The Greek Claims His Shock Heir

by Lynne Graham

  ‘You do realise that he’s not in the same class as a Fotakis?’ her grandfather said, frowning with disapproval. ‘That in getting to marry you he was punching above his weight? That the very fact that he is now known to be my grandson-in-law is likely to make him even richer? And that for an ambitious man, he’s done very, very well for himself?’

  ‘Eros is more interested in being a good father to Teddy than in profiting from any association with you,’ Winnie told the older man proudly. ‘And I’m not a snob. I don’t care that he doesn’t come from some aristocratic family that have ties stretching back to ancient Greece.’

  ‘But surely it is important to you that Nevrakis is honest with you?’ Stam prompted, subjecting her to a troubled appraisal and pausing before continuing wryly, ‘Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you and damage your faith in Nevrakis, but he hasn’t been honest with you.’

  Stam watched as Winnie turned white before his eyes. He was being cruel to be kind, he told himself soothingly. She had to know the truth, had to accept it. He would keep no more secrets where Winnie was concerned.

  As Winnie sipped the coffee she held cradled in one hand, her grip on the saucer had tightened and the cup rattled betrayingly. With great difficulty she held herself still as she stared back at the older man. ‘I presume you can prove what you’re saying...?’ she asked shakily.

  Stam breathed in deep. ‘Nevrakis agreed to marry you to get his family island back. I scooped Trilis up for a song over thirty years ago when his father went bust and Eros naturally wanted to reclaim it. In recent years he’s tried to buy it back on several occasions but I wasn’t interested. On the day of your wedding, however, the island of Trilis became his. A little sweetener to the deal, as it were. It cost him nothing,’ Stam completed heavily, watching anxiously as her expressive face telegraphed her shock. ‘Didn’t he mention that bribe? It was a bribe. Didn’t he admit that he had never in his life before set foot on that island until I agreed to him flying over there to check the place out for the wedding?’

  ‘No...he didn’t mention any of that,’ Winnie almost whispered, leaning forward to set down the cup and saucer on his desk before she embarrassed herself by dropping it.

  ‘If I hadn’t bribed him to marry you, he wouldn’t even have considered giving up his freedom,’ her grandfather emphasised. ‘And this is the man you’re willing to sacrifice a splendid future for?’

  ‘What splendid future?’ she questioned blankly half under her breath.

  ‘Without Nevrakis, you and Teddy could live here with me and eventually you would meet a man more worthy of your attention.’

  ‘A man you chose, who meets your approval,’ Winnie guessed sickly. ‘A man who doesn’t fight back, a man who allows you to call all the shots.’

  ‘Am I that arrogant?’ Stam dealt her a reproachful look.

  ‘I don’t think you can tolerate or like anyone who defies you,’ Winnie muttered ruefully, struggling desperately not to think about what he had just told her about Eros.

  She felt as though she had been dropped from a height and had landed on her head, because it was aching and full of chaotic, unhappy thoughts. Eros had married her to regain a stupid island? How did that make sense? Trilis was, admittedly, a beautiful island and Eros had ties there that went back over a hundred years: the little graveyard on the headland contained worn headstones etched with the Nevrakis name. His family had helped to build the church and the little primary school on the steep cobbled street running up out of the village. She had dreamt of Teddy starting school there one day... In a daze, she shook her thumping head in a vain effort to clear it.

  ‘I like you,’ the older man reproved her gently. ‘And yet you are in your quiet little way every bit as defiant as your father was. I don’t want Nevrakis to hurt you again. That is why I told you about the island.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve nothing more to say to you right now,’ Winnie said tightly as she rose from her seat, striving not to recall Eros’s forecast that her grandfather would hurt her.

  Or had it been more of a case of Eros fearing what the older man might choose to tell her? A faint shudder of distress and revulsion racked Winnie’s slight frame, her eyes prickling a tearful warning and forcing her to blink rapidly. Eros had got an island out of marrying her, a sort of marital buy one, get one free offer. How was she supposed to feel about that? Of course he hadn’t told her. He wasn’t a fool. He was bright enough to know how any woman would feel if she knew a man had had to be bribed into marrying her. Oh, she perfectly understood his silence on the subject, just as she understood the anguished regret flooding her.

  Once again, she had walked, blindfolded by love, into a disaster. To make that mistake once with a man was unpleasant, but to make it twice was unforgivable...

  ‘You’ve only just arrived. You can’t leave now,’ Stam protested in dismay.

  ‘But you’ve said what you wanted to say to me. You pushed me into marrying him and now you’re trying to push me into leaving him, and I won’t be pushed again,’ Winnie told him flatly. ‘What happens next is my business.’

  Only she didn’t know what would happen next, didn’t know what she intended to do with the information she had been given. Beyond confronting Eros, she could see no further, but she paused at the door of the office to look back at her grandfather. ‘Whatever happens between Eros and I, I still hope to see you visiting your great-grandson on Trilis some day soon because he shouldn’t be affected by adult squabbles.’

  ‘Squabbles?’ Stam echoed in disbelief at that insulting term for what he deemed to be a perfectly natural hostility towards the man who had dared to wrong his granddaughter. ‘I’ll never visit you or Teddy there!’

  ‘That’s sad,’ Winnie murmured ruefully. ‘Family should come first, even if you can’t always approve of what they’re doing with their lives.’

  Winnie walked stiffly back out to the foyer, where her bodyguards awaited her. She was in a daze. Eros had married her to get the island back. Eros had forced her to marry him to ensure that he got that island back. Evidently, her grandfather had employed the perfect carrot to tempt. On her own, she hadn’t been tempting enough for a man who had already been through one unsatisfactory marriage and would naturally have been chary of locking himself into a second marriage with a woman he might lust after but didn’t love.

  And that was her situation in a nutshell, she decided sickly while her security team engaged in a series of frantic phone calls to organise a departure that had come much sooner than anyone had expected. Pale as death, she stared at the wall, willing herself to be strong and make decisions. Eros had never loved her and that was unlikely to change. Even for Teddy’s sake she couldn’t stay in a marriage in which his essential indifference would chip away at her self-esteem every day until she had nothing left.

  She was strong, independent, she reminded herself resolutely. She would confront him and deal with the situation without getting overemotional or crying or shouting. Shouting would be pathetic. Shouting would reveal that she had been hurt. She would be cool, dignified. As she worked that out, her shoulders eased back, her head lifted higher...and at the same time she would somehow make Eros Nevrakis very, very sorry that he had ever been born...

  CHAPTER TEN

  EROS SPRANG OUT of the helicopter and took a shortcut across the grass to the house. His lean, darkly handsome features were tense. Winnie had stayed barely half an hour with her grandfather, and after leaving she had ignored his phone calls and his texts. That wasn’t like her. Winnie was never petty or moody and it took a lot to rile her. But nothing could silence Eros’s conviction that something had gone badly wrong.

  Even so, there was no way that he could have persuaded her not to visit Stam Fotakis. Winnie might be petite but she could fight like a heavyweight if anyone tried to drive her in a direction she didn’t want. That was why he had let her fly free. He was determined not
to make her grandfather a source of contention between them. After all, he wanted Winnie to be happy.

  And she had been happy before she’d left him earlier that day even if she had been nervous about confronting her grandfather, a man known the world over for his stubborn intransigence. Had the wretched man threatened her in some way? Rage gripped Eros at that suspicion, rage as volatile and blinding as a lightning storm on a dark night. Had he made a major mistake when he’d stood back and allowed her to see Stam again so soon after the debacle of their wedding day? Disappointed by Winnie’s decision to stay with her husband and child, the older man must be gnashing his teeth in frustration. Had he taken that dissatisfaction out on Winnie?

  Eros strode into the hall, which was curiously empty of staff, and frowned, slowly turning in a half circle.

  ‘You’re home...’ Winnie commented in an odd, flat voice as she walked out of the spacious lounge. ‘Sooner than expected.’

  He wheeled round. Winnie was wearing an elegant black knee-length dress, her slim legs and delicate ankles on display. He breathed in deep because she looked superb, the outfit clinging just enough to hint at her spectacular curves. He wouldn’t tell her how fantastic she looked because she tended to argue with him when he tried to pay her compliments. But no other word could have better described the tumbling mass of lustrous dark hair bouncing on her slim shoulders and the bright brown eyes sparkling with vivacity above her soft pink mouth.

  ‘I cut short my meetings once I realised you would be back early.’

  ‘Now, why would you have done that?’ she questioned suspiciously, although he could not for the life of him imagine anything she had to be suspicious of.

  ‘You stayed a very short time with your grandfather and I was worried that the visit had somehow upset you,’ he admitted pointedly.

  ‘It didn’t take long for Grandad and I to say all that we had to say to each other,’ Winnie told him ominously, staring at him.

  It offended her sense of justice that even after a very busy day, Eros still looked spectacular, his charcoal-grey suit smooth and unwrinkled, exquisitely tailored to his lean, powerful body, his shirt white and immaculate, his green silk tie still straight and, yes, that shade exactly picked up the hue of his stunning eyes. Only the breeze outside that had tousled his luxuriant black curls and the dark encroaching shadow of stubble accentuating his beautifully shaped mouth suggested that hours had passed since their last meeting.

  Eros quirked a winged ebony brow. ‘Anything I should know about?’

  ‘Now, why would you ask me that question?’ Winnie asked sweetly. ‘Is your conscience bothering you?’

  ‘You’re acting very oddly,’ Eros remarked drily, and glanced around in the humming silence. ‘Where are the staff? Where’s Teddy?’

  ‘I gave the staff the night off and Agathe took Teddy down to the village to have tea with her parents. They asked to meet him,’ she told him grudgingly.

  ‘Are you cooking tonight, then?’ Eros enquired lazily.

  ‘You’d better hope not. I might be tempted to poison you if I had to feed you,’ Winnie told him roundly.

  ‘So, Stam told tales,’ Eros gathered without skipping a beat, his intonation as cool as an icicle.

  Inflamed by that controlled coolness, Winnie shifted several feet and lifted an opulent gilded china vase from a table.

  ‘Very ugly, isn’t it?’ Eros commented.

  ‘Not as ugly as the truth of what you did to me,’ Winnie countered, studying him with a blazing anger she could no longer hide.

  ‘What did I do?’ Eros asked sibilantly, thinking that there was no way that she would throw the vase because she was not the scene-throwing, violent type.

  A split second later, Eros learned his mistake as his wife pitched the vase at him with all the force of a shot-putter throwing for a world record. He ducked and she missed, the vase shattering harmlessly against the wall behind him.

  ‘You let my grandfather bribe you into marrying me!’ Winnie condemned in wrathful disgust.

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ Eros fielded succinctly.

  ‘He gave you an island to marry me!’ Winnie flung back at him in shrill disagreement.

  ‘I took the island because he was offering it but that’s not why I married you,’ Eros told her emphatically.

  ‘You accepted this island as a bribe,’ Winnie repeated, refusing to listen.

  ‘It would’ve been foolish not to accept it when I was planning to marry you anyway,’ Eros declared, stalking forward as she coiled her hands into fists and made a desperate slashing movement with one of them, frustrated by his self-assurance in the face of her accusation.

  A big hand engulfed one of hers in his to hold her fast in front of him and his brilliant green eyes clashed with angry brown. ‘The only truly important thing that happened the day I first met your grandfather was his revelation that I was the father of a son. Yes, he offered me this island and my family once had a great attachment to this place, but that offer would not have driven me all the way to London to see you, nor would it have made me marry you. It was Teddy who initially motivated me.’

  ‘I don’t believe you. You didn’t tell me the truth about the island or anything!’ Winnie threw back at him tempestuously.

  ‘Of course I didn’t,’ Eros took the wind out of her sails by replying. ‘I was very angry before I married you. I was furious that you had kept my son from me,’ he reminded her, retaining his grip on her hand when she tried to snatch it away again. ‘But I got over that anger and I didn’t want you to distrust me any more than you already did. Telling you about the island within weeks of marrying you would have damaged our relationship and I wasn’t prepared to risk that. We had enough difficult ground to cover without borrowing trouble.’

  ‘I refuse to listen to your excuses,’ Winnie told him between angrily gritted teeth.

  ‘They’re not excuses—they’re the reasons why I remained silent. Why shouldn’t I have accepted the island when he offered it? My father did ask me to try to reclaim Trilis if I could ever afford to do so. But because I didn’t grow up here and wasn’t familiar with it, this place didn’t mean as much to me as perhaps it should’ve. Once I saw it for the first time, I felt differently,’ he conceded ruefully. ‘I felt a connection, although not, admittedly, with this grandiose house.’

  Winnie shook her head in a kind of blind panic, terrified of being persuaded out of her belief that she had to leave him to find the happiness she craved. ‘I’m going to move out and find somewhere to stay in Athens...so you’ll still be able to see plenty of Teddy.’

  ‘I would need to see plenty of you as well for that arrangement to work,’ Eros fielded forcefully. ‘We can’t live in separate houses. I need both of you to survive.’

  ‘You have never needed me!’ Winnie exclaimed, wrenching her hand angrily free of his.

  ‘All that’s changed,’ Eros countered ruefully, ‘is that I no longer fight that need. Two years ago, when you walked out on me, my life suddenly lost all focus.’

  ‘Nonsense, you didn’t even miss me!’ Winnie argued vehemently.

  Eros rested level green eyes on her. ‘Of course, I missed you. By the time you left you had contrived to become the centre of my world.’

  Winnie frowned at that startling statement. ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘It wasn’t supposed to turn out like that. It was supposed to be a casual affair but it was never casual between us,’ Eros reasoned with a wry curl to his sculpted mouth. ‘I was working eighteen-hour days just so that I could rush down to the country to spend long weekends with you. I was phoning you every day, sometimes more than once. I was behaving like a teenage boy in love for the first time. Often, I walked through the door and within minutes we were in each other’s arms. That’s not a fling. That’s not a casual relationship. But I was in denial about that because I was still marri
ed and I didn’t have the courage or the experience to recognise how important a part of my life you had become.’

  ‘I remember you pushing me away.’

  ‘Because sometimes I felt out of control with you and it unnerved me because I wanted you too much for my peace of mind. I tried to tell myself that being with you wasn’t harming anyone even though I knew that I was lying to myself. Nevertheless, I still couldn’t make myself break off our relationship either,’ he admitted in a driven undertone, his beautiful green eyes disturbingly unguarded in their anxious intensity as he studied her. ‘The fact that I felt everything for you that Tasha wanted me to feel for her only made me feel worse.’

  Involuntarily, Winnie was listening. ‘Did it?’

  ‘After the divorce when I was still thinking about how I had failed I decided that I was no better than my womanising father,’ he said gruffly. ‘I had made you unhappy and I had made Tasha unhappy. She was my wife and she loved me and yet I couldn’t love her back. I watched my mother go through that with my father when he fell for another woman and I couldn’t stand to do that to anyone else. With that on my conscience I didn’t feel that I had the right to pursue any personal happiness.’

  Winnie stared back at him, disconcerted by the amount of guilt he still bore from the past. ‘You should never have agreed to marry her and her father should never have put pressure on you to marry her.’

  ‘And if I did marry her, I should have gone for a divorce the minute she began having relationships with other men,’ he added heavily. ‘But I’d agreed to that and it wasn’t fair to change the rules because they no longer suited me. I tried to keep my promise to her and when I turned to you, I failed, so I didn’t make you any promises.’