by Heidi Rice
He knew what Erin Turner was and he also knew that memory always lied. Memory would have embellished her image and polished her up to a degree that would not withstand the harsh light of reality. He needed to puncture the myth, explode the persistent fantasy and seeing her again in the flesh would accomplish that desirable conclusion most effectively. A hard smile slashed Cristo’s handsome mouth as he imagined her dismay at his untimely reappearance in her life.
‘Look before you leap,’ his risk-adverse foster mother had earnestly told him when he was a child, fearing his adventurous, rebellious nature and unable to comprehend the unimaginably entertaining attraction of taking a leap into the unknown. In spite of all his foster parents’ efforts to tame his passionate temperament, however, Cristo’s notoriously hot-blooded Donakis genes still ran true to form in his veins. His birth parents might not have survived to raise their son but he had inherited their volatile spirits in the cradle.
Without a second thought about the likelihood of consequences, indeed merely reacting to the insidious arousal and sense of challenge tugging at his every physical sense, Cristo lifted the phone. He informed the executive head of his acquisitions team that he would be taking over the next phase of the negotiations with the owner of the Stanwick Hall Hotel group.
* * *
‘Well, what do you think?’ Sam prompted, taken aback by Erin’s unusual silence by his side. ‘You needed a new car and here it is!’
Erin was still staring with a dropped jaw at the top-of-the-range silver BMW parked outside the garages for her examination. ‘It’s beautiful but—’
‘But nothing!’ Sam interrupted impatiently as if he had been awaiting an adverse comment and was keen to stifle it. Only marginally taller than Erin’s five feet two inches, he was a trim man with a shock of white hair and bright blue eyes that burned with restive energy in his suntanned face. ‘You do a big important job here at Stanwick and you need a car that suits the part—’
‘Only not such an exclusive luxury model,’ she protested awkwardly, wondering what on earth her colleagues would think if they saw her pulling up in a vehicle that undoubtedly cost more than she could earn in several years of employment. ‘That’s too much—’
‘Only the best for my star employee,’ Sam countered with cheerful unconcern. ‘You’re the one who taught me the importance of image in business and an economical runabout certainly doesn’t cut the mustard.’
‘I just can’t accept it, Sam,’ Erin told him uncomfortably.
‘You don’t have a choice,’ her boss responded with immoveable good humour as he pressed a set of car keys into her reluctant hand. ‘Your old Fiesta is gone. Thanks, Sam, is all you need to say.’
Erin grimaced down at the keys. ‘Thanks, Sam, but it’s too much—’
‘Nothing’s too good for you. Take a look at the balance sheets for the spas since you took over,’ Sam advised her drily. ‘Even according to that misery of an accountant I employ I’m coining it hand over fist. You’re worth ten times what that car cost me, so let’s hear no more about it.’
‘Sam…’ Erin sighed heavily and he filched the keys back from her to stride over to the BMW and unlock it with a flourish.
‘Come on,’ he urged. ‘Take me for a test drive. I’ve got some time to kill before my big appointment this afternoon.’
‘What big appointment?’ she queried, shooting the sleek car into reverse and filtering it out through the arched entrance to the courtyard and down the drive past the immaculate gardens.
‘I’m having another bash at the retirement thing,’ her boss confided ruefully.
Erin suppressed a weary sigh. Sam Morton was always talking about selling his three country-house hotels, but she believed that it was more an idea that he toyed with from time to time than an actual plan likely to reach fruition. At sixty-two years of age, Sam still put in very long hours of work. He was widowed more than twenty years earlier and childless; his thriving hotel group had become his life, consuming all his energy and time.
Thirty minutes later, having dropped Sam off at his golf club for lunch and gently refused his offer to join him in favour of getting back to work, Erin walked back into Stanwick Hall and entered the office of Sam’s secretary, Janice, a dark-haired fashionably clad woman in her forties.
‘Have you seen the car?’ she asked Janice with a self-conscious wince.
‘I went with him to the showroom to choose it—didn’t I do you proud?’ the brunette teased.
‘Didn’t you try to dissuade him from buying such an expensive model?’ Erin asked in surprise.
‘Right now, Sam’s flush with the last quarter’s profits and keen to splurge. Buying you a new car was a good excuse. I didn’t waste my breath trying to argue with him. When Sam makes up his mind about something it’s set in stone. Look at it as a bonus for all the new clients you’ve brought in since you reorganised the spas,’ Janice advised her. ‘Anyway you must’ve noticed that Sam is all over the place at the moment.’
Erin fell still by the other woman’s desk with a frown. ‘What do you mean?’
‘His moods are unpredictable and he’s very restless. I honestly think that he’s really intending to go for retirement this time around and sell but it’s a challenge for him to face up to it.’
Erin was stunned by that opinion for she had learned not to take Sam’s talk of selling up seriously. Several potential buyers had come and gone unmourned during the two years she had worked at Stanwick Hall. Sam was always willing to discuss the possibility but had yet to go beyond that. ‘You really think that? My word, are half of us likely to be standing in the dole queue this time next month?’
‘Now that’s a worry I can settle for you. The law safeguards employment for the staff in any change of ownership. I know that thanks to Sam checking it out,’ Janice told her. ‘As far as I know this is the first time he’s gone that far through the process before.’
A slight figure in a dark brown trouser suit, silvery blonde hair gleaming at her nape in the sunlight, Erin sank heavily down into the chair by the window, equal amounts of relief and disbelief warring inside her, for experience had taught her never to take anything for granted. ‘I honestly had no idea he was seriously considering selling this time.’
‘Sam’s sixtieth birthday hit him hard. He says he’s at a turning point in his life. He’s got his health and his wealth and now he wants the leisure to enjoy them,’
Janice told her evenly. ‘I can see where he’s coming from. His whole life has revolved round this place for as long as I can remember.’
‘Apart from the occasional game of golf, he has nothing else to occupy him,’ Erin conceded ruefully.
‘Watch your step, Erin. He’s very fond of you,’ Janice murmured, watching the younger woman very closely for her reaction. ‘I always assumed that Sam looked on you as the daughter he never had but recently I’ve begun to wonder if his interest in you is quite so squeaky clean.’
Erin was discomfited by that frankly offered opinion from a woman whom she respected. She gazed steadily back at her and then suddenly helpless laughter was bubbling up in her throat. ‘Janice…I just can’t even begin to imagine Sam making a pass at me!’
‘Listen to me,’ the brunette urged impatiently. ‘You’re a beautiful woman and beautiful women rarely inspire purely platonic feelings in men. Sam’s a lonely man and you’re a good listener and a hard worker. He likes you and admires the way you’ve contrived to rebuild your life. Who’s to say that that hasn’t developed into a more personal interest?’
‘Where on earth did you get the idea that Sam was interested in me in that way?’ Erin demanded baldly.
‘It’s the way he looks at you sometimes, the way he takes advantage of any excuse to go and speak to you. The last time you were on leave he didn’t know what to do with himself.’
Erin usually respected the worldly-wise Janice’s opinions but on this particular issue she was convinced that the older woman had got it badly wr
ong. Erin was confident that she knew her boss inside out and would have noticed anything amiss. She was also mortified on Sam’s behalf, for he was a very proper man with old-fashioned values, who would loathe the existence of such rumours on the staff grapevine. He had never flirted with Erin. Indeed he had never betrayed the smallest sign that he looked on Erin as anything other than a trusted and valued employee.
‘I think you’re wrong but I do hope that nobody else has the same suspicions about us.’
‘That car will cause talk,’ Janice warned her wryly. ‘There’s plenty people around here who will be happy to say that there’s no fool like an old fool!’
Erin’s face flamed. She was suddenly eager to bring the excruciating discussion to an end. She had grown extremely fond of Sam Morton and respected him as a self-made man with principles. Even talking about Sam as a man with the usual male appetites embarrassed her. Not only had the older man given her a chance to work for him when most people wouldn’t have bothered, but he had also promoted and encouraged her ever since then. It was purely thanks to Sam that she had a decent career, a salary she could live on and good prospects. Only how good would those prospects be if Sam sold up and she got a new employer? A new owner would likely want to bring in his own staff and, even if he had to wait for the opportunity, she would not have the freedom to operate as she currently did. It was a sobering thought. Erin had heavy responsibilities on the home front and the mere thought of unemployment made her skin turn clammy and her tummy turn over sickeningly with dread.
‘I’d better get on. Owen’s interviewing therapists this afternoon,’ Erin said ruefully. ‘I don’t want to keep him waiting.’
As Erin drove the sleek BMW several miles to reach the Black’s Inn, the smallest property in Sam’s portfolio—an elegant Georgian hotel, which incorporated a brand-new custom-built spa—she was thinking anxiously about how much money she had contrived to put by in savings in recent months. Not as much as she had hoped, certainly not nearly enough to cover her expenses in the event of job loss, she reflected worriedly. Unfortunately she could never forget the huge struggle she had had trying to get by on welfare benefits when her twins, Lorcan and Nuala, were newly born. Back then her mother, once so proud of her daughter’s achievements, had been aghast at the mess Erin had made of her seemingly promising future. Erin had felt like a total failure and had worked out the exact moment that it had all gone belly up for her. It would have been great to have a terrific career and the guy of her dreams but possibly hoping for that winning combination had been downright greedy. In actuality she had fallen madly in love with the wrong guy and had taken her life apart to make it dovetail with his. All the lessons she had learned growing up had been forgotten, her ambitions put on hold, while she chased her dream lover.
And ever since then, Erin had been beating herself up for her mistakes. When she couldn’t afford to buy something for the twins, when she had to listen in tolerant silence to her mother’s regrets for the youthful freedom she had thrown away by becoming a single parent, she was painfully aware that she could only blame herself. She had precious little excuse for her foolishness and lack of foresight. After all, Erin had grown up in a poor home listening to her father talk endlessly and impressively about how he was going to make his fortune. Over and over and over again she had listened and the fortune had never come. Worse still, on many occasions money that could not be spared had been frittered away on crazy schemes and had dragged her family down into debt. By the time she was ten years old and watching her poorly educated mother work in a succession of dead-end jobs to keep her family solvent, she had realised that her father was just a dreamer, full of money-making ideas but lacking the work ethic required to bring any of those ideas to fruition. His vain belief that he was set on earth to shine as brightly as a star had precluded him from seeking an ordinary job. In any case working to increase someone else’s profit had been what her idle father called ‘a mug’s game’. He had died in a train crash when she was twelve and from that point on life in her home had become less of a roller-coaster ride.
In short, Erin had learned at a young age that she needed to learn how best to keep herself and that it would be very risky to look to any man to take care of her. As a result, she had studied hard at school, ignored those who called her a nerd and gone on to university, also ignoring her mother’s protestations that she should have moved straight into a job to earn a wage. Boyfriends had come and gone, mostly unremarked, for Erin had been wary of getting too involved, of compromising her ambitions to match someone else’s. Having set her sights on a career with prospects, she had emerged from university with a top-flight business management degree. To help to finance her years as a student she had also worked every spare hour as a personal trainer, a vocation that had gained her a raft of more practical skills, not least on how best to please in a service industry.
Later that afternoon, when she returned from her visit to Black’s Inn, the Stanwick receptionist informed Erin that Sam wanted to see her immediately. Realising in dismay that she had forgotten to switch her mobile phone back on after the interviews were finished, Erin knocked lightly on the door of her boss’s office and walked straight in with the lack of ceremony that Sam preferred.
‘Ah, Erin, at last. Where have you been all afternoon? There’s someone here I want you to meet,’ Sam informed her with just a hint of impatience.
‘Sorry, I forgot to remind you that I’d be over at Black’s doing interviews with Owen,’ Erin explained, smiling apologetically until a movement by the window removed her attention from the older man. She turned her head and began to move forward, visually tracking the emergence of a tall powerful male from the shadows. Then she froze as though a glass wall had suddenly sprung into being around her, imprisoning her and shutting her off from her companions.
‘Miss Turner?’ a sleek cultured drawl with the suggestion of an accent purred. ‘I’ve been looking forward to meeting you. Your boss speaks very highly of you.’
Erin flinched as though a thunderclap had sounded within the room without warning, that dark-timbred voice unleashing an instant ‘fight or flight instinct she had to struggle to keep under control. She would have known that distinctive intonation laced with command had she heard it even at a crowded party. It was as unforgettable as the male himself.
‘This is—’ Sam began.
‘Cristophe Donakis…’ Cristo extended a lean brown hand to greet her as if they had never met before.
And Erin just stared in consternation at that wicked fallen-angel face as if she couldn’t believe her eyes. And she couldn’t. Cropped black hair spiky with the short curls that not even the closest cut could eradicate entirely, ebony brows level above stunning dark deep-set eyes that could turn as golden as the sunset, high cheekbones and, as though all the rest was not enough to over-endow him with beauty, a mouth that was the all-male sensual equivalent of pure temptation. The passage of time since their final encounter had left no physical mark on those lean dark features. In a split second it was as if she had turned her head and stepped back in time. He remained defiantly drop-dead gorgeous. Something low down in her body that she hadn’t felt in years clenched tightly and uncomfortably, making her press her slender thighs together in dismay.
‘Mr Donakis,’ Erin pronounced woodenly, lifting her chin and very briefly touching his hand, determined to betray no reaction that Sam might question. Sam’s ‘big appointment’ was with Cristo? She was horrified, fighting to conceal her reactions, could feel a soul-deep trembling begin somewhere in the region of her wobbly knees. That fast she was being bombarded by unwelcome images from their mutual past. Cristo grinning with triumph and punching the air when he finally beat her in a swimming race; Cristo serving her breakfast in bed when she was unwell and making a production of feeding her grapes one by one, long brown fingers caressing her lips at every opportunity, teaching her that no part of her was impervious to his touch. Cristo, sex personified night or day with an unashamedly
one-track mind. He had taught her so much, hurt her so much she could hardly bear to look at him.
‘Make it Cristo. I’m not a big fan of formality,’ Cristo murmured levelly and even the air around him seemed cool as frost.
Just as suddenly Erin was angry, craving the power to knock him into the middle of next week for not being surprised by her appearance. Evidently he had known in advance that she worked for Sam and he was not prepared to own up to their previous relationship, which suited Erin perfectly. Indeed she was grateful that he had pretended she was a stranger, for she cringed at the idea of Sam and her colleagues learning what an idiot she had once been. One of Cristo Donakis’ ex-girlfriends, what? That guy who changed women as he changed socks? Really? Inside her head she could already imagine the jeers and scornful amusement that that revelation would unleash, for Erin already knew that she had the reputation of being standoffish with the staff for keeping her private life private while others happily told all. Was Cristo the prospective buyer of Sam’s hotels? For what other reason would he be visiting the Stanwick hotel? Cristo owned an international hotel and leisure empire.
‘Erin…I’d like you to give Cristo a tour of our facilities here and at the other spas. His particular interest lies with them,’ Sam told her equably. ‘You can give him the most recent breakdown of figures. Believe me when I tell you that this girl has a mind like a computer for the important details.’
Erin went pink in receipt of that compliment.
‘Looks and brains—I’m impressed,’ Cristo pronounced with a slow smile that somehow contrived to freeze her to the marrow.
‘You own the Donakis group,’ Erin remarked tightly, trying to combat the shocked blankness of her mind with a shrewd take on what Cristo’s source of interest could be in a trio of comparatively small hotels, which while luxurious could not seriously compare to the opulence of the elite Donakis hotel standards. ‘I thought you specialised in city hotels.’
