Possession: The Greek Tycoon's Blackmailed Mistress / His Virgin Acquisition

Clashing with the perceptive glint in his brilliant dark-golden eyes, something trembled inside Ella. In a desperate attempt to distract him, she reclaimed her hand and said brightly, ‘I like your yacht.’

Aristandros flung her a sardonic smile. ‘No, you don’t. You believe it’s yet another example of my habits of conspicuous consumption, and you think I should have spent the money having wells dug somewhere in Africa.’

Colour washed as high as the roots of Ella’s hair. ‘I was a terrible prig at twenty-one, wasn’t I? These days I’m not quite so narrow-minded.’

‘The Xenakis Trust, which I set up, contributes a great deal to the most deserving charities,’ Aristandros confirmed. ‘You should find me worthy of approval now.’

Ella paled, because the meeting was not progressing in the way she had hoped. Every word he spoke seemed to allude in some way to the past she was keen to leave buried. ‘We’re neither of us the same people we were then.’

Aristandros inclined his arrogant dark head, neither agreeing nor disagreeing, and invited her to sit down again. Coffee was served for his benefit. ‘I was surprised that you weren’t at your sister’s funeral,’ he admitted.

Ella set down her tea with a sharp little snap. ‘I’m afraid I didn’t know about the accident until some time after it took place.’

His ebony brows pleated in surprise. ‘Nobody in your family contacted you?’

‘Not in the immediate family, no. It was my aunt, my mother’s sister, who told me after the event. It was quite awkward, because she had assumed I already knew,’ Ella explained reluctantly. ‘Obviously the news came as a huge shock to me. Timon and Susie were so young. It’s a devastating loss for their daughter.’

His lean, strong face was grave. ‘And you’re concerned about Calliope?’

‘I’m sure that everyone in both families is equally concerned about her,’ Ella countered.

Aristandros surveyed her with hard, dark eyes and bit out an appreciative laugh. ‘Did dealing with patients finally teach you the art of tact?’he mocked. ‘I doubt that anyone is quite as concerned as you appear to be—’

‘There’s something I need to explain about Callie …’

‘You think I don’t know that you’re her biological mother?’ The tall, powerful Greek’s dark, deep drawl was laced with honeyed derision. ‘Of course I know that.’

Jolted by his assurance, Ella tilted her chin. ‘I assume Timon told you?’

‘Yes. Naturally, I was surprised. After all, you once told me that you didn’t want children.’

‘At twenty-one years old I didn’t, and when my sole input to the process was donated eggs I didn’t consider Callie to be my child when she was born. She was Susie and Timon’s daughter.’

‘How very selfless of you,’ Aristandros murmured flatly. ‘Yet in spite of that statement you are here.’

‘Yes,’ Ella acknowledged. ‘I would very much like to see my niece.’

‘Is that really what you came all this way to ask of me? One single visit with her, and then you walk away again never to look back?’ Aristandros outlined with a look of disbelief.

Ella didn’t know quite how to answer that. She was afraid to be too honest and reveal the depth of her longing to become a more important part of Callie’s life. ‘If that is all you’re prepared to allow me. Something is better than nothing.’

Brilliant dark eyes rested on her. ‘You want so little?’

Colour warmed her cheeks for dissemblance was not her style. She was entrapped by the power of his gaze, awesomely aware of the unyielding strength and shrewd intelligence of the man behind it. She did not dare lie to him, and knew that any form of evasion would be held against her. ‘I think you know that I would like more.’

‘But would more be in Callie’s best interests? And how badly do you want that access to the child?’ Aristandros enquired huskily.

Ella snatched in a charged breath. ‘Very badly,’ she admitted. ‘I don’t believe I’ve ever wanted anything so much.’

Aristandros loosed a sudden, grating laugh that took her aback. ‘Yet she could have been our child. Instead, you made it possible for my cousin and best friend to become a father, and let your sister give birth to a little girl who was genetically half yours. Did it ever occur to you that I might find that particular arrangement offensive?’

The colour in Ella’s cheeks slowly drained away, and her face took on the pinched quality of constraint. ‘No, I’m afraid that possibility didn’t occur to me, and I can only hope that you don’t still feel that way now that you’re Callie’s guardian.’

‘I got over it. I’m not the sentimental type, and I would never hold a child’s parentage against her,’ Aristandros fielded with a harsh edge of emphasis on that point. ‘What I need to know now is how far are you prepared to go to get what you want? How much will you sacrifice?’

‘Are you saying that it might be possible for me to establish an ongoing relationship with my niece?’ Ella pressed, wondering why he was talking about sacrifices.

A slow, steady smile curved his handsome, chiselled mouth. ‘If you please me, the sky’s the limit, glikia mou.’

CHAPTER TWO

ELLA was thoroughly chilled by the smile on Aristandros’s lean, darkly handsome face and his casual term of endearment jarred on her. She had not forgotten what she was dealing with: a very rich and powerful male whose ego she had once dented. Quite accidentally dented, though, she affixed ruefully to that recollection. Their dialogue, however, had taken a sudden step into unknown territory and she genuinely didn’t know what he was getting at.

‘I’m not sure that I appreciate your meaning,’ Ella said carefully, her hyacinth-blue eyes level and enquiring.

‘You’re far from being stupid,’ Aristandros countered in his measured accented drawl. ‘If you want to see Callie, you can only do so on my terms.’

Ella slid out of her comfortable seat and walked with quick harried steps over to the rails farthest away, eager for the breeze coming in off the sea to cool her anxious face. ‘I know that—if I didn’t accept that, I wouldn’t be here.’

‘My terms are tough,’ Aristandros spelt out bluntly. ‘You want Callie. I want you, and Callie needs a female carer. If we put those needs together we can come to an arrangement that suits all three of us.’

I want you. That was almost the only phrase she initially picked out of that speech. She was shocked. He still found her attractive—seven years on? Even in her sensible brown trouser-suit, when she was stressed out of her mind? In that first instant of astonishment, she almost turned round to tell him that he was the answer to an overworked doctor’s prayers. That side of her life had not just taken a back seat while she’d studied and worked her steady path through all the medical hoops she had had to traverse to qualify, it had vanished.

She reminded herself that being wanted by Aristandros did not, by any stretch of the imagination, make her one of a select group. As a woman, she was clued up enough to go on a TV quiz show and answer virtually any question about Aristandros’s highly volatile and energetic love-life. She knew that while his sexual skill and stamina in bed might be legendary according to the tabloid press, his staying power outside the bedroom was of exceptionally short duration. Since they had last met, a constant procession of gorgeous supermodels, starlets and socialites had briefly shared his fast-lane, champagne lifestyle before being ditched and replaced. He got bored very easily.

Indeed, Aristandros had gone on to fulfil every worst expectation that Ella had had of him seven years earlier. His relationships appeared to be short-lived, shallow, self-serving, and not infrequently featured infidelity. He had closely followed in the footsteps of his notorious father as a womaniser. Nothing Ella read about Aristandros had ever given her cause to regret refusing to marry him. He could no more have adapted to the restrictions of matrimony than a tiger could adjust to being a domestic pet. He would have broken her heart and destroyed her, just as her faithless stepfather had destroyed her mother with his extra-marital diversions. After twenty-odd years of marriage, Jane Sardelos had neither backbone nor self-esteem left.

‘You’re suggesting that, if I have sex with you, you’ll let me see Callie?’ Ella queried in a polite tone of incredulity.

‘I’m not quite that crude, glikia mou,’ Aristandros fielded. ‘Nor so easily satisfied. I’m even prepared to offer you something I’ve never offered a woman before. I want you to move in with me—’

‘To live with you?’ Ella echoed in astonishment, a powerful wave of disbelief winging through her taut length.

‘Live and travel with me as my mistress. How else could you look after your niece? Of course, there would be conditions,’ Aristandros continued smoothly. ‘You couldn’t hope to work and still meet my expectations. Living with me and taking care of Callie would be a fulltime occupation.’

‘You haven’t changed one little bit,’ Ella framed shakily, even as her heart jumped in anticipation at the idea of having the freedom to take care of her niece. ‘You still expect to take priority over everything else.’

Aristandros angled back his arrogant dark head, stubborn eyes hurling an unashamed challenge. ‘Why not? I have known many women who would be delighted to make me and my interests their main priority in life. Why would I even consider accepting a lesser commitment from you?’

‘But you can’t make a child part of a deal like that!’ Ella condemned fiercely. ‘It would be immoral and horribly unscrupulous!’

‘I don’t suffer from moral scruples. I’m a practical guy who has no plans to get married to give Callie a mother. So, if you want to be her replacement mother, you have to play this as I want it played.’

He was offering her everything she longed for in return for surrendering everything she had worked so hard to achieve. It was blackmail and it was revenge in one cruelly potent weapon. ‘After seven years, how can we go from having no relationship at all into living together? And me a mistress?’ she questioned unevenly, the unfamiliar word thick and unwieldy on her tongue. ‘It’s crazy.’

Aristandros slowly unfolded his big powerful frame, from his seat and strolled towards her like a sleek panther on the prowl. His narrowed gaze blazed golden and welded to her, homing in on the soft pink of her mouth. ‘It’s not a problem for me. I find you amazingly attractive.’

‘And that’s all that it takes for you—lust?’ Ella slung between gritted teeth with a look of distaste.