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Once again his self-assurance ignited her anxiety level. She took the file over to a sofa and sat down, determined not to be hurried or harassed. There were copies of many documents she had signed off while she worked for him, payments to suppliers and therapists, invoices attached to other copies that differed to show altered figures on the base lines. Her heart sank like lead in her chest and she felt as though someone were sitting on her lungs. It was very comprehensive stuff and shatteringly straightforward in its presentation.
Her knees developed an irritating tremor below the file on her lap but she still fought for a clear head. ‘And according to your investigation these particular therapists didn’t exist?’
‘You know they didn’t,’ Cristo responded flatly.
Erin came to the final document and stared down at the evidence of a single large payment of a thousand pounds heading into a bank account in her name and nausea stirred in her stomach. Had she ever bothered to close that old bank account? She had intended to but couldn’t remember. Only one payment but one was enough to damn her. In her opinion only Sally Jennings could be responsible for such duplicity. She had pretty much automatically signed anything that the older woman put on her desk. With hindsight she knew she had been too trusting. Unhappily managing the spa had been her first serious job and she had had no deputy to stand in for her when Cristo wanted her to make time for him. Torn between too much work, hostile staff, who loathed working for the owner’s girlfriend, and a deep driving desire to impress Cristo with her efficiency, she had relied a lot on Sally, who had worked at the spa since it had opened ten years earlier and knew the business inside out. No such thing as a free ride, Erin told herself heavily now. Even Sam would doubt her innocence in the face of such damning proof as the file contained.
Erin stood up and dropped the file down with a distasteful clunk of dismissal on the coffee table. ‘Very impressive, but I didn’t do it! You gave me a great opportunity when you put me in that job and I wouldn’t have gone behind your back to steal from you.’
Cristo continued to stare at her, eyes like chips of bright gold below his luxuriant lashes, and all of a sudden she was struggling to breathe evenly and something inside her seemed to speed up as if her blood were racing through her veins and the buzz of forbidden excitement in the pit of her tummy were spreading like contagion to her entire body.
‘You still want me, koukla mou,’ Cristo purred, revelling in the charge in the atmosphere, the awareness in her clear gaze. It was the first time he had been able to read her again and it satisfied him.
‘No! That is absolutely not true!’ Erin shot back at him vehemently, wishing she had not asked to see that evidence in his presence as she recognised how much it had unnerved her and damaged her self-discipline. Now she was all shaken and stirred, a state to be avoided in a predator’s radius.
Cristo reached out a hand and curled his fingers around her slender wrist, edging her out from behind the table. The storm of reaction inside her rose to hurricane force, suppressing her caution and defensiveness.
‘No …’ she said in a small choked voice, fighting just to get air back into her lungs.
Nevertheless he drew her close, banding strong arms round her like a prison, and the heat and strength of him acted like an aphrodisiac on her disturbed senses. She tried to keep distance between them, her slender body rigid as a rock, but he closed the gap with inexorable purpose.
‘It’s OK,’ he rasped in the most frighteningly soothing tone. ‘I want you too.’
And Erin did not want to hear that from the male who had dumped her and gone straight off to marry another woman. He had never wanted her enough to love her or keep her and that was the only wanting she had ever needed from him. He meant sex, only sex, she told herself feverishly while the reassuring warmth of him filtered through their clothing to warm her chilled limbs. But far more insidious was the insanely familiar smell of him that close, her nostrils flaring on the faint aroma of the same designer cologne he had always worn, never forgotten, and she was breathing him headily in as though he were a forbidden drug.
‘Stop it, Cristo!’ she told him tartly. ‘I am not going there again. I am never going there again with you!’
‘We’ll see …’ And, golden eyes blazing down at the fiercely conflicted expression on her heart-shaped face, his beautiful mouth swooped down on hers to claim the kiss she would have done almost anything to deny him.
And the taste of him was instantly addictive even as her hands swept up to strike in fists against his broad shoulders while he hauled her closer. Hot, hungry need roared through her in a storm that made her knees shake and she didn’t know whether it was her or him behind it, or if, indeed, both of them were equally responsible. His tongue delved and she shuddered, so awake and defenceless against his every seductive move that it hurt, hurt to feel anything so strongly after so long without it. She wanted that kiss then with a sudden ferocity that terrified her. Nothing else mattered but the forceful power of that lean strong body against her own, the pulsing prominence of her nipples and the liquid burn between her thighs driving her on. His mouth bore down on hers with a seething, sizzling urgency that zinged through her slight length like an electric shock, stunning every sense into reaction. Nothing had ever tasted so good, nothing had ever felt so necessary and answering the shrill shriek of warning firing at the back of her brain took every atom of her inner strength.
‘No!’ she said in fierce rebuttal, thrusting him away from her with an abruptness that almost made him lose that famous catlike balance of his as he backed into a chair.
In a daze, Cristo blinked. She packed a punch like a world-class boxer. He shook his handsome dark head, dark eyes instantly veiling as he fought the bite of un-sated hunger clawing through his big powerful frame. ‘You’re right … this is not the moment. I have a flight to catch,’ he retorted thickly.
Erin’s breasts heaved as she frantically breathed in deep in an effort to emulate his fast recovery. Her amethyst eyes were dark with strong emotion as she studied his lean, darkly handsome features with a loathing she couldn’t hide. ‘I meant no as in never,’ she contradicted shakily. ‘Leave me alone, stay out of my life and stop threatening me.’
His black diamond eyes flared brilliant gold again, for there was nothing in life that Cristo enjoyed so much as a challenge. ‘I won’t go away.’
‘You’re going to get burned if you keep pushing me,’ Erin warned him angrily, her small face set like a stone, all emotion but anger repressed. ‘Get back out of my life or you’ll regret it.’
‘No, I won’t. I rarely regret anything that I do,’ Cristo fielded, visibly savouring the admission. ‘Are you worried that I’ll screw up your future with Morton? Sorry, koukla mou. I’ll be doing him a favour. You’re toxic.’
Her hands clenched into tight fists. ‘I think you’ll feel the toxic effect more strongly by the time this is over.’
Cristo shot her a grimly amused appraisal. ‘I could handle you with one hand tied behind my back.’
‘You always did like to believe your own publicity,’ Erin countered tightly, her spine as straight as an arrow as she walked to the door. ‘I’ll catch a taxi back to Stanwick.’
In the lift, she had what felt like a panic attack, her heart beating too fast for comfort, cold clamminess filming her skin. That kiss? Total dynamite! How could that be? How had that happened? She was not in love with him any more, had believed she was fully cured of all that foolishness … until the instant she laid eyes on him again and his mesmerising attraction gripped her as tightly as steel handcuffs.
Maybe she’d succumbed to that kiss because she had been upset after reading that file. Is that the best excuse you can find? a little voice sneered inside her brain. She reddened, hating herself almost as much as she now hated him. Her response to him had qualified as weak and that was something she could not accept.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_fc071cab-0a64-5fc0-9176-07e27caabfc6)
IN the early hours of the following morning, Erin rocked her son, Lorcan, on her lap. A nightmare had wakened him and it always took a while to comfort him and soothe him back to sleep.
‘Mum …’ he framed drowsily, fixing big dark eyes on her as she smoothed his short tousled curls back from his brow, lashes lowering again as tiredness swept him away again.
Much like her son, Erin was utterly exhausted. When she had arrived back at Stanwick to collect her car Sam had wanted a briefing on Cristo’s impressions, which had stretched into a meeting that lasted a couple of hours. Sam was keen for his properties to join the Donakis empire because he sincerely believed that a businessman of Cristo’s standing could take his three hotels—his life’s work—to a higher level. For the first time Erin had felt uncomfortable with the older man, too aware that she was not being entirely honest with him. He didn’t know she had had a previous relationship with Cristo Donakis and she did not want him to know. If Sam were to realise that Cristo was the guy who had ditched her and ignored her letters and calls for assistance when she found herself pregnant, he would automatically distrust the younger man. And why should her messy personal life interfere with Sam’s plans for retirement? Letting that happen, she felt, would be more wrong than continuing to keep her secrets.
Lorcan shifted against her shoulder, his curly black hair tickling her chin, a warm weight of solid sleeping toddler.
‘Tuck him back into bed quickly,’ a voice advised quietly from the doorway.
As Deidre Turner, a small blonde woman, moved past to hastily flip back the bedding and assist her daughter in settling the little boy back into his cot, Erin sighed and stood up. ‘I’m sorry Lorcan wakened you again.’
‘Don’t be silly. I don’t have to get up as early as you do in the morning,’ her mother replied. ‘Go back to bed. You look like you’re sleepwalking. I don’t know what Sam’s thinking of, keeping you at work so late. He has no appreciation of the fact that you want to spend time with your family in the evening.’
‘Why should he have? He’s never had children to worry about,’ Erin murmured soothingly, twitching the covers back over her son’s small prone body. ‘Sam always likes to wind down with a chat at the end of the day and he’s very excited about the possibility of selling up.’
‘That’s all right for him, but if he does sell up where’s it going to leave you and the rest of the employees?’ Deidre questioned worriedly. ‘We couldn’t possibly manage on my pension.’
Erin patted her mother’s tense shoulder gently. ‘We’ll survive. Apparently the law protects our jobs in a takeover. But I’ll find work somewhere else if need be.’
‘It won’t be easy with the state the economy’s in. There aren’t many jobs out there to find,’ the older woman protested.
‘We’ll be all right,’ Erin pronounced with a confidence that she didn’t feel and a guilty conscience that she had not felt able to tell her mother that Cristo Donakis was Sam’s potential buyer.
But that news would only inflame Deidre Turner, who would also demand to know why her daughter had not made instant use of her access to Cristo to finally tell him that he was a father. In addition her mother was a constant worrier, always in search of the next black cloud on the horizon, and Erin only shared bad news with the older woman if she had no other choice. Checking that her daughter, Nuala, Lorcan’s twin sister, was still soundly asleep, curled up in a little round cosy ball inside her cot, Erin returned to bed and lay there in the darkness feeling every bit as anxious as her mother, if not more, as she struggled to count blessings rather than worries.
They lived in a comfortable terraced house. It was rented, not owned. Deidre, predictably imagining less prosperous times ahead, had decided that Erin borrowing money to buy a property for them was far too risky a venture. Her mother’s attitude had irritated Erin at the time, but now, with the future danger of unemployment on her mind again she was relieved to be a tenant living in modest accommodation. Sam had reassured her about her job, reminding her that the current legislation would protect his staff with guaranteed employment under the new ownership. But there was often a way round such rules, Erin ruminated worriedly, and, when she was already aware that Cristo didn’t want her on his staff, it would only be sensible to immediately begin looking for a new position. Unhappily that might take months to achieve but it was doable, wasn’t it? She had to be more positive, stronger, fired up and ready to meet the challenges ahead.
But, Cristo was not a challenge. He was like a great big massive rock set squarely in her path and she didn’t know how to get round such an obstacle. He believed she had stolen from him. But why hadn’t he pursued that at the time? Why hadn’t he called in the police? Erin was thinking back hard, reckoning that by the time Cristo received proof of her supposed theft he would have been married. Had he put the police on her, the fact that she was his ex would soon have emerged and perhaps got into the newspapers. Would that have embarrassed him? She didn’t think that the Cristo she recalled would have embarrassed that easily. But that publicity might have embarrassed or annoyed his bride. Was it even possible that Lisandra and Erin had both been in a relationship with Cristo at the same time? And that he had feared having that fact exposed? After all, Cristo had got married barely three months after ditching Erin and few couples went from first meeting to marrying that fast. Had he been two-timing both of them? She had never had cause to believe that he was unfaithful to her but refused to believe that he would be incapable of such behaviour. After all, what had she ever really known about Cristo when she had not even suspected that he was about to dump her?
Erin had always liked things safe and certain and she never took risks. The one time she had—Cristo—it had gone badly wrong. On that level she and Cristo were total opposites because nothing thrilled Cristo more than taking a risk or meeting a challenge. So when he had started calling her to ask her out after finally beating her at swimming she had said no, sorry, again and again and again until he had finally manoeuvred her into attending a party at his apartment, urging her to bring friends as her guests.
Her presence bolstered by the presence of Elaine and Tom, it had proved a strangely magical evening with Cristo, she later appreciated, on his very best behaviour. At the end of the night Cristo had kissed her for the first time and that single kiss had been so explosive, it had blown the lid off her wildest dreams … and terrified her. She had known straight off that Cristo Donakis was a high-risk venture: lethally dangerous to her peace of mind.
‘I like you … I do like you,’ she had told Cristo lamely while still shaking like a leaf in the aftermath of the intense passion that had flared up between them. ‘Why can’t we just be friends?’
‘Friends?’ Cristo had echoed as though that word had never come his way before.
‘That’s what I’d prefer,’ she had said brightly.
‘I don’t do that,’ he had told her drily.
With those reservations she’d had more sense at the outset of their affair than she had shown later on, she acknowledged painfully. And once she had had the twins, her life had been turned upside down. She was ashamed to realise that she had been so angry with Cristo in that hotel suite that she had actually been threatening to tell him she was the mother of his children. What aberration had almost driven her to that insane brink? He would not want her children, would never agree to take on the role of father, would only angrily resent the position she put him in and make her feel small and humiliated, a burden he resented. Surely she was entitled to retain some pride when there was no perceptible advantage to telling him the truth?
Cristo had, after all, once confided in her that one of his friends’ girlfriends had had a termination. ‘It broke them up,’ he had commented flatly. ‘Few couples survive that sort of stress. I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready for children. I prefer my life without baggage.’
And she had got the not exactly subtle message he had taken the trouble to put across, his so clever dark eyes pinned to hers: Don’t do that to me! Revealingly, it had been the one and only time he ever chose to make her a party to confidential information about someone he knew for Cristo was, by instinct, very discreet. She had taken it as a warning that if she fell pregnant, he would want her to have a termination and their relationship would be over. It still infuriated her that it had actually been entirely his fault that she had conceived and, although she had later grown desperate enough to try and contact him to ask for financial help, she had known even then that the announcement she had to make of his impending fatherhood would infuriate him. Cristo was too arrogant and controlling to appreciate surprises from any source. That a woman could give birth to a baby without a man’s prior agreement to accept the responsibility would no doubt strike him as very unfair. No, she saw no point whatsoever in telling Cristo that he was the father of two young children.
Even so, what was she planning to do about his threat to reveal that file of impressive evidence? Cristo was threatening the security of her entire family. Everything she had worked to achieve could vanish overnight. Not only Erin, but her mother and her children would pay the cost of her losing her job and salary. On the other hand, if she could sink her pride enough to play Cristo’s cruel game, that file would never see the light of day and at the very least she would have another year of safe employment and plenty of time in which to search for an alternative position. What was one weekend out of the rest of her life, really? She pictured her mother’s face earlier, drawn and troubled as she fretted about the hotel group even changing hands. Life had taught Deidre Turner to fear the unknown and the unexpected. She did not deserve to be caught up in the upheaval that was gathering on her daughter’s horizon and there was little Erin would not have done to protect her children from the instability she had suffered growing up.
Unhappily, Erin believed that the entire situation was her own fault. Hadn’t she ignored everybody’s advice in getting involved with Cristo in the first place? Nobody had had a good word to say about Cristo, pointing out that his reputation as a womaniser spoke for him. And why had she made herself even more dependent by agreeing to go and work for him? Was that wise? her friends had asked worriedly. And no, nothing she had done that year with Cristo had been wise. Hadn’t she hung on in there even when the going got rough and her lover’s lack of commitment was blatantly obvious? He had not even managed to make it back into the UK to celebrate her last birthday with her. She had asked for trouble and now trouble had well and truly come home to roost. Cristo was not going to agree to play nice. Cristo had had over two years to fester over the conviction that she had dared to steal from him. Cristo was out for blood.
As the sun went down in a blaze of glory, Cristo was staring out at the shaded gardens of his foster parents’ much-loved second home away from the smog and heavy traffic in Athens. On his terms, it was homely rather than impressive and it might be situated on the private island of Thesos, which Cristo had inherited at the age of twenty-one, but that was its sole claim to exclusivity.
Vasos and Appollonia Denes had always been extremely scrupulous when it came to enriching themselves in any way through their custodianship of a very wealthy little boy. Both his parents saw life in black and white with no shades of grey, which made them difficult to deal with, Cristo reflected in intense frustration. He had spent three very trying days locked in an office with Vasos, struggling to pull his father’s company back from the edge of bankruptcy without the escape route of even being able to offer the firm a cheap loan. They would not touch his money in any form. Yet his father was suffering from so much stress that he had fallen asleep in the middle of dinner and his mother was still worryingly quiet and troubled, in spite of all her protestations to the contrary. She had never quite recovered from the nervous breakdown she had gone through eighteen months earlier.
Had they had any idea what he was engaged in with Erin Turner they would have been sincerely appalled, Cristo acknowledged grudgingly. They adored him, always thought the best of him, and firmly believed that with the conservative upbringing they had given him he must have absorbed their values, their decent principles. But even as a child Cristo had understood what it took to please his parents and he had learned how to pretend as well as accept that it wasn’t always within his power to cure the evils of the world for them … His lean strong face hardened fiercely as a particularly unpleasant instance of that impossibility twanged deep in his conscience. He poured himself another drink and shook the memory off again fast.
When life was full of eighteen-hour days and the constant demands of his business empire, Erin was a wonderful distraction to toy with, that was all. If she didn’t phone him within the next twenty-four hours, however, they would be entering round two of their battle of wits and he would play hardball. He was already figuring out his next move, no regrets whatsoever. Plainly he lacked the forgiving gene. That was becoming obvious even to him and he was not a man given to self-examination. But the lust driving him was on another plane altogether. One kiss … hell, what was he, a teenager to have got so hot and bothered?
And why did it disturb him that right this very minute she might be lying in a bed with Sam Morton, ensuring his continuing devotion in the easiest and most basic way a woman could? Why should that matter to him? Why, in fact, did that mental vision make him seethe? It should turn him off, douse the fire she roused … disgust him. But all Cristo could think about just then, indeed the only blindingly blue stretch of sky in his immediate future, was the prospect of that weekend. A weekend of the most perfect fantasy. Of course, it went without saying that fantasy would inevitably turn out to be dross, he pondered cynically. And then it would be over and he would be cured of this inconvenient, incomprehensible craving for her cheating little carcass for all time. Done and dusted. He savoured that ideal prospect, increasingly keen to reach that moment of equilibrium.
Erin picked up the phone, her blood solidifying like ice in her veins. Caving in hurt; it was something she didn’t do any more. Show weakness and people often fell on you like vultures. She was not the woman she had been three years earlier. But while she might be tougher, it was useless because Cristo had put her in the no-win corner, giving her no choice other than to try and protect those that she loved by whatever means were within her power.
‘Yes, Miss Turner,’ some faceless PA trilled at the end of the line. ‘Mr Donakis mentioned that you would be calling. I’ll put you through.’
His sheer certainty that she would surrender struck another blow to her already battered pride while she thought painfully of all the other times she had tried to speak to Cristo two and a half years earlier and had run into an endless brick wall of refusals. Of course, a call from an ex would not have been welcome to a newly engaged male but the potential offer of sex, it seemed, occupied a whole other plane of acceptability.
‘Erin,’ Cristo drawled smoothly. ‘How may I help you?’
‘Will the weekend of the fifth suit?’ Her voice was breathless with strain and something very like anguish was rising inside her, for she had lost control of the situation. In the back of her mind something was shrieking that she just could not be doing this, could not possibly be contemplating such a sleazy arrangement, but her brain was mercifully in control as she pictured her children and her mother and once again acknowledged what was most important.
‘That’s two weeks away,’ Cristo growled.
‘And it’s the soonest I can manage,’ Erin said as coolly as if it were a business appointment she was setting up.
‘Agreed. Someone will be in touch about the arrangements. Have a current passport available.’
‘Why? Where on earth are you planning to go?’ she gasped.
‘Somewhere discreet. I’ll see you on the fifth,’ he murmured, the guarded quality in his tone letting her know that he was not alone.
Dry-mouthed, she replaced the phone, pure hatred strong and immovable as a concrete block forming inside her. What had she ever done to him that he should seek her out and threaten to destroy her life? So, he thought she was a thief. Get over it, she wanted to shriek at him. When they had been together she had refused to accept expensive gifts and clothes from him—did that telling fact count for nothing? In every way possible she had tried to make their relationship one of equals and her mind slid back into the past …
Surprisingly, he had banished her reluctance to enter a relationship with him with the use of romantic gestures. He had sent her flowers, occasional witty texts to keep her up to date with his life and on Valentine’s Day he had sent her the most exquisite card and invited her out to dinner again. As there had not been a glimmer of him showing any interest in any other female during that period, Erin didn’t know a woman alive who would have not succumbed to so persuasive an onslaught from a very handsome male. So, she had finally gone out with him, just the two of them, thoroughly enjoyed herself and that was how it had begun: date after date but just kissing, nothing more because she wouldn’t agree to anything more. And, no fan of the celibate life, Cristo had protested, persisting with his need for an explanation until she finally admitted that he would be her first lover. Disconcerted by that admission, he had surprised her by agreeing to wait until she felt that the moment was right and she had loved him all the more for not putting pressure on her.
And in the end she had slept with him because she couldn’t say no to her own craving any longer and the experience, the connection she had felt with him from the outset of true intimacy, had been unutterably wonderful. Four months into their affair, probably tiring of the number of times she was not available through work or the extra hours she put in as a personal trainer to a few select clients, he had offered her the job of manager at the Mobila spa in his flagship London hotel. She had thought long and hard before she accepted but as she was already working as a deputy manager she had believed that the position was well within her capabilities. She had been more afraid that working for Cristo might change their relationship but it had not occurred to her that her new colleagues might resent her inescapably personal ties to their employer.
At the time she had been taking the contraceptive pill but, in spite of trying several different brands, she had suffered mood changes that made her feel like a stranger inside her own skin. Ultimately, Cristo had suggested that he take care of precautions and soon after had come that disturbing little chat about the friend’s girlfriend, who had had a termination, that same possibility obviously having awakened Cristo’s concern on his own account. After six months she had virtually lived in Cristo’s apartment when he was there and he had begun asking her to join him on his travels. She had pointed out that she couldn’t just walk out on her job and expect her staff to take her seriously. He had understood that but he hadn’t liked it and around the same time he had started to question the amount of time she spent with Tom while he was abroad. Tom Harcourt was the closest thing Erin had ever had to a brother. They had met on the same university course and had stayed close friends when Tom also found work in London. There had never been a sexual spark between Erin and Tom but they got on like a house on fire, something Cristo had witnessed on several occasions and had evidently resented or found suspicious. Eight months into their relationship Cristo and Erin had had a huge, horrible row about Tom and Erin had stormed home in a temper.
‘How would you like it if I had a female friend that close?’ Cristo had demanded.
And in truth she wouldn’t have liked it at all, but she loved Tom like a brother and refused to give him up.
‘You’re too possessive for me,’ she had told Cristo, inflaming him as he furiously denied the charge.
‘You’re a very beautiful woman—Tom has to be aware of that. Truly platonic relationships don’t exist,’ Cristo had insisted. ‘One party or the other always feels something more.’
‘Either you trust me or you don’t,’ Erin had reasoned, stripping the dispute back to the bare bones while resisting the dangerous temptation to inform him that he had a shockingly jealous streak.
‘Cristo is in love with you,’ her more experienced flatmate, Elaine, had pronounced with amusement. ‘I didn’t think it would happen but in my opinion men only get that possessive when they’re keen.’
And that heartening forecast was why Erin had extended an olive branch to Cristo after a two-week silence while they both smouldered after that argument. In any case, by that stage Tom was already taking a back seat in her life because he had met the woman, Melissa, whom he would eventually marry. She had then waited hopefully for Cristo to demonstrate a more serious attitude towards her but it had never happened. They had spent Christmas and even his birthday apart while he went home to Greece without even dropping a hint that he might consider asking her to accompany him. Only one element of their affair had stayed the same: his passion for her body had never ebbed right to the very last night they had ever spent together and that same night was the one during which she was convinced she had fallen pregnant.
One week later, after bailing on her birthday party at his hotel, he had dumped her. He had had no qualms about the way he did it either, for he had walked into the spa, asked for a moment alone with her in her office and strolled away five minutes later, the deed done.
‘You and I?’ he had said drily. ‘We’ve run our course and I’d like to move on.’
And he had moved on at supersonic speed to a wife, Erin recalled, settling back into the present with a dazed look on her delicate face. What she couldn’t grasp was why, after that emotion-free affront of a dismissal almost three years ago, he should want to revisit the past. It didn’t make sense to her. Yes, he might want to punish her for supposedly thieving from him, but how did the act of sex, anything but retribution with a guy like Cristo Donakis, encompass that ambition?
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_e0f201cf-7d97-59e0-b0f0-9e9efdfbd141)
TWO weeks later, Erin stepped out of the car that had collected her at the airport and breathed in slow and deep. Italy, Tuscany in fact, not at all the setting that she had dimly expected Cristo to provide. In truth she had assumed the weekend would take place in London at his apartment, if he still lived there in the city, or even in one of his hotels. A grand fortified house presiding over an incredibly scenic hidden Italian valley had not featured at all.
Even with the sun starting to set in a golden blaze, the views of grape terraces, arrow-shaped cypresses, pine-forested slopes and silver-grey olive trees were magnificent; almost as much so as the wide graceful house with its shallow terracotta red roof and twin lines of tall elegant windows. Bells tinkled while sheep grazed on stretches of lush green grass in a timeless pastoral scene. It was not the backdrop she would have given to Cristo, whom she had once believed could only thrive on the often insane pace of city life.
A small balding manservant was already grasping the small case she had travelled with and with an expansive wave of one hand he welcomed her in English, introduced himself as Vincenzo and invited her to follow him indoors to an imposing marble hall that echoed with their footsteps. He escorted her straight up the sweeping marble staircase to a beautifully furnished bedroom decorated in masculine shades of gold and green. Her cheeks flared as she gazed at the wide gold-draped bed and hastily she glanced away again, preceding Vincenzo into the superb modern bathroom and politely smiling in admiration.
Did the wretched man know what she was here for? Or did he simply assume that she was yet another one of Cristo’s women? And whatever he thought, what did it matter? She studied her taut reflection with self-loathing. Get over yourself, she told herself urgently. It might feel like a lifetime since she had had sex but at the end of the day sex was just sex even with Cristo and not worth risking her security over. She was being practical, choosing the safest option …
Over the past two weeks negotiations over the buyout of Sam’s hotels had speeded up to reach agreement. The deal was signed, sealed and delivered and, whether she liked it or not, she was going to be working for Cristo Donakis again, although presumably only after that forensic accounting team he had mentioned had convinced him that she was to be trusted after all. The sting of his conviction that she was a thief still lingered though, not to mention the necessity of having had to lie outright to her trusting mother to travel to Italy. That latter act sat like a giant stone on her conscience.
Her face and her heart troubled, Erin doffed her light raincoat and agreed to come downstairs to enjoy the coffee that Vincenzo was offering. She had told her mother that she was catching the train up to Scotland to stay with Tom and his wife, Melissa, and their new baby, Karen. What else could she have told the older woman? Deidre Turner would have had a heart attack had she known the truth of what her wayward daughter was about to do and guilt nagged at Erin. Surely sometimes a lie was kinder than the truth, she reasoned uncertainly. But that was of little comfort to a young woman raised to ‘tell the truth and shame the devil’.
Coffee was served on the terrace in the warmth of early evening and she thought about Lorcan and Nuala, resenting the loss of a weekend that she had expected to spend with her twins. As she abstractedly took in the fabulous view shadowing into dark hills and tree tops her phone buzzed and she drew it from her bag.
Wear your hair loose, the text told her.
Cristo was reducing her to the level of a toy with a starring role in his fantasy. The taste of her coffee soured in her mouth. She was sick with nerves. Cristophe Donakis was the man she had once loved beyond belief. Although she had worked hard to hide it, she had absolutely adored him and their intimacy had only added another dimension to that love. This demeaning emotion-free encounter would destroy even the good memories. Though perhaps that would be a godsend? Was Cristo getting a kick out of having her at his disposal? Cristo enjoyed power. Teeth gritting, she finished the coffee and went back upstairs to change. Was she supposed to dress as if this were a date or await his arrival in that vast bed? Tears stung her eyes and she blinked them away furiously as she headed for a shower. No, absolutely no way was she going to wait in the bed! Swathed in a towel, she tugged a silky blue dress from her case.
Cristo leapt out of the helicopter and strode up to the villa, impatience and hunger burning through him. He hadn’t been worth a damn all day, all week for that matter! Just the thought of Erin being there had wiped out his wits, Vincenzo’s call to confirm her arrival catching him in the middle of a board meeting. How many times had he told himself he shouldn’t be doing this? What the hell, he reasoned furiously, why shouldn’t he be a bastard for a change? He had let her off the hook too lightly three years ago. This—being with her one more time—was an indulgence but it was also an exorcism, and when it was done he would be done with her as well.
The pulse in Erin’s neck was beating like crazy as she hovered by the bedroom window, refusing to look outside while her tummy twisted into knots. She had heard the helicopter landing, knew Cristo liked to fly himself, and knew it would be him and that within minutes he would walk through the bedroom door. She clasped her hands tightly together, willing back her nerves, striving for calm and cool.
And then the door flew open, rocking back on its hinges to frame Cristo, brilliant black diamond eyes snaking across the room to rest on her, his tall well-built body casting a long shadow in the lamp light. And there she was, silvery pale hair tumbling round her shoulders, something pretty and blue swirling round her petite little body, waiting for him just as he remembered from times gone by. Erin. He savoured her, noting the glow of self-consciousness that coloured the beautiful delicacy of her features. He experienced such a charge of hunger at the first glance that a predatory smile crossed his mobile male mouth.
‘Cristo …’ Erin contrived to enunciate with admirable clarity, only the breathy quietness of her voice letting her down.
‘Erin,’ he breathed thickly, closing the distance between them and hauling her straight into his arms.
He said something in Greek as he gazed down at her and she would have given anything to know what it was. ‘What—?’
‘Don’t want to talk, koukla mou,’ Cristo husked, his breath fanning her cheek as he bent his handsome dark head.
