‘Look after yourself,’ Xan urged grimly. ‘And if you ever need anything, call me—’
Elvi dealt him a rueful grimace. ‘Like that’s going to happen,’ she derided with newly learned cynicism. ‘Goodbye, Xan.’
* * *
‘Daniel’s going to be fine. Your mother says he looks like he’s been beaten up and he’s sprained his ankle but that’s all, so you don’t need to worry,’ Dmitri declared, letting her know that he too was in regular contact with her parent as he accompanied her out to the helicopter waiting in the grounds of the villa. ‘I hope you know you’re very welcome to move to Oxford with your family—’
Elvi smiled warmly at the older man. ‘Thanks. I’m going to tell Mum the truth when I get back, well...almost the truth,’ she adjusted with a slight wince. ‘I won’t tell her anything that upsets her.’
At noon the next day, after a sleepless flight on Xan’s opulent jet and a harried arrival at yet another very fancy apartment, where she left her luggage stacked, Elvi went straight to the hospital and met her mother in the waiting area. Her eyes were burning in her head from exhaustion and the battle to stay in control of her emotions. It’s over. The phrase kept on crashing into her head like an alarm bell shrilling and lacing her every thought with far too much drama. No, no, I’m not in love with him, this is a crush, a long-overdue crush and it is manageable, she told herself firmly.
‘You were with Mr Ziakis...in Greece?’ Sally Cartwright repeated in disbelief. ‘What on earth—?’
‘I went to see him after you were arrested and...then we had dinner and somehow we ended up getting involved,’ Elvi admitted starkly. ‘It was crazy and it all happened terribly fast...of course, it was never going to last—’
‘But that’s why he dropped the theft charge, I imagine.’ Her mother wrapped her arms round her trembling daughter and muttered soothing things, seeing far more than Elvi would ever have admitted in the hollowness of the younger woman’s eyes and her drawn pallor.
The lies swept away, Elvi hoped she would feel better but her mood remained flat as a pancake. As Dmitri had forecast, Daniel was fine, his face badly bruised and swollen and his ankle sprained. Her sibling would be returning home with them on crutches.
Two weeks dragged past. Dmitri hired a van and moved Sally’s family to his terraced house in Oxford. The property was beautifully renovated and a vast improvement on their previous home. Elvi finally got her own bedroom while her mother enthused about the freedom of having a garden again. Elvi, however, had more pressing things on her mind because her period was late. In a sombre mood, she went out to buy a pregnancy test, anxiously counting days on her fingers, striving to be optimistic as she recalled Xan’s lack of concern over that contraceptive mishap.
Thinking about Xan only upset her and she tried not to do it but late at night, lying sleepless in bed, there was nothing else to think about. Xan hadn’t had to say the words in the end but he had found her wanting and he had dumped her like an old shoe within days of taking her to bed for the first time. Her self-esteem at rock-bottom, Elvi threw herself into organising their new home with her mother and looking up training courses online in an attempt to find something that truly interested her rather than settling for the first job available. Unhappily, the pregnancy scare hit her like an express train just when she was trying to move beyond heartbreak.
She sat in the bathroom clutching the wand before she even went downstairs to breakfast. Her brain was running at a thousand knots a minute. How could she be pregnant? How could a single oversight result in such a life-changing event? Yes, she knew the facts of life, but her hazy recollection of that first time with Xan seemed more about passion than anything else. The confirmation of a positive test came up and, in a panic, she reread the instructions all over again. She felt sick and dizzy, overwhelmed by fear of the unknown. She was pregnant, she acknowledged in shock; she was actually going to have Xan’s baby.
She dragged in a steadying breath of oxygen. Naturally she knew there were alternatives but the idea of surrendering her baby to adoption had no appeal for her and she couldn’t bring herself to consider a termination. She would have to tell Xan because he had the right to know: this was his child too. Before she could lose her nerve, she pulled out her phone to text him.
I need to see you. Something to tell you.
Xan read the text in the middle of a meeting. Elvi.
Meet for lunch?
His intelligence warned him that lunch was a very bad idea. Going cold turkey to kill an obsession was a basic ground rule. His hunger for Elvi was persistent, there in the morning when he awoke, there at night when he tried to shut down his thoughts and sleep. Somehow Elvi and her glorious curves had become an obsession, rarely out of his mind. What the hell would she want to see him about? Probably some problem relating to her family, he reasoned grimly, recalling that he had urged her to contact him at any time and could hardly complain if she had decided to take him up on the invitation.
Can’t make it to lunch in time. Living in Oxford now.
Xan froze. She wasn’t even occupying the apartment he had bought her? What the hell was she doing in Oxford? He asked her to meet him that afternoon at her apartment, the one she wasn’t using, he clarified with controlled sarcasm.
It was ages before she assented with a grudging OK and promised to text him once she had worked out what time she would be there.
* * *
Elvi wouldn’t allow herself to dress up for her meeting with Xan. He was the father of her unborn child, not a lover, not someone she wanted to impress, not anything really. In jeans and a purple filmy top, her hair confined in a long braid that snaked down her slender spine, she caught the train and battled every intimate memory that tried to sneak back into her mind. But she had forgotten nothing about Xan from the way he liked to check stocks and shares and eat in silence over breakfast to the provocative blaze of his stunning golden eyes when he was hungry for her.
Had he reconciled with Angie Sarantos? Or had that flirtation simply been a symptom of his restive boredom in Elvi’s company? She allowed herself to think along those lines because it was realistic thinking and naturally she was curious. It was also best not to dwell in advance on Xan’s likely horror at the news that she had conceived because she was well aware that he had not seriously entertained that possibility.
She texted Xan as soon as she arrived at the apartment and anxiously paced the living area while she waited. The shrill of the doorbell took her by surprise because she had assumed he would have a key for the second apartment as he had had for the first.
‘Don’t you have a key?’ she asked as she pulled open the door and fell back a step.
‘No, this apartment is in your name. I have no right of entry here,’ Xan told her quietly.
‘Are you saying you bought it for me? An apartment?’ Elvi gasped incredulously as she went into instant retreat, intimidated by the height
of him towering over her that close. Nor could she believe what she was hearing. He had moved her out of the other apartment to put her into a new one but she had no idea why. In any case, why on earth would he buy her an apartment?
Xan jerked a casual shoulder, dismissing the guilty conscience that had powered the purchase. ‘I wanted you to be secure—’