‘Four half-sisters, two half-brothers.’
‘So...’ Elvi rested inquisitive eyes on his lean, darkly handsome visage, momentarily reminding him of a baby bird seeking a titbit ‘...that means either your mother or your father had more than one marriage—’
‘My father was a five times loser at the altar,’ Xan supplied drily. ‘Two models and two beauty queens followed my mother and all four wives were greedy to feather their own nests.’
‘Oh...’ Elvi said nothing more, understanding a little more about his background than she had previously because a multi-married father, a possibly betrayed mother and a bunch of half-siblings implied a fairly dysfunctional family history, compared with her own. But she was reluctantly impressed by Xan’s assurance that he looked after his younger siblings, even though he didn’t consider himself close to them. ‘So, whose wedding are we attending?’
‘Delphina, the youngest one. She’s twenty. At an age when she ought to be out forging a career and a lively social life, she’s tying herself down,’ Xan declared with cynical disapproval. ‘She and Takis will be in the divorce court within five years.’
Elvi winced. ‘If they truly love each other they’ll make it through,’ she argued.
Xan rolled his eyes, unimpressed, and rustled his newspaper before dropping his head to give the printed word his full attention again. A shard of sunlight shone across the glossy blue-black strands of his hair, which he wore longer on top, shorn short at the sides. His wickedly long black lashes shielded his gaze from her, drawing her eyes down the straight blade of his nose to the faint dark shadow of stubble that shaded his golden skin even soon after shaving. Blinking in confusion, Elvi looked away, questioning her fascination, denying the licking little curl of heat uncoiling between her thighs, pressing them together to stop that betrayal in its tracks.
She had to be his mistress but that didn’t mean she had to like it or blindly accept that she was attracted to him. She wasn’t going to play that game to his rules, wasn’t going to let sex seduce her into being disloyal to her own ideals. She didn’t want sex without feelings involved and wasn’t about to let her body mislead her. She was stronger than that...wasn’t she? If she let herself sink without trace into that sexual chemistry, it would only encourage him to hang on to her longer. And she didn’t want that, of course she didn’t, she told herself firmly.
As Elvi drifted away from the table with all the precise direction of a dandelion seed blowing in the breeze, Xan watched her pause to look out of the window, almost trip over a chair and only then head towards the door. She lived inside her head more than she lived in the real world, he thought impatiently. Her nature was utterly alien to his and he couldn’t understand why he had the most ridiculous urge to smooth her passage through every obstacle.
Returning to the bedroom, intending to make a start on that packing to be ready for their departure in an hour’s time, Elvi was perplexed to find Sylvia already there with suitcases and an assistant.
‘Tell me what you want to bring with you to Greece,’ Sylvia urged helpfully, as if it was no big deal to be standing in someone else’s bedroom working before seven in the morning.
Being rushed through the VIP channel at the airport only heightened Elvi’s sense of anticipation, no matter how hard she tried to suppress it, and, stepping onto Xan’s sleek private jet, she was unable to silence a small gasp of awe at the space in the cabin furnished with ivory leather seating and the kind of luxuries that even she, who had never flown before, knew were extravagances available only to the very wealthy. The svelte stewardess offered her an array of different coffees, a library of films, all the latest glossy magazines and even the option of a lie-down in the stateroom.
‘Take a seat,’ Xan instructed her tersely, wondering why she was still hovering in the middle of the aisle.
‘It’s my first flight,’ she whispered, not wanting any of the smartly uniformed cabin crew around them to hear. ‘I can’t help staring—’
Xan closed a hand over hers and settled her down in the seat opposite his. ‘Life’s just full of firsts for you right now.’
Elvi dealt him a stonily unamused glance and lifted her chin.
‘I’m not making fun of you... I’m not,’ Xan insisted, working hard not to laugh at that look she had given him, which had washed off him like a feather trying to beat up a rock. ‘But why haven’t you flown before? For most people it’s like catching a bus these days.’
‘You really don’t have a clue what my life has been like.’
‘Then educate me.’
‘You’d be bored,’ Elvi told him repressively, having caught the gleam of amusement in his gaze at her earlier naïve admission.
His expectant silence nagged at her. ‘Obviously we never had the money to go on holidays,’ she admitted unwillingly.
‘Then why have a passport?’
‘Equally obviously people still like to live in hope.’
‘Even with an alcoholic parent?’
‘Sally went through a very tough time after my father died but she still adopted me,’ Elvi proclaimed defensively.
‘Adopted?’ Xan shot her a startled glance. ‘You were adopted?’
Elvi sighed. ‘My mother was my father’s first wife but she died when I was a baby. Sally adored my dad but she always believed that he only married her to get a mother for me. He was a junior surgeon working long hours and it was difficult for him to cope with a kid at the same time,’ she told him. ‘When he died, Sally worried that someone might try to take me away from her—’
‘Presumably this adoption occurred before she took to the bottle?’ Xan slotted in, his careless wording exasperating Elvi.
‘Yes, but the point I’m trying to make is that, even in the midst of grieving for my dad, Sally was scared that I would be taken away from her because we weren’t related by blood—’
A shapely black brow skated up. ‘And presumably you feel that you owe her something for that devotion. Did you ever check the terms of your father’s will?’
The insinuation that her adoptive mother could’ve had something to gain from adopting her set Elvi’s teeth on edge but it struck her as typical of Xan’s intensely cynical outlook on life. ‘He didn’t leave a will. He wasn’t much older than you when he died from an aneurysm. Sally applied to adopt me because she loved me and wanted to keep me with her and Daniel.’
‘Then it sucks to be you,’ Xan could not resist saying, thinking about what he knew of alcoholic behaviour and how Elvi must’ve suffered throughout most of her childhood. How on earth, he marvelled, had she still contrived to form such an intense bond with her adoptive mother in spite of the woman’s failings? Betrayed or cheated by anyone, Xan never forgot or forgave. He drew a line and if it was crossed, that was that.
‘Well, it didn’t, not always,’ Elvi protested. ‘There were good times even when things were tough and she was never a nasty drunk, never abusive or violent. We were lucky.’
Lucky? Xan swallowed back a derisive retort while he studied her animated face. She loved talking about her family, he noted, reckoning that
