‘You’ll be in Oxford for the beginning of Daniel’s classes,’ Elvi remarked approvingly.
‘Yes...’ Sally smiled suddenly, all her natural warmth on display as she hugged her daughter’s shoulders where she sat. ‘Isn’t it amazing how life can just suddenly take a turn for the better?’
‘Amazing,’ Elvi agreed.
‘My only concern is that I’m going to see less of you.’ Sally sighed.
‘Can’t have everything,’ Elvi quipped. ‘And I can still visit.’
‘Can I ask you just one question?’ Sally prompted anxiously. ‘Why can’t we meet this boyfriend of yours?’
Elvi tried and failed to fit Xan Ziakis into the boyfriend category and reddened. ‘It’s...er...too soon,’ she mumbled uncomfortably.
‘So, it has been one of those “love at first sight” efforts, then,’ Sally assumed, seeming to relax at that idea. ‘He hasn’t been around long—’
‘And it could end as quickly as it started,’ Elvi dared to add.
Sally grimaced as she made the tea. ‘I won’t wish that on you...but it would mean you could move to Oxford and join us.’
‘Probably,’ Elvi allowed, cupping her hands round the warm mug, her turmoil over Xan soothed by her mother’s restored spirits.
And why did she even feel that she was in turmoil over him? she questioned with self-loathing. They had had sex and that was all. There was nothing more to them. They were not a couple in a relationship. And if she was learning things she would sooner not have known, well, that was part of growing up, she told herself impatiently. The first lesson had been that she could enjoy intimacy without the finer feelings getting involved, and she hadn’t been proud of that until Xan’s detachment in the aftermath had wounded her, teaching her that while she might tell herself that she expected nothing more, she was still somehow programmed to want more from the man than he was ever likely to give her.
Only a couple of minutes before nine, Elvi returned to the apartment and was perplexed to find it stripped of everything she owned. Where was her stuff? It meant she couldn’t change out of the jeans she had gone home in, even had she wanted to.
And why would she want to? she asked herself irritably. Pleasing Xan by wearing the clothes he had bought for her shouldn’t be on her to-do list. In fact the sooner he got tired of her, she told herself, the better it would be for both of them. A trip to Greece in his company wasn’t likely to change anything between them and they had nothing whatsoever in common beyond the fact that they had both been born human.
CHAPTER SIX
SHORTLY AFTER NINE, Elvi was wafted away from the apartment to Xan’s penthouse.
There was nothing comfortable about that experience, primarily because Xan wasn’t at the penthouse to greet her. Dmitri informed her with positive cheerfulness that his employer was attending a bankers’ dinner at a private club, and left her to wander alone around the most amazing living space Elvi had ever seen.
It astonished her that here was only one massive bedroom, because her mother had never mentioned that fact, or that there was a gym. Of course, he had to make the effort to keep fit when he was in a desk job, she reasoned while a flood of spontaneous images of Xan’s lean, muscular physique filled her memory to overflowing. Her face burned up and she registered that she had changed, he had changed her, whether she liked it or not.
The living area was all space and contemporary
furniture, the bedroom simply empty by comparison until she peeked into the closets her mother had mentioned and discovered the marvels of Xan’s need to classify everything into a category, and it made her wonder why he was that way. Her clothing was also to be discovered in a closet, but it hadn’t been colour-coded. There was only one en-suite bathroom, and it contained a magnificent sunken bath that called to Elvi much like a siren’s song after the day she had endured. Evidently Xan enjoyed a puritanical bathing experience because there were no perfumed lotions and nothing that made bubbles, but she sank into the warm depths of the water regardless, only then appreciating how very tired she was.
All that fretting about her first experience of sex had taken it out of her, not to mention the awkward aftermath when Xan had treated her much like a stranger to whom he had to be polite, she reflected wearily. In a minute she would get out of the bath and climb into the only bed available.
* * *
Taking his security team by surprise, Xan left the official dinner early. It felt very odd to him to picture someone waiting for him at the penthouse and he suppressed the observation, exasperated by the unusual thoughts interfering with his normally disciplined state of mind. He stalked into his bedroom, spotted a little pile of clothes on the floor and frowned. Well, she was here but where?
He walked round the entire apartment before deciding that she had to be in the bathroom and only then noticed that the door was slightly ajar. He pushed it quietly wide and saw her fast asleep in his bath and sunk low enough in the water for it to be dangerous. Jawline clenching, he reached for a large towel before reaching for her. She wakened, startled and apparently stricken to find herself in his arms, bright blue eyes filled with alarm. ‘What? Where?’ she framed in dismay.
‘You fell asleep,’ he told her as her torrent of hair dripped everywhere as if she were a mermaid dragged suddenly from the sea.
‘What are you doing with me?’
‘I was putting you in bed—’
‘But I can’t go to bed with wet hair!’ she gasped.
Mouth compressing, Xan set her down again. ‘Just wrap it in a towel and go to bed,’ he urged.
‘Have you any idea what it would look like in the morning if I did that?’ Elvi exclaimed in receipt of that ill-advised male suggestion.