by Lynne Graham
‘Name them,’ she challenged.
‘I will not discuss them with you—’
‘You unreasonable, arrogant …’ she slammed back, so enraged with him that she was trembling. ‘In all the time we were together I never so much as looked at another man but that wasn’t good enough for you, was it? You’re jealous and possessive to the bone—you couldn’t even stand me spending time with Tom!’
Eyes glowing like the heart of a fire between black spiky lashes, Cristo closed his hands to her waist and lifted her off her feet to set her to one side. ‘I’ve told you. We’re not having this discussion.’
Erin followed him into the bathroom. ‘We definitely are, Cristo. You can’t accuse me of infidelity and expect me to accept it in silence! What’s wrong with you? You think I’m a thief as well but you said nothing about that either at the time. In retrospect don’t you find all this muck being flung at me a little strange?’
Cristo was engaged in stripping off his wine-stained clothing. ‘In what way strange?’ he queried curtly.
‘It’s beginning to look to me like someone set out to deliberately discredit me in your eyes.’
His handsome mouth took on a sardonic curve as he peeled off his jeans and left them in a heap. ‘That sounds like paranoia.’
Erin averted her attention as he stripped off his boxers and discovered that she was studying his long, powerful, hair-roughened thighs instead. The colour in her cheeks heightened as she lifted her head again, struggling to blot out the sight of the lean ropes of muscle banding his powerful torso. ‘There’s nothing paranoid about my suspicions—’
‘You cheated on me and I found out … get over it,’ Cristo advised witheringly as he switched on the shower and stepped in, utterly unconcerned by the nudity of his lean bronzed body. But then he had never been shy. ‘It’s ancient history. Don’t try to resurrect it.’
‘I wish I’d hit you with that bottle.’
Cristo rammed back the shower door and rested cold dark eyes of warning on her angry, defiant face. ‘Don’t you ever do anything like that again or I won’t be responsible for what I do.’
Erin clashed with scorching golden eyes and her tummy lurched. Rage washed over her again because butterflies were leaping in her pelvis. Infuriatingly her body was reacting to him with all the control of an infatuated adolescent. ‘I wish I had cheated on you … the way you treated me, I might as well have done!’
She stalked out of the bathroom. He had knocked her for six with that accusation. He had also taught her that she didn’t know him as well as she had always believed she did. Although she had recognised his reserve she had never dreamt that he might have the capacity to keep such big secrets from her. What else didn’t she know about Cristo? And what else had happened that had caused him to doubt her loyalty? What were those other ‘things’ he had grudgingly mentioned? Yanking the bedspread off the bed, and lifting a pillow, she made up the sofa on the far side of the room for her occupation.
‘You’re not sleeping over there,’ Cristo told her tautly.
‘I’m certainly not getting back into a bed with a man who thinks I’m a slut as well as a thief!’ Erin replied with spirit, pale hair bouncing on her shoulders as she spun round to face him.
Stark naked, Cristo was hauling fresh clothing from drawers. He shot her a censorious appraisal from brilliant dark eyes. ‘We have a deal—’
‘But I intend to add my own conditions,’ Erin declared thinly. ‘I’ll keep to our agreement if—’
‘Too late—we already have a deal.’
‘If that’s your attitude I’m sleeping on the sofa.’
His thick sooty lashes lowered on stunning golden eyes while he surveyed her. ‘Do you cheat at cards too?’
‘You ought to know—you taught me to play,’ she reminded him.
The silence buzzed like an angry wasp. Cristo continued to watch her, his attention locked to the sultry pink pout of her mouth. He wished he had kept his own shut and could not think why he had admitted that he knew of her betrayal. Everything had been going so well until she decided that honour demanded she now prove that she was pure as the driven snow. In exasperation he scored long brown fingers through his damp black hair. ‘What conditions?’ he demanded impatiently.
‘I’ll get back into that bed if—and only if—you agree to talk to Tom, who will verify that he passed the key card for the room to his brother and later dropped me off at the hospital a hundred miles away to be with my mother.’
Cristo looked pained. ‘That’s ridiculous.’
Erin tilted her chin. ‘No, it’s the least of what you owe me.’
‘I owe you nothing.’ He was poised there insolently, still half naked but for the jeans he had pulled on. Just looking at Cristo made her heartbeat pick up speed and her breathing quicken: he was so physically gorgeous. White-hot sex appeal was bred into his very bones. Even more disturbingly, the wilful line of his beautiful mouth was remarkably like her son, Lorcan’s, she registered in dismay, rushing to suppress that unnerving sense of familiarity. Inside himself Cristo was seething with anger, she did know that, but Cristo rarely revealed anger on the surface, deeming that a weakness. And one thing Cristophe Donakis did not do was weakness.
‘I deserve that you check out my side of the story,’ Erin proclaimed as regally as a queen. ‘You didn’t give me the opportunity three years ago, so the least you can do is take care of the omission now.’
A winged ebony brow quirked. ‘And if I agree, you’ll get back into bed?’
‘I have just one more thing to say.’
‘You’re pricing yourself out of the market.’
Erin gazed back at him, remembering when she had loved him, when she had simply lived for his quick easy smile and attention and shrinking from the recollection, fearful of ever laying her heart out again. ‘No, I’m worth waiting for.’
Cristo dealt her a hungry appraisal that made her triangular face burn as though he had turned an open flame on her skin. ‘Speak …’
‘Ask yourself why I would commit fraud and put myself at risk of a prison sentence while refusing to accept the valuable diamond jewellery you tried to give me on several occasions,’ she advised softly. ‘If I wanted money that badly, keeping the diamonds and selling them would have been much more sensible.’
Cristo held her eyes coolly without reaction and then released his breath on a slow measured hiss. ‘Get back in bed,’ he breathed.
Erin retrieved her pillow and undid the tie on the robe, letting it fall as she scrambled onto the divan. Cristo watched, desire igniting almost simultaneously to raise his temperature. Surely there had never been any woman with paler, more perfect skin or more delicate yet highly feminine curves? He lay down on the bed beside her with a sense that all was right in his world for the first time in a long time. Erin studied the stark beauty of his features, knowing why no other man had tempted her, knowing why she was still heart whole. Nobody had ever come close to comparing to Cristo either in looks or passion. Eyes drowsy, she lifted a hand in the simmering silence and with her forefinger gently traced the volatile curve of his full lower lip. His gaze smouldered and his hand came up to entrap hers, long fingers wrapping round her smaller hand with precision.
‘Go to sleep,’ he breathed ruefully, noting the shadows that lay below her eyes like bruises. ‘You’re exhausted.’
Why should it bother him that she looked so tired? Why had he even noticed? His expressive mouth tightened.
They were enjoying the equivalent of a two-night stand: finer feelings of any kind were not required. Nor had he any intention of getting caught up in discussing their previous relationship. There was nothing to discuss. But Erin had looked so shocked when he accused her of cheating on him. Perhaps she had been shocked that he had found her out. Clearly her partner that night had stayed silent about Cristo’s entry to the hotel room. And Erin had always had a talent for playing innocent and naïve. Once that had charmed him, fooled him. Now it merely s
et his teeth on edge with suspicion.
What was Erin hoping to get out of this weekend? She was a survivor. As was he and he didn’t like the fact that he was enjoying her company so much.
The next day they had breakfast on the terrace mid-morning. Erin had slept so late she was embarrassed. Sleeping in, after all, was a luxury she no longer enjoyed at home. The twins woke up at the crack of dawn demanding attention and since their birth Erin had learned to get by on short rations of sleep. Casually garbed in white cotton trousers teamed with a colourful silk top, she spread honey on her toast and enjoyed the picturesque landscape of rolling hills covered with mature chestnut and oak woods at the rear of the villa. It occurred to her that she might as well have been on a pleasure trip, for the accommodation and food were superb and even the company was acceptable.
Acceptable, jeered a little mocking voice in her head as she glanced at Cristo, lean and darkly magnificent in a black polo shirt and tailored chinos, predictably pacing the terrace as he ate and drank, the restive spirit that drove him unable to keep the lid on his sheer energy this early in the day. He had let her sleep undisturbed, had already been up and dressed when he finally wakened her. As his spectacular dark golden eyes surged her she went pink, something akin to panic assailing her as she felt her treacherous body’s instant response to his powerful masculinity. There was an ache at the heart of her, a physical reminder of the wild passion they had shared. Yes, shared, she labelled, refusing to overlook her own behaviour. The sleazy weekend of her worst imaginings had come nowhere near reality and it had also proved surprisingly informative, she acknowledged wryly as she continued to think deeply about Cristo’s admission that he had believed she had cheated on him. How could he not have confronted her about that? And yet she knew why not, she understood the bone-deep unforgiving pride that was so much a part of his nature. He had successfully hidden his anger from her at the time, refusing to vent it, something she could not have done in his place. He had accepted her supposed betrayal and, even now, his lack of faith in her when she had loved him appalled her. As Cristo had reminded her, though, it was the past and she thought it was wiser not to dwell on it.
He took her out for a drive in an open-topped sports car. Such freedom felt strange to her. She was accustomed to taking the twins to the park on Saturday mornings. Guilt weighed her down for she knew that her children would be missing out on that outing because Erin’s mother found it difficult to watch over her grandchildren alone in a public place. Lorcan loved to explore and he wandered off, often followed by his sister. Erin had twice found her son standing up to his knees in the boating lake and had carried him kicking and screaming back to dry land where Nuala waited to enrage him with the toddler version of, ‘I told you so.’
‘How did you end up working for Sam Morton?’ Cristo prompted.
‘Pure good luck. I was living at home and working as a personal trainer again. My best client was a friend of Sam’s. That kind lady talked me up to him when he was looking for a spa manager and he phoned me and offered me an interview.’
‘What made you leave London to return to Oxford?’
Erin shot him a taut glance and opted for honesty. ‘I couldn’t afford city life when I was living on benefits. I should never have resigned from my job at the Mobila spa—that was rash and short-sighted of me.’
‘I was surprised when you resigned,’ Cristo admitted. ‘Later I assumed it was because you’d been dipping into the till and you thought it would be safer to stage a vanishing act.’
Erin stiffened at that reminder but said nothing, resigned to the fact that she could not combat that charge until she had, at least, tackled Sally Jennings. ‘I left because I didn’t want to keep running into you and I assumed you’d feel the same way but I was over-sensitive. Leaving after working there such a short time blighted my CV. It was also much harder to find another job than I thought it would be.’ Especially once she had realised that she was pregnant and no longer feeling well, she completed inwardly.
A hundred memories of their time together were assailing Cristo and lending a brooding edge to his mood. He remembered her twirling in the rain with an umbrella. She had preferred nights in watching DVDs to nights out at a club but the horror movies, which she loved, gave her nightmares. He had learned not to mind being used as a security blanket in the middle of the night. They had virtually lived together at weekends when he was in London, his innate untidiness driving her wild while her love of pizza had left him cold. Now he asked himself how well he had ever known her.
The sun beat down on them as they walked around a little hill village, packed with stone houses and narrow twisting alleys. In the cool quiet interior of the tiny ancient church, she lit a candle and said a little prayer for peace while Cristo waited outside for her. Around him she couldn’t think straight and the level of her emotional turmoil was starting to scare her. She needed to hate him but what she was feeling was not hatred. That she knew, but what she did feel beyond the pull of his magnetic attraction was much harder to pin down and she abandoned the challenge. In twenty-four hours she would be heading home and this little episode would be finished, she reasoned doggedly, keen to ground herself to solid earth again. What was the point in tormenting herself with regrets and foolish questions?
They had a simple lunch in the medieval piazza where Cristo stretched like a lion basking in the midday heat while Erin sat back in the shade, aware that without it her winter pale skin would burn. The waitress, a young woman in her twenties, couldn’t take her eyes off the striking beauty of Cristo’s classic features or the sizzling effect of his honey-coloured gaze when he smiled. With a sinking heart Erin recalled when she had been even more impressionable.
Even now, she flushed beneath his disturbingly intent scrutiny. ‘What?’
‘You look beautiful and you didn’t even have to make an effort. It only took you ten minutes to get dressed.’
‘You’re accustomed to more decorative women … that’s all.’
‘You always turn aside compliments as though they’re insincere,’ Cristo murmured, his attention lodging revealingly on the voluptuous curve of her raspberry-tinted lips.
Erin knew that look, recognised his sexual hunger and felt the raw pull of it deep inside her body. Her nipples tingled and a pool of liquid heat formed in her pelvis, making her instantly ashamed of her lack of self-discipline. Breathing rapidly in the warm still air in an attempt to suppress those unwelcome reactions, she tensed but she remained insanely aware of his appreciative scrutiny. The atmosphere positively smouldered. Cristo laughed with husky satisfaction and her heart hammered like a trapped bird in her chest.
‘Time for us to leave, koukla mou,’ he murmured, silkily suggestive, sliding fluidly upright to take care of the bill.
Tomorrow could not come soon enough for her, Erin told herself. The weekend would be over and she could pretty much slip back into the comforting routine of her very ordinary life. But she would also be working for Cristo again and in the wake of this forty-eight-hour break from reality that would be no easy challenge.
They walked back downhill, Erin moving a few steps in Cristo’s wake. It was the hottest hour of the day and even her light clothing was clinging to her damp skin but she loved the sunshine. He caught her hand as he drew level with the car and drew her closer, hot, hungry eyes with the pure lustre of gold connecting with hers. He bent his dark head and claimed her lips in a searing kiss. Every response she had fought since leaving the villa bubbled up in a fountain of need. The erotic charge between them was delirious, devastating her defences as he fed hungrily from the sweetness of her mouth. She could feel the leashed demand in his lean, hard body as he bent her back against the car bonnet, the tremor in the long fingers clasping her cheek as her tongue tangled with his. She wanted to eat him alive. With a ragged groan, he stepped back from her.
‘Let’s go,’ he rasped.
Her legs were as bendy and unreliable as twigs as she stumbled into the passeng
er seat. With her heart thundering and her head swimming after that lusty exchange her thoughts ran blood red with guilt and shame. This was not how she had expected the weekend to turn out: she had never counted on still being so attracted to Cristo that every barrier between them dropped.
Snatching in a steadying breath, Cristo drove off. He felt out of control and he didn’t like that. When had ‘just sex’ become ‘must-have sex’? And what had happened to the exorcism goal? This was getting her out of his system? He thought of his marriage, an infallible reminder of the danger of undisciplined impulses, and straight away the electrifying heat in his blood cooled, his arousal subsiding to a more bearable level.
Erin’s mobile phone started ringing as she entered the villa. She snatched it out of her bag with a frown and answered it. ‘Mum?’ she queried into the excited barrage of her mother’s too fast hail of words. ‘Calm down. What is it?’
Cristo watched Erin begin to pace the hall in quick short steps. ‘What sort of an accident?’ she was asking urgently, her triangular face lint white with shock and dismay. ‘Oh m-my … word … how bad is it?’
Erin pressed a concerned hand to her parted lips and turned in a clumsy uncoordinated circle. Nuala had had an accident at the playground and had broken her arm. It was a fracture and required surgery. Erin’s heart was beating so fast with worry that she felt sick. Assuring her mother that she would be at the hospital as soon as possible, she ended the call.
‘Bad news?’ Cristo prompted.
‘It’s an emergency—you’ve got to get me home as fast as you can. I’m sorry. I’ll go and pack.’
Erin fled upstairs, nothing in her head but the thought of her daughter suffering without her mother’s support. She had never felt so guilty in her life. Nuala was hurt and about to have an operation and Erin couldn’t be with her. It would never have happened if Erin had stayed at home. Deidre Turner had tried to take the twins to the park in her daughter’s place. Nuela had squirmed to the top of the climbing frame and hung upside down in spite of her grandmother’s pleas for her to come down. When the child fell she might have broken her arm but she was exceedingly lucky not to have broken her neck. Knowing that her daughter had to be in pain and frightened, Erin felt her tummy churn with nausea. She should have told Cristo that she couldn’t make the weekend because she now had children, responsibilities. Staying silent on that score had been the act of an irresponsible parent.