grew apprehensive again, sensing that Eros was about to state his demands with regard to their son. He strolled over to the windows and opened the doors onto the balcony, allowing the sounds of the world outside to intrude. She followed him out onto the roof garden, clutching her glass like a lifeline and settling down in a padded seat while he leant up against the balustrade, unperturbed by the light breeze tousling his black curls.
‘I’ve reached the conclusion that we should get married,’ Eros murmured silkily and without the smallest effort to prepare her for that startling announcement. ‘It would settle every problem and then we could both support Teddy.’
Winnie froze in shock and stared at him, huge brown eyes welded to his lean dark features and the brilliance of his intense green eyes. Memories unravelled inside her head, tossing her back in time, momentarily burying her in intimate recollections. Eros always looked most alert in the grip of passion and she sensed that for some reason the idea of marrying her fell into that same category of being something he wanted a great deal. Why, she had no idea, but she was convinced that it was truly important to him. Certainly not for sex or for her own self, she gathered, since he had let her walk out of his life two years earlier and made no attempt to see her again. Finding her when she had only moved back in with her sisters wouldn’t have been that much of a challenge for Eros. But at best on his terms, she had only been a fling and at worst, a casual mistress, not a woman he either needed or really cared about and he hadn’t looked for her.
‘Why do you think that we should marry?’ she almost croaked, her throat dry with stress and confusion.
‘Teddy.’ Eros shrugged a shoulder. ‘There’s no other way to give him everything he needs.’
‘That’s nonsensical!’ Winnie objected boldly. ‘Loads of couples live separate lives and share their children perfectly happily.’
‘And how are we going to share Teddy when I’m based in Greece?’ Eros derided.
‘That’s not my problem,’ Winnie told him thinly. ‘Maybe you could start spending more time here?’
‘I asked you to marry me,’ Eros reminded her very drily. ‘Don’t you think you should be a little more gracious?’
An angry flush of chagrin mantled Winnie’s cheekbones. Suspicion infiltrated her, swiftly followed by comprehension. Hadn’t she just told him that one of the richest men in the world was her grandfather? In Eros’s eyes, she had evidently become an eligible bride because she was no longer a penniless cook. ‘No, I don’t,’ she snapped back resentfully. ‘You certainly wouldn’t have asked me to marry you two years ago!’
‘Not unless I wished to be tried as a bigamist,’ he fielded with sardonic bite. ‘I wasn’t free to marry then and Teddy didn’t exist. But now we have Teddy to consider and I would like my son to carry my name.’
‘He’s perfectly happy with my name!’ Winnie parried with spirit. ‘You know very well that you don’t really want to marry me, Eros. I’m just a woman you slept with who became inconveniently pregnant.’
Eros ignored that statement. ‘I want my son in my home and I can’t have him without his mother.’
Winnie lost her angry colour and dropped her gaze, the pain of rejection slicing through her. ‘Oh, thank you very much,’ she framed curtly.
‘Thee mou...’ Eros growled in sudden seething frustration. ‘Of course I want you too!’
Winnie rose from her seat and set her glass down with a sharp little snap. ‘Well, maybe...just maybe, Mr Ego, I don’t want you!’ she slung back.
‘It would take me only five minutes to prove otherwise,’ Eros bit out in unhesitating challenge. ‘Let me list all the many reasons why we should marry.’
‘Oh, spare me the lecture, please,’ Winnie muttered witheringly. ‘Or why not start with the fact that the idea would never have occurred to you if I hadn’t told you that I was related to Stam Fotakis?’
Eros stared back at her in shock, noticeably turning pale beneath his bronzed skin, the angles of his high cheekbones starkly prominent and taut. ‘You actually think I want you for the money you may one day inherit?’ he breathed in incredulous rage.
No, definitely not a gold-digger, Winnie decided, reckoning that no man could fake that amount of disbelief and outrage. It was time for her to bow smartly out of their civil little dinner date before they came to physical blows. ‘I think I should go home now.’
A hand closed round hers and jerked her back around before she could walk indoors again. Shimmering sea-glass eyes locked to her flushed face like lasers. ‘This has nothing to do with you being a member of the Fotakis family. This is between us.’
‘Well, no, actually it’s not,’ Winnie argued, dry-mouthed with tension. ‘This is about you wanting Teddy and having to take me too and apparently make the best of a bad bargain.’
‘Thee mou... Where are your wits?’ Eros growled down at her with lancing impatience. ‘I want you.’
‘You didn’t want me so much that you came looking for me two years ago!’ Winnie flared back at him in an outburst that, despite her best efforts, emerged as accusing in tone.
‘I was married. Our relationship was wrong. That is why I didn’t seek you out again,’ Eros breathed in a fierce undertone. ‘I didn’t want to be tempted back into our affair.’
‘A pity you didn’t feel like that when you first met me!’ Winnie tossed back at him accusingly. ‘We’d all have been a lot happier if you’d done the right thing from the start!’
‘But we wouldn’t have had Teddy,’ Eros pointed out unarguably. ‘And now that I have met him, I wouldn’t change the past even if I could.’
Alarmingly conscious of the hand closed round her narrow wrist, the fingers lazily stroking her arm as if to soothe her, Winnie dropped her head, knowing that in spite of the unhappiness Eros had caused her, she would never wish that Teddy had not been born because he had brought so much love, light and comfort into the world with him. Eros had broken her heart but Teddy had healed her, giving her the focus and the strength to rebuild her life.
‘I do want you,’ Eros grated, pushing up her chin, green eyes blazing bright as crystal in sunlight, crushing her soft full mouth under his, tasting her with a ravenous hunger that electrified her where she stood.
Her lips parted and something tightened deep down inside her pelvis as his tongue plunged into the sensitive interior of her mouth. A faint tremor racked her, her tongue tangling with his, her body instinctively straining towards him. Her breasts were full and tender and the burst of heat between her thighs compelled her headlong into his lean, muscular length, craving the contact that that overwhelming hunger had unleashed. The hard thrust of his arousal against her stomach was unmistakeable.
The sure, deft exploration of his hands over the swell of her bottom and then up over her tender breasts, cupping, squeezing, partially soothed the raw need traversing her and yet simultaneously drove it even higher. A whimper of choked sound was wrenched from her throat. She was utterly lost in the powerful sensations coursing through her, urging her on and destroying her every defence because what she was feeling was utterly mindless.
‘Look at me...’ Eros urged, his dark, deep, insistent
