with Sam is none of your business.’
‘I’m divorced,’ he murmured flatly.
Erin shrugged a slim shoulder as if the information meant nothing to her. ‘I read about it in the papers. Your marriage didn’t last very long.’
He frowned, black brows drawing together. ‘Long enough.’
And as his darkly handsome features shadowed and hardened Erin made a discovery that stung her. His broken marriage was still a source of discomfort to him. She sensed his regret and his reserve and the latter was nothing new. Cristo had always played his cards close to his chest, keeping his feelings under cover, and he had played it that way right to the end of their affair when he had told her it had run its course without drama or remorse. The recollection stiffened her backbone because she had been so shocked and unprepared for that development. This time around, she knew who and what she was dealing with: if he wanted a fight, one way or another, she would give him one!
They travelled up in the lift in a tense silence. She could not credit the situation she found herself in. Was she to be the equivalent of a rebound affair in the wake of his divorce? It occurred to her that a sleazy one-off weekend scarcely qualified for that lofty description and mortified pink highlighted her cheeks. Cristo studied her, picturing her silver gilt hair loose, a party dress to replace the business suit, high heels to show off those shapely legs. His body quickened to the image and was swiftly encouraged by far more X-rated images from the past. When he had her in his bed again, she would disappoint him, of course she would. It would not be as good as he remembered, he told himself urgently. That was the whole point of the game, that and, of course, a well-deserved dose of retribution. She had changed though. Those amethyst eyes no longer telegraphed every reaction making her easily read and she was more controlled than he recalled. Once she saw that he had definitive evidence of her thefts, she would surely study to please …
Erin had not quite bargained on the silent isolation of a hotel suite and she hovered in the centre of the reception room, having refused a drink. She watched him stride into the bedroom to retrieve whatever he was after, that long, lean, powerful body that had once haunted her dreams and ensured that other men could not compare so graceful in movement that she compressed her lips into a tight line, infuriated by the fact that she had noticed. But Cristo was a very noticeable guy. Every female head turned when he walked by and their attention lingered. But, Elaine had been right about him, he was a predator to the backbone and she was now simply a target with an X marked on her back. She wondered what his wife had done to him. Did Cristo have a score to settle against the female sex? And why, after almost three years had passed, was she on the menu again?
Cristo extended a file. ‘Go ahead and take a look.’
Once again his self-assurance ignited her anxiety level. She took the file over to a sofa and sat down, determined not to be hurried or harassed. There were copies of many documents she had signed off while she worked for him, payments to suppliers and therapists, invoices attached to other copies that differed to show altered figures on the base lines. Her heart sank like lead in her chest and she felt as though someone were sitting on her lungs. It was very comprehensive stuff and shatteringly straightforward in its presentation.
Her knees developed an irritating tremor below the file on her lap but she still fought for a clear head. ‘And according to your investigation these particular therapists didn’t exist?’
‘You know they didn’t,’ Cristo responded flatly.
Erin came to the final document and stared down at the evidence of a single large payment of a thousand pounds heading into a bank account in her name and nausea stirred in her stomach. Had she ever bothered to close that old bank account? She had intended to but couldn’t remember. Only one payment but one was enough to damn her. In her opinion only Sally Jennings could be responsible for such duplicity. She had pretty much automatically signed anything that the older woman put on her desk. With hindsight she knew she had been too trusting. Unhappily managing the spa had been her first serious job and she had had no deputy to stand in for her when Cristo wanted her to make time for him. Torn between too much work, hostile staff, who loathed working for the owner’s girlfriend, and a deep driving desire to impress Cristo with her efficiency, she had relied a lot on Sally, who had worked at the spa since it had opened ten years earlier and knew the business inside out. No such thing as a free ride, Erin told herself heavily now. Even Sam would doubt her innocence in the face of such damning proof as the file contained.
Erin stood up and dropped the file down with a distasteful clunk of dismissal on the coffee table. ‘Very impressive, but I didn’t do it! You gave me a great opportunity when you put me in that job and I wouldn’t have gone behind your back to steal from you.’
Cristo continued to stare at her, eyes like chips of bright gold below his luxuriant lashes, and all of a sudden she was struggling to breathe evenly and something inside her seemed to speed up as if her blood were racing through her veins and the buzz of forbidden excitement in the pit of her tummy were spreading like contagion to her entire body.
‘You still want me, koukla mou,’ Cristo purred, revelling in the charge in the atmosphere, the awareness in her clear gaze. It was the first time he had been able to read her again and it satisfied him.
‘No! That is absolutely not true!’ Erin shot back at him vehemently, wishing she had not asked to see that evidence in his presence as she recognised how much it had unnerved her and damaged her self-discipline. Now she was all shaken and stirred, a state to be avoided in a predator’s radius.
Cristo reached out a hand and curled his fingers around her slender wrist, edging her out from behind the table. The storm of reaction inside her rose to hurricane force, suppressing her caution and defensiveness.
‘No …’ she said in a small choked voice, fighting just to get air back into her lungs.
Nevertheless he drew her close, banding strong arms round her like a prison, and the heat and strength of him acted like an aphrodisiac on her disturbed senses. She tried to keep distance between them, her slender body rigid as a rock, but he closed the gap with inexorable purpose.
‘It’s OK,’ he rasped in the most frighteningly soothing tone. ‘I want you too.’
And Erin did not want to hear that from the male who had dumped her and gone straight off to marry another woman. He had never wanted her enough to love her or keep her and that was the only wanting she had ever needed from him. He meant sex, only sex, she told herself feverishly while the reassuring warmth of him filtered through their clothing to warm her chilled limbs. But far more insidious was the insanely familiar smell of him that close, her nostrils flaring on the faint aroma of the same designer cologne he had always worn, never forgotten, and she was breathing him headily in as though he were a forbidden drug.
‘Stop it, Cristo!’ she told him tartly. ‘I am not going there again. I am never going there again with you!’
‘We’ll see …’ And, golden eyes blazing down at the fiercely conflicted expression on her heart-shaped face, his beautiful mouth swooped down on hers to claim the kiss she would have done almost anything to deny him.
And the taste of him was instantly addictive even as her hands swept up to strike in fists against his broad shoulders while he hauled her closer. Hot, hungry need roared through her in a storm that made her knees shake and she didn’t know whether it was her or him behind it, or if, indeed, both of them were equally responsible. His tongue delved and she shuddered, so awake and defenceless against his every seductive move that it hurt, hurt to feel anything so strongly after so long without it. She wanted that kiss then with a sudden ferocity that terrified her. Nothing else mattered but the
