by Lynne Graham
And there it was, she thought melodramatically, Eros exerting control again. He had smoothly brought the thorny topic of his rare visits to London right back to where they had started and placed it before her again like a reproach, cutting through her attempt to sidetrack him.
‘You may know my paternal grandfather,’ Winnie remarked abruptly, determined not to fall into the trap of shouldering blame for his unavailability to act as a regular father. ‘Stamboulas Fotakis. My sisters and I only met him recently.’
Eros’s scrutiny was level and cool and uniquely uninformative. ‘Who hasn’t heard of Bull Fotakis? He’s a legend in his own lifetime. Why didn’t you mention that connection two years ago?’
Winnie laid down her knife and fork and grasped her glass. ‘To be honest, mentioning it never even crossed my mind. At that point I hadn’t met him or, indeed, had any contact with him. My father parted with him on bad terms but we don’t have any other relatives. My sisters were too young when my parents died to appreciate that we did have a grandparent still living. When I told them about him, they were curious and keen to get to know him,’ she said truthfully. ‘We are very grateful for the house he allows us to live in.’
The lean, strong lineaments of his darkly handsome face had pulled taut. ‘It’s my job to be keeping you and my child, not your grandfather’s,’ he declared bluntly.
He would make a terrific poker player, she thought wryly, for he had betrayed no strong reaction to her admission of her grandfather’s identity, indeed had merely turned the spotlight straight back to himself.
‘That’s a rather old-fashioned outlook, if you don’t mind me saying,’ Winnie dared, pausing to sip her wine and refresh her dry mouth.
‘I do mind you saying it,’ Eros countered, green eyes glittering like shards of sea glass between lush black lashes. ‘My son and the mother of my child are solely my responsibility. There’s nothing old-fashioned about that conviction. Even the law would back me up. I should be maintaining both of you.’
Winnie paled, her appetite dwindling even more beneath the sheer weight of his gaze. He was so intense and Teddy emanated that same intensity in whatever he did, suggesting that it was a family trait. ‘Let’s not argue,’ she muttered uneasily, gathering that he was planning to persuade her to accept financial help from him.
‘Undoubtedly, we will find much to argue about,’ Eros told her, dismaying her with his insouciance at that prospect because Winnie was no fan of conflict, particularly around Teddy. ‘Eat up,’ he urged lightly.
‘Why is it so important for you to be a big part of Teddy’s life?’ Winnie pressed more boldly.
‘My father divorced my mother when I was eight and I barely saw him after that,’ Eros admitted, disconcerting her with that admission. ‘He remarried and my stepmother had no interest in kids. That marriage broke down, as well. My father lived a chaotic life after he left my mother and he didn’t have the time or the energy to continue being a parent. By the time I was eighteen and he was dying, he was a stranger.’
Winnie winced. ‘I’m sorry. I had no idea.’
‘But perhaps you will now understand why I see my role in Teddy’s life as being a role of crucial importance for his benefit as well as mine,’ he murmured sibilantly, his eyes veiled, his expression grave.
‘Yes,’ she conceded reluctantly. ‘Yes, I can see that an absent father would leave an impression on you.’
‘Fortunately for me, when I was setting up my first business, I met an older man who acted as my mentor and steered me away from more imprudent investments,’ he admitted wryly. ‘Without Filipe’s backing, my first venture would have run aground. He was the father my own father was too busy and selfish to be. I don’t ever want my son to view me in that light.’
‘Naturally not,’ Winnie agreed, pushing her plate away.
Involuntarily, she was entranced by the informative glimpse he was giving her of his younger years because Eros had always been very tight-lipped about his background. He had backed away or ignored intrusive questions and if she persisted, he had shut her down with brooding silence. He had stubbornly resisted her once-overwhelming desire to know everything there was to know about him, but then possibly he had been afraid that he might stumble if he talked too freely and accidentally reveal that he was married. Nothing would ever persuade her that he had kept that dark secret unintentionally.
She watched him eat his dessert with eyes that brimmed with growing amusement and memories. Eros had a very sweet tooth. He only ever indulged it at mealtimes and she knew he worked hard in the gym to stay lean and fit. He ushered her back into the comfortable living area, carrying her wine for her.
Winnie grew apprehensive again, sensing that Eros was about to state his demands with regard to their son. He strolled over to the windows and opened the doors onto the balcony, allowing the sounds of the world outside to intrude. She followed him out onto the roof garden, clutching her glass like a lifeline and settling down in a padded seat while he leant up against the balustrade, unperturbed by the light breeze tousling his black curls.
‘I’ve reached the conclusion that we should get married,’ Eros murmured silkily and without the smallest effort to prepare her for that startling announcement. ‘It would settle every problem and then we could both support Teddy.’
Winnie froze in shock and stared at him, huge brown eyes welded to his lean dark features and the brilliance of his intense green eyes. Memories unravelled inside her head, tossing her back in time, momentarily burying her in intimate recollections. Eros always looked most alert in the grip of passion and she sensed that for some reason the idea of marrying her fell into that same category of being something he wanted a great deal. Why, she had no idea, but she was convinced that it was truly important to him. Certainly not for sex or for her own self, she gathered, since he had let her walk out of his life two years earlier and made no attempt to see her again. Finding her when she had only moved back in with her sisters wouldn’t have been that much of a challenge for Eros. But at best on his terms, she had only been a fling and at worst, a casual mistress, not a woman he either needed or really cared about and he hadn’t looked for her.
‘Why do you think that we should marry?’ she almost croaked, her throat dry with stress and confusion.
‘Teddy.’ Eros shrugged a shoulder. ‘There’s no other way to give him everything he needs.’
‘That’s nonsensical!’ Winnie objected boldly. ‘Loads of couples live separate lives and share their children perfectly happily.’
‘And how are we going to share Teddy when I’m based in Greece?’ Eros derided.
‘That’s not my problem,’ Winnie told him thinly. ‘Maybe you could start spending more time here?’
‘I asked you to marry me,’ Eros reminded her very drily. ‘Don’t you think you should be a little more gracious?’
An angry flush of chagrin mantled Winnie’s cheekbones. Suspicion infiltrated her, swiftly followed by comprehension. Hadn’t she just told him that one of the richest men in the world was her grandfather? In Eros’s eyes, she had evidently become an eligible bride because she was no longer a penniless cook. ‘No, I don’t,’ she snapped back resentfully. ‘You certainly wouldn’t have asked me to marry you two years ago!’
‘Not unless I wished to be tried as a bigamist,’ he fielded with sardonic bite. ‘I wasn’t free to marry then and Teddy didn’t exist. But now we have Teddy to consider and I would like my son to carry my name.’
‘He’s perfectly happy with my name!’ Winnie parried with spirit. ‘You know very well that you don’t really want to marry me, Eros. I’m just a woman you slept with who became inconveniently pregnant.’
Eros ignored that statement. ‘I want my son in my home and I can’t have him without his mother.’
Winnie lost her angry colour and dropped her gaze, the pain of rejection slicing through her. ‘Oh, than
k you very much,’ she framed curtly.
‘Thee mou...’ Eros growled in sudden seething frustration. ‘Of course I want you too!’
Winnie rose from her seat and set her glass down with a sharp little snap. ‘Well, maybe...just maybe, Mr Ego, I don’t want you!’ she slung back.
‘It would take me only five minutes to prove otherwise,’ Eros bit out in unhesitating challenge. ‘Let me list all the many reasons why we should marry.’
‘Oh, spare me the lecture, please,’ Winnie muttered witheringly. ‘Or why not start with the fact that the idea would never have occurred to you if I hadn’t told you that I was related to Stam Fotakis?’
Eros stared back at her in shock, noticeably turning pale beneath his bronzed skin, the angles of his high cheekbones starkly prominent and taut. ‘You actually think I want you for the money you may one day inherit?’ he breathed in incredulous rage.
No, definitely not a gold-digger, Winnie decided, reckoning that no man could fake that amount of disbelief and outrage. It was time for her to bow smartly out of their civil little dinner date before they came to physical blows. ‘I think I should go home now.’
A hand closed round hers and jerked her back around before she could walk indoors again. Shimmering sea-glass eyes locked to her flushed face like lasers. ‘This has nothing to do with you being a member of the Fotakis family. This is between us.’
‘Well, no, actually it’s not,’ Winnie argued, dry-mouthed with tension. ‘This is about you wanting Teddy and having to take me too and apparently make the best of a bad bargain.’
‘Thee mou... Where are your wits?’ Eros growled down at her with lancing impatience. ‘I want you.’
‘You didn’t want me so much that you came looking for me two years ago!’ Winnie flared back at him in an outburst that, despite her best efforts, emerged as accusing in tone.
‘I was married. Our relationship was wrong. That is why I didn’t seek you out again,’ Eros breathed in a fierce undertone. ‘I didn’t want to be tempted back into our affair.’
‘A pity you didn’t feel like that when you first met me!’ Winnie tossed back at him accusingly. ‘We’d all have been a lot happier if you’d done the right thing from the start!’
‘But we wouldn’t have had Teddy,’ Eros pointed out unarguably. ‘And now that I have met him, I wouldn’t change the past even if I could.’
Alarmingly conscious of the hand closed round her narrow wrist, the fingers lazily stroking her arm as if to soothe her, Winnie dropped her head, knowing that in spite of the unhappiness Eros had caused her, she would never wish that Teddy had not been born because he had brought so much love, light and comfort into the world with him. Eros had broken her heart but Teddy had healed her, giving her the focus and the strength to rebuild her life.
‘I do want you,’ Eros grated, pushing up her chin, green eyes blazing bright as crystal in sunlight, crushing her soft full mouth under his, tasting her with a ravenous hunger that electrified her where she stood.
Her lips parted and something tightened deep down inside her pelvis as his tongue plunged into the sensitive interior of her mouth. A faint tremor racked her, her tongue tangling with his, her body instinctively straining towards him. Her breasts were full and tender and the burst of heat between her thighs compelled her headlong into his lean, muscular length, craving the contact that that overwhelming hunger had unleashed. The hard thrust of his arousal against her stomach was unmistakeable.
The sure, deft exploration of his hands over the swell of her bottom and then up over her tender breasts, cupping, squeezing, partially soothed the raw need traversing her and yet simultaneously drove it even higher. A whimper of choked sound was wrenched from her throat. She was utterly lost in the powerful sensations coursing through her, urging her on and destroying her every defence because what she was feeling was utterly mindless.
‘Look at me...’ Eros urged, his dark, deep, insistent drawl sending a tingling sensation down her taut spine. ‘I want you. You want me. It’s very simple.’
With a mighty mental exertion, Winnie forced her body back from the lure of his and stepped back a further pace for good measure. Her cheeks were burning with mortification and inside herself she was beating herself up for revelling in that kiss. ‘No, it’s not simple.’
‘But it could be if we both act like reasonable people,’ Eros intoned. ‘I don’t want to be forced into a custody battle with you.’
Winnie froze. ‘C-custody?’ she stammered in horror. ‘Battle? Why would you do that?’
‘Because if you say no to marriage, I have no other option,’ Eros replied without hesitation. ‘I want Teddy in my life, Winnie, and I won’t settle for anything less.’
Winnie was pale and still in retreat from him. ‘Obviously I’m willing to agree arrangements for you to see Teddy,’ she reminded him. ‘I wouldn’t have come tonight if I hadn’t been willing.’
His lean dark features were shuttered and hard. ‘Occasional meetings here in London? That’s not enough. I want more.’
Winnie steeled her backbone to stay upright and she stared back at him, struggling to conceal her horror at the pressure he was putting on her. ‘You can’t have more,’ she told him flatly. ‘You can see Teddy whenever you’re able but I won’t agree to anything beyond that.’
His extraordinary eyes narrowed to glittering shards of green. ‘Then we go to court and, be warned, I will arm myself with every piece of ammunition that I can lay my hands on to strengthen my own case...’
‘You’re threatening me,’ she whispered shakily, a chill spreading through her body from deep down inside her, surprise and fear assailing her in a sickening wave.
‘You’re leaving my child in the care of a woman who was accused of working in a brothel, her name and her face plastered all over the gutter press!’ Eros condemned.
Winnie, literally, felt faint with shock that he should already be aware of that embarrassing truth. He was talking about her sister Vivi, poor Vivi, whose first job had inadvertently led to her reputation being ruined. Vivi had believed she was working for a modelling agency but in fact it had also been an escort agency, which was raided by the police and closed down for operating illegally as a brothel. Being both photogenic and naive, Vivi had been branded as a prostitute by the tabloids as she was seen fleeing the premises that same day.
‘And your other sister, who rarely goes out in public and suffers from panic attacks. How safe is Teddy with her?’ Eros enquired lethally. ‘What if she has one of those attacks when she’s supposed to be looking after my son?’
‘I hate you!’ Winnie ground out rawly, anger splintering through her like a lightning bolt, for there was nothing she would not do to protect her younger sisters. ‘How did you find out such confidential details about my family?’
‘Such details are available to anyone with the cash to have you investigated,’ Eros told her levelly.
‘You’re hateful,’ Winnie told him with a scornful, dismissive jerk of her slight shoulders. ‘I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man alive after an apocalypse! I have no respect for a man prepared to sink low enough to threaten my family while he tries to steal my son, and I wouldn’t trust a word you said—’
‘Teddy is my son and my family too,’ Eros reasoned, lifting his strong chin. ‘It is right that I do everything within my power—no matter how dirty I have to get—to do what I believe to be best for my son.’
Winnie had already retreated all the way back into the apartment. ‘Well, just you keep on telling yourself that if it makes you feel better but, unlike you, I have standards and rules I wouldn’t break... No—no matter what the temptation was!’
‘You can’t expect me to play nice in a situation where you expect me to accept that my own child will be perpetually out of my reach,’ Eros argued fiercely, green eyes snapping with intensity.
‘
When the dust settles,’ Winnie responded curtly, ‘just remember that you are the one who wanted to make this a battle and fight dirty. I was the one prepared to be reasonable and fair.’
‘Really?’ Eros slanted a scornful brow. ‘Were you fair when you concealed the birth of my child from me? Were you fair when you denied Teddy his right to have a father? Were you being fair when you suggested that I could maybe arrange to be in London more often to see my son?’
Her heart-shaped face tight and pale with angry tension, Winnie screened her eyes and remained silent, reluctant to engage in further argument with him because it wasn’t getting her anywhere. No, none of that was fair. But it had not been any fairer on her when Eros had concealed the reality that he was a married man. It was, however, even more unjust when he threatened to expose her sisters in court as unsuitable carers for Teddy because of past experiences that neither young woman could have avoided or controlled.
Zoe had been bullied and abused in foster care. Vivi had been left to take the fall for a wayward young heiress from a powerful family. In short, life wasn’t fair, Winnie conceded unhappily. She had first learned that when her loving, hardworking parents had died at the hands of a drunk driver and she had learned it afresh when she had trustingly given her heart to a man who had broken it.
But Eros wasn’t going to get his hands on Teddy too, she swore vehemently to herself. She would fight back by appealing to her grandfather for help. The older man wanted her to marry some man of his choosing, so he would hardly support the idea of her marrying Eros, nor would he want Eros to have more power over his grandson than he had.
Indeed, so worked up was Winnie that she could not even wait until she got home to speak to Stam Fotakis. She phoned her grandfather on the way home and told him that Eros had demanded that she marry him.
‘It’s past time,’ Stam commented, sending her reeling with that unforeseen response. ‘But better late than never. He’s the boy’s father and when you marry him, my grandson gets his name and his birthright. Nevrakis isn’t from an old family but he has good social standing and pots of money and at least he’s not a spendthrift, womanising idiot like his late father...’