by Lynne Graham
‘What’s going on?’ Cristo questioned from the bedroom doorway.
Erin paused in the act of flinging clothes back into her case and twisted her head round. ‘How quickly can you get me back home?’
‘Within a few hours—we’ll leave as soon as you’re ready, but I’d appreciate an explanation.’
Erin folded her lips, eyes refusing to meet his, and turned back to her packing. ‘I can’t give you one. A relative of mine has had an accident and I need to get home … urgently.’
Cristo released an impatient sigh. ‘Why do you make such a song and dance about even simple things? Why can’t you tell me the whole story?’
Erin dealt him a numb, distanced look. ‘I don’t have the words or enough time to explain.’
Within fifteen minutes they had left the house to travel to the airport. Erin was rigid with tension and silent, locked in her anxiety about her daughter, not to mention her guilt that her mother was being forced to deal with a very stressful situation alone. This was her punishment for deceiving her mother about where she was staying for the weekend, she thought painfully. Her children needed her but she was not within reach to come quickly to their aid. Instead their next-door neighbour, Tamsin, a young woman with kids of her own, had come to the hospital to collect Lorcan so that her mother could stay on there and wait for Nuala to come out of surgery.
They were walking through the airport when Cristo closed a hand to Erin’s wrist and said curtly. ‘We have to talk about this.’
‘Talking isn’t what you brought me here for,’ Erin countered tartly. ‘I appreciate that you feel shortchanged but right now there’s nothing I can do about it.’
‘That’s not what I meant,’ Cristo said glacially, frustration brightening his black diamond gaze to brilliance in his lean, strong face. ‘I’ll get you back to Oxford as quick as I can but you have to tell me what’s going on.’
Erin nodded agreement and bit her lip. ‘Once we’re airborne.’
Tell him—he made it sound so simple. She thought of those phone calls she had made, desperate to tell him, desperate for his support in a hostile world. When she’d realised she was pregnant she had reached out in panic, not thinking about what she would have to say or how he would react. Those kinds of fears would have been luxuries when she was struggling just to survive. Now she was older, wiser, aware she was about to open a can of worms with a blunt knife and make a mess. But why not? Why shouldn’t Cristo know that he was a father? How he reacted no longer mattered: she already had a job, a roof over her head. She didn’t need him any more.
Ensconced in the cream-leather-upholstered luxury of Cristo’s private jet, Erin struggled to regain her composure but she was too worried about Nuala and her mother. Deidre Turner didn’t deal well with the unexpected and suffered from panic attacks. How could she have left her mother with the burden of the twins for the weekend when the older woman had already looked after them all week long? Her mother would have been tired, tested by the daily challenge of caring for two lively toddlers, who didn’t always do as they were told, a combination that was an accident waiting to happen.
Cristo released his seat belt and stood up, six feet four inches of well-groomed male, in a dark business suit that made the most of his lean, powerful physique. Shrewd dark golden eyes below sooty lashes welded to her, he dealt her an expectant look.
‘I have children now,’ Erin declared baldly, breaking the tense silence. ‘Twins of two and a bit, a boy and a girl—’
Unsurprisingly, Cristo was stunned. ‘Children?’ he repeated the plural designation in a tone of astonishment. ‘How could you possibly have children?’
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘THE usual way. I fell pregnant. I became a mother eight months later,’ Erin told him flatly.
‘Twins?’ Cristo bit out a sardonic laugh to punctuate the word.
‘Yes, born a little early. And my daughter, Nuala, got hurt in a playground accident this morning. She broke her arm and she has to have surgery on it. That’s why I have to get home asap,’ Erin completed in the same strained tone.
‘And you didn’t feel that you could mention the little fact that you’re a mother before this point?’ Cristo derided grimly.
Erin studied the carpet. ‘I didn’t think you’d be interested.’
‘I’m more interested in finding out who the father of your twins might be,’ Cristo admitted, his stubborn jaw line clenching hard. ‘Is it Morton?’
‘No,’ Erin fielded without hesitation. ‘My children were very young when I first met Sam.’
‘Why is this like pulling teeth?’ Cristo demanded with ringing impatience.
‘Because you’re going out of your way to avoid the most obvious connection.’ Erin lifted her chin and studied him with cool amethyst eyes, an ocean of calm cocooning her as she moved towards the final bar she had set herself to clear. ‘Lorcan and Nuala are your children and don’t you dare complain about only finding that out now! It’s your fault that I made endless attempts to get in touch with you and failed.’
His stunning dark eyes widened, his beautiful mouth twisting. ‘My children —don’t be ridiculous. How could they possibly be mine?’
‘The traditional way, Cristo. You turned over in bed one night shortly before we broke up and made love to me without using a condom. Of course I can’t be a hundred per cent certain about the exact timing, but certainly that’s when I assume that I conceived,’ she explained curtly.
Beneath his bronzed skin, Cristo had grown pale as if such nit-picking detail added a veracity to her claim that nothing else could have done. ‘You’re saying that I got you pregnant?’
‘There wasn’t anyone else in the picture, in spite of all your misconceptions about Tom’s little brother.’ Erin rose to her feet with determination. ‘You are the father of my children. You can do DNA tests, whatever you like to satisfy yourself. I really don’t care. That side of things is immaterial to me now.’
Cristo poured himself a drink from the built in bar. His hand wasn’t quite steady as he raised the glass to his lips and drank deep. ‘This is inconceivable.’
He wheeled back round to stare at her with cloaked intensity, momentarily stepping outside the dialogue while with every fibre of his being he relived that last sweet taste of her in sunlight as her tongue tangled with his. The burn of that hunger had electrified him. She was a sexual challenge that never waned. That was what she meant to him, a high of satisfaction he craved every time he looked at her. He hated what she was but he wanted to bed her over and over again. That was easier to think about than the fantastic idea that he might have accidentally got her pregnant in the past. Hadn’t he only just emerged from a nightmare in that category? A nightmare that had comprehensively blown his marriage and his family apart? And now, the least likely mother of all was telling him that he was immaterial? He would never let another woman deny him his paternal rights.
‘I’ll take a soda and lime,’ Erin told him pointedly.
Frowning, his black brows drawing together, Cristo turned back to the bar to prepare her drink. His movements were deft and precise. He handed her a tall moisture-beaded glass, turning his arrogant dark head to study her afresh as he did so. He was so deep in shock at the concept of being a father that he felt as if the passage of time had frozen him in his tracks. ‘You said you made endless attempts to get in touch with me.’
‘Your PA finally told me that she had instructions not to put my calls through to you and that I was wasting my time.’
Cristo set his glass down on the bar with a sharp little snap of protest. ‘I never issued any such instruction!’
‘Well, maybe it was the bad fairy who issued it.’ Erin lifted and dropped a slight shoulder, unimpressed by his plea of innocence. All too well did she remember how humiliated she had felt having to make those repeated and clearly unwelcome phone calls. ‘I also sent a couple of letters.’
‘Which I never received.’
Erin ignored that
comeback. ‘You had changed your private cell phone number. I had no choice but to try and contact you through your office. At the last, I even phoned your family home in Athens …’
‘You contacted my … parents?’ Cristo queried with frank incredulity.
‘And your mother refused to pass on a message to you. She said you were getting married and that you wanted nothing more to do with “a woman like me”,’ Erin grimaced as she repeated that lowering description.
‘I don’t believe you. My foster mother is a kind, gentle woman. She would never be so offensive, particularly to a pregnant woman—’
‘Oh, I didn’t get as far as telling her that I was pregnant during our conversation. I could hardly get a word in edgeways once she realised who I was.’
‘She would not have known who you were,’ Cristo countered with conviction. ‘I never once mentioned your existence to my parents.’
Erin tried not to wince. She had often wondered and he had just confirmed her deepest suspicions. While evidently his foster mother had known her son did have a relationship with a woman in London, she had not received that information from him. Evidently, Erin had never been important enough to her lover to warrant being discussed with his family ‘I wrote to your office as well. The letters were returned to me unopened,’ she confided doggedly. ‘That’s when I gave up trying to contact you.’
Cristo drained his glass, set it down, shook his head slightly. ‘You say I’m the father of your children. I cannot accept that.’
Erin shrugged and sank back into her seat. At least he wasn’t shouting at her or calling her a liar … yet. Time might well take care of that oversight. In truth, though, she had never seen him so shaken, for Cristo was strong as steel and given to rolling with the punches that life dealt out. But right now he was in a daze, visibly shattered by her revelation.
‘It’s OK if you can’t accept it. I’ll understand. But at least I’ve finally told you. How you feel about it, whether or not you believe me, isn’t relevant any more.’
Cristo shot her an exasperated look that hinted at the darker, deeper emotions he was maintaining control over beneath his forbidding reserve. ‘How can it not be relevant?’
‘Because it doesn’t matter any longer. When I first fell pregnant, life was tough. I needed your help then and I didn’t get it,’ Erin pointed out ruefully. ‘Now, thanks to my mother’s support, the kids and I are quite self-sufficient as long as I have a reasonable salary to rely on.’
In the strained silence, Cristo poured himself another drink. She watched the muscles work in his strong brown throat and then recalled how only hours earlier she had wanted to eat him alive and she cringed at that reminder of how weak she could be around him. On the other hand, he was a sophisticated man and he had the sexual experience to make her burn—that was all! It would be foolish to punish herself just because she had sunk low enough to enjoy their intimacy on his terms. She was a healthy, warm-blooded woman who had suppressed her natural needs for too long. In the end, if anything, too much self-control had made a victim of her. Of course she had never met a man she wanted as she wanted Cristo, never known a man who, even in the midst of the most emotional scene she had ever endured, could still make her mind wander down undisciplined paths. For there he stood, shocked but unbowed, gorgeous dark eyes smouldering with raw reaction in his even more gorgeous face.
‘If this story of yours is true, why didn’t you tell me the instant I came back into your life?’ he pressed, lifting his proud dark head high, a tiny muscle pulling tight at one corner of his unsmiling mouth.
Erin compressed her lips, shook her head. ‘I didn’t want anyone to know that we’d even had a past relationship, never mind that you’re the father of my kids.’
‘I don’t follow that reasoning. Would Morton have turned against you had he known the truth?’
‘Stop dragging Sam into everything. He’s nothing to do with any of this,’ Erin said vehemently. ‘I owe Sam. He took a risk on me. The job with his hotel group made it possible for me to survive. As for other people knowing about our … er … past connection, I would have found that embarrassing.’
Embarrassing? Cristo gritted his even white teeth while resisting the urge to bite back. Why would she lie now? After all, if he was the father of her twins, he had to owe her thousands of pounds in child support. Nor, until he had made checks, could he disprove her claim that she had tried to contact him to tell him that she was pregnant. If it was true and if she had continued with the pregnancy rather than seeking a way out of her predicament, he owed her a debt, didn’t he? While his intelligence urged caution, he would be careful of uttering any disparaging comments.
‘I’ll accompany you home,’ Cristo announced in a tone of finality.
Disconcerted, Erin frowned. ‘But why would you do that?’
‘Perhaps I would like to see these children whom you insist are my flesh and blood.’
Her triangular face froze, long lashes sweeping down over her eyes while she processed an idea that seemed to strike her as extraordinary.
‘Surely you expected that?’
Erin glanced up and clashed with eyes that burned like a furnace in Cristo’s hard masculine face. ‘I hadn’t thought that far ahead.’
‘I’m coming to the hospital with you,’ Cristo decreed.
Erin winced at the prospect, picturing her mother’s astonishment, not to mention the prospect of explaining that she had lied about going to Scotland and had gone to Italy to be with Cristo instead.
‘There’s nothing else that I can do,’ Cristo added grimly.
Erin was mystified. Was curiosity or a sense of duty driving him? But then how on earth had she expected him to react to her revelation? Had she really believed that he might just walk away untouched by the news that he was a father?
‘I’m not expecting you to get involved with the twins,’ Erin muttered uncomfortably.
‘It is more a matter of what I expect of myself,’ Cristo countered with a gravity she had never seen in him before.
Oh, my word, what have I done? Erin wondered feverishly. What did he expect from himself in the parenting stakes? His own upbringing, after all, had been unusual. And he was a non-conformist to the marrow of his bones, shrugging off convention if it made no sense to him.
It was nine in the evening before they made it to the hospital. Deidre Turner was seated in a bland little side ward next to a bed in which a small still form lay. The older woman, her face grey with exhaustion and her eyes marked pink by tears, scrambled upright when she saw her daughter. ‘Erin, thank goodness! I was scared you mightn’t make it back tonight and I was worried about leaving Lorcan with Tamsin,’ she confided, only then noting the presence of the tall black-haired male behind Erin.
‘Mum?’ Erin murmured uncertainly. ‘This is Cristo Donakis. He insisted on coming with me.’
For once shorn of his social aplomb, Cristo came to a dead halt at the foot of the bed to gaze down at the little girl with the white-blonde curls clustered round her small head. She looked like Erin but her skin was several shades darker than her mother’s fair complexion. His attention rested on the small skinny arm bearing a colourful cast and he swallowed a sudden unfamiliar thickness in his throat. She was tiny as a doll and as he stared in growing wonderment her feathery lashes lifted to reveal eyes as dark a brown as his own.
‘Mummy …’ Nuala whispered drowsily.
‘I’m here.’ Erin hastily pulled up a seat and perched on the edge of it, leaning forward to pat Nuala’s little hand soothingly. ‘How did the surgery go, Mum?’
‘Really well. The surgeon was very pleased,’ Deidre confided. ‘Nuala should regain the full use of her arm.’
‘That’s a relief,’ Erin commented, turning her gaze back to her daughter’s small flushed face. ‘How are you feeling, pet?’
‘My arm’s sore.’ The little girl sighed, her attention roaming away from her mother to lock to the tall powerful man stationed at the foot of
her bed. ‘Who is that man?’
‘I’m Cristo,’ Cristo muttered not quite steadily.
‘He’s your daddy,’ Deidre Turner explained without hesitation, a broad smile of satisfaction chasing the exhaustion from her drawn face.
Shock at that announcement trapped Erin’s breath in her throat and she shot the older woman a look of dismay.
‘Honesty is the best policy,’ Deidre remarked to noone in particular, rising from her seat to extend a hand to Cristo. ‘I’m Erin’s mother, Deidre.’
‘Daddy?’ Nuala repeated wide-eyed at the description. ‘You’re my daddy?’
In the simmering silence, Erin frowned. ‘Yes. He’s your daddy,’ she confirmed. ‘Mum? Could I have a word with you in private?’
A nurse came in just then to check on Nuala and, after mentioning that her daughter was complaining of pain, Erin stepped outside with her mother. ‘You must be wondering what’s going on,’ Erin began awkwardly.
‘What’s there to wonder? Obviously you’ve finally told the man he’s a father and that’s not before time,’ the older woman replied wryly.
Erin breathed in deep. ‘I’m afraid I lied to you about where I was this weekend—I wasn’t in Scotland with Tom and Melissa. I was with Cristo.’
‘And you didn’t know how to tell me, I suppose. Did you think I would interfere?’ Deidre enquired astutely. ‘He’s the twins’ father. Naturally you need to sort this situation out but you’ve taken the first step towards that and I’m proud of you.’