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After all, thinking about it wasn’t going to make it go away and dwelling on something she couldn’t avoid would be foolish. She tried on the half-dozen dresses and vanished into one of the bathrooms to find the right size for the fancy lingerie Sylvia had placed on the bed. She chose the dress that fitted the best and hid the most, not being a fan of her own cleavage. Her back and arms and legs would be on show and that was quite enough, in her opinion. She had to practise walking in the very high heeled sandals and they pinched her toes horribly. It was a very great shame that wearing a designer outfit that probably cost hundreds if not thousands of pounds had never been on her bucket list, she conceded ruefully.
What on earth did Xan want with a young woman like her? For goodness’ sake, she was a shop girl, or had been until she’d quit earlier that day in a very uncomfortable phone call to her employer. She was ordinary, not special, not a beauty, no great wit. What did Xan see in her that was so desirable he would go to such lengths to have her?
She looked in the mirror. Her body—what a lowering thought that was, she reflected unhappily. He didn’t know her, wouldn’t waste time even trying to get to know her; he only wanted to have sex with her, and the fancy apartment and the ridiculously big wardrobe Sylvia had insisted she would need were simply the luxury trappings that she was expected to be delighted to receive. She had no doubt that other women had enjoyed those benefits from sharing their bodies with a very, very rich man but, unfortunately for her, she wasn’t one of them. She felt cheapened by living in an apartment Xan owned, wearing clothes and eating food provided by him. It felt too much like being paid for sex. But that was the arrangement she had agreed to, she reminded herself, and she did not see that she could do much about it.
For the first time in over a year, when a bout of flu had forced him to deviate from his routine, Xan finished at the office early. He acknowledged that Elvi roused an unusual sense of excitement that was new to his experience. It was nothing he couldn’t handle though, he thought, choosing to be amused by his mood rather than disturbed by it. She was new, she was fresh, there was nothing odd about his interest. He was a normal guy, his libido inflamed by the prospect of a different woman. He texted her the time she would be picked up and smiled.
Elvi was disconcerted when the bell went shortly before eight and she was confronted with Dmitri on the doorstep. ‘Ready?’ he asked flatly, somehow radiating disapproval in waves.
Her complexion flaming, Elvi dug her key into the fancy clutch that matched her ridiculous shoes and preceded him into the lift he had already had waiting for her. ‘What’s your job with Xan?’ she enquired stiffly.
‘I’m the head of his security team. Does Sally know about this?’ he framed.
‘Of course not,’ Elvi parried uncomfortably. ‘I don’t want her to know either.’
The older man released his breath impatiently and said nothing more, but the attitude he emanated had left her in no doubt that he had guessed exactly what her new role in his employer’s life was and she was mortified by the deep sense of shame that engulfed her.
‘What’s wrong?’ Xan heard himself demand as soon as he saw her, because instead of the smile, the warmth that he had somehow vaguely expected from her, she was flushed and stiff as a waxwork with her usual glow absent.
‘Nothing,’ Elvi responded tightly.
‘I hate it when people lie to me,’ Xan told her warningly.
‘Well, if you must know, I feel like the slut I said I wasn’t!’ Elvi rounded on him helplessly, her emotions overpowering her innate practicality. ‘Living in an apartment you own, wearing clothes you paid for!’
Never having been attacked on that score before, Xan tensed, slowly coming to terms with the truth that for the first time in his life he might just have chosen a woman with moral principles. He was utterly spooked by the suspicion. ‘You’re not a slut,’ he breathed in a curt undertone of denial. ‘We have an agreement—’
The reminder steadied Elvi as nothing else could have done. ‘The theft charge?’
‘Dropped. Gone,’ Xan emphasised with relief, expecting that to improve her mood.
But Elvi said nothing, refusing to believe that assurance until she heard it from her mother herself. She knew Sally would have phoned her immediately with such news, not sat on it. Her hands merely tightened around her clutch.
‘I have some jewellery for you to wear,’ Xan continued.
‘Don’t want it,’ she said mutinously.
‘Nonetheless you will wear it as part of your role,’ Xan contradicted, settling a wide shallow box on her lap without apology. ‘You’re being childish and difficult and that’s not what I want from you.’
Possibly that was the wake-up call Elvi felt she needed at the moment. She had agreed to the mistress role and there was no room to wriggle out of the arrangement again. Gritting her teeth together, she opened the box on a diamond necklace and earrings that flashed like white fire as the streetlights illuminated the limo’s interior. She pushed her hair over one shoulder and reached for the necklace but Xan got there before her.
‘Allow me,’ he breathed, tugging her round by the shoulder to put her back to him, so close to her that the sheer heat of his body hit her bare back like a burn inflicted by the sun and she froze as he bent over her to attach the necklace at her nape.
That close, he smelt amazing, a dynamite combination of clean, crisp masculinity, exotic cologne and an element that was uniquely his own but which reminded her of fresh air and the woods. The startling wonder of his scent filtered through her like an aphrodisiac, shocking her afresh. Her breath hitching in her dry throat, she shifted away again fast and fumbled for the earrings to attach them.
‘You’re very jumpy for a woman I have yet to touch,’ Xan observed.
‘This situation is new to me,’ Elvi pointed out nervously.
‘It’s not a situation. It’s a relationship like any other.’ Xan surprised himself by saying the word he always avoided because he knew it wasn’t a relationship, it was purely a sexual connection.
Now you’re giving her mixed messages, he reproved himself immediately. No, he was simply trying to make her relax before she wrecked his good mood. He had set this up; he could hardly complain about her being different from the kind of women he was accustomed to when he had known that from the start. He was no softie with women but he was always rational, fair, he assured himself until he tried to apply that statement to the manner in which he had acquired Elvi, and the oddest sense of discomfiture assailed him for the first time ever in a woman’s presence.
Elvi shot him an anxious glance, big blue eyes as easily read as a headline. There was a sort of strange innocence about her, almost as if she was expecting him to break out a whip and chains. Stubborn mouth quirking, he shelved that sudden unlikely suspicion, choosing instead to recall the moment she had looked back at him a couple of months back in the apartment foyer. She had wanted him then and he had known it, was way too experienced in that department with women to be mistaken. And now he had made it possible for her to have him and she ought to be pleased about that, shouldn’t she? He was pleased. Why wasn’t she? Why did women have to be so blasted irrational and changeable? And since when had he cared when one was? He was wasting way too much time speculating on her behaviour and it was inappropriate with a sexual partner.
He took her to a very exclusive party in a London town house with a man playing jazz at a grand piano in the drawing room amid a crush of very well-dressed chattering guests. Xan was treated like a golden god from the moment he arrived, drinks brought, seats found, his every opinion sought. He did once say, ‘This is Elvi,’ but for the most part, she was studiously ignored, presumably because his habit of having a mistress as a partner at such engagements was well known and she was deemed to be beneath the notice of such wealthy people.
‘Who is she?’ she heard one woman whisper behind her seat.
