by Lynne Graham
‘No, prior to our marriage, I had no dealings with Tasha beyond sharing a dinner table with her occasionally in her father’s company. She was only seventeen and I haven’t dated a teenager since I was one myself,’ Eros countered drily. ‘I was simply a regular visitor to her home and a close friend of her father’s. Without any encouragement from me, Tasha decided that she had fallen in love with me and she convinced Filipe that it was a lasting love while I believed it was only a teenage infatuation. Her father, however, wanted her to be happy and he trusted me to look after her.’
‘Naturally, but—’
‘He knew I wasn’t in love with Tasha but neither was I in love with anyone else. He asked me to marry her and give the relationship a chance,’ Eros volunteered grimly. ‘He was dying. I couldn’t say no to him. Because I wanted him to leave this world in peace, I agreed and a wedding was arranged before Filipe’s condition deteriorated.’
‘You should’ve said no if you didn’t have feelings for her!’ Winnie argued helplessly. ‘It was emotional blackmail.’
Eros tensed even more. ‘It wasn’t like that. I believed that I knew what I was doing. I didn’t love Tasha but I did care what happened to her. She was a very emotional teenager and I didn’t want her to be alone and unprotected as I had once been myself. There are a lot of sharks in the world, particularly if you have money. And Filipe left Tasha very well provided for.’
‘If she was only seventeen, what age were you?’ Winnie pressed.
‘Twenty-five.’ Eros paced restively across to the windows, his discomfort at the subject he was talking about painfully apparent to her. ‘But it was a huge gap. She was a very young seventeen year old because her father had spoiled her and shielded her from real life. I was a very serious twenty five year old because my childhood had been less than idyllic and I knew how hard I would have to work to overcome my father’s bad reputation in business. Tasha and I had very little in common.’
Winnie released her pent-up breath in a slow hiss. ‘I think you were crazy to marry her. She would’ve been far too immature for you at that age and if she thought she loved you, marrying her was only encouraging her expectations.’
‘I didn’t encourage her.’ Eros’s proud dark head reared up and back and he sent her a reproving glance from glittering green eyes. ‘I didn’t take her to bed either. In fact, we never had sex.’
Brown eyes locked hard to his lean, darkly handsome features, Winnie stared back at him. ‘Never?’ she stressed in wonderment.
‘Never,’ Eros confirmed. ‘Tasha wanted us to have a normal marriage from the start but I disagreed. She wasn’t ready for an adult relationship and she deserved a husband who loved her. She also needed to have the freedom her father had denied her to enjoy all the usual youthful experiences. I hurt her pride a lot when I turned her down but I didn’t think there was an alternative.’
‘So, what happened after that?’ Winnie pressed, hanging on his every word, her mind buzzing with conjecture and shock and bewilderment. Whatever she had believed of Eros’s marriage, she had always assumed that it was a normal marriage between two people who had, at least, started out loving each other.
‘We made an agreement. Tasha wanted to study design and set up her own interiors business. She transferred to a student course in London and I told her that she was free to date anyone she wanted, which she duly did. Unfortunately, however, she couldn’t bring herself to extend the same freedom to me. She was too jealous, too possessive to accept the idea of me being with another woman,’ he admitted tautly. ‘And I did promise her that if she still felt the same way about me after she had graduated, I would give our marriage a try.’
‘Why on earth would you make a promise like that when you didn’t want her in the first place?’
Eros vented a groan. ‘Because she was heartbroken that I wouldn’t agree to have a normal relationship with her. Although I was convinced that she’d grow out of her infatuation, she refused to accept it. I was trying to let her down gently and allow her to save face. Thee mou... I assumed she’d grow out of thinking she loved me!’
‘It was still a promise too far. It left your life in limbo,’ Winnie pointed out, reckoning that it had been very short-sighted of him to agree to such unequal terms.
A grim look tautened Eros’s strong face. ‘You have no idea how guilty I felt because I couldn’t return her feelings,’ he admitted ruefully. ‘At one stage, she was crying and threatening to harm herself. I would have said anything, promised almost anything to calm her down.’
‘Oh...’ Winnie swallowed hard, picturing Eros struggling to calm and control a teenage drama queen and wincing in sympathy.
‘But you’re right. It was the wrong thing to promise because, naturally, both of us were likely to change. But for several years, our unconventional arrangement did work,’ Eros told her wryly. ‘Just as her father had hoped I was able to watch over her, control her finances and ensure that nobody took advantage of her. We would see each other occasionally for dinner but we never occupied the same house and we lived entirely separate lives. Tasha moved from luxury student accommodation into her own apartment above her first design studio.’
‘No wonder you seemed to be single when I met you,’ Winnie muttered. ‘No wonder there was no sign of a woman in your life. Why didn’t you tell me that you were trapped in a marriage that you never wanted?’
‘It wouldn’t have been fair to Tasha to admit that I felt trapped. She was my wife and I did try to be loyal to her. In fact, I kept my promise to her until I met you because there were no other women before you,’ Eros admitted with a twist of his sensual mouth. ‘And then with you around suddenly, life became very, very complicated in all sorts of ways. I was married but in my own mind I was still single...and then there was that stupid promise I’d made to her.’
‘But presumably she took advantage of the freedom you offered her?’
‘Of course, she did. In fact at the time I was involved with you, she was actually living with one of her boyfriends. And then that broke up very messily and she came running back to me for support, convinced that it was the perfect time for us to try having a normal marriage. That was when you met her, when she turned up at the country house without warning,’ he revealed impatiently. ‘But by that stage, I knew that I wanted out and that I needed my freedom back. Ultimately she agreed to the divorce.’
‘She is very beautiful,’ Winnie remarked uneasily, an image of Tasha’s Scandinavian fairness and endless legs still haunting her. ‘Why didn’t you want to give her that final chance?’
‘Because I felt more like her big brother and when I finally admitted that to her, she realised that that was unlikely to change,’ he confessed wryly. ‘I didn’t tell her about you though. I didn’t want to hurt her.’
A dawning awareness of certain unwelcome facts was keeping Winnie quiet and unresponsive. Right from the outset Eros had put Tasha’s needs before her own, she concluded unhappily. He had sent Winnie down to his country house, where Tasha was less likely to see her or learn about her existence. He had continually protected Tasha’s feelings and had tried to remain loyal to her in mind, if not in body. When he had finally gone for a divorce, Winnie had already disappeared from his life and even after he had regained his freedom, he hadn’t come looking for her. Those truths hurt. He might not have loved his wife but she had received a level of caring and loyalty from him that Winnie had never commanded. In short, Winnie had only ever been runner-up on Eros’s scale of who was most important to him, at least until he had discovered that she had given birth to his son.
As the silence stretched to an uneasy length, Eros breathed in deep. ‘I should have told you the truth when we first met. I regret keeping quiet but while I was with you, I was an emotional mess. Our affair was so intense it unnerved me and the more I thought about it, the more wrong it felt but I couldn’t make myself walk away.’
&
nbsp; ‘Then it’s probably a good thing that I did the walking away for you,’ Winnie pronounced in a tone of finality.
‘Winnie?’ Eros prompted with a frown of incomprehension.
Stiff with discomfiture at the wounding thoughts flaying her like knives, Winnie stood up, too hurt and proud to do anything other than conceal her true feelings. ‘Well, I’m glad you’ve finally told me the whole story,’ she muttered hastily as she frantically thought about how best to quickly escape an even more awkward conversation. ‘But, you know, all I can think about right now is food.’
‘Food?’ Eros repeated in astonishment, for he had been bracing himself for questions, comments and further condemnation of the choices he had made.
Winnie forced an apologetic smile to her lips. ‘Yes. I’m afraid I didn’t eat much today and now I’m starving, so I think I need to raid the kitchen.’
Without further ado, she crossed the room to her suitcase and began to open it in search of something to wear.
Eros frowned at her, perplexed by her mood. He wasn’t stupid. He could see that she was annoyed with him and trying to deflect attention from that reality. But did he really want to drag any more of the past into the present? It was their wedding night and it had been preceded by a very long and upsetting day. Maybe, in seeking to avoid further divisive debates and concentrate on practicalities, Winnie had the right idea, he acknowledged uncertainly.
He watched as she dragged a faded silky robe out of the tumbled contents of the case and, dropping the towel, donned the robe in a series of jerky movements. Her heart-shaped face was taut, brown eyes dark and evasive as she walked to the door.
‘I bought you a new wardrobe of clothes,’ Eros admitted abruptly.
Winnie whirled back round to look at him in surprise. ‘Why would you do that?’
‘It’s a gift,’ Eros hastened to assure her.
‘How very generous of you,’ Winnie responded in a tone that hinted that she thought it rather weird that he should interest himself in what she wore.
But Eros, who found her appealing even in a faded robe that had seen better days, always noticed what she wore because he rarely took his attention off her when she was in his vicinity.
‘I don’t feel comfortable with you wearing clothes bought by your grandfather,’ Eros admitted in blunt addition.
Winnie tensed. ‘You’re not in competition with Grandad—’
‘Of course not, you’re my wife,’ Eros countered with a possessive edge to his intonation as he studied her.
‘All Grandad paid for was my wedding dress. The majority of my own clothes are still in London,’ Winnie confided carelessly. ‘I don’t have summer stuff though, so I can certainly use anything in that line.’
She was not going to argue with him, not going to argue with him about anything, Winnie told herself urgently. She would get upset, she would be out of control, leaking emotion that would give away too much of what she was truly feeling. And she didn’t even know what she was feeling, did she?
Hurt. Why did Eros always hurt her? Why was she always looking for more from him? What was the point? She had to adjust to the new status quo, and fast. She was stuck being married and stuck on an island with a man who neither loved nor trusted her. She still had her son and Eros was terrific in bed. Count positives, not negatives, she instructed herself fiercely. That was what her sister Zoe would tell her to do...
CHAPTER NINE
‘I WANTED TO eat chocolate round the clock,’ Winnie admitted ruefully, wondering how Eros could possibly be interested in what her pregnancy had been like but, for all that, he kept on pressing for more information. ‘Now, why couldn’t I have craved something healthy like salmon or salad while I was pregnant? No, I had to crave chocolate. I put on a good bit of weight.’
‘I bet it suited you,’ Eros murmured, wishing he had been there for her when it would really have mattered to her and counted in his favour. As she lay in his arms, he ran an appreciative hand over the lush fullness of her breasts cradled in a bikini top. He dipped his fingertips into the cups, skimming the fabric out of his path to expose her breasts and expertly tease the sensitive peaks. ‘I adore your curves.’
Her mind went blank and she forgot what she was about to say as her spine arched helplessly into the hard, muscular heat of the lean, powerful body holding hers. The tingling rise of heat between her thighs controlled her utterly. ‘Someone might see us!’ she framed in sudden breathless panic.
‘Nobody can see us down here,’ Eros replied, turning her across his lap to lower his mouth to the pouting nipples he had bared. ‘It’s a private beach and we’re shielded by the cliffs,’ he reminded her thickly while he played with the swollen pink crests until she was gasping and squirming and weak with liquid arousal.
He raked a finger across the taut crotch of her bikini pants. The breath sobbed in her throat as the tender flesh beneath throbbed with pulsing need. How Eros could smash her control that fast when they had made love only a few hours earlier, she had no idea. She only knew that as he began to wrench the bikini pants down and off, she was as impatient as he was. He dipped a finger into her overheated core and she vented a shameless moan, digging her hips into his hard thighs, her whole body ablaze with excitement.
‘You’re so ready,’ Eros growled appreciatively, twisting her round to face him and pushing his shorts down as he lifted her over him and brought her down.
Protection in place, Eros lowered her over him, watching her chocolate eyes widen and the pupils dilate as he entered her hard and fast. And then there wasn’t time or space for anything but the wild excitement engulfing them both. He cupped her hips, controlling the pace, rocking up into her when she didn’t move fast enough and suddenly all the sensations he induced were tumbling in a feverish, overwhelming surge of power over Winnie and she got lost in them, gasping, moaning, struggling to vocalise the extraordinary strength of the eagerness gripping her. She was straining, climbing, reaching for that ultimate climax and he forced her through the barriers, her body shattering like glass from the inside out, leaving her drained and limp.
Eros responded by lifting her up and flipping her under him instead, continuing the pace in a pagan rhythm. Her heart thundering, her breath catching in her tight throat, she pushed up to him, her body catching fire again as he ground down into her hard and that hint of erotic force convulsed her in fresh spasms of blissful pleasure. His magnificent body shuddered over hers until he finally groaned with uninhibited satisfaction.
But even in that moment, his shrewd brain was working at full tilt. He couldn’t keep his wife a semiprisoner for ever, he couldn’t force her to remain his wife either, but when it came to any reference to the future or that thorny word, commitment, Winnie was maddeningly elusive. He gritted his teeth, wondering if he was destined to live for ever with Stam Fotakis peering critically over his shoulder, ready to whisk Winnie away the instant there was a shaky moment in their marriage.
Both his arms wrapped round her slim, trembling body with innate possessiveness, Eros suppressed a sigh. All marriages had shaky moments, he reckoned ruefully, but he couldn’t afford to put a foot wrong. He had to tell Winnie that the island had only become his on their wedding day. He also needed to tell her about her grandfather’s threats. But unfortunately, Winnie was already sufficiently wary without him giving her added encouragement to distrust him. And who did he blame for that reality? Eros swallowed a groan, his every past sin and mistake threatening to pile up on top of him all at once.
* * *
Winnie held Eros close, her slender length quaking with the aftershocks still pulsing inside her. Her fingers stroked through his damp black curls and brushed against a stubbled jawline on her way to tracing the fullness of his sensual lower lip. As she revelled in that physical closeness a helpless tenderness flashed up through her. For a startling instant, his brilliant sea-glass eyes held hers fast and i
n that instant everything became so clear to her. She wanted to hold him for ever, she never wanted to let him go again because she loved him, had, it seemed, never stopped loving him. She had no idea how she had contrived to deny that fact over the past month. Of course, she hadn’t wanted to admit that distinctly humiliating truth even to herself and she couldn’t picture ever telling him. That was her secret, not something for sharing even with her sisters.
But, how could she not tell the truth to Vivi and Zoe? She was accustomed to telling them everything and was still on the phone to them most days. She had told them that she was happy but had sensed that they were not convinced. Unfortunately, her sisters had returned to London straight after the wedding. Eros had suggested that she invite them out for a visit but neither Vivi nor Zoe had sufficient annual leave to take another break from their jobs so soon after the wedding.
After all, only four weeks had passed since she’d married Eros, planning to leave him. Since then she had been living on the island with Eros and her son, waking up and falling asleep to the timeless sound of the waves beating the shore below the house. Eros hadn’t kept her a prisoner as he had threatened but he hadn’t allowed her to go anywhere alone either, citing his concern that her grandfather would try to steal her back by some nefarious means, ignoring her protest that she would not allow the older man to do anything of that nature.
For the first couple of weeks, Eros had taken her and Teddy and their nanny, Agathe, sailing round the Greek islands. Although the yacht had been rather more compact than the giant one her grandfather had borrowed to transport them to Trilis, it had still carried a full crew and its opulent furnishings and spacious cabins had ensured they’d enjoyed perfect privacy. The cruise had been a very relaxing experience, blowing away the tension of the wedding day that had gone wrong. And she now owned two fabulous rings. The first, a magnificent solitaire. Not an engagement ring, Eros had insisted even though he had put it on that finger. And the second? An eternity ring, a hoop of sparkling sapphires to mark the birth of their son.