the wrong moment for Ella to set eyes on her family for the first time in seven years. Her stepfather, a heavily built man with thick, grey hair, was standing on the terrace with a drink in his hand. Her mother, a slight, fair-haired woman in a pink dress, was by his side. Behind them stood two tall, dark young men—her half-brothers, grown to adulthood without her knowledge. Ella paled when Theo Sardelos looked right through her, and her mother, her face full of painful discomfiture, turned her head quite deliberately to avoid seeing her only surviving daughter. Her twin half-siblings, disdaining such pretences, stared stonily back at her, their scowling attitude one of pure belligerence.
Ella was very angry that Aristandros had put her family on the guest list without telling her. Conscious that she was not the only person present capable of noting that her family was giving her the cold shoulder, she forced herself to address her stepfather with a perfunctory greeting before turning to her mother to say, ‘Would you like to come and see Callie?’
‘No, she would not,’ Theo Sardelos growled, slinging his stepdaughter a look of profound distaste as he answered for his wife, a controlling habit of his that Ella remembered with repulsion. ‘Your presence here makes that impossible.’
Her olive branch broken and discarded unceremoniously at her feet, Ella did not respond. She knew the older man well enough to appreciate that he would relish any opportunity to embarrass her in front of an audience. Although it took considerable courage, she kept on smiling and moved on, beckoning a waiter to ensure a clutch of late arrivals were served at the buffet. Kasma brought Callie back down, and the little girl, her stuffed rabbit now tucked securely under her arm, sped back to Ella’s side to clutch at her skirt in a possessive hold.