The Secrets She Carried

by Lynne Graham

  ‘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 wi
thout 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.