‘We couldn’t have been expected to report our every movement to our children. We had a multimillion-euro business to run and the staff were perfectly well placed to look after you.’ She laughed and took a good sip of her drink.
‘You could have done and you should have done. That multimillion-euro business has turned into a multibillion business since I’ve been at the helm and I’m still able to eat breakfast every day with Loukas when he’s in my care. His future is all that matters and that future does not include you being his guardian, so finish your drink and get out.’
She pouted. Elizabeth would have laughed if she weren’t so appalled. Mirela had actually pouted.
‘You’re kicking me out when I still haven’t spoken properly to my new daughter-in-law?’ Mirela’s beady eyes finally fixed upon her. ‘Or should that be old daughter-in-law?’
Was that a dig at her age or that they’d been unwittingly married for a decade?
‘You’re not pregnant already, are you, darling? Or do you just like your food?’
‘When I get pregnant you’ll be the first to know,’ Elizabeth said, ignoring the barb. She held out a hand. ‘It’s been a pleasure meeting you... Do I call you Mother?’
Mirela looked at the extended hand and then surprised Elizabeth by shaking it. Before she released it, she studied it a moment then said, ‘I know a good manicurist in Athens. I’ll get the number passed on to you. And I know just the place you can get a chemical peel for your acne scars.’
If Elizabeth had acne scars she might have been offended. As she didn’t, she did the only thing she could think of. She laughed. ‘I can see exactly why Xander and Yanis don’t want you anywhere near Loukas.’
‘And I can see exactly why Xander kept you a secret for ten years,’ Mirela shot back. She opened her mouth again, most likely to spew another sweet insult, when Xander took her arm.
‘Time to go. Don’t bother coming back until you can show some civility to my wife.’
‘I can walk. You don’t need to manhandle me.’ She tugged her arm free, finished her drink and handed the empty glass back to him. ‘I’ll see you in the morning, darling. Don’t forget your father’s flying to Germany for the Munich Conference so he won’t be at the board meeting.’ Then she looked at Elizabeth one last time. ‘I’ll see you in court. Goodbye, darlings.’
Only when she was sure Mirela had truly gone, looking through the window as the chauffeured car sped off to make doubly sure, did Elizabeth dare look at Xander.
‘My God. Your mother is something else.’
He’d poured them both another Scotch and sat himself in one of the rounded pods by the infinity pool, gazing out into the distance with a grim expression on his face.
‘I can only apologise.’
‘You weren’t to know she was coming.’
His head dropped forward and he rubbed the back of his neck. ‘For what she said to you.’
‘You don’t control her mouth.’
‘I’m glad you didn’t let her intimidate you. I would have cut in sooner but I thought I should see how you handled her.’ He lifted his head, his eyes suddenly lightening. ‘You handled her beautifully.’
‘Better than I would have ten years ago,’ she admitted. Ten years ago his mother would have cut her down in flames.
Ironically, it was Xander’s dumping of her to supposedly protect her from Mirela that had toughened her up to deal with the witch.
‘And don’t forget I’ve had practice with my own mom. I would love to get them in a room together. I have no idea who’d come out as top dog but it would be fun to watch.’
‘It sounds like my idea of hell,’ he commented drily.
Then the look between them changed, all the amusement dissolving. Her lips began tingling again as she recalled their kiss...
A mistake that wouldn’t be repeated.
She crossed her arms tightly across her chest before giving a decisive nod. ‘I totally understand why you wouldn’t want her to have custody of Loukas. I will do everything in my power to make sure the judge sees us as a loving, stable couple.’
Xander didn’t say anything, simply stared at her in the way that made her veins heat and her belly turn to mush.
The kiss they’d shared loomed like a spectre between them and it was all she could do not to gaze at those firm lips that had covered hers so deliciously.
She edged away to the door with a pounding heart, and cleared her throat. ‘What happened before your mother turned up...’ She cleared her throat.
He didn’t fill the silence.
She shuffled further back. ‘It was a mistake.’
His jaw clenched. ‘It won’t happen again,’ he stated flatly, then took another large drink of his Scotch, eyes like steel as they bore into her.
Unable to say another word, she jerked a nod and left.
Her heart was still thumping madly when she reached the safety of her room.
* * *
A noise woke her from the light doze she had finally fallen into hours later.
She lifted her head from the pillow but only silence rang out. Just as she’d convinced herself she’d imagined it, she heard it again. A cry.
Throwing the covers off, she jumped out of bed and hurried to unlock her door, then sped down the wide hallway to Loukas’s room.
Cautiously, she put her ear to his door at the same moment he cried out again.
Heart pounding, she pushed it open and entered his room.
He was on his bed, his covers kicked off and half on the floor, his little body twisting and turning, whimpers coming from his mouth.
Should she wake him? Or was it only sleepwalkers you weren’t supposed to rouse?
Another cry came from him and she quickly placed the covers back on him, then sat beside him and tentatively put a hand on his head.
Maybe she could just soothe him back to a happy dream, she figured, holding her breath as she gently stroked his hair.
It seemed to work. After a while he stopped thrashing and the whimpers lessened until they’d gone entirely.
Her heart almost stopped when his eyes opened.
He stared at her wide-eyed, hardly blinking, his mouth forming a tight miserable line.
Wanting to weep for him, Elizabeth continued to stroke his hair. She didn’t speak, hoping he’d be able to see in her eyes that she meant him no harm and only wanted to help.
She remembered so clearly the nightmares she’d suffered as a child, the dreams of finding herself lost and alone. Even as a small child she’d known her parents didn’t love her. The one person who had shown her love had been her granny but their time together had been infrequent and fleeting. Elizabeth’s mother had despised her mother-in-law and her father had feared her. For Elizabeth her granny had been sent from heaven; a security blanket to love and care for her.
It was in that silent moment that she fully understood why Xander had forced her back into his life. He might be incapable of loving her—or any other woman—but he did love this defenceless little boy. And Loukas loved him. Xander was his security blanket in a world where his parents were often incapable of caring for him themselves.
Loukas had learned that adults, Xander excepted, could not be trusted to always be there when he needed them. And, as much as she tried to keep her distance from the little boy, reluctant to form an attachment when she knew her time here was limited and she didn’t want him to have to deal with the abandonment of yet another adult—because that was how Loukas would see it; as an abandonment—all she wanted was to wrap her arms tightly around him and smother him in love.
Loukas’s eyelids became heavier. She stayed where she was until his rigid frame relaxed, his eyes closed a final time and he turned on his side and burrowed back under his covers.
Placing a gentle kiss on the top of his head, she carefully got back to her feet. Only when she turned to tiptoe out of the room did she see Xander standing in the doorway, wearing nothing but a pair of black boxers.
Xander didn’t think his heart had ever felt so full or his chest so tight. For hours he’d lain in his bed, reliving their kiss, castigating himself for starting it, fighting the urge to kick the adjoining door down and get into her bed.
Interspersed with all this had been anger he couldn’t rid himself of over his mother’s surprise visit.
It shouldn’t have been a surprise. His mother was a law unto herself. Both his parents were.
He must have fallen asleep as it had taken him a few moments of disorientation to hear Loukas’s cries. Before he could go to him, he’d heard Elizabeth’s door open and her soft footsteps treading away. He’d arrived at Loukas’s room in time to see her place a hand to his nephew’s head.
There had been such tenderness in her touch, such compassion for the child who had shown her nothing but animosity, that all he could do was watch with the most enormous lump in his throat.
Now, as she padded to the door, he stepped back to let her pass and captured the delicate floral scent she carried everywhere.
His blood thickening, he pulled the door to so it was slightly ajar and faced her.
Only soft night lights gave any colour to the hallway, a glow that gave Elizabeth an ethereal quality, highlighting the beauty of her oval face. All she wore was a T-shirt that fell to her knees, which, with her mass of curls springing in every direction, stripped back the years to a time when she’d briefly been the centre point of his world.
It had been her beauty that had first captured his attention but there was nothing unique about beautiful women, especially in his world where imperfections were dealt with in a permanent manner from the minimum legal age, turning all the socialites he’d mixed with into one homogenous face.
Elizabeth’s beauty had been matched by her smile, which he’d seen her bestow on everyone she made eye contact with. She’d been kind too, another rarity in his world, opening doors for a chambermaid struggling with an enormous cleaning trolley when it seemed as if no one else had even seen her though she was right there before them. He wouldn’t have seen her if he hadn’t been watching Elizabeth.
She might have matured into a cynical sassy bombshell over the years but the Elizabeth from old was in there too, the warm, generous woman he’d been crazy about, still there, ready to spring out and soothe a defenceless child from a nightmare.
‘Thank you,’ he said quietly, struggling to speak through the raggedness of his chest.
She sucked her lips in and swallowed. ‘He’s sleeping now.’
Theos, he ached to touch her again. Her small breasts were like little juts straining through her T-shirt and he so badly wanted to taste them again. He wanted to taste all of her again.
But he’d given his word that it wouldn’t happen and he intended to keep it. Unless Elizabeth threw herself at him and demanded he take her, he would keep his hands to himself, no matter how many cold showers he had to take.
* * *
Elizabeth waited for Xander to say something else and break this strange chemical cocktail weaving around them. She couldn’t tear her eyes from him.
Her heart hammered and she struggled to breathe. The generous proportions of the hallway shrank around them as she gazed into eyes that swam with unashamed desire and made her lungs close up. A pulse set off low within her, her skin heated...
She wanted him so much. Too much. So much that she was in danger of losing her grip on reality, of turning the clock back to a time when she had believed that love was out there and that the desire she had felt for him must translate into love.
These were things she didn’t want to feel. Not ever again. She couldn’t trust her own heart to do the right thing so she must trust her head and let it keep her grounded in reality.
‘We should get some sleep.’
He nodded and put a hand to her cheek, rubbing his thumb gently over her cheekbone.
She closed her eyes, her skin burning under his touch, certain he must be able to see her thundering heart beneath her T-shirt.
There was the lightest brush of lips against hers before she heard a deep inhalation. ‘Goodnight, Elizabeth.’
When she opened her eyes, all she could see were the muscles across his back rippling as he walked to his bedroom and shut the door firmly behind him.
* * *
Xander ruffled his nephew’s hair. ‘Sleep tight. I’ll see you in the morning.’
Loukas sat up and hooked his arms around Xander’s waist. ‘Can I see Mummy again tomorrow?’
‘If she’s well enough.’ He wouldn’t make any false promises. Katerina needed a liver transplant. To get this, she would have to be sober for six months. For Katerina to recover and have anything like a normal life, she had to quit drinking. This was an issue in itself as she refused, despite all the evidence including her once glowing complexion now an almost fluorescent yellow, to admit she was an alcoholic. She’d been transferred to a different private hospital, one that was more like a convalescence home. There she was watched twenty-four hours a day and given all manner of counselling. Getting a drink was impossible. For the time being she was safe, even if in denial.
She’d been happy to see Loukas though. Xander had wanted to grab her shoulders and force her to look in her son’s face.
If you won’t admit your problem and fight to save yourself, do it for him, he’d longed to shout. But shouting wouldn’t have changed anything. The change could only come from Katerina herself, a woman who had spent her life controlled by others and who had found her only freedom in the bottom of a bottle of spirits.
He thought of Elizabeth—hell, when didn’t he think of Elizabeth?
She’d been back in his life for a week. Since their kiss three nights ago they’d hardly seen anything of each other except during the evening meals they shared with Loukas, during which they were studiously polite to each other.
Elizabeth had taken control of her life in an entirely different way from Katerina. She’d formed her own successful business from nothing after putting herself through college, never giving up even when it meant having to walk miles every day as she didn’t have the money to pay a bus fare. He felt intense admiration for that, for driving herself to succeed when it would have been far easier to fail.
Once he’d extricated himself from Loukas’s hold, he turned off the bedside light and left the room. It was time for a shower.
Tonight, he and Elizabeth were going to a fundraising gala at the Athens Museum so the three of them and Loukas’s nanny were staying the night in Xander’s Athens home.
It was the perfect opportunity for them to be photographed together and the gala was for a good cause.
After showering, he shaved, then set about dressing, donning a dark blue suit with a white shirt and striped silver tie. He spent half a minute styling his hair, fastened his cufflinks, dabbed some cologne on, checked his shoes for scuffs and declared himself good to go.
Impulse made him knock on the adjoining door. ‘Are you nearly ready?’
‘Two minutes. I’ll meet you in the living room.’
The two minutes turned into twenty. Just as he was starting to get annoyed, footsteps sounded down the stairs.
Rising to meet her, he stepped through the living room door and all the air sucked itself from his lungs.
She came to a stop two steps from the bottom of the wide stairs, consternation on her face. ‘Well? Am I presentable for Greek society?’
He swallowed to dislodge a boulder jammed in his throat. ‘You look...’ he shook his head ‘...ravishing.’
Her full-length couture dress fitted snuggly against her lean body, high-necked with a frill at the cuff of the long sleeves. Dark grey in colour, it was overlaid with a mesh of tiny white metallic roses that glimmered under the light. A thin black belt with a large crystal buckle and a matching purse completed the outfit. She’d swept her mass of hair to one side in a knot at the base of her ear with a crystal fastener, a couple of stray curls left free to soften
her oval face. Her eyes were subtly made up while her lips matched the blood red of her fingernails. The whole effect was dramatic and classy and hit him in the groin more effectively than if she’d worn something revealing.
It was only when she took the last remaining steps that he noticed the slit running the entire length of her right leg, right up to mid-thigh, showcasing a pair of sparkling silver heels, and the ache in his groin became altogether harder.
Gritting his teeth, determined not to show his arousal—for God’s sake, he was thirty years old, far too old to be getting inappropriate erections—he held out an arm to her.
The slightest of curves tugged on her lips, and she slipped a hand into it.
It was time to face the cameras.
CHAPTER NINE
THE ATHENS MUSEUM was in the Monastiraki neighbourhood, a short distance from Xander’s home.
‘We could’ve walked,’ Elizabeth said when they came to a stop outside an impressive neoclassical building.
He arched a brow. ‘You want to walk in those shoes?’
‘Maybe not,’ she agreed demurely.
All day she’d had butterflies playing in her belly. Throughout her career she’d acted as a stylist for many of her clients, mostly her female ones. Some were new to a particular section of the wealthy world their date inhabited. Others, unwilling to confide in anyone what they were doing, simply wanted the company. What Elizabeth rarely did was doll herself up and attend a function such as this. When she did it was always with one eye on her watch, looking for the earliest polite time to leave.
Tonight she’d deliberately left her wrist bare and her cell in her room. Like in Diadonus, Xander had put her in the adjoining room to his.
The car door opened and Xander got out. He turned to her and held out a hand.
Meeting his eye, she took it, swinging her legs out in what she hoped was a graceful manner, and was thrown back to a week ago on St Francis when he’d helped her out of the golf buggy at the airport.
It was crazy to think only a week had passed since that evening. She’d gone to bed that night hating him, certain she would never forgive him for his threats and blackmail when a simple explanation of the situation would have been enough to get her agreement.
Married for the Greek's Convenience Page 9
