‘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.’