Читать книгу Irresistible Greeks: Secrets and Seduction: The Secrets She Carried / Painted the Other Woman / Breaking the Greek's Rules - Линн Грэхем, Julia James - Страница 9

ERIN walked into the cloakroom of the hotel and ran her wrists below the cold water tap until the panicked thump of her heartbeat seemed to slow to a tolerable level. Get a grip on yourself, she told her tense reflection as she dried her hands. Why should Cristo come back into her life now and try to wreck it? On his part it would be a pointless exercise …

Unless he was after revenge. At the vanity counter she tidied her hair and noticed with annoyance that her hands were no longer steady. He had already contrived to wind her up like a clockwork toy, firing all her self-defence mechanisms into override. And she needed to watch out because panic would make her stupid and careless. She breathed in slow and deep, fighting to stay calm. He didn’t know about the children so evidently he had not read a single one of her letters. Had he known about the twins he would have left her in peace, she was convinced of it. What man went out of his way to dig up trouble?

Cristo did, a little voice piped up warningly at the back of her head, and all of a sudden time was taking her back to their first encounter.

At the time Erin was employed in her first job as a deputy manager at a council leisure centre. Elaine, one of her university friends, was from a wealthy home and her father had bought her an apartment in an exclusive building. When Elaine realised what a struggle Erin was having trying to find decent accommodation on a budget, she had offered Erin her box room, a space barely large enough for a single bed with storage beneath. But Erin hadn’t cared how small the room was, she had enjoyed having Elaine’s company, not to mention daily access to the residents’ fancy leisure complex on the ground floor.

Erin had always been a keen swimmer and had won so many trophies for her school that she could have aspired to an athletic career had her parents been of a different ilk. Regretfully, in spite of her coach’s efforts at persuasion, Erin’s parents had been unwilling to commit to the time and cost of supporting a serious training schedule for their talented daughter. However, Erin still loved the sport and swam as often as she could.

The first time she had seen Cristo he had been scything up and down the pool with the sleek flow of a shark. His technique had been lazy, his speed moderate, she had noted, overtaking him without effort as she pursued her usual vigorous workout.

‘Race me!’ he had challenged when he caught up with her.

And she still recalled those dark deep-set gorgeous eyes, gleaming like polished bronze, electrifying in his lean, darkly handsome features.

‘I’ll beat you,’ she warned him ruefully. ‘Can you take that?’

The dark golden eyes had flashed as though she had lit a fire inside him. ‘Bring it on …’ he had urged.

And just like him, she had loved the challenge, skimming through the water with the firing power of a bullet, beating him to the finish line and turning to cherish his look of disbelief. Afterwards she had hauled herself out of the water and he had followed suit, straightening his lean powerful length to tower over her diminutive frame, water streaming down over his six-pack abs, drawing her attention to his superb muscular development. It was possibly the very first time that she had ever seriously noticed a man’s body.

‘You’re tiny. How the hell did you beat me?’ he demanded incredulously.

‘I’m a good swimmer.’

‘We have to have a retrial, koukla mou.’

‘OK, same time Wednesday night but I warn you I train every day and your technique is sloppy—’

‘Sloppy …’ Cristo repeated in accented disbelief, an ebony brow quirking. ‘If I wasn’t tired, I’d have beaten you hollow!’

Erin laughed. ‘Sure you would,’ she agreed peaceably, knowing what the male ego was like.

He extended a lean brown hand. ‘I’m Cristophe Donakis … I’ll see you Wednesday and I’ll whip your hide.’

‘I don’t think so,’ she told him cheerfully.

‘Cristophe Donakis? You met Cristophe in the residents’ pool where us ordinary people swim?’ Elaine later gasped in consternation. ‘What on earth was he doing there? He owns the penthouse and he has a private pool on the roof.’

‘Well, he was slumming this evening. Who is he?’

‘A spoilt rotten Greek tycoon and playboy with pots of money and a different woman on the go every week. I’ve seen him taking them up there in the lift. He’s very fond of decorative beauties. Stay clear. He’d gobble you up like a mid-morning snack,’ Elaine warned her drily.

But that same night the recollection of Cristo’s flawless male perfection got Erin all hot and bothered in her dreams and she marvelled that he could have that effect on her, for her strict upbringing had made her reserved and wary about all things sexual. Even at a glance she had recognised that Cristophe Donakis was a very sexual animal. On the Wednesday she beat him a second time, albeit with a little more effort on her part.

‘Join me for a drink,’ he suggested afterwards, his hungry gaze wandering at leisure over her slim curves in the plain black and red suit she wore, rising to linger on her soft full mouth, the sexual charge of his interest blatant and bringing self-conscious colour to her cheeks.

‘No, thanks.’ Fear of getting out of her depth and of somehow making a fool of herself made Erin especially cautious

‘A rematch, then … third time lucky?’ he prompted, amusement dancing in his stunning eyes below the fringe of black curling lashes.

‘My flatmate tells me you have your own pool.’

‘It’s in the process of being replaced. Rematch?’ he pressed again, pure challenge gleaming in those bronzed eyes. ‘The next time the loser buys dinner. Give me your phone number and we’ll arrange a date for it. I’m about to leave for the US for a week.’

She admired his persistence and had never been able to resist a dare. The third time he beat her, punching the air with uninhibited triumph. And that was also the moment she fell for Cristo, loving the naturally dramatic streak that he kept concealed below the surface in favour of cool assurance and the gloriously wicked grin that could burnish his hard dark features with adorably boyish enthusiasm.

She fed him in an American-style diner down the street in the sort of basic unsophisticated setting that she could tell was unfamiliar to him, but he proved a good sport and an entertaining raconteur, who drew her out about her job and her ambitions. He assumed that she would accompany him back to his apartment after the meal, looked at her in frank surprise when she refused, for he was very much a male accustomed to easy conquests. After that rebuff it took him two whole weeks to phone her again.

‘He’ll hurt you,’ Elaine forecast. ‘He’s too handsome, too rich, too arrogant. You’re very down to earth. What have you got in common with a guy like that?’

And the answer was … nothing. But like a moth drawn to a candle flame she had refused to acknowledge the obvious and eventually she had got burned, badly enough burned to avoid getting involved ever since. From time to time other men had made a play for her but she had resisted, reluctant to entertain such a complication in her life. In any case living under the same roof as her mother was almost as good as wearing a chastity belt, she reflected with sheepish amusement.

Cristo was already seated in the elegant restaurant. He levered upright as she approached, his keen dark gaze welded to her delicate features. She looked like an angel, fragile, pure, amethyst eyes luminous as jewels in her heart-shaped face. He noticed the other men following her progress and the seductive image of her spread across his silk sheets flashed through his head, instantly hardening him. He marvelled at the effect she had on him even though he knew that she was both dishonest and untrustworthy, a thoughtless, foolish little slut below the patina of that perfection. No truly clever woman would have tossed him and what he could buy her away for the cheap thrill of a casual encounter and what he considered to be a paltry sum of money.

Erin felt the heat of his appraisal and flushed, her spine stiffening, her bone structure tightening as she exerted fierce self-discipline. Willing herself not to react, she sat down and immediately lifted the menu to peruse it. She picked a single course, told him that she didn’t want any wine and sat as straight as a child told to sit properly at table.

‘So, tell me what you want and get it over with,’ she suggested, eager to take charge of the conversation rather than sit there quailing like a victim.

His dark golden eyes rested on the hands she had clasped together on the table top and his beautiful mouth took on a sardonic twist. ‘I want you,’ he countered levelly.

Her smooth brow indented. ‘In what way?’

Cristo laughed, raw amusement lightening his stunning eyes to a shade somewhere between amber and honey. ‘In the most obvious way that a man wants a woman.’

But she couldn’t credit that, for hadn’t he ditched her and moved on to marry an exceptionally beautiful Greek woman, a socialite called Lisandra, within weeks of their split? She hadn’t been able to hold him then, hadn’t been important enough to him to retain his interest. He had moved on with his life without her at breathtaking speed. Now he was divorced and it was mean of her to reflect that his marriage had barely lasted long enough for the ink to dry on the licence. Maybe he had got bored with his wife and being married in the same way that he had got bored with Erin. Maybe he didn’t have what it took to really care about any woman.

‘That’s the price of my silence,’ Cristo drawled smooth as silk.

Blackmail? Erin was shocked, so shocked that her teeth settled into the soft underside of her lower lip and she tasted the faint coppery tang of blood in her mouth. ‘The silence relating to this supposed thieving you believe me to be guilty of—’

‘Know you to be guilty of,’ Cristo traded.

‘You can’t possibly be serious,’ Erin breathed tightly.

Lean bronzed face radiating raw assurance, Cristo ran a lean brown forefinger down over the back of her hand and every skin cell in her body leapt into tingling awareness. ‘Why would you think that? We had a very good time between the sheets.’

Assailed by unwelcome memories, Erin went rigid but that fast, still shockingly attuned to a certain dark intimate note in his deep drawl, her body reacted. Inside her bra, her breasts swelled, her nipples tightening into prominent points, and her breath rasped in her tight throat. She blinked, lashes lowering, shutting out the hot dark golden gaze pinned to her. He could still get to her and that shocked her but was it so surprising? She had lived like a nun since her children were born, grateful just to have a job and a roof over her head in the wake of the struggle to survive while she was pregnant and unemployed. A good time. That phrase cheapened her, made light of what she had once believed they had shared. Was a good time all she had been? Or was the very fact that he was back in her life, trying to force her to give him her time and her body again, proof that she had actually meant something more to him? It was a heady suspicion. Not that she still cared about him, she reflected, but like any woman she had her pride.

‘So what are you suggesting?’ Erin queried, resolving to play him along for a while until she better understood her position. ‘Are you asking me to come back to you?’

‘Na pas sto dialo … go to hell!’ Cristo growled, incredulity flashing across his spectacular bone structure at that explosive suggestion. ‘I’m talking about one weekend.’

Her delicate face froze tight. She felt the painful sting of that contempt right down to her marrow bone and inwardly swore that somehow, some way, some day he would pay for insulting her like that. Had the waiter not arrived with their meals she could not have trusted herself not to say something unwise. Forced to hold her tongue, she studied her plate fixedly, her hackles raised, bitterness poisoning her. How dared he? How dared he treat her like some hooker he could rent for an hour or two?

‘A dirty weekend,’ she framed through compressed lips. ‘That does fit your MO.’

Those lustrous amber eyes shimmered below his thick sooty lashes, the leashed power of his strong personality and masculine virility creating an aggressive aura. Another punch of awareness slid through her. It was like poking a tiger through the bars of a cage and shockingly exciting, a welcome respite from the hard little knot of humiliation he had inflicted.

‘One weekend in return for my silence and the twenty grand you stole … cheap at the price,’ Cristo quipped cool as ice.

Erin wanted to thump him for that crack and restraining that natural urge made her slender hands clench into fists where she had placed them on her lap, out of view of his shrewd notice. The only way to play it with Cristo was cool. If she lost her temper she was lost and he would walk all over her.

‘Stop playing the ice goddess. That may be a turn on for Morton but it doesn’t rev my engine at all,’ Cristo informed her drily. ‘One weekend—that’s the deal on the table—’

‘Was this whole thing a set-up? Have you no intention of buying Sam out?’ Erin pressed shakily.

‘That is a question for me and my acquisitions team to decide. If it’s a good investment your presence on the staff will not deter me, although obviously I’d be bringing back the forensic accounting team to run a check on your activities.’

Her chin came up. ‘They’ll find nothing because I have done nothing dishonest. Neither at Sam’s company nor at yours. Furthermore I will not accept blackmail.’

‘I think you’ll end up eating those words,’ Cristo forecast gently, spearing a chunk of succulent steak, primal male to the bone in his unspoilt appetite.

‘You have to show me the evidence you say you have before I can make any kind of a decision.’

‘After we’ve eaten. It’s in my suite,’ he responded equably.

His easy acquiescence on that score shook Erin. Clearly he was confident about the proof he had of her deceit. But, dismayed though she was by that suspicion, she brought her chin up, amethyst eyes glinting with challenge. ‘We’ll see.’

And she ate even though she wasn’t hungry, for to push her food round her plate and leave it virtually untouched would only highlight the reality that she was sick with nerves.

‘I have to go home for a week,’ Cristo told her smoothly. ‘My foster father’s company is in trouble and he needs my advice. You must be aware of the state of the Greek economy.’

Erin nodded grudgingly. ‘Aren’t you suffering from the same effects?’

‘My businesses are primarily here and in North America. I saw the way things were going a couple of years back but Vasos is stubborn. He dislikes change and he wouldn’t listen to me when I tried to warn him.’

‘And you are telling me this … because?’

‘To help you to pen that weekend slot into your no doubt busy social calendar.’

Her teeth gritted behind her closed lips, her aggrieved sense of outrage building higher. He was so confident of winning that it was an affront. For a split second she was tempted to tell him that two young children took a heavy toll on what free time she had, but common sense kept her quiet, not to mention pride. She did not want him to know that a night out for her these days would most likely encompass a trip to the cinema or a modest meal with friends.

‘So what is the state of play with Morton?’ Cristo enquired quietly.

As Cristo was rarely quiet, she glanced up suspiciously. ‘My relationship with Sam is none of your business.’

‘I’m divorced,’ he murmured flatly.

Erin shrugged a slim shoulder as if the information meant nothing to her. ‘I read about it in the papers. Your marriage didn’t last very long.’

He frowned, black brows drawing together. ‘Long enough.’

And as his darkly handsome features shadowed and hardened Erin made a discovery that stung her. His broken marriage was still a source of discomfort to him. She sensed his regret and his reserve and the latter was nothing new. Cristo had always played his cards close to his chest, keeping his feelings under cover, and he had played it that way right to the end of their affair when he had told her it had run its course without drama or remorse. The recollection stiffened her backbone because she had been so shocked and unprepared for that development. This time around, she knew who and what she was dealing with: if he wanted a fight, one way or another, she would give him one!

They travelled up in the lift in a tense silence. She could not credit the situation she found herself in. Was she to be the equivalent of a rebound affair in the wake of his divorce? It occurred to her that a sleazy one-off weekend scarcely qualified for that lofty description and mortified pink highlighted her cheeks. Cristo studied her, picturing her silver gilt hair loose, a party dress to replace the business suit, high heels to show off those shapely legs. His body quickened to the image and was swiftly encouraged by far more X-rated images from the past. When he had her in his bed again, she would disappoint him, of course she would. It would not be as good as he remembered, he told himself urgently. That was the whole point of the game, that and, of course, a well-deserved dose of retribution. She had changed though. Those amethyst eyes no longer telegraphed every reaction making her easily read and she was more controlled than he recalled. Once she saw that he had definitive evidence of her thefts, she would surely study to please …

Erin had not quite bargained on the silent isolation of a hotel suite and she hovered in the centre of the reception room, having refused a drink. She watched him stride into the bedroom to retrieve whatever he was after, that long, lean, powerful body that had once haunted her dreams and ensured that other men could not compare so graceful in movement that she compressed her lips into a tight line, infuriated by the fact that she had noticed. But Cristo was a very noticeable guy. Every female head turned when he walked by and their attention lingered. But, Elaine had been right about him, he was a predator to the backbone and she was now simply a target with an X marked on her back. She wondered what his wife had done to him. Did Cristo have a score to settle against the female sex? And why, after almost three years had passed, was she on the menu again?

Cristo extended a file. ‘Go ahead and take a look.’

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.