LITMIR.BIZ

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to get home and be with her family.

      ‘Are you all right?’ Hana asked her worriedly. ‘You’re as white as a sheet. Sit down for a moment—’

      ‘No, I need to speak to Xan,’ Elvi broke in apologetically. ‘Do you know where he is?’

      Minutes later, Elvi entered Xan’s office on the ground floor. He was standing by the window, talking in French on the phone. Some words she vaguely recognised from school but most were incomprehensible as she hovered just over the threshold staring at him. For probably the last time, she reasoned numbly.

      ‘I want to go home,’ she declared shakily. ‘My brother’s in hospital.’

      And from that point on, everything moved on oiled wheels. In fact, she had the feeling that Xan couldn’t get her off the island of Thira fast enough because he could not have been more helpful. He insisted that she travel back on his private jet, instructed the staff to pack for her while also informing her that he had organised accommodation in London for her and that he would place money in her bank account.

      ‘But I don’t need accommodation or money!’

      ‘Of course, you do,’ Xan overruled without hesitation. ‘It’s my fault that you don’t have employment to return to and you need support to get back on your feet again. The apartment you originally moved into is up for sale at present, so naturally I will provide somewhere else for you to stay.’

      And at that point Elvi simply stopped arguing because arguing with Xan was exhausting. He would regroup and address the topic from another angle, usually one she hadn’t yet thought of. What did strike her like a blow was his eagerness to speed her on her way and ease her passage with his wealth.

      ‘You don’t need to feel guilty that we’re over,’ Elvi told him abruptly, the reproof literally leaping straight from her brain onto her tongue. ‘We didn’t suit. We’re like oil and water—’

      Xan froze, his lean, powerful physique pulling taut, and his magnificent eyes flashed pure gold. ‘I’m not feeling guilty. Why would I feel guilty?’

      Her stomach already rolling with nausea, Elvi decided not to mention Angie. Why go there when she didn’t have to and her family emergency had given Xan a ready excuse to move her back out of his life again as fast as he had dragged her into it?

      ‘Look after yourself,’ Xan urged grimly. ‘And if you ever need anything, call me—’

      Elvi dealt him a rueful grimace. ‘Like that’s going to happen,’ she derided with newly learned cynicism. ‘Goodbye, Xan.’

      * * *

      ‘Daniel’s going to be fine. Your mother says he looks like he’s been beaten up and he’s sprained his ankle but that’s all, so you don’t need to worry,’ Dmitri declared, letting her know that he too was in regular contact with her parent as he accompanied her out to the helicopter waiting in the grounds of the villa. ‘I hope you know you’re very welcome to move to Oxford with your family—’

      Elvi smiled warmly at the older man. ‘Thanks. I’m going to tell Mum the truth when I get back, well...almost the truth,’ she adjusted with a slight wince. ‘I won’t tell her anything that upsets her.’

      At noon the next day, after a sleepless flight on Xan’s opulent jet and a harried arrival at yet another very fancy apartment, where she left her luggage stacked, Elvi went straight to the hospital and met her mother in the waiting area. Her eyes were burning in her head from exhaustion and the battle to stay in control of her emotions. It’s over. The phrase kept on crashing into her head like an alarm bell shrilling and lacing her every thought with far too much drama. No, no, I’m not in love with him, this is a crush, a long-overdue crush and it is manageable, she told herself firmly.

      ‘You were with Mr Ziakis...in Greece?’ Sally Cartwright repeated in disbelief. ‘What on earth—?’

      ‘I went to see him after you were arrested and...then we had dinner and somehow we ended up getting involved,’ Elvi admitted starkly. ‘It was crazy and it all happened terribly fast...of course, it was never going to last—’

      ‘But that’s why he dropped the theft charge, I imagine.’ Her mother wrapped her arms round her trembling daughter and muttered soothing things, seeing far more than Elvi would ever have admitted in the hollowness of the younger woman’s eyes and her drawn pallor.

      The lies swept away, Elvi hoped she would feel better but her mood remained flat as a pancake. As Dmitri had forecast, Daniel was fine, his face badly bruised and swollen and his ankle sprained. Her sibling would be returning home with them on crutches.

      Two weeks dragged past. Dmitri hired a van and moved Sally’s family to his terraced house in Oxford. The property was beautifully renovated and a vast improvement on their previous home. Elvi finally got her own bedroom while her mother enthused about the freedom of having a garden again. Elvi, however, had more pressing things on her mind because her period was late. In a sombre mood, she went out to buy a pregnancy test, anxiously counting days on her fingers, striving to be optimistic as she recalled Xan’s lack of concern over that contraceptive mishap.

      Thinking about Xan only upset her and she tried not to do it but late at night, lying sleepless in bed, there was nothing else to think about. Xan hadn’t had to say the words in the end but he had found her wanting and he had dumped her like an old shoe within days of taking her to bed for the first time. Her self-esteem at rock-bottom, Elvi threw herself into organising their new home with her mother and looking up training courses online in an attempt to find something that truly interested her rather than settling for the first job available. Unhappily, the pregnancy scare hit her like an express train just when she was trying to move beyond heartbreak.

      She sat in the bathroom clutching the wand before she even went downstairs to breakfast. Her brain was running at a thousand knots a minute. How could she be pregnant? How could a single oversight result in such a life-changing event? Yes, she knew the facts of life, but her hazy recollection of that first time with Xan seemed more about passion than anything else. The confirmation of a positive test came up and, in a panic, she reread the instructions all over again. She felt sick and dizzy, overwhelmed by fear of the unknown. She was pregnant, she acknowledged in shock; she was actually going to have Xan’s baby.

      She dragged in a steadying breath of oxygen. Naturally she knew there were alternatives but the idea of surrendering her baby to adoption had no appeal for her and she couldn’t bring herself to consider a termination. She would have to tell Xan because he had the right to know: this was his child too. Before she could lose her nerve, she pulled out her phone to text him.

      I need to see you. Something to tell you.

      Xan read the text in the middle of a meeting. Elvi.

      Meet for lunch?

      His intelligence warned him that lunch was a very bad idea. Going cold turkey to kill an obsession was a basic ground rule. His hunger for Elvi was persistent, there in the morning when he awoke, there at night when he tried to shut down his thoughts and sleep. Somehow Elvi and her glorious curves had become an obsession, rarely out of his mind. What the hell would she want to see him about? Probably some problem relating to her family, he reasoned grimly, recalling that he had urged her to contact him at any time and could hardly complain if she had decided to take him up on the invitation.

      Can’t make it to lunch in time. Living in Oxford now.

      Xan froze. She wasn’t even occupying the apartment he had bought her? What the hell was she doing in Oxford? He asked her to meet him that afternoon at her apartment, the one she wasn’t using, he clarified with controlled sarcasm.

      It was ages before she assented with a grudging OK and promised to text him once she had worked out what time she would be there.

      * * *

      Elvi wouldn’t allow herself to dress up for her meeting with Xan. He was the father of her unborn child, not a lover,

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