‘But you’re stuck here now,’ Eros pointed out softly, even while his dark deep drawl vibrated in the smouldering silence. ‘And you will not leave this island or take Teddy from it until I am satisfied that I can trust you.’
So shocked was Winnie by that provocative threat that she spun round to face him again, brown eyes huge with disbelief in her expressive face, her chest heaving.
For an instant, Eros found his concentration slipping. Even in a rage, he was still a man and the heave of Winnie’s luscious lace-covered breasts was as eye-catching as it was arousing. It also brought to mind the lowering awareness that this was not how he had expected to spend his wedding night. But then how would he know what was normal on a wedding night? he asked himself sardonically. He had never had a normal marriage and now it looked as if history was set on cruel repeat, a possibility he absolutely refused to accept a second time around.
Either he was married or he wasn’t. There would be no halfway deal, no unreasonable conditions set between him and Winnie. Yet at the same time he refused to contemplate another divorce. They had to put Teddy first and, as far as he was concerned, putting Teddy first entailed giving their son both parents beneath the same roof.
‘You can’t be serious!’ Winnie exclaimed, challenging that outrageous announcement that he would not allow her to leave the island.
‘You haven’t given me a choice,’ Eros parried with harsh conviction. ‘Do you think I don’t appreciate that your grandfather will be standing by waiting for the opportunity to steal you and Teddy back from me?’
Her lashes flickered up on startled eyes and she turned her head away again, the muscles in her slight shoulders rigid with strain. Something else she hadn’t thought about, she scolded herself in exasperation: Stam Fotakis would not take defeat lying down. Her grandfather would remain determined to get his own way and he would not be fussy about his methods. But it galled her to see herself and her child at the centre of a tug of war between two powerful men.
‘If you somehow contrive to escape and return to Stam, that will be your choice,’ Eros delineated in a driven undertone. ‘But you will not sacrifice my son to his care.’
‘Oh, drop the drama!’ Winnie scoffed. ‘My grandfather would not harm a hair on Teddy’s head and nothing you can say would convince me otherwise!’
‘I only have to look at your family’s history to know that Stam has very poor parenting skills and I won’t subject my son to that experience.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Winnie argued in frustration. ‘Grandad cares about Teddy.’
‘I assume he cared for his own sons at one time, as well,’ Eros countered very drily. ‘But he still flung your father out to sink or swim for defying him when he was only a teenager. As for your uncle, Nicos, he made the mistake of marrying a woman your grandfather disapproved of. She was a divorcee and Stam refused to even meet her. When your uncle died, your grandfather and he were estranged.’
Winnie dropped her head, her eyes troubled, because she hadn’t known that salient fact. Stam had told her only that his elder son had died in an accident, not that father and son had been at daggers drawn at the time of his passing. And rightly or wrongly, it did make her question her innate faith in the older man because evidently her grandfather had made an almighty mess of keeping his own family together.
‘And don’t kid yourself that Stam would give Teddy any easier a ride if he failed his expectations,’ Eros completed grimly.
‘Point taken,’ Winnie conceded stiffly, wanting the subject dropped because it was patently obvious that Eros knew more about her grandfather than she did.
‘And Stam will never accept me. He’s too much of a snob,’ Eros added grimly. ‘In his eyes, I’m nouveau riche...and there’re no princess grandmothers in my family tree!’
‘That sort of thing isn’t important to me,’ Winnie muttered uncomfortably.
‘Pedigree is very important to your grandfather. Don’t ever forget that. He wanted a ring on your finger to gloss over the reality that you were an unmarried mother and that’s where my role was supposed to end. I was good enough for you to marry but not good enough to be accepted into the Fotakis family.’
‘Scarcely matters now,’ she mumbled helplessly.
But Eros wasn’t listening. He stalked indoors, his long lithe legs powering him towards the bar in the corner of the ballroom. Momentarily released from tension, Winnie allowed herself to breathe again. She congratulated herself on not losing her temper and leant back against the iron balustrade, letting the strain slowly trickle out of her muscles.
Eros strode back, his entire focus locked to Winnie’s slight figure. With her luxuriant mane of dark hair shifting in the light breeze below the sparkling diamond tiara and her caramel eyes bright in her heart-shaped face, she looked tiny and gorgeous and that reluctant acknowledgement only unleashed a stronger tide of aggression within him. She had betrayed his trust and she wasn’t a fitting mother for a vulnerable child. How could she be? In marrying him and as quickly walking out on him again she had demonstrated that she had very few principles, least of all when it came to reliability and honesty.
Winnie didn’t really want a drink but she accepted the glass of wine Eros extended because she was thirsty and if he was offering a polite olive branch, she was more than willing to grasp it. Taut as a bowstring, she sipped nervously at the wine.
‘When I asked you to marry me, it was the real deal,’ Eros intoned with level diction, his lean, darkly handsome features sombre. ‘There was no deception involved and no lies. I intended to be a husband to you and a father to my son and I planned to fulfil both roles to the very best of my ability.’
Winnie breathed in so deep she felt dizzy when the cool salty air flooded her lungs. She flung her slim shoulders back, brown eyes bright with anger. ‘Don’t you dare try to talk down to me when you threatened to harm my sisters by exposing their secrets!’
‘That doesn’t excuse you for entering that church and speaking vows you had no intention of following through on!’ Eros ground out wrathfully. ‘That was wrong!’
‘Your threats were equally wrong.’ Winnie fought back with a flush rising in her cheeks. ‘I couldn’t risk allowing you to humiliate my sisters any more than I could risk losing my son, so don’t you dare tell me that you were offering me “the real deal” because you didn’t give me any options!’
‘I chose to do what was best for all three of us and I put Teddy first. You’ve never put him first,’ Eros condemned grimly. ‘If you had, you wouldn’t have kept us apart.’
‘Wouldn’t I have?’ Winnie gasped, so furious that she could hardly breathe for the tightness of the corseting built into her grown and squeezing her ribs. ‘You were such a great role model for an innocent little boy, weren’t you? A married man having an affair with an employee behind his wife’s back? Do you really think you were the kind of father I wanted or needed for my son?’
‘Perhaps not but I was his father and I had rights,’ Eros reminded her without remorse. ‘Rights and responsibilities you were happy to ignore and deny.’
Clutching her wine glass, Winnie gave way to her impatience and moved forward to push past him and return indoors. ‘We’ve already been through this argument. There’s no point going there again!’ she proclaimed.
‘I married you in good faith. I didn’t even demand a signature on a prenup. Why? I was fool enough to trust you.’
Breathless and troubled with her cheeks on fire with mortification, Winnie snatched up the bottle of wine on the bar and refilled her glass. ‘More fool you, then!’ she shot back at him defiantly, reasoning that as he had already won the most important battle she had little more to lose from aggravating him.
Eros was outraged. Quiet, trusting, naive little Winnie, it seemed, had only ever existed in his own imagination, a romantic fiction more than a reality. ‘A fo
ol no more,’ he reminded her with dark satisfaction. ‘I have my wife and my child in my home where I wanted them to be.’
‘And much good may it do you!’ Winnie hurled back as she moistened her dry mouth with more wine. ‘I am not your wife in any way that counts.’