ELVI BOARDED XAN’S private jet with a sense of liberation because the strain of the day and the pressure of being the centre of attention as bride and groom were now safely behind them. Being forced to act as though nothing was wrong between her and Xan after that incident with Joel had stressed her out. His aggressive reaction to Joel’s declaration had shaken her and she knew she had to confront him. Violence would never ever be acceptable to Elvi.
‘You still haven’t told me where we’re going,’ she reminded Xan gently once they were airborne.
‘The South of France. I have a house there that I rarely use. I did think of taking you back to the island, but my family wouldn’t have given us much peace on Thira,’ he told her wryly.
‘I like your family,’ Elvi protested.
‘We need alone time,’ Xan countered smoothly. ‘That’s your cue to start telling me about Joel...’
Elvi tensed and stirred her coffee. ‘There’s not much to say. We’ve been friends since primary school. He was so into art even then that he didn’t fit in with the boys but I got on great with him. He’s now making quite a name for himself as a portrait painter.’
‘If you’re that close, you should’ve told me about him,’ Xan informed her disapprovingly.
‘You should’ve told me about Angie,’ Elvi countered without hesitation. ‘She’s much more relevant to this conversation than any we could have about Joel. Joel and I have only ever been friends. He’s the big brother I never had.’
‘Only it’s obvious that he cherishes far from brotherly feelings for you,’ Xan derided, his lean, strong face revealing not an ounce of discomfiture at her reference to his former girlfriend.
‘He said he does but I still find that hard to believe,’ Elvi confided, shaking her head in amazement. ‘I have to admit that I didn’t notice anything different in the way he treated me—’
Xan’s wide sensual mouth quirked at that admission. ‘You’re not vain and you wouldn’t have been looking for it. I saw how shocked you were. If I hadn’t I would have been wondering if you had been involved in some relationship with him behind my back.’
Elvi’s temper stirred at that insinuation and she lifted her chin and gave him a defiant look, her cheeks reddening. ‘Surely you could hardly have wondered that when you became my first lover?’ she dared. ‘Please don’t try to use that as an excuse for the violence you employed.’
‘I’m not looking for an excuse. I’m not sorry I hit him,’ Xan asserted immediately, springing upright to tower over her, the fine fabric of his tailored suit pulling against his strong muscular thighs and wide taut shoulders, distracting her when she least wanted to be distracted.
‘There was absolutely no need or excuse for violence,’ Elvi declared.
His lean bronzed features were taut and hard as he helped himself to a drink at the integral bar. ‘He crossed a line,’ he spelt out coldly. ‘You’re my wife. It was our wedding day. No man would listen in silence when another man threw a challenge of that nature at him.’
‘Joel did not challenge you!’ Elvi proclaimed in heated disagreement.
An ebony brow skated up. ‘It wasn’t a challenge when Joel said he would be waiting to catch you when I messed up?’
Elvi stiffened and flushed. ‘That was just one of those silly things a man says when he’s trying to save face. You should’ve ignored it—’
‘Consider me punching Joel as one of those silly things a man does when he’s angry,’ Xan advised lethally. ‘Your compassion for him is misplaced—’
‘No, it’s not!’ Elvi protested. ‘I felt horribly guilty when he said he loved me because I felt that I should’ve noticed something. I wished I’d told him about you, for a start, but I didn’t tell him about you because of the way our relationship started...the arrangement...we agreed.’
A faint line of colour scored Xan’s killer cheekbones, the distaste with which she whispered those two explanatory words hitting him hard. ‘Even when I wish I could, I can’t change the past, Elvi,’ he breathed in a driven undertone.
‘No, but you can ensure you don’t plough in and punch one of my friends again over something you overheard in a private conversation. Joel went too far but you went in fists flying and there was no need for it,’ she told him stiffly.
‘There was every need. Now he knows his boundaries but, since the violence upset you so much, I can assure you that it won’t happen again,’ Xan conceded grimly. dpg!
Only a little soothed, Elvi threw her head high. ‘And you said I was yours,’ she reminded him doggedly. ‘I’m not. Putting a ring on my finger doesn’t transform me into property.’
‘You are mine,’ Xan delivered in contradiction. ‘Mine in a way no other woman has ever been.’
‘Angie?’ Elvi queried helplessly.
Xan compressed his lips. ‘I didn’t marry Angie or conceive a child with her.’
‘But you didn’t intend to do either of those things with me,’ Elvi pointed out flatly.
Xan merely shrugged a dismissive big shoulder. ‘Angie was my first love. We met at university. I fell hard for her,’ he admitted harshly, his lean, strong face grim. ‘I knew she was a material girl but it still didn’t occur to me that if my prospects appeared to go downhill, she would choose money over me. There were rumours even before my father’s death that his company was in trouble. Angie left me the same day the accountant confirmed that the family fortune was gone. She already had another man in her sights and within months she had married him and moved abroad.’
‘You had a lucky escape,’ Elvi told him staunchly. ‘In the light of her behaviour why on earth did you make such a fuss of her at your sister’s wedding?’
His spectacular bone structure pulled taut, amber-gold eyes shielded by his black lashes. ‘I had to let you go. I was very much in the wrong dragging you into my bed in the first place and the only possible recompense I could make, after I discovered the extent of your innocence, was to let you return to your life,’ he framed grittily. ‘I should have let you go free that first day but I still wanted you too much. On Thira, wanting you, needing you to that extent freaked me out. Flirting with Angie gave me an escape route and forced me to set you free and I didn’t have to tell you any lies—’
Elvi was stunned, listening in shaken silence to that unexpected confession because she had not appreciated how deep Xan’s guilt over making her his mistress went. ‘You make everything so complicated. You were behaving like one of those men who deliberately treats a woman badly to ensure that she breaks things off and saves him the trouble of doing it,’ she mumbled in bemusement.
To be fair to her, her brain was working on more than one thought train. She was still thinking about Xan’s surprising admission that needing her to such an extent had seriously worried him, which suggested to her that Xan had been feeling something more than lust for her, something strong enough to ignite his fear of a deeper commitment.
‘But I’ve got you now,’ Xan pointed out with unashamed satisfaction as he closed a powerful hand over hers and tugged her up out of her seat. ‘I won’t be treating you badly because I definitely don’t want you to leave me—’
‘You’re sure of that?’ Elvi checked. ‘No more Angies or major affairs lurking in your past?’
‘Not one. She burned me too badly. I protected myself after that,’ Xan confessed huskily, his attention locking to Elvi’s ripe pink mouth with smouldering intensity. That fast, he was aroused and aching for her.
He leant down to taste her in an exploratory foray that was supposed to be teasing, but which swiftly turned into a breathtakingly sensual assault. He plucked at the inviting fullness of her lower lip, traced the sealed line of her mouth with the teasing tip of his tongue and then plunged deep between her lips with the kind of hunger that made her tremble in his arms. A nagging hollow sensation deep down inside forced her to clamp her thighs tightly together.
‘Were you jealous of Joel?’ Elvi asked hopefully.
Xan drew back from her frowning. ‘Of course not. I’ve never been the jealous type and since you won’t be seeing him again—’
It was Elvi’s turn to freeze. ‘I beg your pardon?’ she interrupted.
Xan shrugged. ‘You can’t see him again until he’s got over you. If you keep on seeing him, you’ll be encouraging him to continue wanting what he can’t have. That would be cruel—’
‘I can see him if I want to.’
‘Not if I have anything to do with it,’ Xan sliced in squarely. ‘And why would you want to see him? He doesn’t want to be your friend, he wants to be your lover.’
Elvi reddened uncomfortably, unable to escape the maddening reality that Xan was making valid points.
‘He’ll get over it eventually,’ Xan forecast carelessly. ‘If he had really loved you, he would have taken the risk and told you how he felt about you. But if you want my opinion—’
‘I don’t,’ Elvi told him cuttingly.
‘He knew if he told you how he felt about you he’d be plunging himself into a serious relationship and he wasn’t ready for that. He kept you on ice for the future, encouraged by the fact that you weren’t putting yourself out there for other men. He missed his chance.’
‘You walked away from me too,’ Elvi reminded him tightly.
‘No, I made you walk away from me and it cost me. I’ve gone through a month of hell without you,’ Xan murmured hoarsely, startling her with that grated confession. ‘I haven’t even looked at another woman since the day you came into my office—’
Elvi shook free of her disconcertion and treated him to an unimpressed appraisal. ‘Angie?’
‘I was faking it,’ Xan said drily.
Elvi settled down into her seat. ‘You fake it well,’ she responded, stamping on the nugget of hurt that even thinking about that day recreated.
‘I wanted you to believe I’d moved on.’
Purely because he had a guilty conscience about her? Or had he had other more personal reasons? Elvi speculated, not quite convinced that conscience could have driven Xan into creating a false picture when the more obvious solution would’ve been to let her go immediately. Had a desire for more sex been his sole motivator? There was so much she wanted to ask but Xan had that distant look back in his eyes again, suggesting that he had already given up enough in explanations for one day.
An SUV whisked them from the airport to the villa in the South of France. It was rural, which surprised her, a picturesque stone property surrounded by rolling lavender fields. A housekeeper greeted them. Xan went off for a shower while Elvi wandered round the cool interior, impressed by the clever mix of contemporary and antique that came together to create a relaxed atmosphere.
‘Why did you buy this place if you hardly ever use it?’ she asked him as he was getting dressed in lightweight chinos and a cotton shirt.
‘I thought it would do me good to take holidays, but every time I came here I ended up working, so eventually I stopped coming,’ he admitted wryly.
‘I won’t let you work while I’m here,’ Elvi told him playfully.
Xan rested vibrant amber-gold eyes on her animated face. ‘I don’t want to work when you’re around. You’re bad for me.’
Elvi smiled at that very serious admission and, drawn by the glow of that encouraging teasing smile, he stalked across the room and grabbed her up into his arms, settling down again on the side of the bed with her cradled across his hard, muscular thighs.
‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have grabbed you like that, not when you’re pregnant,’ Xan breathed tautly. ‘I need to be more careful—’
‘The doctor told you I was perfectly healthy and strong,’ Elvi reminded him.
Very deliberately, Xan splayed long brown fingers across her lower stomach. ‘As far as I’m concerned, you’re glass and breakable now,’ he contradicted, smoothing her flesh gently. ‘That’s our child in there and we won’t be taking any unnecessary risks.’
Warmth stole into Elvi, his concern banishing her fears. ‘You really want this baby,’ she murmured.
‘As much as I want you, moli mou.’ Xan lifted her up again and set her down on her feet with careful hands. ‘Even if it was an unexpected development, it feels right now. Let’s go downstairs and get dinner.’
Elvi gazed up into brilliant amber eyes and her heart skipped a beat. His fingers engulfed hers as he tugged her towards the stairs. He wanted their baby and he wanted her. It was sufficient to power a healthy start for any marriage, she told herself soothingly. Shame pierced her when she recalled why she had agreed to marry him, because she suspected she had fretted herself into an unreasonable state of paranoia when she worried that Xan might try to take her child from her.
Dinner was served out on the candlelit terrace. It was a light meal because neither of them was especially hungry. Over coffee, Xan studied her with hooded dark eyes, his lean bronzed face sombre. ‘Why did you suddenly change your mind and decide to marry me?’ he asked, sharply disconcerting her. ‘I mean, you were saying no and so set against the idea and me and then, all of a sudden, you—’
It was now or never, Elvi registered, and, although she quailed at the prospect of telling him the unlovely truth, she also felt that she had to be honest. ‘I was in a panic that day. I’d just found out I was pregnant,’ she reminded him carefully in her own defence. ‘I was very conscious that your father took you from your mother and I was scared that if we didn’t get married, you might try to take our child from me at some time in the future.’
Xan frowned, staring at her in patent disbelief.
‘I told myself that wives have more rights than unmarried mums and that your mother may not have fought for you but I would fight to hold on to any child of mine. I thought I’d be safer as a wife from that threat.’ Her voice ran out of steam, her apprehension rising at the look of angry disbelief growing on his lean dark features.
‘You can’t be serious...’ Xan intoned in a driven undertone.
‘I’m not thinking that way any longer,’ Elvi admitted ruefully. ‘But unfortunately that is how I was thinking that day when I agreed—’
‘I can’t believe this,’ Xan grated with a shake of his handsome dark head as he rose upright to stare across the table at her. ‘I can’t believe you actually thought that I would do that to you and my child after what I went through myself as a boy.’
‘Yes, you did say you never felt secure—’
‘It was a lot worse than that!’ Xan objected, swinging away from her, suddenly short of breath and desperate to be alone. ‘I’m going out for a drive—’
Elvi leapt out of her seat. ‘Not without me, you’re not!’ she exclaimed.
‘I’m not in the mood for company right now, Elvi,’ Xan admitted harshly as he belatedly recognised that the mess of emotions he was experiencing all boiled down to that awful, ego-zapping word hurt, and the shock of that recognition hit him even harder.
What had he thought? That somewhere deep down inside Elvi had come to care for him? Care for the male who had virtually blackmailed her into his bed, into her first experience of sex and landed her into unplanned motherhood at the same time? Naturally, caring had had nothing to do with her decision to marry him. Knowing nothing good of him, she had decided to protect herself in advance from any further wrong he might choose to inflict on her. How could he blame her for that?
Elvi planted herself in his path to the front door. ‘No, Xan, you shouldn’t be driving anywhere when you’re upset—’
Stormy amber-gold eyes locked to her. ‘I’m not upset! Now move away from the door.’
‘No.’ Elvi stood her ground and when he tried to lift her to shift her to one side she swarmed up his lean, powerful body like a monkey climbing a tree and clung, her arms wrapping round his neck. ‘Please talk to me, please don’t walk away...don’t hide things—’
His strong jawline setting hard like granite, Xan wrapped his arms round her to secure her and he carried her upstairs, where he lowered her down onto the bed. Or at least he tried to lower her, but Elvi was clinging like a limpet and when he tried to loosen her grip, she dropped her head and kissed him instead.
‘No, Elvi,’ he began doggedly.
Elvi threw her weight against him to unbalance him and he backed down on the bed to ensure that he didn’t lose his balance. ‘You don’t mean no,’ she told him with all the conviction of a woman who had come into contact with the noticeable bulge in his trousers. ‘I won’t let you leave me when you’re upset.’
Xan groaned out loud and momentarily closed his eyes, trying to deny everything he was feeling. Meanwhile, Elvi hugged him tight and peppered his face with soothing kisses.
‘Thee mou...what are you trying to do to me?’ Xan ground out, engulfed by warm clingy woman and finding it surprisingly pleasant.
‘Make you talk. I’ve explained myself as best as I can. I had to be honest. I won’t lie to you,’ Elvi stated. ‘I was all over the place emotionally the day you asked me to marry you. I was still getting over the pain of you flirting with Angie and I didn’t feel I could trust you at all. I was scared, confused and then I thought about how your father had taken you away from your mother and it petrified me.’
‘I would never do that to you,’ Xan intoned grimly. ‘I had a hellish childhood living with my father.’
‘Yes, I gathered that, but only recently. Initially you made your childhood sound idyllic.’
Xan groaned again, lush black lashes lifting on sombre amber-gold eyes. ‘I always lie about it for my mother’s sake. I don’t like to hurt her. I don’t want to make her feel guilty for not fighting for me because she really didn’t have much choice,’ he said grimly. ‘My father replaced her with another woman and then insisted on keeping me as well. My grandparents persuaded Mum to go back to university to finish her Masters in the USA. She needed to get away from the island and she needed a new future to focus on. I have never blamed her for cutting her losses and running. She was still only a girl—’
Still perched on top of his big powerful body, Elvi ran gentle fingertips across the tightness of his wide sensual mouth as she bent over him. ‘So, Ariadne went to America—?’
‘And wrote and sold her first archaeology textbook. It was a bestseller—’
‘While you were doing what?’ she queried.
‘Getting used to my first stepmother, Hana and Lukas’s mother. That broke up when I was six and Dad moved another woman in. She didn’t last but she gave birth to Tobias before she left. Wife number three came next and so it went on throughout my childhood and adolescence. Helios couldn’t be faithful for five minutes and on a couple of occasions, between women, he even drifted back to Mum, causing her great distress,’ he confided bitterly. ‘He was a liar and a cheat and he pretty much ruined her life. She focused on her career and I saw very little of her until I reached my teens.’
‘That must’ve been very difficult for you and your mother.’
‘I’m very fond of her. She has a huge heart. She coped with losing me by burying herself in her studies and travelling round the world to work on archaeological digs—’
‘What was it like for you growing up in such an unsettled household?’ Elvi pressed, helplessly curious.
‘Imagine what it’s like to come home from school and discover your bedroom has been taken off you and given to a new step-sibling instead,’ Xan urged. ‘Nothing was permanent, nothing was private, nothing in the house on Thira truly belonged to me. I was at the mercy of Dad’s latest wife or lover. It made me a loner, who didn’t trust anyone. I always thought my father married my mother too young and that’s why he made such a mess but now I think he was just an easily bored womaniser.’
Elvi was drinking in every word, finally understanding how the boy had grown into a man with a colour-coded wardrobe and a powerful need for privacy. Deprived of order, control and security as a child, Xan had made order, control and security his first goals as an adult.
‘Being a womaniser entails messy, dramatic relationships so I went the mistress route instead,’ Xan confided. ‘I suppose it was sleazy—’
‘It was sleazy,’ Elvi told him.
Xan shrugged a shoulder. ‘It worked for me until you burst onto my horizon and then I blew it... I didn’t want you in the same apartment where I’d been with other women. I didn’t want to treat you the same way...’
As the silence dragged unbroken, Elvi stroked his lips apart with a tender fingertip and bent down to kiss him. ‘If you talk, you get rewarded...and the more you talk, the bigger the reward gets,’ she whispered encouragingly.
Xan arched his hips up beneath her, letting her know that his erection had not subsided. ‘Tell me more, moli mou—’
‘No, you bring out a side of me I don’t know,’ Elvi mumbled, suddenly embarrassed by her forward behaviour.
‘You do the same to me. Unnerving, isn’t it?’ Xan prompted. ‘I want you more than I’ve ever wanted a woman in my life—’
‘Angie?’ Elvi challenged shamefacedly.
‘Angie was never a challenge. You were... Will you quit bringing her up?’ he demanded impatiently.
Elvi nodded seriously. ‘OK.’
‘I thought you and I were just about good sex until I tried to make myself give you up. I felt huge guilt about depriving you of your virginity, but I still couldn’t bring myself to let you go or admit that what I had with you was different from anything I’d ever had with a woman,’ Xan told her, reaching up to untie the narrow shoulder straps of her sundress and tug her bodice down inch by dangerous inch.
‘Stop it...we’re talking!’ Elvi protested.
‘Can’t we play at the same time?’ Xan questioned, giving the dress a rough yank to free her full breasts, and then groaning out loud as her bountiful pale curves filled his hands to overflowing. ‘I mean...let’s be honest...at this moment... I will tell you anything you want to know—’
Her breath caught in her throat as he rubbed her swollen nipples between finger and thumb, sending a flash of heat shooting through her. ‘Why were you trying to run away earlier?’ she demanded shakily.
‘I was...’ Xan flung his tousled dark head back and breathed in deep and slow. ‘When you told me you’d only married me because you were scared I might try to take our child away from you, I was...’ Again he hesitated.
‘You were...what?’ Elvi prompted in frustration.
‘Hurt... OK? I was hurt!’ Xan finally got that word out and grimaced. ‘Because by the time I got to our wedding today I knew I wanted and needed you round the clock and that somehow you had made me fall passionately in love with you, which explains why I continue to screw everything up. Passion and logic don’t work well together and the way you make me feel often leaves me feeling like I’m clinging to sanity by my fingernails alone.’
Elvi gazed down at him in awed incredulity. ‘You love me...seriously?’
‘Serious as a heart attack.’ Xan flipped over, carrying her with him, reversing their positions at the same time as he endeavoured to remove her dress. ‘I think I started falling for you the minute I saw you, which is why I was so eaten up with guilt when I first took you to bed. Suddenly I was seeing every wrong thing I’d done and said to you in horrible Technicolor and I didn’t know how to sort it out and start again.’
‘You were hurt when you believed I’d married you just to safeguard my position.’ Elvi smoothed gentle fingertips along his strong jaw while with her other hand she ran down the side zip on her dress to facilitate his manoeuvres. ‘And I told myself I was agreeing for that reason, but I suspect that I was really giving myself a good reason to do what I secretly wanted to do because I love you. Do you deserve my love?’ she asked for herself. ‘No, you probably don’t, but you can work at deserving it for the rest of our lives—’
Xan laughed out loud. ‘I like it when you’re blunt like that—’
‘And, no, you don’t get any time off for good behaviour,’ she told him sternly. ‘And after sex, you will always, always hold me close.’
‘It’s not just sex with you...it’s much more than that,’ Xan muttered awkwardly.
Elvi fluttered her eyelashes. ‘Souls meeting?’
Xan laughed again, reaching down to kiss her at the same time as he unzipped his chinos. ‘Our bodies are definitely going to meet,’ he intoned against her reddened mouth with unconcealed hunger. ‘On a collision course right now to that meeting—’
Being both a little frantic to make love again, they never did make it back downstairs for the dessert course and they lay talking lazily in bed until almost dawn. By that stage, they were involved in negotiations with Xan agreeing to take weekends and holidays off and Elvi agreeing not to drop clothes on the floor.
‘I love you so much, agape mou,’ Xan murmured, experiencing contentment for the first time ever, his beautiful eyes locked tenderly to Elvi’s smiling, happy face. ‘I’ll buy you a dog once we’ve got used to being parents.’
Blissfully relaxed, Elvi let her arms tighten round his long, lean body, gentle fingers smoothing over his satin-smooth back. Xan liked to plan everything, cautiously moving from one checkpoint to the next. Yet without any preparation at all, he had plunged into their marriage and the promise of fatherhood with his whole heart, freely accepting those changes and loving her into the bargain.
‘I love you too,’ she whispered, happily convinced she had found a very special man.
* * *
Five years later, Elvi sat on the sand of the cove below the house on Thira and watched her daughter, Molly, patiently build a sandcastle with all the devotion to detail that Xan had already taught her. The little plastic flag had to go in exactly the right place, the moat had to fill with water, the shells that denoted windows had to sit in exact lines, and then disaster came along on two sturdy toddler legs. With a shout of delight, Molly’s little brother, Ajax, flung himself at the castle, for he delighted as much in smashing things down as his sister delighted in building them.
But the split second before Ajax made contact and destroyed his sister’s creation, a pair of arms stretched out and grabbed him back. ‘No,’ Xan told his son firmly.
Ajax wailed and screeched and struggled to escape his father’s hold while Molly plonked herself defensively in front of the castle and told her brother off.
‘When did you get back?’ Elvi asked her husband, battling to be heard over Ajax’s enraged yells.
‘Ten minutes ago. The Athens meeting didn’t last as long as I expected,’ Xan told her with a lazy smile, quite unbothered by his son’s vociferous complaints.
‘Oh, let him wreck it,’ Molly groaned in exasperation as her brother’s sobbing reached an ear-splitting peak. ‘The sea will take it tonight anyway.’
‘Are you sure?’ Elvi asked her daughter.
‘He’s a baby,’ her daughter pointed out pityingly, anchoring herself to her father’s side. ‘I’ll make another one tomorrow.’
Xan lowered Ajax back to the sand. The toddler hovered, tears sprinkling his chubby cheeks, his platinum-pale curls blowing in the breeze. He stretched out a chubby fist to bat at a tower and then overbalanced and fell on top of the castle, getting sand on his face, which he hated.
‘It’s really not his day,’ Elvi pronounced as she rescued the little boy and brushed him free of sand while he watched her with the huge amber-gold eyes he had inherited from his father.
Their children were an endearing mix of their parents. Molly had black hair and blue eyes and a love of order. Ajax was two and he loved to make a mess. He was usually much quieter than Molly, except when he got overtired.
‘He’s ready for bed,’ Elvi pronounced, gathering up the clutter around her and stuffing it into bags while Xan hoisted his son onto his shoulder. Holding Molly’s hand, Xan led the way up the steep steps back to the house.
They’d had two children in five years and life was busy. Elvi had had an easy pregnancy with Molly and terrible morning sickness while carrying Ajax. She reckoned that their family was now complete. Their dog, a terrier mix called Bones, romped along in their wake, his frantic energy keeping his wiry little body fit in spite of a calorie intake that would have powered an elephant.
Their nanny whisked the children away for supper and bedtime and, having spent the entire day with her son and daughter, Elvi was grateful to have time for Xan. Xan might have given up his seven-days-a-week schedule but he was still very much in demand, flying round the world to make speeches and give advice. In the early days of their marriage she had travelled with him, but Molly’s birth had intervened and their home base was now a very comfortable town house in London, convenient for Xan’s office in the City. They spent holidays on Thira, finding the more laid-back lifestyle there perfect for raising their young family. When they wanted alone time as a couple, they flew to the South of France and left the grandparents in charge of their household.
Ariadne was an adoring grandmother but not as regularly available as Dmitri and Sally, who had, after a lengthy and very discreet relationship, married the year before at around the same time as Dmitri had taken early retirement. They now owned a house on the island and were regular visitors, just as Xan’s siblings were. Family parties were regular events on Thira, and Elvi had become accustomed to hosting everything from barbecues to christenings. She loved the fact that their children were growing up with their cousins and enjoyed a wide circle of relatives, unlike herself.
Daniel had graduated in medicine and was now entering hospital training where his working hours would be very much longer. Elvi was grateful that her brother was based at a London hospital where she hoped to see more of him.
‘You do appreciate that I have been away from you for an entire week,’ Xan murmured, cornering her on the landing to extract a very hungry kiss from her willingly parted lips.
Her heart singing, Elvi gave him a sparkling smile.
‘I did have this fantasy where you were waiting on the front step to greet me,’ Xan told her as he walked her down to their bedroom.
‘Like a Victorian servant?’ Elvi asked with intense amusement dancing in her eyes.
‘And then I had to go find you on the beach and you’re covered in sand and windblown and...absolutely gorgeous,’ Xan emphasised huskily, backing her down on the bed. ‘And now you’re going to get sand all over the bed—’
‘Of course, if you’re that fastidious I could go and have a shower first,’ Elvi proffered, knowing he wouldn’t have the patience to wait even three minutes.
Xan was undressing where he stood and nothing got hung up or carefully draped. Indeed, his tie, shoes and socks went flying. Of course, she knew he would tidy it all up afterwards and complain about the unfortunate effect she had on him. Confident that she was entirely the centre of his attention, Elvi shimmied seductively out of her sundress, skimmed off the last garments with panache and knelt on the bed, veiled in the hair he wouldn’t let her cut. And as he studied her, she studied him, her breath catching in her throat as the long, taut muscular lines of his beautiful body emerged.
The hunger never died, she thought dreamily, turning her face up for his kiss, rejoicing in the fact that the whole world stopped for her when Xan was with her. It was the kind of happiness she had never hoped to find and he had given it to her, he had made her feel secure and adored and more precious than the diamonds he was continually gifting her.
‘I love you,’ she said softly. ‘You never know your luck—I might wait on the front step for you the next time—’
‘No, I like this...just you and me, hara mou,’ Xan insisted, gathering her into his arms with a deep sigh of satisfaction, because coming home to his family, slipping back into the warm and happy atmosphere Elvi created for them, was the greatest pleasure of his life. ‘Loving each other and living happily ever after... I didn’t think I’d ever have that, but you gave it to me.’
* * * * *