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in an aggrieved undertone. ‘But I’m nowhere near ready for that step.’

      Elvi shrugged a stiff shoulder. ‘Well, I imagine you’ll do exactly as you like anyway and she knows that.’

      Always throwing oil on troubled waters, that was Elvi, Xan noted, and it was a novel approach to a man quick to impatience and anger, but rather soothing to be around, if you needed to be handled as though you were an unstable explosive device. Was that how she saw him? To his own surprise, he asked her that question.

      ‘Well, you’re naturally intolerant,’ Elvi pointed out almost apologetically, as if the unlovely trait of intolerance could not possibly be his own fault. ‘You are very precise in your expectations and accustomed to other people meeting those expectations, either because you’re paying them to do so or because you’re used to people going out of their way to please you.’

      ‘Both,’ Xan agreed, impressed by her honesty and her tact. He didn’t think he had ever been insulted or criticised so politely. ‘Are you planning to go out of your way to please me any time soon?’

      Elvi stiffened, her cheeks flushing, her mouth compressing. ‘Probably not.’

      Xan swung away to hide his smile because she would assume he was laughing at her and he wasn’t. She was teaching him almost as much as he was teaching her and by the time she learned and accepted that sex was merely sex, he would probably be bored, he told himself stubbornly, striving to ignore the reality that simply the thought of getting her into the same bed at the end of the tedious evening ahead sent a throbbing, stabbing pulse of raw erotic craving through him. She would have an enjoyable holiday on Thira and then he would send her home. She would be restored to happy-clappy positivity, merely a little less innocent and the sordid aspects of their original arrangement would be tidily airbrushed over into something more acceptable.

      Unaware of Xan’s plans for her immediate future, Elvi smoothed down her dress, black, fitted with a lower neckline than she liked, but undeniably elegant.

      ‘Wear your diamonds,’ Xan advised, emerging from the bathroom in all his naked glory, so tall and bronzed with powerful pectorals and taut ropes of muscle visible across his flat abdomen.

      With difficulty, Elvi dragged her eyes from that view, her body uncomfortably warm despite the air conditioning. ‘They’re not my diamonds—’

      ‘I bought them for you.’

      ‘I don’t want them.’

      ‘But you can wear them when I tell you to,’ Xan cut in, flipping open the jewel case to extract the necklace and anchor it round her throat while she struggled to lift her hair out of his path.

      She had sworn she would not do as she was told but here she was doing it like everyone else around Xan, Elvi reflected angrily. ‘I’m leaving them behind when we part—’

      Xan shrugged an indifferent shoulder. ‘And when do you think that might be?’

      ‘A week?’ Elvi looked at him hopefully.

      And without warning, Xan felt a surge of rage splinter through him. It was that hopeful look that implied that she could not wait to regain her freedom and escape him. A woman had never ever shown Xan that expression before.

      ‘No chance,’ he countered succinctly, his attention involuntarily lingering on the voluptuous display of her breasts in the dress. It wasn’t so much that the neckline was too low as that she had rather more than could be easily contained.

      ‘My face is at this level,’ Elvi told him thinly, all too well aware of where his scrutiny had strayed.

      ‘Obviously I’m going to look... I love your curves,’ Xan retorted squarely. ‘But I think you should change into another dress. I don’t want anyone else looking.’

      Thoroughly irritated by being asked to change when she was fully dressed, but disliking even more having her chest on display, Elvi stepped back into the built-in closet where her clothing had been hung to rifle through the selection for another option. She yanked out the blue dress she had worn for the party he had taken her to and dug out a different bra to go with it, disappearing into the bathroom for the exchange, tossing over her shoulder, ‘I don’t see why it should bother you if anyone did look!’

      Xan compressed his wide sensual mouth while he thought about that. He didn’t know why the idea bothered him, but it did. Her glorious hourglass shape was eye-catching and he didn’t want to share it. Fortunately, she was not one of those women, and he had met quite a few, who deliberately exposed as much flesh as possible in the hope of attracting more male attention.

      ‘Much better,’ Xan pronounced when she reappeared, flushed and slightly tumbled, to settle exasperated eyes on him. ‘I hope the swimwear you have isn’t too revealing—’

      Elvi rolled her eyes as she stepped through the doorway into the corridor ahead of him. Even the most modestly cut swimwear made her look like an old-style pin-up girl, a fact that had put her off swimming sessions at a young age. ‘So, interestingly, you have a prudish streak too,’ she remarked snidely.

      Still insulted by her enthusiasm for leaving him to return to her workaday, poverty-stricken existence, Xan refused to rise to the bait.

      Downstairs, a crowd of guests were enjoying pre-dinner drinks and Elvi was introduced to Xan’s relations. The bride-to-be, Delphina, was a pretty brunette with a ridiculously shy version of Xan’s eyes while her mother was a brassy blonde, who loosed a sarcastic laugh of disbelief when Elvi, asked what she did for a living, mentioned her most recent employment in a craft shop.

      ‘You see, Callista,’ Xan murmured in the mildest of tones. ‘Some women do choose to work for a living.’

      ‘I would just have ignored her,’ Elvi whispered in reproof as they moved away.

      ‘I’m not a fan of turning the other cheek,’ Xan retorted crisply. ‘Callista lives off the rich men she sleeps with and she had no business sneering at you. It’s a wonder Delphina has turned out as well as she has.’

      ‘Sleeping with rich men to get by sounds very much like work to me,’ Elvi dared.

      Xan froze and glanced down at her with a sudden frown.

      ‘Oh, I wasn’t getting at you,’ Elvi said with mock innocence. ‘After all, I did it to keep my mother out of prison and off drink, which is rather different.’

      ‘Skase!’ Xan shot down at her in a raw undertone.

      ‘Meaning?’

      ‘Shut up...drop the subject,’ Xan bit out furiously as he leant down to her level.

      ‘Well, you really can’t go around with that “one rule for me but a different rule for everyone else” take on everything,’ Elvi pointed out helplessly.

      ‘I can do whatever I like—’

      ‘And it’s thoroughly bad for you,’ Elvi told him firmly.

      Xan swore under his breath, inflamed by her sheer nerve. Why didn’t she worry about offending him, as other women did? He stood by watching his mother introduce Elvi to his remaining sisters, noticing how animated the conversation between them all became. Of course, he should’ve expected that, he told himself calmingly. His sisters all lived in the real world, unlike his former stepmother, Callista. One sister was an engineer with her own company, another was a doctor, the third a happy housewife with four children, two of which were very cute five-year-old female twins. Another and stronger generation of his family, he labelled with satisfaction, for not one of his siblings exhibited the money-grabbing greed of his former stepmothers. Yes, he had bought them all houses and financed their business projects, but essentially his brothers and sisters were independent, falling back on his wealth only in times of misfortune.

      They sat down to dinner. By that stage it was clear to Xan that Elvi had gone down like a prize trophy with his family because his mother was pumping her about her love

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