Читать книгу Irresistible Greeks Collection - Кэрол Мортимер, Кэрол Мортимер - Страница 17

ERIN picked at the perfectly cooked lunch served on board Cristo’s private jet without much appetite. She was still angry at Sally and bitter that the older woman had got away with destroying Erin’s reputation rather than her own. How many other people were suffering from the mistaken assumption that she was a con woman, who had escaped her just deserts solely because she was the owner’s ex-girlfriend? As someone who had always worked hard with scrupulous honesty and pride in her performance of her duties, she deeply resented the false impression that Sally had created to hide her own wrongdoing.

‘We have to talk,’ Cristo remarked flatly.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard that phrase from you before,’ she parried waspishly, recalling that once upon a time Cristo had been the first out of he door when such a suggestion was laid before him. That had certainly been his all-too-masculine reaction on every occasion when she’d tried to corner him for a serious conversation.

From the cabin next door she could hear the sounds of the children playing and talking. Jenny, the charming young brunette nanny, had turned out not to work for the spa crèche after all. No, indeed, Jenny had been specifically hired by Cristo to take care of the twins while they were in Greece.

‘That’s so unnecessary and extravagant,’ Erin had criticised when she found out about the arrangement at the airport.

‘You can’t look after them 24-7,’ Cristo had informed her authoritatively.

‘Why can’t I?’ she had asked.

‘Why shouldn’t you have a break?’ he had responded arrogantly.

‘If Jenny is your concept of responsible parenting you need to buy another handbook,’ she had retorted curtly, annoyed that he had taken such a decision over her head. He was Lorcan and Nuala’s father: all right, she accepted that, however that didn’t mean that she would accept his interference in matters about which he was scarcely qualified to have an opinion. She was no more in need of a break than any other working mother, she thought thinly, which she supposed meant that, rail as she had at him, the prospect of the occasional hour in which she could relax and think of herself again was disturbingly appealing and made her feel quite appallingly guilty.

Returning to the present and the tense atmosphere currently stretching between them, Erin shot Cristo a glance from cool amethyst eyes. ‘You think we should talk? I’ll be frank—only if you crawled naked over broken glass would I think you had redeemed yourself.’

A wicked grin very briefly slashed Cristo’s lean bronzed features, his dark eyes shot with golden amusement below his thick sooty lashes, making him spectacularly handsome. ‘Not much chance of that,’ he admitted.

‘So, where’s my apology?’ Erin demanded truculently to mask the effect of her dry mouth and quickened heartbeat because, no matter how furious he made her, she could still not remain impervious to his stunning good looks, a reality that mortified her. ‘It’s taking you long enough!’

‘I was trying to come up with the right words.’

‘Even if you swallowed a dictionary, it wouldn’t help you!’

Lean strong face taut, Cristo sprang out of his seat. ‘I am sincerely sorry that I ever entertained the suspicion that you had stolen from me, koukla mou.’

‘You didn’t just entertain it,’ she objected. ‘You fell for it hook, line and sinker!’

‘My security team are even at this moment checking into this Will Grimes angle. I can’t understand why a private detective would have been interested in you.’ Indeed, having thought deeply about that particular issue, Cristo could only think that someone he knew had hired a detective in an apparent effort to disgrace Erin. But who would have wasted their money on such a pursuit and what had been the motivation? It still made no sense to him. Erin had not been his wife or fiancée? Why would anyone have wanted to harm her and, through her, him?

Erin tilted her chin, eyes glinting pure lavender. ‘Seems I wasn’t paranoid, after all. I’m still waiting on that apology too.’

His strong jaw line hardened, dark eyes gleaming. ‘And you’ll be waiting a long time because you’re not getting a second. If you hadn’t been so direct about your expectations I might have soft-pedalled for the sake of peace, but now I’ll be equally direct: you brought that theft accusation down on your own head!’

Erin stared at him aghast, totally wrong-footed by that condemnation coming at her out of the blue when she had expected a grovelling apology. Really? Well, possibly not of the grovelling variety, but, yes, she had assumed he would be embarrassed by his misjudgement and eager to soothe her wounded feelings. Now, deprived of that development and outraged by his attitude, Erin leapt out of her seat to face him. ‘And how do you work that out?’

‘As far as I was aware Sally Jennings was an exemplary long-term employee with no strikes against her and no reason to lie. Had I known she had already been caught thieving at work I would have known to take a closer look at her activities,’ Cristo shot back at her levelly.

Erin stiffened, feeling she was on weaker ground when it came to the decision she had once made over Sally and defying the reflection. ‘Sally was going through a divorce and she has two autistic sons. At the time, I believed she needed compassionate handling rather than punishment.’

Cristo expelled his breath in a hiss, his brilliant eyes cracking like whips. ‘Compassion? If I’d known then how you mishandled her dishonesty I would have sacked you for incompetence!’

‘Incompetence?’ Erin bleated incredulously, rage jumping up and down inside her like a gushing fountain suddenly switched on.

‘Yes, incompetence,’ Cristo confirmed with succinct bite. ‘How would you feel about a manager who left a thief in a position of power in your business and chose not to warn anyone about her dangerous little weakness?’

‘I dealt with the situation as I saw fit back then. Looking back, I can see I was too trusting—’

‘Correction … bloody naïve!’ Cristo shot back at her witheringly. ‘I didn’t hire you to be compassionate. Plenty of people lead tough lives but few of them steal. I hired you to take care of part of my business and that was your sole responsibility. Listening to sob stories and letting a clever calculating woman get off scot-free with her crimes was no part of your job description!’

It took enormous will power but Erin managed to restrain her temper and the urge to snap back at him because she knew that he was making valid points. ‘It’s not a decision I would make now. Unfortunately I liked Sally and believed she was a wonderful worker. I was naïve—I’ll admit that—’

‘Why the hell didn’t you consult me about it or at least approach someone with more experience for their opinion on what to do about her?’ Cristo demanded angrily. ‘At the very least, once you knew Sally was a thief, all her activities at work should have been checked out thoroughly and she should have been moved to a position where she had no access to products, account books or money.’

As he made those cogent decrees Erin lifted her head high, refusing to go into retreat. ‘You’re right but I thought I could deal with the situation on my own. I didn’t want you to think that I couldn’t cope. But I was hugely overworked and stressed at the time. I notice the current manager has a deputy and I saw at least two administrators in the general office. I didn’t have anyone but Sally to rely on.’

‘Then you should have asked for more help,’ Cristo fielded without hesitation.

‘My biggest mistake was accepting a position from someone I was involved with. I was too proud, too busy trying to impress you about what a great job I was doing. I didn’t have enough experienced staff around me and those that were there kept their distance because I was too close to the boss. I was very focused on building the business, bringing in more custom, increasing productivity. It made me far too dependent on Sally for support. I can see that now,’ Erin concluded that honest statement curtly.

‘At least you can now see what that inappropriate decision cost you. Sally didn’t hesitate when it came to setting you up to take the blame for her acts of fraud or when she got the chance to reap financial benefits from her disloyalty,’ Cristo pointed out.

‘Don’t forget that Sally Jennings fooled you as well. The role she played was very convincing,’ Erin reminded him tightly. ‘You didn’t smell a rat in her performance either.’

‘But I would have done had you tipped me off about her stealing. Right, we’ve aired this for long enough, subject closed,’ Cristo pronounced decisively.

‘Now that you’ve had your say and blamed me for everything?’ Erin countered tautly, amethyst eyes dark and unwittingly vulnerable, for that word, ‘incompetence’, had cut deep as a knife. ‘Was it too much for me to expect that after knowing me for a year you would question the idea that I might have been filling my pockets at your expense?’

‘After certain suspicions had been awakened and the man I saw in your hotel-room bed I will concede that I was predisposed to think the worst of you,’ Cristo derided, compressing his wide sensual mouth into a tough line. ‘What’s that cliché about the easiest explanation usually being the right one? In this case, the easiest explanation was the wrong one.’

Erin sank back down in her seat. ‘Am I finally getting a clean slate on the score of the one-night stand with the toy boy?’ she asked grittily. ‘Tom’s brother, Dennis, was only nineteen back then.’

‘That’s not quite so clear cut. My suspicions in that quarter were first awakened by other indications, which I will discuss with you when we get to the island,’ he added as her triangular face tensed into a frown of bemusement. ‘I am sincerely sorry that I misjudged you and that I didn’t dig a little deeper three years back.’

Erin said nothing. What other evidence of her infidelity did he imagine he had? She hadn’t a clue what he was talking about and had no time for more mysteries. In addition her mind was being bombarded with thoughts after that heated exchange of views. He had shot her down in flames and it rankled and that was precisely why she had not approached him for advice after she had caught Sally stealing. She had known he would take the toughest stance and would call in the police. She had feared that he would blame her for the inadequate security in the products store, which had made Sally’s thefts all too easy. If she was honest she had also worried about how she would cope without Sally at her elbow. My mistake, she acknowledged painfully. A wrong decision that had cost her more than she could ever have dreamt.

Cristo watched in frustration as Erin made a weak excuse and went off to join Jenny and the twins. It had been right to tell her the truth, he told himself angrily. He was damned if the fact that she was the mother of his children would make him start lying just to please her! Did shooting from the hip mean he had also shot himself in the foot? Almost three years ago, he had not talked to Erin about important issues and this time around he was determined not to repeat that mistake. Blunt speech had to be better than minimal communication and misunderstandings, he decided impatiently.

Shielded by the need to keep the twins occupied for what remained of a journey that entailed a final helicopter flight to the island of Thesos, Erin licked her wounds in private. From the air she had a fantastic view of Cristo’s island. It was bigger than she had imagined and the southern end was heavily forested with pine trees. She spied a cluster of low-rise structures on what appeared to be a building site on the furthest coast and a picturesque little town by the harbour before the helicopter flew level again and began to swoop down over the tree tops to land.

Lorcan was asleep and Cristo hoisted his son out of Erin’s arms and carried him off. They had landed about twenty yards from a magnificent ultra-modern villa surrounded by terraces and balconies to take advantage of the land and sea views.

‘This all looks new,’ Erin remarked.

‘I demolished my parents’ house and had this one designed about three years ago. It made more sense than trying to renovate the old place,’ he commented casually.

Three years ago, while they had still been a couple, Erin had known nothing about his island or the new house he was having built. Not for the first time Erin appreciated that Cristo had shut her out of a large section of his life and she wondered why. Obviously he had never considered her important enough to include her in the Greek half of his existence, which encompassed home and family. And that, whether she liked it or not, hurt, most particularly when he had married a Greek woman within months of dumping Erin.

A short brunette with warm brown eyes was introduced as Androula, the housekeeper. Straight away Androula cooed over the children in their arms and hurried off to show Erin and Jenny to the rooms set aside for their use. Erin was taken aback to discover that Cristo had already had accommodation specially prepared for his son and daughter, each complete with small beds, appropriate decoration and an array of toys. Leaving the capable Jenny to put the drowsy children to bed, Erin explored her own room with its doors opening onto the terrace and superb view through the trees to a white beach and a turquoise sea over which the sun was sinking in a display of fiery splendour.

‘Will you be comfortable here?’

Erin spun to find Cristo behind her, poised between the French windows. ‘How could I fail to be? It’s the height of luxury,’ she said awkwardly.

Cristo searched her shuttered face and breathed almost roughly, ‘I was tough on you on the plane. I was angry that you let that scheming woman make you pay the price for her crimes.’

‘But at least that’s sorted out now. The rooms organised for the children are beautiful,’ she told him stiffly, suppressing the discomfiture she was still feeling. ‘You must have organised that almost as soon as you found out about them.’

Cristo inclined his dark head. ‘Yes, even before I asked you if they could visit Thesos. I still tend to act first and ask later.’

Not even questioning that arrogant assumption of power, Erin turned away and rested her elbows back on the low wall girding the terrace. She had intended to get her revenge on Cristo for what he had done to her in Italy, but it had gradually dawned on her that angering or hurting Cristo would most probably damage his relationship with their children. Their own relationship was irrevocably meshed with the ties and responsibilities of also being parents. And how, in conscience, could she take that risk of weakening those links?

‘You never ever told me that this place existed,’ she said.

‘What would have been the point if I wasn’t planning to bring you here?’ he murmured wryly. ‘When I was with you I wasn’t quite ready to move our affair on to the next stage. I was simply enjoying the place we had reached until it blew up in both our faces. I’m sorry.’

‘No need to apologise.’ Erin fought the just-slapped-in-the-face sensation of humiliation that his piece of plain speaking inspired and wondered why on earth he was suddenly telling her such things. In the past she had loved him and longed for a secure future with him but he had not felt the same. Why did that news still make her feel so gutted? That time was gone and she didn’t love him any longer. She just lusted after him, enjoyed his energising company, respected his business prowess, intelligence and strength of principle. Enumerating that unacceptably long list of his supposed attributes, Erin gritted her teeth together. Why was she doing this to herself? Dwelling on things that no longer had any place between them? She was the mother of his children and that was all.

‘In those days …’ Cristo, engaged in watching the tense muscles in her slender back and the vulnerable piece of pale nape exposed by her bent head, floundered. ‘I wasn’t exactly in touch with my feelings.’

‘I’m not sure you had any … above your belt,’ Erin specified shakily.

‘That is so wrong!’ Cristo growled, lean hands closing forcefully to her shoulders to tug her back round to face him. ‘I was sick to the stomach when I thought you’d gone to bed with another man! It turned my whole life upside down!’

‘Try being pregnant by a man you can’t even get to speak to you on the phone!’ Erin lanced back at him with unconcealed bitterness.

His dark golden eyes shone amber bright at the challenge. ‘I would never have knowingly allowed that to happen. What reason would I have to treat you like some demented stalker? I intend to get the full story out of Amelia when I’m next in Athens where she works now.’

‘I’ll still never forgive you.’

His superb bone structure was taut and he gazed steadily back at her. ‘Was being pregnant so bad?’

‘I had to live on welfare benefits. It was a struggle I’ll never forget,’ Erin admitted truthfully. ‘My home was a damp tenth-floor council flat barely fit for human habitation. It was only when my mother came to see me and realised how I was living that she invited me to go home with her. There was also the not so little matter of me being pregnant and unmarried, which really did upset Mum. She’s an old-fashioned woman and as far as she’s concerned decent girls don’t have babies until they have a ring on their wedding finger. We were estranged for most of my pregnancy.’

His concern was unfeigned. ‘You had no support at all? What about your friend, Elaine? Did she ask you to move out of her apartment?’

‘No, I made that decision—I couldn’t pay my way any more,’ Erin explained ruefully. ‘But Tom and Melissa helped out as best they could.’

‘Melissa?’

‘Now Tom’s wife but at the time they were living together and I couldn’t have had better friends,’ Erin declared. ‘They were very good to me.’

His keen gaze was screened by his luxuriant black lashes, his eloquent mouth set in a forbidding line. ‘I owe them a debt for that.’

‘Yes, you do,’ Erin told him bluntly. ‘They didn’t have much either but what they had they shared.’

His lashes swept up on breathtakingly beautiful golden eyes from which all anger had vanished. ‘But I owe the biggest debt of all to you for bringing my children into the world. Don’t think I don’t appreciate that and know how lucky I was that you chose not to have a termination. I do know—I do appreciate it,’ he completed in a rare display of unmistakable emotion.

Cristo took the wind out of Erin’s sails with that candid little speech, but her anger with him was not so easily soothed. ‘When I was pregnant I assumed that if you had a choice you would have preferred me to have a termination. You once told me about that friend of yours whose girlfriend got pregnant,’ she reminded him.

‘I didn’t say that I approved of what they chose to do. Maybe it was right for them but I would not have reacted the same way that he did.’

‘Easy to say,’ she needled. ‘Hindsight is a wonderful device with which to rewrite the past. You also said that you preferred your life without baggage.’

‘Don’t judge me for what I did and didn’t do almost three years ago. I’ve grown up a lot since then,’ Cristo spelt out tautly.

His marriage to Lisandra, she thought ruefully, thinking it was sad that she apparently owed this rather less arrogant and reserved version of Cristo to the machinations of another woman. Even so, her heart could only be touched by his gratitude that she had given birth to Lorcan and Nuala. She had felt his sincerity and it meant a great deal to her. Cristo had, after all, taken to fatherhood with enthusiasm and energy. He seemed neither resentful of the responsibility he had had thrust on him, nor ill-at-ease with it. That awareness tore more than one brick out of Erin’s defensive wall.

Walking back indoors, she noticed a trio of large envelopes lying on an occasional table. Already opened, they were addressed to Cristo at his London office. ‘What are these?’

Cristo hesitated and then frowned, his restive pacing coming to a sudden halt. ‘The evidence I promised to show you once we got here. Take a look at what’s in those envelopes …’

‘Why? What’s in them?’

‘Photos which were sent to me during the latter months we were together in London.’

Erin extracted a large, slightly blurred photograph of a couple walking hand in hand. The man was her friend, Tom Harcourt, and the face on the woman was hers. As she had never held hands with Tom in her life she was astonished until she studied the body and the clothing of the female depicted. In a frantic rush, she leafed through the other photos, one showing the same couple kissing and another of them hugging. ‘That may be my face but it’s not my body—it’s Melissa’s. These photos are all of Tom with his wife, Melissa, but they’ve been digitally altered to make it look as though the woman is me!’ she murmured in disbelief.

‘Altered?’ Cristo stood by her side as she fanned out the photos and one by one proceeded to verbally pick them apart. ‘How altered?’

‘Whoever sent these photos to you grafted my face onto Melissa’s body,’ she told him angrily. ‘All we have in common is that we’re both blondes but I’d recognise that sweater from a mile away! How on earth could you think that was me, Cristo? Melissa is much smaller, well under five foot tall. Didn’t you notice how small she seems beside Tom, who isn’t that tall? And since when did I have a bust as big as that?’

Peering down at the photos, Cristo noted every point of comparison. ‘None of them are of you with Tom,’ he finally breathed in bewilderment. ‘Why didn’t I notice those differences for myself?’

It might as well have been a rhetorical question because Erin had no intention of pursuing that pointless line of enquiry. ‘As you said, you act first and ask later. But I just don’t believe how secretive you can be! You received these rotten lying photos on three separate occasions and didn’t once mention them to me. No wonder you became so suspicious of my friendship with Tom!’

In retrospect she could recall the surprisingly sudden alteration in Cristo’s attitude towards her spending time with Tom while he was away on business. Cristo had gone from accepting that friendship without comment to suddenly questioning her every meeting with the other man, but only now was she discovering that genuine disquiet had provoked that change of heart.

Erin was struggling to understand why he had remained silent in the face of such provocation and failing. It was cruel to realise that she had gone through so much pain just because some hateful individual had decided to destroy Cristo’s trust in her, ensuring that he would reject her. He had walked away from her and almost straight away gone on to marry another woman. The wound inflicted by that decision of his had never left her. He had got over her so quickly and she believed that he must always have viewed her as not being good enough to marry. His choice of a rich Greek wife from a background similar to his own had been revealing.

‘Why didn’t you show these photos to me at the time?’ Erin demanded.

Lean, strong face shuttered, Cristo clenched his jaw. He walked away a few paces, his long, lean body as fluid and graceful as running water, his black hair gleaming like polished jet in the fading daylight above his bold bronzed profile. Sometimes he looked so incredibly handsome that she couldn’t take her eyes off him, she thought rawly, anguish for what they had lost engulfing her.

‘I had too much pride,’ Cristo grated the admission. ‘I could not make my mind up about whether you were cheating on me or whether your relationship with Tom had simply become too close and affectionate. I didn’t know what to think but it did make me doubt your loyalty—’

‘And when you walked into that hotel room and saw a strange man in the bed, you were in exactly the right frame of mind to assume that I was cheating on you,’ Erin completed with fierce resentment. ‘How could you not give me a single chance to defend myself?’

‘I will always regret it,’ Cristo confessed in a driven undertone, piling the photos together and cramming them into a single envelope. ‘We are now living with the consequences. I’ve missed more than two years of my children’s lives as a result. I would not like to be in the shoes of whomever I find is responsible for deliberately setting out to destroy us.’

‘But the hotel-room thing was just an unlucky coincidence,’ Erin reasoned heavily, shaken that anyone could have gone to such lengths to discredit her in his eyes. ‘I do understand after seeing those photos that you honestly believed you didn’t need to see me in the flesh in the same room to believe that I was cheating on you. Do you have a bunny-boiling ex-girlfriend somewhere in your past? Jealous women can be vicious. Who else would take so much time and trouble and put so much money into trying to split us up?’

‘I don’t know but I have every intention of finding out,’ he swore, a hostile expression stamped on his hard features. He cast the envelopes aside and drew her back to him with determined hands.

He lowered his head and caressed her parted lips slowly with his own in a move that completely disconcerted her. Her entire body tingled with electrified awareness. Coming alive to his sensual call, she was shamefully aware that the peaks of her breasts were straining into bullet points and her thighs pressing together to contain the ache of emptiness there. ‘I want a fresh start with you,’ he breathed in a raw undertone, his breath fanning her cheek. ‘Let’s get all the rubbish out of the way and leave it behind us.’

‘A lot of what you call rubbish messed up my life,’ Erin replied defensively, her eyes prickling with tears behind her eyelids, and she didn’t even understand why she so suddenly felt screamingly vulnerable and unsure of herself. I want a fresh start with you. She hadn’t seen that coming, didn’t know what to say.

‘We both screwed up,’ Cristo contradicted, gravity hardening his high cheekbones to make him look tougher and stronger than ever. ‘We can’t change the past but we can begin again …’

Erin looked up into his lean, tense features. ‘Can we?’ she whispered.

Long brown fingers framed her cheekbone and intent dark golden eyes flamed over her troubled face. ‘I say we can,’ he declared, curving a hand to her hip to ease her closer.

She wanted to believe it; she wanted to believe it so badly. He wanted her back. He still wanted her. A powerful tide of relief rolled through her, closely followed by a flood of happiness. Dark eyes glinting sensually below his lashes, he melded her to his big powerful length and desire flared through her like a hungry fire ready to blaze out of control. The heat of him against her, the glorious scent of his skin and the hungry thrust of his erection were a potent inducement and when he crushed her sultry mouth beneath his she was with him every step of the way.

Cristo peeled off her blouse with wildly impatient hands and then released her bra to bury his mouth urgently in the sweet sloping swell of her breasts. ‘You’re so beautiful, so perfect—’

‘Not perfect,’ she protested as he gathered her up and lowered her down on the bed with a scantily leashed impatience she could not resist.

‘You’re perfect for me, koukla mou,’ Cristo countered, determined to have the last word. ‘You always were.’

The passionate kiss that followed as he explored the confines of her mouth with devouring heat silenced her. Her nipples were hard and swollen and he dallied there with his mouth and his fingers to reduce her to gasping compliance with the hot sensuality that was so much a part of him. The remainder of her clothes were discarded and Cristo undressed in haste, returning to claim her with his lean, strong body boldly aroused. Her heart raced as she stroked the long, hard thickness of his shaft and she rejoiced when he groaned and arched his hips up to her in supplication. He flipped her back against the pillows, searching out the slick sensitive folds and the tiny knot of nerve-endings above to stroke her with teasing, tender skill. The tide of pleasure swept her out of her control, each touch of his fingers making her burn and writhe and finally sob with anticipation and need. And only then did he reach for protection and sink deep into her damp sheath, telling her huskily of his pleasure as her inner muscles tightened convulsively around him. Excitement gripped her when he withdrew and then plunged deep into her again, ripples of delight rising higher and higher inside her as the fire in her pelvis burned hotter than ever. And when she finally reached a climax and he reached the same point with her, he lay sated and uncharacteristically silent in the protective circle of her arms afterwards and she felt gloriously happy.

‘That was … wonderful, koukla mou,’ Cristo husked, folding her slight damp body, to him with possessive arms. ‘I don’t know how I contrived to keep my hands off you for so long.’

‘I should’ve said no,’ Erin lamented, studying his lean, darkly handsome features with dazed eyes. ‘You blackmailed me into bed in Italy—’

‘You wanted me.’ Cristo punctuated that claim with a soothing kiss on her reddened lips, smouldering golden eyes scanning her flushed face with unashamed satisfaction. ‘I wanted you. I found a way round the difficulties so that we could be together again. Now that I have you back in my arms where you belong I would be a liar if I pretended to have regrets.’

‘The end justifies the means?’ Erin pressed drily.

‘You know that you want me just as much,’ he argued with unashamed assurance. ‘When we burn, we burn together.’

It was true and even with that frantic need fulfilled she could not lie in contact with that compellingly masculine body of his without experiencing the first little quivers of yet another sensual awakening. As the liquid warmth at the heart of her began to melt he ran the edge of his teeth down the extended length of her neck and she shivered violently. He reached for another condom and then pulled her over to him, watching as her lashes dipped low in a cloaked expression of intense pleasure that he savoured.

‘Will you marry me?’ he murmured tautly.

Eyes flying wide, Erin stared down at him, wondering if she had imagined that question.

‘It seemed like the right moment,’ Cristo asserted, his hands clasping to her hips to rock her gently up on him and then down in a controlling rhythm that was impossibly exciting. ‘Don’t laugh—’

‘I’m not going to laugh!’ she riposted, offended by the suggestion and studying him with troubled amethyst eyes. ‘Are you serious?’

‘I want you and the twins to be a proper part of my life.’ His breathing fractured as she made a subtle circling movement above him, pale silvery fair hair streaming down over her shoulders to allow tantalising glimpses of her small pert breasts. ‘I don’t think it can get better than this, koukla mou.’

And when only minutes later yet another orgasm took Erin by storm, she decided she agreed with him. She lay in the relaxed circle of his arms, breathing in the hot damp smell of him like a hopeless addict, too long deprived of the source of her fix. He wanted her. He wanted their children. What more was there? Love? Cristo hadn’t offered her love the last time she was with him and he likely never would. It was wiser to focus on what she could have rather than what she couldn’t. Wasn’t it the question she had always wanted him to ask? And did it really matter that he hadn’t made an occasion of the proposal? Aside of the few gestures he had made when in initial pursuit of her, Cristo didn’t have a romantic bone in his body. He was probably being practical. They were very much attracted to each other and it made sense for them to marry and share the children, she conceded ruefully, but she was slightly amazed that he was willing to surrender his freedom again after his first unhappy marriage.

‘Are you sure about this?’

His sooty lashes swept up on his level gaze. ‘I know what I want.’

‘But is it really us as a family unit?’

‘Do I get to wake up to you almost every morning?’ Cristo raised a mocking brow. ‘That’s my sole demand. That’s what I want and need.’

Erin was not quite convinced of that when two little wriggling noisy bodies tried to get into bed with them at dawn the next morning. Aghast, Cristo snatched up his boxers to make himself presentable and looked on in disbelief as the twins cuddled up between them, providing as effective a barrier as a wall.

‘What are you doing in Mummy’s bed?’ Lorcan demanded curiously.

‘Your mother and I are getting married very soon,’ Cristo announced instantly.

Erin stiffened in dismay. ‘Cristo, I didn’t say yes.’

Cristo sent her a shocked look, his eyes dancing with wicked amusement. ‘Are you saying that you took repeated gross advantage of me last night without any intention of making an honest man of me and doing the decent thing?’

Erin reddened at his mockery, the ache of her well-used body reminding her that after the enthusiasm she had demonstrated between the sheets he naturally took her agreement to marry him somewhat for granted. ‘No, I’m not saying that.’

‘Then I can go ahead and make the wedding arrangements?’

Erin nodded uncertainly, thoroughly shaken by the concept of becoming his bride. ‘Shouldn’t we have a living-together trial first?’

‘Nope. You might change your mind. I refuse to be put on trial. And on a more serious note, it’s time I told my parents about you and the twins. I don’t want them to hear from another source,’ he imparted wryly. ‘I’ll go and see them after breakfast.’

‘They live here on the island?’ Now she grasped why he had never offered to bring her to Thesos for a visit.

‘They have a second home here. They use it weekends, holidays.’ He shrugged. ‘They’re here right now.’

‘How do you think they’ll react?’

‘I suspect my foster mother will be overjoyed—she’s crazy about children.’

‘Just not so crazy about me?’ Erin remarked uncomfortably as the twins scampered out of bed and she followed suit.

‘Some misunderstanding must’ve lain behind the strange impression you received of my foster mother during that phone call you made while you were pregnant. Appollonia had no reason to think badly of you. She knew nothing about you.’

The four of them enjoyed breakfast on the terrace and then Cristo left to visit his parents and Erin changed into a swimsuit, packed a bag and took the children down to the beach As the morning ticked slowly past she wondered anxiously what sort of a reception Cristo was receiving from his parents. His foster parents, she reminded herself again, having studied a picture on the wall of a glamorous young couple standing on the deck of a yacht and guessed that the glossy pair were Cristo’s birth parents. When she came back from the beach, she let Jenny take the exhausted twins and went for a shower, emerging to phone her mother and describe the island and the house and, finally, their plans to marry. Her parent was very pleased by her news.

Choosing a book from the well-stocked, handsome library to entertain her until lunchtime, Erin relaxed in a cushioned lounger in the shade below the trees. She was drowsing in the heat when a slight sound alerted her to the awareness that she was no longer alone. Taking off her sunglasses, she sat up and frowned at Cristo, who looked grim. Lines of strain were indented between his nose and mouth, his black hair was tousled and stubble darkened the revealing downward curve of his beautiful mouth.

‘What’s up?’ Erin demanded worriedly, checking her watch. He had been gone for hours. It was two in the afternoon.

As he sank down heavily opposite her Erin leant a little closer and sniffed. ‘Have you been drinking?’

‘I might have had a couple while I was waiting on the doctor’s arrival with Vasos,’ he volunteered half under his breath. ‘It’s been such a ghastly morning that I don’t really remember.’

‘Who needed a doctor?’ she exclaimed.

‘My mother.’

‘Appollonia’s taken ill?’

Cristo dealt her a troubled appraisal. ‘It was her … she was the one who hired the private detective. I wouldn’t have believed it if she hadn’t known enough to convince me. My father is in shock—he had no idea what was going on.’

Erin was bemused. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘My mother hired Will Grimes.’

Her eyes widened while she recognised how much that staggering discovery had upset him. There was enormous sorrow in his unshielded eyes that made her wince and long to hold him close, for she knew how deeply attached he was to the couple who had raised him. In fact it hurt her so much to see him wounded in such a way that she stopped lying to herself in that same moment: all her proud pretences and defences fell away and she was left to face the inescapable truth that she still loved Cristophe Donakis and had never stopped loving him.