‘Okay.’ Ella’s voice was small and breathless, and she nodded in confirmation; the terrible, frightening tension and the fear of an unknown impossible future was leaving her piece by piece. There was no other woman in his life. He hadn’t been with anyone but her since they’d got back together again. She had misunderstood, deemed him guilty when he was innocent. Her world had horizons and possibilities again, but she was almost afraid of accepting that fact.
‘You’re really shaken up,’ Aristandros remarked, draping her bag over her shoulder and guiding her out of the room. ‘I should be shouting at you for thinking the worst of me and putting me through a hellish evening of frustration and worry. I don’t even like opera at the best of times, but tonight I felt trapped.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she muttered in the lift, and she wanted to lean up against him and cling but wouldn’t let herself act that weak and feminine.
‘You’re never going to trust me, are you? Why do I get the feeling that I’m paying for your stepfather’s sins?’
Ella ducked her head as he tucked her into the limo waiting outside. She had made a hash of things again. A sniff escaped her and then another. Aristandros wrapped both arms round her and almost squeezed the life’s breath out of her. ‘Don’t be silly. You have nothing to cry about.’
‘Maybe it was stupid, and I know I misunderstood, but I honestly thought you must have slept with her I was devastated!’ Ella gasped out strickenly. ‘And I didn’t know what I was going to do because I couldn’t give up Callie to walk away from you—I couldn’t!’
Aristandros held her back from him. ‘That’s one worry you don’t have to have ever again.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I care too much about Callie to use her to control you. You were right. I shouldn’t have involved her in our arrangement. That was inexcusable.’ His darkly handsome features were taut and grim as he made that statement. ‘Whatever happens between us, I will share custody of Callie with you. You love her and she loves you, and I have watched her blossom in your care. I will never try to separate you from her and you will both always enjoy my financial support.’
Ella was astonished by that far-reaching promise and the conviction with which he spoke. ‘Why are you saying this now? Why have you changed your mind after forcing that iniquitous agreement on me?’
‘I recognise that what I did was wrong from start to finish: using Callie as bait to trap you, forcing such an unscrupulous contract on you. Drakon was right in what he said, and he didn’t know the half of what I imposed on you. Worst of all, I knew that what I was doing to you was wrong even as I did it. Yet I still went ahead with it,’ Aristandros recounted heavily, his handsome head turned in profile to her, his mouth harshly compressed.
‘Why, though? Was it all about revenge?’ she pressed, desperate to understand what had motivated him
The silence lay like a blanket and the tension in his big, powerful frame was so fierce she could feel it even though they were no longer touching. The limousine was already pulling in at the airport.
‘Ari…?’ she prompted. ‘I need to know.’
‘I told myself it was purely an act of revenge, but it wasn’t. The truth is usually the most simple answer—and the simple answer is that I just wanted you, and that agreement bound you hand and foot to ensure you couldn’t walk away again. I needed that protection before I could let myself get involved with you again,’ he breathed in a driven undertone. ‘But now I realise that I don’t want to keep you only because I’ve got legal custody of your daughter.’
‘So, if I want to leave and return to my life in London,’ Ella whispered unevenly, ‘You’ll let me go and allow me to take Callie with me?’
‘Letting you both go would kill me, but I won’t go back on my word to you,’ Aristandros declared with raw emphasis as the door beside her was whipped open by his driver.
Surrounded by his security team, they walked through the airport in silence. I just wanted you. Four little words that made a heck of a difference to Ella, and that kept on rhyming back and forth through her head, providing a much-needed mantra of hope. In spite of all the other options he must have had, he had returned to his past and blackmailed her back into a relationship with him. For the first time she registered that she had been and still evidently was much more important to Aristandros Xenakis than he had ever been willing to admit. He didn’t want to lose either her or Callie, but he was willing to let them go free if that was what she decided she wanted.