your mother refused to pass on a message to you. She said you were getting married and that you wanted nothing more to do with “a woman like me”,’ Erin grimaced as she repeated that lowering description.
‘I don’t believe you. My foster mother is a kind, gentle woman. She would never be so offensive, particularly to a pregnant woman—’
‘Oh, I didn’t get as far as telling her that I was pregnant during our conversation. I could hardly get a word in edgeways once she realised who I was.’
‘She would not have known who you were,’ Cristo countered with conviction. ‘I never once mentioned your existence to my parents.’
Erin tried not to wince. She had often wondered and he had just confirmed her deepest suspicions. While evidently his foster mother had known her son did have a relationship with a woman in London, she had not received that information from him. Evidently, Erin had never been important enough to her lover to warrant being discussed with his family ‘I wrote to your office as well. The letters were returned to me unopened,’ she confided doggedly. ‘That’s when I gave up trying to contact you.’
Cristo drained his glass, set it down, shook his head slightly. ‘You say I’m the father of your children. I cannot accept that.’
Erin shrugged and sank back into her seat. At least he wasn’t shouting at her or calling her a liar … yet. Time might well take care of that oversight. In truth, though, she had never seen him so shaken, for Cristo was strong as steel and given to rolling with the punches that life dealt out. But right now he was in a daze, visibly shattered by her revelation.
‘It’s OK if you can’t accept it. I’ll understand. But at least I’ve finally told you. How you feel about it, whether or not you believe me, isn’t relevant any more.’
Cristo shot her an exasperated look that hinted at the darker, deeper emotions he was maintaining control over beneath his forbidding reserve. ‘How can it not be relevant?’
‘Because it doesn’t matter any longer. When I first fell pregnant, life was tough. I needed your help then and I didn’t get it,’ Erin pointed out ruefully. ‘Now, thanks to my mother’s support, the kids and I are quite self-sufficient as long as I have a reasonable salary to rely on.’
In the strained silence, Cristo poured himself another drink. She watched the muscles work in his strong brown throat and then recalled how only hours earlier she had wanted to eat him alive and she cringed at that reminder of how weak she could be around him. On the other hand, he was a sophisticated man and he had the sexual experience to make her burn—that was all! It would be foolish to punish herself just because she had sunk low enough to enjoy their intimacy on his terms. She was a healthy, warm-blooded woman who had suppressed her natural needs for too long. In the end, if anything, too much self-control had made a victim of her. Of course she had never met a man she wanted as she wanted Cristo, never known a man who, even in the midst of the most emotional scene she had ever endured, could still make her mind wander down undisciplined paths. For there he stood, shocked but unbowed, gorgeous dark eyes smouldering with raw reaction in his even more gorgeous face.
‘If this story of yours is true, why didn’t you tell me the instant I came back into your life?’ he pressed, lifting his proud dark head high, a tiny muscle pulling tight at one corner of his unsmiling mouth.
Erin compressed her lips, shook her head. ‘I didn’t want anyone to know that we’d even had a past relationship, never mind that you’re the father of my kids.’
‘I don’t follow that reasoning. Would Morton have turned against you had he known the truth?’
‘Stop dragging Sam into everything. He’s nothing to do with any of this,’ Erin said vehemently. ‘I owe Sam. He took a risk on me. The job with his hotel group made it possible for me to survive. As for other people knowing about our … er … past connection, I would have found that embarrassing.’
Embarrassing? Cristo gritted his even white teeth while resisting the urge to bite back. Why would she lie now? After all, if he was the father of her twins, he had to owe her thousands of pounds in child support. Nor, until he had made checks, could he disprove her claim that she had tried to contact him to tell him that she was pregnant. If it was true and if she had continued with the pregnancy rather than seeking a way out of her predicament, he owed her a debt, didn’t he? While his intelligence urged caution, he would be careful of uttering any disparaging comments.
‘I’ll accompany you home,’ Cristo announced in a tone of finality.
Disconcerted, Erin frowned. ‘But why would you do that?’
‘Perhaps I would like to see these children whom you insist are my flesh and blood.’
Her triangular face froze, long lashes sweeping down over her eyes while she processed an idea that seemed to strike her as extraordinary.
‘Surely you expected that?’
Erin glanced up and clashed with eyes that burned like a furnace in Cristo’s hard masculine face. ‘I hadn’t thought that far ahead.’
‘I’m coming to the hospital with you,’ Cristo decreed.
Erin winced at the prospect, picturing her mother’s astonishment, not to mention the prospect of explaining that she had lied about going to Scotland and had gone to Italy to be with Cristo instead.
‘There’s nothing else that I can do,’ Cristo added grimly.
Erin was mystified. Was curiosity or a sense of duty driving him? But then how on earth had she expected him to react to her revelation? Had she really believed that he might just walk away untouched by the news that he was a father?
‘I’m not expecting you to get involved with the twins,’ Erin muttered uncomfortably.
‘It is more a matter of what I expect of myself,’ Cristo countered with a gravity she had never seen in him before.
Oh, my word, what have I done? Erin wondered feverishly. What did he expect from himself in the parenting stakes? His own upbringing, after all, had been unusual. And he was a non-conformist to the marrow of his bones, shrugging off convention if it made no sense to him.
It was nine in the evening before they made it to the hospital. Deidre Turner was seated in a bland little side ward next to a bed in which a small still form lay. The older woman, her face grey with exhaustion and her eyes marked pink by tears, scrambled upright when she saw her daughter. ‘Erin, thank goodness! I was scared you mightn’t make it back tonight and I was worried about leaving Lorcan with Tamsin,’ she confided, only then noting the presence of the tall black-haired male behind Erin.
‘Mum?’ Erin murmured uncertainly. ‘This is Cristo Donakis. He insisted on coming with me.’
For once shorn of his social aplomb, Cristo came to a dead halt at the foot of the bed to gaze down at the little girl with the white-blonde curls clustered round her small head. She looked like Erin but her skin was several shades darker than her mother’s fair complexion. His attention rested on the small skinny arm bearing a colourful cast and he swallowed a sudden unfamiliar thickness in his throat. She was tiny as a doll and as he stared in growing wonderment her feathery lashes lifted to reveal eyes as dark a brown as his own.
‘Mummy …’ Nuala whispered drowsily.
‘I’m
