Читать книгу Modern Romance February Books 1-4 - Линн Грэхем, Maisey Yates - Страница 19

‘I WANTED TO eat chocolate round the clock,’ Winnie admitted ruefully, wondering how Eros could possibly be interested in what her pregnancy had been like but, for all that, he kept on pressing for more information. ‘Now, why couldn’t I have craved something healthy like salmon or salad while I was pregnant? No, I had to crave chocolate. I put on a good bit of weight.’

‘I bet it suited you,’ Eros murmured, wishing he had been there for her when it would really have mattered to her and counted in his favour. As she lay in his arms, he ran an appreciative hand over the lush fullness of her breasts cradled in a bikini top. He dipped his fingertips into the cups, skimming the fabric out of his path to expose her breasts and expertly tease the sensitive peaks. ‘I adore your curves.’

Her mind went blank and she forgot what she was about to say as her spine arched helplessly into the hard, muscular heat of the lean, powerful body holding hers. The tingling rise of heat between her thighs controlled her utterly. ‘Someone might see us!’ she framed in sudden breathless panic.

‘Nobody can see us down here,’ Eros replied, turning her across his lap to lower his mouth to the pouting nipples he had bared. ‘It’s a private beach and we’re shielded by the cliffs,’ he reminded her thickly while he played with the swollen pink crests until she was gasping and squirming and weak with liquid arousal.

He raked a finger across the taut crotch of her bikini pants. The breath sobbed in her throat as the tender flesh beneath throbbed with pulsing need. How Eros could smash her control that fast when they had made love only a few hours earlier, she had no idea. She only knew that as he began to wrench the bikini pants down and off, she was as impatient as he was. He dipped a finger into her overheated core and she vented a shameless moan, digging her hips into his hard thighs, her whole body ablaze with excitement.

‘You’re so ready,’ Eros growled appreciatively, twisting her round to face him and pushing his shorts down as he lifted her over him and brought her down.

Protection in place, Eros lowered her over him, watching her chocolate eyes widen and the pupils dilate as he entered her hard and fast. And then there wasn’t time or space for anything but the wild excitement engulfing them both. He cupped her hips, controlling the pace, rocking up into her when she didn’t move fast enough and suddenly all the sensations he induced were tumbling in a feverish, overwhelming surge of power over Winnie and she got lost in them, gasping, moaning, struggling to vocalise the extraordinary strength of the eagerness gripping her. She was straining, climbing, reaching for that ultimate climax and he forced her through the barriers, her body shattering like glass from the inside out, leaving her drained and limp.

Eros responded by lifting her up and flipping her under him instead, continuing the pace in a pagan rhythm. Her heart thundering, her breath catching in her tight throat, she pushed up to him, her body catching fire again as he ground down into her hard and that hint of erotic force convulsed her in fresh spasms of blissful pleasure. His magnificent body shuddered over hers until he finally groaned with uninhibited satisfaction.

But even in that moment, his shrewd brain was working at full tilt. He couldn’t keep his wife a semiprisoner for ever, he couldn’t force her to remain his wife either, but when it came to any reference to the future or that thorny word, commitment, Winnie was maddeningly elusive. He gritted his teeth, wondering if he was destined to live for ever with Stam Fotakis peering critically over his shoulder, ready to whisk Winnie away the instant there was a shaky moment in their marriage.

Both his arms wrapped round her slim, trembling body with innate possessiveness, Eros suppressed a sigh. All marriages had shaky moments, he reckoned ruefully, but he couldn’t afford to put a foot wrong. He had to tell Winnie that the island had only become his on their wedding day. He also needed to tell her about her grandfather’s threats. But unfortunately, Winnie was already sufficiently wary without him giving her added encouragement to distrust him. And who did he blame for that reality? Eros swallowed a groan, his every past sin and mistake threatening to pile up on top of him all at once.

* * *

Winnie held Eros close, her slender length quaking with the aftershocks still pulsing inside her. Her fingers stroked through his damp black curls and brushed against a stubbled jawline on her way to tracing the fullness of his sensual lower lip. As she revelled in that physical closeness a helpless tenderness flashed up through her. For a startling instant, his brilliant sea-glass eyes held hers fast and in that instant everything became so clear to her. She wanted to hold him for ever, she never wanted to let him go again because she loved him, had, it seemed, never stopped loving him. She had no idea how she had contrived to deny that fact over the past month. Of course, she hadn’t wanted to admit that distinctly humiliating truth even to herself and she couldn’t picture ever telling him. That was her secret, not something for sharing even with her sisters.

But, how could she not tell the truth to Vivi and Zoe? She was accustomed to telling them everything and was still on the phone to them most days. She had told them that she was happy but had sensed that they were not convinced. Unfortunately, her sisters had returned to London straight after the wedding. Eros had suggested that she invite them out for a visit but neither Vivi nor Zoe had sufficient annual leave to take another break from their jobs so soon after the wedding.

After all, only four weeks had passed since she’d married Eros, planning to leave him. Since then she had been living on the island with Eros and her son, waking up and falling asleep to the timeless sound of the waves beating the shore below the house. Eros hadn’t kept her a prisoner as he had threatened but he hadn’t allowed her to go anywhere alone either, citing his concern that her grandfather would try to steal her back by some nefarious means, ignoring her protest that she would not allow the older man to do anything of that nature.

For the first couple of weeks, Eros had taken her and Teddy and their nanny, Agathe, sailing round the Greek islands. Although the yacht had been rather more compact than the giant one her grandfather had borrowed to transport them to Trilis, it had still carried a full crew and its opulent furnishings and spacious cabins had ensured they’d enjoyed perfect privacy. The cruise had been a very relaxing experience, blowing away the tension of the wedding day that had gone wrong. And she now owned two fabulous rings. The first, a magnificent solitaire. Not an engagement ring, Eros had insisted even though he had put it on that finger. And the second? An eternity ring, a hoop of sparkling sapphires to mark the birth of their son.

In Mykonos, they had gone to clubs and danced into the early hours, and Winnie had been surprised by how much she had enjoyed her first experience of being part of a couple that went out in public. At the country house, they had had quiet dinners, nights in rather than nights out. But this time around, she thought happily, everything was different and Eros treated her differently, as well. He was consistently affectionate, both in and out of bed, tender in private moments and always, always interested in her and very focused on her comfort and enjoyment. There had been swimming picnics in wild, secluded coves where Teddy could run about naked, long lazy lunches in little tavernas off the beaten track and more than once she had fallen into bed tipsy and giggling, having enjoyed herself so much that she’d felt positively guilty about it. They had dodged paparazzi cameras on the beach at Paros and had then been skilfully intercepted by them when they were shopping on Corfu.

When she looked at that tabloid photograph she barely recognised herself because, with her feet pushed into casual leather flip-flops and clothed in a bright red sundress from the wardrobe Eros had bought her, she seemed to have somehow metamorphosed into a more extrovert and less inhibited version of herself. She had a deep tan now and her hair was a tumbling mass of natural waves streaked lighter in places by the sun. She had stopped watching what she ate and was waiting ruefully on the pounds piling back on although the constant activity in and out of the bedroom had to be holding the weight at bay.

Eros was very active, very physical. He had taken her windsurfing and paddleboarding. She swam like a fish and she swam every day. Eros was teaching Teddy to swim and he had hauled them both up every hill on the island to appreciate the views, Teddy sitting on his shoulders or waving his arms in excitement from the confines of a baby backpack. Eros was a great father and he had a hands-on approach to his son that had very much impressed Winnie. Watching Eros with Teddy had convinced her that their son would lose a great deal if he was deprived of his father’s daily attention. Teddy was already throwing fewer tantrums. It could be that he was growing out of that phase, but Winnie was also able to see that her son thrived on winning his father’s approval and quickly shied away from the kind of behaviour that made Eros frown.

With her, Eros was still the same entertaining and sexy man he had always been, but he was much more considerate and caring with her and ready to talk about anything she wanted to talk about, which was the biggest change she had noticed in him. Indeed, being with Eros and Teddy made her happy. And one night a week the staff went home early and Winnie cooked up a storm and they ate on the terrace beneath the stars, which brought back memories of how they had first got to know each other.

But her own contentment and Teddy’s didn’t mean that Winnie could close her eyes to the necessity of seeing her grandfather and having a straight talk with him. She couldn’t just leave matters as they had been when she had decided to return to Eros on her wedding day. Unfortunately, she was very much aware that Eros would not be keen on her going anywhere near the older man.

‘I need a shower.’ Winnie sighed. She slid off the lounger and pulled on a cover-up before stooping to cram her discarded bikini and other possessions into a beach bag. ‘And then it’ll be time for lunch and Teddy will be awake.’

‘What do you want to do this afternoon?’ Eros enquired lazily before adding, ‘I could do with getting on with some work—’

‘That’s fine. I’ll have Teddy.’ Winnie breathed in deep. ‘But I’d like to go and see Grandad tomorrow.’

Eros stopped dead in the middle of the long steep path that led back up to the house. ‘No,’ he said with emphasis.

‘I wasn’t asking for permission,’ Winnie warned him. ‘Nor am I planning to take our son with me. It would be nice if you could invite Grandad here to see Teddy.’

Eros studied her with incredulous green eyes. ‘In your dreams!’ he grated.

‘No, it’ll happen. I can’t say when because I haven’t got a crystal ball but it will happen,’ Winnie assured him evenly, sliding past him to continue on up the path. ‘I’m not going to allow my grandfather or indeed anyone else in my family to be at odds with my husband. I’m going to sort it all out.’

‘I won’t allow it,’ Eros growled.

‘Not listening...not listening, Eros!’ Winnie carolled as she walked steadily on even though she was out of breath from the climb and her cover-up was sticking uncomfortably to her perspiring skin. ‘Families shouldn’t be divided.’

‘And what bush did your mother find you under after the stork delivered you?’ Eros asked cuttingly. ‘Families are often divided. My own, for a start.’

‘That was a divorce, rather a different situation,’ Winnie reasoned. ‘But I know it hit you hard as a child when your parents parted.’

‘No, what hit me hard was my mother’s heartbreak,’ Eros sliced in grimly. ‘She never got over my father and she couldn’t move on. A marriage should mean more than a legal obligation.’

‘I think it does to most people,’ Winnie contended evenly. ‘From what you’ve told me I suspect your father succumbed to a midlife crisis and that sent his life off the rails.’

‘I used to see marriage as a sort of sacred trust,’ Eros ground out rawly. ‘That’s why I didn’t want to marry Tasha and why I stayed married longer than I should’ve. I kept hoping the differences between us would magically melt away but I’m not that naive now and I’d be a fool to let you spend time with a man who hates me and wants to destroy our marriage.’

‘Well, you see, the point is I’m not asking you to “let me” do anything,’ Winnie responded with spirit. ‘I’m going to Athens even if it means climbing on the ferry and spending hours getting there.’

‘And how the hell do I know that you’re planning to come back to me?’ Eros demanded with suppressed savagery.

‘Aside from the fact that Teddy is staying here?’ Refusing to react to the brooding darkness in his lean, strong face, Winnie rolled her eyes. ‘Maybe it’s time you tried trusting me.’

‘Not going to happen,’ Eros intoned grimly. ‘Last time I trusted you, you said your vows in church and then scuttled off onto that yacht to leave me!’

Winnie went pink with mortification and then suddenly she lifted her head high and tilted her chin in defiance. ‘Last time I trusted you, you turned out to be a married man,’ she reminded him thinly. ‘People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. We’ve both made mistakes—’

‘This marriage is not a mistake,’ Eros sliced in, his intonation raw-edged.

‘Only time will tell us that,’ Winnie parried quietly.

A lean hand enclosed her arm to hold her back as she started up the stairs. ‘Then give us that time,’ he urged. ‘Running off to see Stam Fotakis this soon is like inviting the fox into the chicken coop. He’ll cause trouble for us if he can.’

‘Grandad only wants what he thinks is best for me, what he thinks is best for all of us. I’m going to tell him about your first marriage,’ Winnie told him as she tugged her arm free of his hold and went upstairs.

‘You’re going to do...what?’ Eros demanded in shaken disbelief.

‘You heard me. I want Grandad to understand that you were in a very unusual situation.’

‘What I told you was private,’ Eros grated.

‘Please,’ Winnie pressed. ‘At the very least he needs to know that your marriage wasn’t a regular marriage.’

In an impatient gesture, Eros flung back his dark head, seduced against his will by the softness of those caramel eyes. ‘Oh...as you wish!’

‘Thanks. Grandad may be stubborn and difficult but I won’t cut him out of my life.’

‘He cut your father out of his,’ Eros reminded her unkindly.

It was a low blow and, from the landing, she flung him an unimpressed look. ‘He admitted that that was a mistake but once he’d taken a stance he was too proud to climb down. People change, Eros.’

‘You haven’t changed in the essentials. You still want to believe the best of everyone,’ Eros condemned as he drew level with her. ‘It doesn’t work. Believe it or not, there are bad people in the world who get a kick out of doing you down and hurting you.’

Winnie thrust wide their bedroom door with angry force. ‘You think I don’t know that after my experiences in foster care?’ she flung back at him in disbelief.

‘I don’t know. You won’t talk about those experiences,’ he pointed out.

Winnie went very still and then crossed her arms defensively in front of herself. ‘In the very first home I went to, my trainers were stolen and I was accused of selling them and lying about it. Vivi was badly bullied by the other girls. In the second I was repeatedly punched by an older boy because I wouldn’t give him money. That I didn’t have any money didn’t seem to occur to him because he said I talked too nicely to be poor. The third place, I no longer had my sisters because we’d been separated. The foster father was a wife beater and one night I got in the way of his fists,’ she recited emotionlessly, her hands clenching in on themselves. ‘After that I was in a state home for a while and by the time I moved back into foster care, I was developing breasts, which was really bad news.’

As she’d talked, Eros had paled. ‘Why did you never share all this with me before?’

Winnie compressed her lips. ‘People don’t want to know about that sort of stuff.’

‘But I want to know everything because I care about you,’ Eros said levelly. ‘So keep talking.’

‘If it wasn’t men leering at me on the home front, it was adolescent boys. I had several scary experiences as a teenager but I managed to keep myself safe. By the time I got to John and Liz’s home, I was viewed as antisocial and difficult. They changed all that. They changed everything,’ she admitted chokily, tears rolling down her cheeks. ‘But do you know why I’m telling you all this? Because I want you to know that family means everything to me and I don’t expect perfection. Family can encompass a whole pile of different people. It can be your friends, people like John and Liz, even misguided people like my grandfather, who don’t know when to mind their own business.’

Eros crossed the distance between them and hauled her into his arms, desperate to comfort her. He was appalled at what she had gone through without proper support. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘No, you’re not,’ she whispered helplessly. ‘You’re like Grandad. Of course, you don’t like each other. You’re just sorry you’re not getting your own way.’

‘Partially,’ Eros admitted gruffly, brushing her hair back from her tear-stained face. ‘But it’s important to me to protect you. I don’t want you to get hurt and I’m afraid I don’t trust your grandfather not to hurt you.’

‘You can’t keep me locked up here for ever.’

‘Like a princess in a tower?’ His charismatic smile curved his sensual lips. ‘No...but I’d like to.’

‘I know...’ Acting on impulse, mesmerised by the stunning jewelled eyes welded to her, Winnie stretched up and covered his mouth with hers. ‘But you can’t.’

‘That doesn’t mean I’m giving up.’ Eros claimed her parted lips with fiery hunger and drank deep of her response, holding her so close that she could feel every stark line of his big powerful body, including his blatant arousal.

‘You can’t be...again?’ she mumbled weakly. ‘Really?’

‘Really,’ Eros husked, long fingers lifting the hem of her dress, gliding up to the junction of her thighs to pry them apart and explore, his body already aching for the silken oblivion of hers.

He pushed her back against the wall and hoisted her up against him, the carnal play of his fingers ensuring her readiness. A moment later, he plunged into her and buried himself deep, his breathing raw and ragged in her ears as his hips hammered against hers. It was fast and hard and very erotic, and she shot to a climax so swiftly that she saw stars behind her eyes. Only when her legs slid limply down his hard thighs in the aftermath and they were both panting did she register that he hadn’t used a condom.

‘You didn’t use protection!’ she gasped.

Eros blinked, green eyes still dark and sultry with sexual satisfaction. He groaned out loud, raking his tousled black hair from his brow with frustrated fingers. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘No...no, it’s okay... At least, it should be,’ Winnie muttered, feverishly calculating dates. ‘We should be fine. It’s not the right time. I should see a doctor, see about taking the pill.’

‘No discussion?’ Eros lifted a judgemental black brow.

‘Not on that topic...maybe in a year or two if we’re still together,’ Winnie suggested with characteristic practicality.

‘I’m not pushing it. Whatever you decide is okay with me...’ he conceded, surprising her. ‘And, Winnie? We will still be together.’

As Winnie walked into the bathroom, Eros appeared in the doorway. ‘I’ll head into my Athens office tomorrow and drop you off at your grandfather’s estate on the way. But I won’t be able to pick you up coming home because I have a meeting in Piraeus and I don’t know how long it will run. When you’re ready to leave, your security team will arrange it.’

Winnie turned slowly from her beach-flushed reflection in the mirror and gave him a huge smile. ‘Thank you,’ she said warmly, appreciating the reality that he had listened to her and respected her right to do as she wished even if it went against his own instincts.

* * *

‘Four security guards to look after me is overkill!’ Winnie hissed in disbelief as she saw the men getting out of the car behind to supervise her visit to her grandfather’s home. ‘Grandad’s not about to kidnap me, for goodness’ sake. Don’t you think that you’re taking this security stuff too far?’

‘Better safe than sorry,’ Eros told her, impervious to reason. ‘If they see anything remotely suspicious, they will immediately contact me.’

‘And if they contact you, what are you planning to do?’ Winnie demanded incredulously. ‘Storm the house to extract me in a military assault?’

Eros studied her with a ferocious glitter of emerald fire lighting his stunning eyes. ‘I will do whatever it takes to protect my wife and my marriage.’

Winnie groaned out loud. ‘This is one of those masculine things, isn’t it? A show of strength?’

Eros gave her a flashing, utterly beguiling boyish grin that lit up his lean, dark features. ‘It’ll annoy the hell out of Stam. I’m warning him politely that I will not tolerate further interference in our marriage. He’ll tell you, of course, that I’m paranoid.’

‘I don’t care,’ Winnie whispered softly before she reached for the car door. ‘Paranoid or not, you’re mine...’

The assurance fell into a sudden silence as she immediately regretted those revealing words and Eros stilled in surprise. ‘Am I?’

Far more hers than he had ever been before, Winnie adjusted painfully, her heart-shaped face suffused with mortified colour. She loved him but that didn’t mean she had to wave that fact like a big banner in his face. In fact, coolness would be far more effective with Eros. Weren’t men supposed to always want what they thought they couldn’t have? What came easy was always deemed less valuable.

‘I’ll see you later,’ Winnie framed, climbing hastily out of the car and walking towards the grand front door of her grandfather’s home. She had given the older man a brief call the night before to tell him that she was coming to visit. She was hopeful that the month she had been on the island would have given him the chance to calm down and develop a more accepting attitude towards her marriage.

Stam Fotakis was in his office but he immediately rose from behind his desk and ordered his PA to serve coffee.

‘I thought you might have taken the morning off,’ Winnie remarked wryly as he instructed his PA to hold his calls.

‘I never take a day off,’ Stam informed her with pride, studying her over the top of his reading glasses. ‘Unless I’m celebrating, of course, and the fact you’ve arrived without luggage suggests that I have nothing to celebrate...yet.’

Winnie quickly caught his drift and almost winced before deciding to be equally direct. ‘I’m not planning to leave Eros. We’ve decided to stay together,’ Winnie admitted, watching the older man’s craggy face tighten and darken at that unwelcome news. ‘I’m here to ask you to back off and accept our marriage.’

‘Thee mou...’ Stam Fotakis breathed with a sudden frown of condemnation as he studied her strained and anxious face. ‘You’re still in love with the bastard!’

His perception made Winnie pale but she stood her ground. ‘You have to recognise that Eros and I are a couple and that it is absolutely in Teddy’s best interests that we make a go of our marriage.’

‘You’d walk through fire for Nevrakis, wouldn’t you?’ her grandfather breathed in a tone of incredulity as he sprang upright again. ‘When will you learn that he is simply using you?’

‘How is Eros using me?’ Winnie pressed levelly. ‘I know the best of him and I know the worst of him. Let me tell you about his first marriage.’

Her grandfather raised his hand in an immediate silencing motion. ‘I don’t want to hear some sob story.’

‘It’s not a sob story—it’s an explanation,’ Winnie argued and, as quickly and as simply as she could, she told her grandad about Eros’s first marriage.

‘Am I supposed to be impressed that I’ve married you off to a sentimental idiot with silly romantic notions about honour and loyalty?’ Stam Fotakis demanded, frowning at her in concern. ‘You’re making excuses for him, Winnie. He was a married man and he turned you into his mistress!’

‘It wasn’t like that between us.’ Winnie lifted her chin, although it took courage to fly in the face of such opinions. ‘And I respect stuff like sentiment and honour and loyalty. I like that he didn’t blame Tasha or anyone else for the mess he involved us all in. I like that I wasn’t one of many lovers he took. I like that he knows he made mistakes but that he’s trying to make up for it now.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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