by Lynne Graham
Her heart started thumping very fast inside her, a memory stirring of Eros arriving late at the country house one Friday evening, having attended a banking dinner he couldn’t avoid. Heat washed up over her dismayed face and she ducked past Eros and darted straight into the limo, only unfortunately nothing could drown out her recollection of having had mad passionate sex on the sofa in the drawing room with him that night. She had been shocked by how desperate he had seemed for her and then foolishly pleased, deeming it a sign of deeper attachment. She hated looking back with hindsight, seeing how stupid she had been, continually mistaking sex for love.
‘What’s wrong?’ Eros asked, studying her rigidity.
‘Nothing’s wrong!’ Winnie proclaimed, dry-mouthed with tension, thinking wildly of an excuse to explain her discomfiture. ‘It’s all the wedding stuff...such a fuss. I can’t think straight.’
‘I thought all women enjoyed that sort of thing,’ Eros admitted.
‘Me...not so much,’ she said truthfully, even knowing that once, had it been a real, proper wedding backed by love and need, she would have been overjoyed to be marrying him. That time was past, gone, she recalled, furious with herself for even thinking along those lines.
‘It won’t last long,’ Eros said soothingly, trying not to remember the planning insanity of his first wedding. ‘We’re getting married the middle of next week on Trilis.’
‘Trilis? Where’s that?’
‘A private island in Greece where the Nevrakis family started out as olive farmers and also ran a small hotel.’
‘I assumed I’d be getting married at Grandad’s house.’
‘My family always get married on the island,’ Eros countered smoothly.
Winnie swallowed hard on the objections brimming on her lips, wondering how much harder it would be to leave an island after the public wedding show was over. She had no doubt that her grandfather had already factored in that added difficulty to his plans because he was not a man to leave anything undone. But guilt gnawed at Winnie’s conscience because Eros was taking the wedding as seriously as though he were a real bridegroom...
My family always get married on the island.
She wondered if he had married his first wife there and then punished herself for that inappropriate piece of curiosity by reminding herself of how he had threatened to harm her entirely innocent sisters. Eros Nevrakis did not deserve her guilt, she told herself urgently. He was as ruthless as a killing machine in shark form, taking what he wanted without care for what it might cost someone else.
Stam Fotakis had already helped her and her sisters a great deal and she owed the older man not just gratitude but loyalty, she reminded herself firmly. She had to choose sides, there was no other option and every instinct warned her to choose her family and put them first. Perhaps then she could pursue her dream of establishing a closer relationship with her grandad.
Eros took her, not to his apartment, which relieved her, but to an exclusive club where they were seated in a very private velvet-lined booth that was screened-off from the crowd. She had noticed the attention he received on arrival, the subtle straightening, turning of heads that all signalled the arrival of an envied, highly attractive and very wealthy alpha male. Female heads turned even faster and lingered on Eros, glancing at her, brows lifting because she didn’t look glamorous enough to fit the expected mould. People were probably wondering if she was a niece or the daughter of a friend or even an employee.
After what had felt like a very public entrance, the booth felt too cosy and he felt too close, her spine tingling at the dark timbre of his accented drawl, gooseflesh rippling across her skin when he carelessly brushed her hand with his as he passed her the menu. Iridescent sea-glass eyes enhanced by lush black lashes surveyed her levelly from across the table, his lean, dark, classically handsome features so strikingly flawless that, for a split second, she couldn’t rip her attention from his spectacular bone structure.
His obvious relaxation taunted her simmering tension. Winnie could feel every breath she drew along with the wanton tightening of her nipples and the lick of pulsing heat curling between her thighs. It was unnerving that he could still awaken those responses in her treacherous body and it made her hate him more than ever for destroying the idealistic, romantic innocence that had been hers before she met him.
‘You’re incredibly quiet tonight,’ Eros remarked lazily. ‘I used to like that about you.’
‘But a quiet woman is less of a challenge.’
‘By the time I met you I had had enough of being challenged,’ Eros admitted, lashes dipping, evading her scrutiny as if he already feared that he had revealed too much.
Challenged by his wife? Possibly Tasha had discovered his infidelity, although she had not appeared remotely suspicious of Winnie when she’d arrived at the country house and Winnie had behaved like an employee for Tasha’s benefit for the first time in weeks. She had made a meal for his wife and it had hurt her pride to play the servant, driving home the lesson of how very foolish she had been to get into bed with a man whom she knew next to nothing about. It hadn’t helped either to see a wife very much more beautiful than she was herself. Tasha was a sleek, shapely blonde with lively blue eyes and a pronounced air of energy, chattering into her phone constantly to rap out instructions to an employee and answer queries in a variety of languages. Beautiful, accomplished and confident, everything Winnie was not.
Winnie had packed and left that house and her job that same day, filled with shame and regret. Memories could be so cruel, she registered abruptly, realising that she had carried that demeaning sense of being less and second best ever since that humiliating day.
‘We will make this marriage work,’ Eros told her arrogantly over the first course of the meal. ‘It has to work for Teddy.’
Chilled inside by that insistent statement, Winnie toyed with her food, thinking about Teddy, who was perfectly happy with his mother and his aunts. But for how long will that phase of his childhood last? a little voice prompted her for the first time. Children grew up fast and developed more complex needs. Eros would still have visiting rights though, and Teddy would learn to value his father and divide his loyalties as all children of parents who lived apart had to do. He would be fine, absolutely fine, she told herself bracingly.
‘This is very important to me,’ Eros intoned in the smouldering silence. ‘Why do I get the impression that you’re not even listening?’
Winnie faked a yawn with her hand. ‘I’m sorry. I’m very tired.’
It would be the first time a woman had fallen asleep on him, Eros reflected grimly, exasperated by her silence, her seeming refusal to make the smallest effort. What was the matter with her? This was not Winnie as he recalled her, but then she had walked out on him, become a mother alone, struggled to survive and the experience was bound to have changed her. Yet if they were to stay together, they had to find a bridge between the past and the present. Sex? He knew he couldn’t wait to have her under him again, over him, in front of him...just about any way he could have her.
No, that hadn’t changed, he acknowledged reluctantly, that raw driving hunger to possess that she incited and which he had never understood or accepted. It had hurt his pride, it had exasperated him with her, with himself because he distrusted anything he couldn’t control and he hadn’t been able to control the fierce need she provoked. Yet he had repeatedly tried to explain it to himself, talk himself out of those urges, constantly challenging himself with self-denial while he fought to get his discipline back.
Unarguably, however, the truth remained that Winnie sat there in an ugly cloaking black dress that revealed nothing of her very sensual curves and with only the smallest encouragement he would still have spread her across the table and fallen on her like a sex-starved animal.
CHAPTER SIX
‘YOU LOOK AMAZING!’ Vivi sighed as Winnie performed a twirl in front o
f the built-in cheval mirror on the wall of the luxury cabin.
It was a beautiful dress, fashioned of Venice lace and organza, cut to fit Winnie’s shapely figure like a glove. An enticing row of pearl buttons ran down her spine to her hip. The sweetheart neckline emphasised her sister’s curves while the mermaid style flared out from her knees with very real elegance and not with the kind of fullness of fabric that would have accentuated Winnie’s diminutive height.
‘We all do but, like all brides, Winnie takes the crown,’ Zoe murmured fondly. ‘I feel like pinching myself to see if this is real. Here we are on a fabulous yacht, cruising to our sister’s wedding on a private island... It’s like a dream or like suddenly being plunged into a movie.’
‘I wonder if you’ll feel quite so chirpy when it’s your wedding day,’ Vivi remarked with an edge of warning.
‘But we don’t have to worry about that. Grandad is going to whisk us all away again before we need to worry about consequences.’ Zoe’s bright confidence in Stamboulas Fotakis’s ability to work miracles was unconcealed. ‘Eros wanted to transport all of us to the island because he made the island a no-fly zone to keep the paparazzi from buzzing the wedding from above,’ she reminded her siblings. ‘And Grandad got around that change of plan by borrowing a pal’s massive yacht for the occasion.’
‘Yes, Grandad’s pretty wily,’ Winnie agreed, still studying her reflection, her heart beating so fast with nerves it felt as though it were thumping through her entire body like a ticking time bomb on countdown.
‘Pittee,’ Teddy told her, yanking on her gown for attention.
‘Pretty? That’s a new word. Wonder where he picked up that one,’ Vivi commented, snatching her nephew up into a hug. ‘No, you’re not allowed to touch Mama’s dress with those little hands, but I’m wearing black, so you can do all the grabbing you want round Aunt Zoe and me!’
Teddy giggled with delight as Vivi turned him upside down, swung him round and dumped him on the massive bed for a spot of tickling and the sort of rough play he adored. Winnie paced anxiously. Eros had visited them in London twice to see Teddy but Winnie hadn’t seen him since that tense and disturbing evening meal they had shared. She had been at work, for, although her grandfather and Eros had both scoffed at the idea of such dutiful behaviour, Winnie had worked out her notice, giving the restaurant owner time to find and engage her replacement.
The yacht was slowing down radically to enter the harbour and dock. When they disembarked they were heading straight to the church before moving up to the Nevrakis house on the hill for the reception. When it came to making the return trip to Athens, both Winnie and her sisters already had their instructions. All they had to do was slip away and walk back down to the little harbour, where the yacht would await their arrival. Teddy would be brought there in a separate manoeuvre. ‘Why not leave straight after the church ceremony?’ she had asked her grandfather. ‘Surely that would be easier.’
His answer had disturbed her.
‘I want my guests and his to see Nevrakis dance to my tune and then become the abandoned bridegroom on his wedding day,’ Stamboulas Fotakis had assured her with satisfaction.
Winnie had paled and instantly felt queasy because, strange as it might seem, that aspect of her grandfather’s plans hadn’t occurred to her. Worrying about how she and her son might get away again had consumed her and she had never paused to stop and think about what her unexpected vanishing act would actually mean to Eros or how it would affect him, beyond angering him, of course. And somehow, she didn’t know why, the concept of humiliating Eros in front of a crowd made her feel quite sick and ashamed. That kind of revenge wasn’t her style even if it was her aggressive grandad’s. She didn’t want to hurt Eros because he was her son’s father and insulting and injuring him could only damage an already strained relationship. Why hadn’t she thought of that issue sooner? Now it was too late, she conceded unhappily, hurriedly reminding herself of how ruthless Eros had been when he’d threatened her vulnerable sisters. Eros could look after himself perfectly well, she reasoned feverishly.
He wouldn’t walk away from Teddy but he would realise he had lost any power over her and her siblings. That was how it had to be. She didn’t have a choice just as her sisters didn’t have a choice. This was the price of saving the roof over their foster parents’ heads. Goodness knew, after all the good John and Liz had done for Winnie, Vivi and Zoe and so many other troubled and unhappy teenagers, the older couple deserved the sisters’ protection and the security of no longer having to fear the loss of their home. Even so, she was sad that she was getting married without the older couple’s presence and knew they had been disappointed. Unfortunately, not only would it have been very hard for either John or Liz to leave their foster children for a couple of days with their busy schedule, but also she couldn’t possibly tell them the truth, that it wasn’t a real or normal wedding. Saving John and Liz had entailed a lot of fibs and half-truths that still sat on Winnie’s conscience like lead weights.
‘It’s time.’ Their grandfather lodged in the doorway, ultrasmart in his tailored morning suit and cravat. ‘You look delightful, Winnie. Nevrakis will be disappointed when he realises that he doesn’t get to keep you or my great-grandson.’
Oxygen rattled in Winnie’s tight throat. ‘Eros is tough. He’ll get over it,’ she said flatly, thinking of the man who had moved on untouched by their broken relationship and the hurt inflicted on her. ‘He’s one of life’s survivors.’
‘As are you,’ Vivi reminded her as they walked out onto the deck and began the delicate operation of getting the bride off the yacht without brushing her gown against anything that could mark its pristine ivory threaded with gold folds.
Two classic cars bedecked with flowers awaited them at the harbour and a sizeable crowd provided an audience. Winnie accompanied her grandfather into the first, her sisters and her son entered the second. Her chest tight as a drum with tension, she struggled to smile like a bride when her grandfather urged her. Every floral tribute she saw, every well-wisher reminded her that she was taking part in an unsavoury plan. The cars ferried them only a couple of hundred yards to a picturesque little stone church overlooking the sea with a little village full of white-painted houses climbing the hill behind it.
‘There won’t be many witnesses to the ceremony in a place this small,’ Stam Fotakis lamented at her side, but his granddaughter was relieved by the same fact.
John and Liz took their foster kids to church but pressured no one who preferred not to go. Winnie discovered a new fear bubbling up in her chest, the fear that she was enacting a heavenly punishable offence in undergoing a wedding ceremony without the intent of following through. A civil ceremony would have been preferable, she brooded uncomfortably. A squad of people waited outside the church to witness the bride’s arrival, calling out greetings and good wishes. With her sisters beside her, however, she felt stronger and less oversensitive.
Inside the dim old church with its candles, painted murals of the saints and beautiful white floral displays, her focus leapt straight to the man at the foot of the aisle. Eros turned round, his classic bronzed profile alert to her arrival. Beneath her gown, she could feel her entire body heat and flush with awareness. His brilliant green eyes were gilded in the candlelit interior and her mouth ran dry. Even the morning suit that made her grandad look a little rotund and small could only embellish Eros’s all-male beauty, showcasing every lithe athletic inch of his broad-shouldered, lean-hipped, long-legged length.
‘Gorgeous dress,’ he muttered half under his breath as they both turned to face the Greek Orthodox priest.
Finding her breath in the ritual that followed, bearing up to the crushing solemnity of the occasion in which she understood only sporadic words were a challenge for her. Eros slid the ring, an elaborate engraved platinum circle, onto her finger and she breathed again because it was done. She was the wife of the man she had
once loved to the edge of insanity and her eyes stung with a sudden rush of moisture because the wounding memories seemed very close to the surface at that moment and she welcomed those thoughts, needing the armour of her hatred for him to defend her from other feelings and sensations.
‘Papa!’ Teddy shook free of Zoe’s hand and pounced on Eros as they moved down the aisle again.
That word, that very designation, being openly awarded to Eros shook Winnie up. When had that started? Why had nobody warned her? Of course, it was reality, she reminded herself soothingly, and not all the wishing in the world could change it. Even before the wedding she had been tied for life by her son to a man she despised. An unscrupulous guy without principles, who took what he wanted when he wanted without regard for the consequences to anyone else. For all she knew, she brooded, his wife had divorced him for his infidelity and if he hadn’t been faithful to Tasha, he wouldn’t be planning to be any more faithful to his second wife, for cheaters were known to repeat their habits.
Those grim ruminations rebuilt her defences and bolstered her strength to face the walkout she had to stage. Eros might be Teddy’s papa but he was not a nice guy, not a man in need of her sympathy or guilty conscience, she told herself urgently.
While unaware of his bride’s dark thoughts, Eros, nonetheless, read her tension and assumed it was caused by her shy dislike of being the centre of attention. That was so very different from his first wedding that there was no comparison to be made and he was relieved by that acknowledgement. He had never seen the point of bestowing blame on either himself or Tasha for a marriage breakdown that had seemed inevitable to him from the very first day of their convenient arrangement.
He had done his best to uphold their paper marriage. He had done his duty for years, struggling not to be selfish, struggling to be fair and honourable even when it had become an almighty challenge and their marriage had been in name only. That he had finally failed was something he no longer held against himself as he had once done. Nobody was perfect, neither him nor anyone else. All that troubled him in the present was that Winnie had somehow ended up paying the ultimate cost for his failure. For that same reason he could tolerate Stam Fotakis’s loathing with calm control because, in the old man’s shoes, he knew that he might well have felt the same.