The Greek Tycoon's Blackmailed Mistress
Ella was blissfully happy. She and Aristandros had enjoyed a huge engagement party, and her wedding a couple of months afterwards had been the fairy-tale event that she had always secretly dreamt of having. Although Ella had been just a little pregnant at the time, she hadn’t been showing. Lily had been her chief bridesmaid, and was currently applying for a surgical job at a Greek hospital after meeting up with a Greek businessman of her own at the wedding.
Ella had been surprised when she’d fallen pregnant so quickly, while Ari had merely had his unshakeable faith in his own virility proven to his full satisfaction. Callie was just at the age when a baby brother was a source of fascination to her, and had had to be dissuaded from treating Nikolos like a living, breathing doll. Ella and Aristandros had formally adopted Callie, and although they were careful to tell the child only as much as she could currently understand about her true beginnings and Timon, the little girl regarded them as her mother and father.
When Ella heard the buzz of the helicopter passing overhead, she grinned and headed out to the terrace to watch it land. Lean, dark and stunningly handsome in his business suit, Aristandros strode towards her.
‘How was New York?’ she asked.
‘I had a frantic schedule. I’m just glad to be home with my beautiful wife and children.’ As Callie raced towards him chattering in excitement, Aristandros swung the little girl up and hugged her with an ease that would have been foreign to him a year earlier. He paused beside Ella and lowered his dark head to kiss her.
Tingles of sensual awareness ran up and down her spine and into more private places. ‘I like the dress,’ he growled.
‘Daddy’s talking like a bear,’ Callie giggled, sliding down to the ground to run off again.
Ella twirled so that Aristandros got the full effect of the short, red strappy dress swirling round her slim legs. ‘Happy anniversary,’ she told him.
‘What’s on the agenda for tonight?’
‘Dinner on the yacht, and we’re spending the night on board so that we can have lots and lots of private time without being interrupted,’ Ella told him cheerfully.
Her candour brought a deeply amused smile to his striking features. ‘You know how to keep me happy.’
‘I certainly hope so. I love you loads,’ she confided, wrapping her arms round him.
‘And I love the way you love me as much as I love you.’ Aristandros gazed down at her with brilliant dark eyes. ‘I want you to know that this has been the happiest year of my entire life, agapi mou.’
Ella knew that that was an admission to be truly treasured, and felt almost overwhelmed by emotion.
Over dinner on Hellenic Lady, they caught up after his three-day absence and he gave her a sapphire eternity-ring engraved with their son’s name. Hand-in-hand they walked to their state room, which was adorned with fresh flowers, to share a wonderful night together, and an early morning disturbed neither by a baby’s cries for attention nor a toddler’s wistful demands for company.
But that rare silence felt a touch weird to both of them and, after a quick breakfast, they got in the speedboat to sail back to shore and they spent the rest of the day on the beach as a family…