The Secrets She Carried

Owen brimmed with enthusiasm as he showed them round the spa, describing the latest improvements and special offers as well as the upsurge in custom that had resulted. He finished by offering them coffee but Cristo demurred, pleading time constraints as he whisked Erin back out to the car and angled it back out onto the road to make their last call. Brackens was Sam’s most exclusive property. A Victorian house set in wooded surroundings, it was very popular with couples in search of a romantic weekend and the spa was run as a member’s only club.

Erin watched Mia, the elegant brunette in her thirties who managed Brackens, melt at Cristo’s first smile and allowed the knowledgeable manager to do most of the talking as she showed them round her impressive domain. Erin was struggling to concentrate on the job at hand. There was too much else on her bemused mind. So, for almost three years, Cristo had been under the impression that she had stolen a fat wad of cash from him. Why hadn’t he contacted her? Why had he virtually let it go instead of informing the police? Cristo never let people get away with doing the dirty on him. He was a man few would wish to cross but he did reward loyal, hardworking staff with generous bonuses and opportunities.

Watching Mia laugh flirtatiously with Cristo made Erin feel slightly nauseous. She could recall when she had been even more impressionable. One glance at that lean dark face of sharp angles and creative hollows and those stunning black diamond eyes and she had been enamoured, her interest caught, her body humming with unfamiliar thrills. Her wariness with men, her long hours of study while others partied, had made her more than usually vulnerable for a young woman of twenty-one. She slammed down hard on the memory, awarding Cristo a veiled glance when he ushered her back to his Bugatti with a fleeting remark on her quietness.

‘May I go home now?’ she enquired as he turned the sports car.

‘We’re having dinner together at my hotel,’ Cristo informed her. ‘We have things to talk about.’

‘I have nothing to talk to you about. Sam does his own negotiating,’ Erin volunteered drily. ‘I’m just the hired help.’

‘If rumour is to be believed, you’re not just anything when it comes to Sam Morton.’

Erin went rigid in the passenger seat at the suggestion. ‘Do you listen to rumours?’

‘You slept with me while I was employing you,’ Cristo reminded her without heat.

Her teeth ground together. For two pins she would have slapped him. ‘That’s different. We were already involved when I began working for you.’

Cristo compressed his beautifully shaped mouth, his thoughts taking him back even though he didn’t want to go there. He had never had to work so hard to get a woman into bed. Her elusiveness, her surprising inhibitions had heightened his desire, persuaded him that she was different. Yes, she had been different, she had lined her pockets at his expense throughout their affair, he recalled grimly. She had taken him for a fool just as she was taking Morton.

‘Sam and I are only friends—’

His eloquent mouth quirked. ‘The same sort of friendship you had with that other friend of yours, Tom?’

Erin stiffened, remembering how suspicious Cristo had become of her fondness for Tom’s company towards the end of their affair. ‘Not as familiar. Sam’s from a different generation.’

Tom was a mate from her university days, more like a brother than anything else and still an appreciated part of Erin’s life. Unfortunately Cristo didn’t believe that platonic friendships could exist and Erin had eventually given up trying to convince him otherwise, reasoning that she was entitled to her own friends regardless of his opinions.

‘Morton’s old enough to be your grandfather—’

‘Which is why there’s nothing else between us,’ Erin slotted in flatly. ‘I’m not sleeping with Sam.’

‘He’s besotted with you. I don’t believe you,’ Cristo framed succinctly.

‘That’s your prerogative.’ Erin dug out her mobile phone and tapped out her home number.

Her mother answered. In the background she could hear a child crying. Lorcan, she guessed. Her son sounded tired and cross and her heart clenched, for she felt guilty that she couldn’t be there with him. It hurt that she got to spend so little time with her children during the week and she cherished her weekends with the twins when she tried to make up for her absence during working hours.

‘I’m sorry but I’ll be late home tonight,’ she told Deidre Turner.

‘Why? What are you doing?’ the older woman asked.

‘I have some work to deal with before I can leave.’

Tight-lipped and knowing she still had a maternal interrogation to face, Erin put her phone back in her bag. The very last thing she could afford to tell her parent was that Cristo had reappeared in her life. She would never hear the end of it, much as she had yet to hear the end of the reproaches about bringing two children into the world without first having acquired a wedding ring on her finger. But she didn’t blame her mother for her attitude. Educated in a convent school by nuns and deeply devout, Deidre had somewhat rigid views. At the same time, however, she was a very loving and caring grandmother and Erin could not have coped as a single parent without the older woman’s support.

‘I still don’t know what this is about,’ Erin complained as Cristo parked outside the foremost hotel in the area. ‘I didn’t steal from you three years ago but until you give me more facts I can’t defend myself.’

‘One of the transactions was traced right back to your bank account. Don’t waste your time trying to plead innocence,’ Cristo shot back at her very drily.

‘I don’t want to have dinner with you. It’s not like we parted on good terms,’ Erin reminded him doggedly.

Cristo climbed gracefully out of the car. ‘It’s like this. Either you dine with me and we talk or I go straight to your boss with my file on your thefts.’

He spoke so levelly, so unemotionally that for several taut seconds Erin could not quite accept that he had threatened her without turning a hair. The blood drained from below her fair skin and she froze until she recognised that he had given her a choice. She could tell him to take his precious file of supposed evidence and put it where the sun didn’t shine. She could call his bluff. But, unhappily for her, she knew Cristophe Donakis and she knew what he was capable of.

He didn’t bluff and he was very determined. He would push to the limits and beyond to gain a desired result. He was tough, sufficiently volatile to be downright dangerous and a merciless enemy. If Cristo truly believed that she had stolen from him, he would not settle until he had punished her for her offence.

For the first time in a very long time, Erin felt utterly helpless. She had too much at stake to risk her children’s future. She had worked very hard to get to where she was and she would fight just as hard to retain it …

CHAPTER THREE

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.’