a military assault?’
Eros studied her with a ferocious glitter of emerald fire lighting his stunning eyes. ‘I will do whatever it takes to protect my wife and my marriage.’
Winnie groaned out loud. ‘This is one of those masculine things, isn’t it? A show of strength?’
Eros gave her a flashing, utterly beguiling boyish grin that lit up his lean, dark features. ‘It’ll annoy the hell out of Stam. I’m warning him politely that I will not tolerate further interference in our marriage. He’ll tell you, of course, that I’m paranoid.’
‘I don’t care,’ Winnie whispered softly before she reached for the car door. ‘Paranoid or not, you’re mine...’
The assurance fell into a sudden silence as she immediately regretted those revealing words and Eros stilled in surprise. ‘Am I?’
Far more hers than he had ever been before, Winnie adjusted painfully, her heart-shaped face suffused with mortified colour. She loved him but that didn’t mean she had to wave that fact like a big banner in his face. In fact, coolness would be far more effective with Eros. Weren’t men supposed to always want what they thought they couldn’t have? What came easy was always deemed less valuable.
‘I’ll see you later,’ Winnie framed, climbing hastily out of the car and walking towards the grand front door of her grandfather’s home. She had given the older man a brief call the night before to tell him that she was coming to visit. She was hopeful that the month she had been on the island would have given him the chance to calm down and develop a more accepting attitude towards her marriage.
Stam Fotakis was in his office but he immediately rose from behind his desk and ordered his PA to serve coffee.
‘I thought you might have taken the morning off,’ Winnie remarked wryly as he instructed his PA to hold his calls.
‘I never take a day off,’ Stam informed her with pride, studying her over the top of his reading glasses. ‘Unless I’m celebrating, of course, and the fact you’ve arrived without luggage suggests that I have nothing to celebrate...yet.’
Winnie quickly caught his drift and almost winced before deciding to be equally direct. ‘I’m not planning to leave Eros. We’ve decided to stay together,’ Winnie admitted, watching the older man’s craggy face tighten and darken at that unwelcome news. ‘I’m here to ask you to back off and accept our marriage.’
‘Thee mou...’ Stam Fotakis breathed with a sudden frown of condemnation as he studied her strained and anxious face. ‘You’re still in love with the bastard!’
His perception made Winnie pale but she stood her ground. ‘You have to recognise that Eros and I are a couple and that it is absolutely in Teddy’s best interests that we make a go of our marriage.’
‘You’d walk through fire for Nevrakis, wouldn’t you?’ her grandfather breathed in a tone of incredulity as he sprang upright again. ‘When will you learn that he is simply using you?’
‘How is Eros using me?’ Winnie pressed levelly. ‘I know the best of him and I know the worst of him. Let me tell you about his first marriage.’
Her grandfather raised his hand in an immediate silencing motion. ‘I don’t want to hear some sob story.’
‘It’s not a sob story—it’s an explanation,’ Winnie argued and, as quickly and as simply as she could, she told her grandad about Eros’s first marriage.
‘Am I supposed to be impressed that I’ve married you off to a sentimental idiot with silly romantic notions about honour and loyalty?’ Stam Fotakis demanded, frowning at her in concern. ‘You’re making excuses for him, Winnie. He was a married man and he turned you into his mistress!’
‘It wasn’t like that between us.’ Winnie lifted her chin, although it took courage to fly in the face of such opinions. ‘And I respect stuff like sentiment and honour and loyalty. I like that he didn’t blame Tasha or anyone else for the mess he involved us all in. I like that I wasn’t one of many lovers he took. I like that he knows he made mistakes but that he’s trying to make up for it now.’
‘You do realise that he’s not in the same class as a Fotakis?’ her grandfather said, frowning with disapproval. ‘That in getting to marry you he was punching above his weight? That the very fact that he is now known to be my grandson-in-law is likely to make him even richer? And that for an ambitious man, he’s done very, very well for himself?’
‘Eros is more interested in being a good father to Teddy than in profiting from any association with you,’ Winnie told the older man proudly. ‘And I’m not a snob. I don’t care that he doesn’t come from some aristocratic family that have ties stretching back to ancient Greece.’
‘But surely it is important to you that Nevrakis is honest with you?’ Stam prompted, subjecting her to a troubled appraisal and pausing before continuing wryly, ‘Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you and damage your faith in Nevrakis, but he hasn’t been honest with you.’
Stam watched as Winnie turned white before his eyes. He was being cruel to be kind, he told himself soothingly. She had to know the truth, had to accept it. He would keep no more secrets where Winnie was concerned.
As Winnie sipped the coffee she held cradled in one hand, her grip on the saucer had tightened and the cup rattled betrayingly. With great difficulty she held herself still as she stared back at the older man. ‘I presume you can prove what you’re saying...?’ she asked shakily.
Stam breathed in deep. ‘Nevrakis agreed to marry you to get his family island back. I scooped Trilis up for a song over thirty years ago when his father went bust and Eros naturally wanted to reclaim it. In recent years he’s tried to buy it back on several occasions but I wasn’t interested. On the day of your wedding, however, the island of Trilis became his. A little sweetener to the deal, as it were. It cost him nothing,’ Stam completed heavily, watching anxiously as her expressive face telegraphed her shock. ‘Didn’t he mention that bribe? It was a bribe. Didn’t he admit that he had never in his life before set foot on that island until I agreed to him flying over there to check the place out for the wedding?’
‘No...he didn’t mention any of that,’ Winnie almost whispered, leaning forward to set down the cup and saucer on his desk before she embarrassed herself by dropping it.
‘If I hadn’t bribed him to marry you, he wouldn’t even have considered giving up his freedom,’ her grandfather emphasised. ‘And this is the man you’re willing to sacrifice a splendid future for?’
‘What splendid future?’ she questioned blankly half under her breath.
‘Without Nevrakis, you and Teddy could live here with me and eventually you would meet a man more worthy of your attention.’
‘A man you chose, who meets your approval,’ Winnie guessed sickly. ‘A man who doesn’t fight back, a man who allows you to call all the shots.’
‘Am I that arrogant?’ Stam dealt her a reproachful look.
‘I don’t think you can tolerate or like anyone who defies you,’ Winnie muttered ruefully, struggling desperately not to think about what he had just told her about Eros.
She
