Kitabı oku: «Modern Romance February Books 1-4», sayfa 5
Karena’s entry into the kitchen that evening had concluded that conversation with Eros, for the housekeeper had usually served the meals, but a couple of nights later when Winnie had noticed how very tired the older woman had looked, she had urged her to return to her flat for the night and leave her to serve the meal. It had been a strategic error to expose herself to greater contact with Eros but at the time she had felt guilty about the fat salary she earned and the reality that she worked much shorter hours than Karena, who had been on duty from dawn to dusk and busy even when Eros had been abroad because she’d overseen the cleaning and maintenance of the house. When Karena had fallen victim to a sprained wrist, that serving arrangement had become permanent with Karena departing to her flat every evening before Eros’s return.
Only a few evenings had passed before Eros had suggested she join him and, although she had demurred in surprise and discomfiture the first time, the second time he had asked she had told herself that it would be rude to refuse again and she had sat down and shared a glass of wine with him. She had asked him about his day and his foreign travels and had listened while he’d talked, sipping her wine, answering the occasional query while becoming maddeningly aware of the intensity of his beautiful eyes on her. Just sitting there she had felt all hot and tingly, flattered by his interest, his apparent desire for her company when he could’ve had so many more glamorous women eagerly filling the same role.
Back then Winnie had been a retiring mixture of naivety and insecurity when men were around. Keen to climb the career ladder, she hadn’t dated much, and as soon as her sisters had begun looking to her as a role model, dating had become even more of a challenge. A couple of unsavoury experiences with men who had wanted much more than she’d wanted to give had kept her a virgin. Working long, unsocial hours hadn’t helped, so the thrill of being in Eros’s company and the sole focus of his attention had rather gone to her head. The first kiss... No, she didn’t want to remember that which loomed large in her memory as her first major mistake. Squashing that untimely recollection, she walked past the opulent vehicle that she assumed was Eros’s limousine and was unlocking the front door of the house when she heard him behind her.
‘An elegant location,’ he remarked, making her jump as she hurriedly crossed the threshold.
‘Yes, thanks to Grandad. The house belongs to him.’ Hurriedly doffing her coat, Winnie hung it up in the alcove and showed him into the lounge. ‘You can wait in here while I feed Teddy and put him down for his nap...’
‘Why did you choose to call him Teddy?’ he queried.
‘Officially it’s Theodore, my father’s middle name,’ she proffered stiffly. ‘But it was too big a name for a baby and he ended up Teddy instead.’
Uninvited, Eros followed her into the kitchen, where she strapped Teddy into his booster seat at the table and whipped between fridge and microwave, warming her son’s lunch while studiously ignoring Eros’s silent presence by the door.
Teddy grasped his spoon and ate, making more of a mess than usual, showing off because a stranger was present.
‘I assume your sisters look after him while you’re at work?’ Eros prompted.
‘Yes...’ Winnie glanced worriedly at him. ‘They’re very good with him.’
‘A father would have been even better.’
Breathing in deep and slow to restrain her temper, Winnie concentrated on cleaning up Teddy and the table, unstrapping him to lift him.
‘Allow me...’ Disconcertingly, Eros stepped right into her path and simply scooped her son out of her hold. ‘Where to now?’
‘Upstairs,’ Winnie said thinly, reluctantly leading the way.
She pushed open the door of Teddy’s room.
‘This is a little girl’s room,’ Eros objected, only slowly lowering her son into his cot, his attention pinned to the pink cartoon mural of princesses on the wall.
‘We haven’t got around to redecorating yet,’ Winnie retorted, sidestepping the truth that the sisters had decided not to go to that trouble and expense when they were unsure how long their grandfather would allow them to make the house their home. Stepping over to the cot, she slipped off her son’s shoes and his sweatshirt and settled him down before tugging the string on the little musical mobile that had been his from birth.
Closing the curtains, she walked back to the door, watching Eros hover by the cot. ‘Why’s the cot in the middle of the room?’ he asked.
‘Because if you put it beside the furniture, Teddy will use it to climb out and I don’t want the hassle of trying to persuade him to stay put in a junior bed. He’s too young to understand.’
‘A nanny would remove much of the burden of childcare,’ Eros commented smoothly. ‘It must be hard for you to work and care adequately for him at the same time.’
‘Not with my sisters around,’ Winnie countered steadily, refusing to rise to the suggestion that she wasn’t doing the best mothering job possible.
Eros strode down the stairs only a step in her wake and she walked into the lounge. ‘I suppose I should offer you coffee,’ she said stiffly.
Eros sent her a winging hard glance. ‘No, thanks. Let’s not procrastinate.’
‘If you must know, I was trying to be polite.’
Eros shrugged a broad shoulder, the edge of his jacket falling back to expose a shirt front pulling taut across his muscular torso, delineating sleek bands of abdominal muscle. As she watched, her mouth ran dry and she looked hastily away, colour warming her cheeks.
‘Why bother?’ Eros incised drily. ‘We’re neither friends nor casual acquaintances.’
‘What do you want from me?’ Winnie fired back at him, anxiety biting through her.
‘Answers,’ Eros framed silkily. ‘And I’ll keep on coming back at you until I get them.’
CHAPTER THREE
‘ANSWERS? WELL, I can give you a question. Why didn’t you tell me that you were a married man?’ Winnie demanded abruptly, infuriated by his refusal to acknowledge that deception.
‘You never asked if I was married,’ Eros pointed out smoothly.
And that fast, Winnie wanted to hit him, hit him so hard she knocked him into the middle of next week. Her small hands curled into tight fists, her cheeks pink with the force of her resentment and the galling knowledge that she couldn’t afford to lose control of her temper. ‘Why would I have asked when ostensibly you were living alone and there was no visible woman in your life?’ she shot back at him. ‘I hadn’t the smallest suspicion that you were already in a relationship!’
‘My marriage is not a subject I’m prepared to discuss with you,’ Eros informed her arrogantly, clenching his strong jawline. ‘I would have been willing to discuss that topic two years ago. But two years on, I don’t believe I owe you that explanation.’
Winnie clenched her teeth together as hard as if she were biting into solid metal. ‘Oh, don’t you, indeed?’ she exclaimed, vexed by that provocative assurance and, if anything, madder than ever.
‘You met Tasha,’ Eros acknowledged curtly. ‘Eventually I did find that out and presumably that is why you chose to suddenly disappear without giving me any explanation.’
‘Don’t say that like it excuses you... Nothing excuses your behaviour!’ Winnie slammed back at him furiously. ‘And I didn’t owe you anything!’
Eros studied her with intent, glittering green eyes. She still had lousy dress sense, he conceded ruefully, invariably choosing to envelop herself in drab colours and very practical clothing, but he knew her ripe body as well as he knew his own and he could see the changes in her lush figure, which even clad in leggings and an all-concealing sweatshirt was visibly fuller at breast and hip. He hardened, momentarily snatched back into hot, sweaty memories of the passion that had once threatened to consume him. His treacherous libido heated up, sending a sensual pulse through his groin and making him bite back a curse at his lack of restraint.
For a while, the sheer novelty of that passion had obsessed him and, having recognised that as a dangerous weakness, he had refused to allow himself to look for her after she vanished out of his life. He could get by fine without sex; he had got by for years and he no longer fell as easily into temptation as he had fallen with her. He was free now, he reminded himself, but that old belief that he had to always stay in control of his physical urges was still ingrained in him. Giving way to those same urges had destroyed his father’s life. Winnie had made him feel dangerously out of control and that, if he was honest with himself, had unnerved him.
‘At the very least, you owed me the knowledge that you were pregnant with my child,’ Eros delivered in harsh condemnation.
‘No, I didn’t!’ Winnie slammed back at him in annoyance. ‘Your deception released me from any such obligation!’
His stunning eyes narrowed, black velvety lashes shading that mesmeric green. ‘There was no deception on my part. For a deception to be contrived, one must deliberately engage in concealment of the truth...and I did not. I didn’t tell you a single lie!’
For several unbearable seconds, Winnie searched her memory for evidence of a lie and her inability to find one merely enraged her more. He was so scheming, so specious in his arguments. ‘But you also knew I hadn’t the faintest suspicion that you were a married man!’ she flung back at him bitterly.
Eros inclined his glossy dark head. ‘Did I? Some women are content to sleep with married men without questioning their status.’
‘Stop playing with words!’ Winnie interrupted, rising up on her toes, pulsing with angry tension. ‘That’s what you’re doing in defiance of the facts! You knew I wasn’t that kind of woman... You knew I wouldn’t willingly get involved with a married man!’
Again, Eros shrugged, the lean, hard angles of his sculpted features set like granite. ‘None of this nonsense is pertinent now,’ he claimed in a dry tone of finality. ‘I will not engage in a slanging match about our past. That ship sailed a long time ago. What is germane now is that you have my son and you didn’t tell me about him. Let’s concentrate on that, rather than on facts we cannot change.’
Winnie tore her gaze from him with difficulty and turned her head away, momentarily at a loss. In one sense he was correct, in that there was nothing to be gained from arguing about what had happened between them two years earlier, but that also meant that he was denying her any justification for having chosen not to inform him of her pregnancy. Her slight shoulders stiffened and her head swung back, dark strands of her lush mane of hair falling across cheeks flushed by angry frustration.
‘How did you become pregnant anyway?’ Eros demanded without warning. ‘I always took precautions.’
At that much-too-intimate question, Winnie practically fried in mortification inside her own burning skin and she walked stiffly over to the window, momentarily turning her back on him. ‘No, there were times when you overlooked that necessity,’ she told him grudgingly, forced to recall early-morning encounters when she had wakened to his hard, thrillingly aroused body pressed to hers and in warm drowsy lust and need had succumbed without either of them thinking of contraception.
‘I don’t remember a single occasion,’ Eros informed her with a raw edge to his dark, deep, accented drawl.
‘Then you must have a very short memory because I remember at least a dozen occasions when contraception was the last thing on your mind. In the shower, in the pool, early mornings when we were both half-asleep.’ Winnie forced out the words like staccato bullets voiced between gritted teeth. ‘In fact, you were downright careless, and I noticed but I didn’t say anything. Instead, I tried to go on the pill to protect myself but by the time I saw a GP, it was too late. I had already conceived.’
‘You should’ve drawn those oversights to my attention,’ Eros delivered curtly, reflecting that if anything should’ve warned him that the affair was out of control, it was exactly that aberrant carelessness on his part that underlined it. He had got too comfortable with her, too involved to be logical and safe. It had been a high-voltage sexual affair and he hadn’t been prepared for it, hadn’t counted the risks or the costs, had simply waded in like a man with an unquenchable thirst and drunk so deep that even his intelligence was compromised.
Winnie twisted back to him in a sudden movement. ‘Oh, really?’ she carolled tartly. ‘So, the fact I fell pregnant is my fault too, is it?’
‘There’s little point in awarding blame this late in the day,’ Eros murmured curtly. ‘What is done is done and we have a child...a child who is, sadly, a stranger to me. That must be remedied immediately.’
Winnie was so rigid that her very muscles ached with the strain. ‘Must it?’
‘Of course, it must be,’ Eros declared, studying her with an incredulity that implied she would have to be witless to expect anything else. ‘Teddy must learn that I am his father and I need to get to know him. I would like to spend time with him tomorrow.’
‘No,’ Winnie cut in without even thinking about it because Teddy had always been hers and he had never been in the care of anyone outside the family.
‘Naturally, I will bring a qualified nanny with me to ensure that Teddy’s basic needs are properly met while he is with me. I have a lot to learn about being a father,’ Eros admitted with a candour that disconcerted her. ‘But given time and experience, I will pick up what I have to know.’
‘I really can’t believe that you’re this interested in Teddy!’ Winnie proclaimed in consternation, watching him pace back and forth in front of her, the lithe grace of his every movement strikingly noticeable and grabbing her attention with its aching familiarity.
A hollow sensation opened inside Winnie, her breath suddenly tripping in her throat. Her nipples were peaking, suddenly tender and tight beneath her clothing. She dragged in a jagged breath as the hot melting sensation of arousal pulsed between her taut thighs. How did he do that to her? How on earth could he still do that to her when she knew he was no longer hers to crave? Never had been hers either, except in her imagination, she reminded herself guiltily, dragging her attention from him to try to focus elsewhere.
‘Obviously I want to get to know my son and I expect that process to begin immediately,’ Eros spelt out bluntly. ‘I will not accept you putting obstacles in my path.’
‘Is that a fact?’ Winnie sizzled back at him, feeling as though she was under attack on every front.
‘I am being frank. You have denied me my rights as a parent for quite long enough,’ Eros reasoned. ‘The situation must change. I will see Teddy tomorrow and take him out. He will be very well taken care of.’
‘I’ll come too,’ Winnie broke in insistently. ‘You won’t need a nanny.’
‘No,’ Eros countered decisively, his wide sensual lips compressing into a determined line. ‘I would prefer to get to know my son away from your influence.’
‘He’s too young for that yet!’ Winnie argued passionately. ‘He’s never been away from me before.’
‘Then it is time you encouraged him to achieve a little independence.’
‘He’s only a baby!’ Winnie gasped defensively.
‘He will come to no harm in my care. He is my son, my family, indeed the only close family I have left alive,’ Eros pointed out grittily. ‘Obviously he will be looked after to the very best of my ability.’
‘You can’t simply exclude me!’ Winnie said accusingly.
Eros elevated a winged ebony brow in direct challenge. ‘Is that not what you have done to me?’ he pressed silkily. ‘I have been excluded from every aspect of his life since birth but that cannot continue and you have to accept that reality.’
‘I don’t have to accept anything from you!’ Winnie objected vehemently, wondering how they had contrived to travel so swiftly from rehashing old issues to his shattering demand to have full unsupervised access to their son.
And that was the crux of the matter, Winnie registered belatedly. Teddy was their son, not only hers, not only his. It was truly the first time that she had been confronted by the unwelcome truth that she did not have total, unbreakable rights over her own child and that awareness cut through her like a knife blade, giving rise to all sorts of other worries and insecurities. Faster than the speed of light, Eros was interfering, setting down his boundaries and making unapologetic demands. Eros was not the sort of man likely to humbly sit back in the corner and wait until she decided to cede him his rights as a parent.
