Playing the Royal Game

And ever since then, Erin had been beating herself up for her mistakes. When she couldn’t afford to buy something for the twins, when she had to listen in tolerant silence to her mother’s regrets for the youthful freedom she had thrown away by becoming a single parent, she was painfully aware that she could only blame herself. She had precious little excuse for her foolishness and lack of foresight. After all, Erin had grown up in a poor home listening to her father talk endlessly and impressively about how he was going to make his fortune. Over and over and over again she had listened and the fortune had never come. Worse still, on many occasions money that could not be spared had been frittered away on crazy schemes and had dragged her family down into debt. By the time she was ten years old and watching her poorly educated mother work in a succession of dead-end jobs to keep her family solvent, she had realised that her father was just a dreamer, full of money-making ideas but lacking the work ethic required to bring any of those ideas to fruition. His vain belief that he was set on earth to shine as brightly as a star had precluded him from seeking an ordinary job. In any case working to increase someone else’s profit had been what her idle father called ‘a mug’s game’. He had died in a train crash when she was twelve and from that point on life in her home had become less of a roller-coaster ride.

In short, Erin had learned at a young age that she needed to learn how best to keep herself and that it would be very risky to look to any man to take care of her. As a result, she had studied hard at school, ignored those who called her a nerd and gone on to university, also ignoring her mother’s protestations that she should have moved straight into a job to earn a wage. Boyfriends had come and gone, mostly unremarked, for Erin had been wary of getting too involved, of compromising her ambitions to match someone else’s. Having set her sights on a career with prospects, she had emerged from university with a top-flight business management degree. To help to finance her years as a student she had also worked every spare hour as a personal trainer, a vocation that had gained her a raft of more practical skills, not least on how best to please in a service industry.

Later that afternoon, when she returned from her visit to Black’s Inn, the Stanwick receptionist informed Erin that Sam wanted to see her immediately. Realising in dismay that she had forgotten to switch her mobile phone back on after the interviews were finished, Erin knocked lightly on the door of her boss’s office and walked straight in with the lack of ceremony that Sam preferred.

‘Ah, Erin, at last. Where have you been all afternoon? There’s someone here I want you to meet,’ Sam informed her with just a hint of impatience.

‘Sorry, I forgot to remind you that I’d be over at Black’s doing interviews with Owen,’ Erin explained, smiling apologetically until a movement by the window removed her attention from the older man. She turned her head and began to move forward, visually tracking the emergence of a tall powerful male from the shadows. Then she froze as though a glass wall had suddenly sprung into being around her, imprisoning her and shutting her off from her companions.

‘Miss Turner?’ a sleek cultured drawl with the suggestion of an accent purred. ‘I’ve been looking forward to meeting you. Your boss speaks very highly of you.’

Erin flinched as though a thunderclap had sounded within the room without warning, that dark-timbred voice unleashing an instant ‘fight or flight instinct she had to struggle to keep under control. She would have known that distinctive intonation laced with command had she heard it even at a crowded party. It was as unforgettable as the male himself.

‘This is—’ Sam began.

‘Cristophe Donakis…’ Cristo extended a lean brown hand to greet her as if they had never met before.

And Erin just stared in consternation at that wicked fallen-angel face as if she couldn’t believe her eyes. And she couldn’t. Cropped black hair spiky with the short curls that not even the closest cut could eradicate entirely, ebony brows level above stunning dark deep-set eyes that could turn as golden as the sunset, high cheekbones and, as though all the rest was not enough to over-endow him with beauty, a mouth that was the all-male sensual equivalent of pure temptation. The passage of time since their final encounter had left no physical mark on those lean dark features. In a split second it was as if she had turned her head and stepped back in time. He remained defiantly drop-dead gorgeous. Something low down in her body that she hadn’t felt in years clenched tightly and uncomfortably, making her press her slender thighs together in dismay.