The Secrets She Carried

‘I caught the guy in your bed in your hotel room the night after your birthday bash,’ Cristo countered flatly. ‘You cheated on me.’

Erin was frowning. ‘Who did you see in my hotel room?’

Cristo shrugged a broad shoulder and dealt her a satiric glance. ‘I have no idea who he was. I let myself into the room intending to surprise you and instead I got the surprise.’

Erin was stunned. ‘But I wasn’t there—you didn’t see me.’

Cristo dealt her a scornful look. ‘I saw the man, the discarded clothes, the wine glasses and I could hear the shower running in the bathroom. I didn’t need to see you as well.’

Erin was so tense she was barely breathing. In a sudden movement she pushed back her chair and stood upright, her amethyst eyes bright with anger. ‘Well, actually you did because that wasn’t me in the bathroom! I didn’t even stay in London that night.’

Cristo gave her an unimpressed look. ‘It was your room and he was in your bed—’

Anger coursed through her in a torrent of incredulous rage. ‘And you’re only telling me this now, nearly three years later? Why didn’t you mention it at the time?’

‘I didn’t see any point in staging a messy confrontation. I had seen all I needed to see,’ Cristo derided with harsh assurance.

CHAPTER SIX

ERIN genuinely wanted to strangle Cristo at that moment. In the space of seconds she was reviewing the misery she had endured after their parting and finally grasping why he had dumped her with so little fanfare. Hostility at his latest misjudgement roared through her, her facial bones drawing taut below her fine skin. ‘You had seen all you needed to see—is that a fact?’ she snapped back furiously.

An ebony brow elevated with sardonic cool. ‘What more evidence would I have required?’

‘Proper evidence!’ Erin fired back at him quick as a flash with more than a hint of his own intensity. ‘Because that wasn’t me in that bathroom. I didn’t stay in London that night. I got a call from the hospital to tell me that my mother had been rushed to Casualty with a suspected heart attack. Tom and his girlfriend offered to run me home—Tom’s kid brother, Dennis, asked if he could use my hotel room to stay in town with his girlfriend. I said yes, why wouldn’t I have? I wasn’t expecting you to turn up. When you told me you couldn’t make it home to my party, you also said that you probably wouldn’t make it back to London for at least another twenty-four hours.’

His darkly handsome features se

t like stone, Cristo gave her an unyielding look. ‘I don’t believe your explanation.’

At that inflammatory admission, Erin simply grabbed up the bottle of wine and poured it over his head, watching with satisfaction as the golden liquid cascaded down over his black hair and granite-hard masculine features. Startled by the assault, he leapt up with an irate Greek curse and wrenched the bottle from her grasp. ‘Have you gone insane?’ he raked back at her in ringing disbelief.

Untouched by any form of guilt, Erin grimly watched him dry his face with a napkin. ‘I must’ve been when I got involved with you. How dare you assume that I slept with some other guy? How dare you just accept that and judge me for it? After the amount of time I was with you, I deserved more respect. How could you condemn me without a hearing?’

‘I’m not having this conversation with you—I’m going for a second shower,’ Cristo declared, striding towards the bathroom door.

Erin moved liked lightning to get there ahead of him and leant back in the doorway, daring him to shift her out of his path. ‘You are so stubborn. But I could put my hand on a bible and swear that I wasn’t in the Mobila hotel that night.’

‘You were there!’ Cristo breathed rawly, wrathful challenge scored into every hard angle and hollow of his breathtakingly handsome face.

‘No, I wasn’t!’ Erin snapped back at him angrily. ‘How could you even credit that I’d spent the night with another man?’

‘Why not? I couldn’t make it back in time for your birthday party and I knew you had to be furious with me—’

‘Not so furious that I would have got into bed with someone else! I can’t believe that you thought that of me and just walked away from it.’

His eyes hostile, his hard jaw line squared and he said nothing.

‘Of course, I understand why now,’ Erin continued thinly. ‘You are so full of ego and pride. Walking away was the easiest thing to do—’

‘That’s not why I said nothing,’ Cristo argued, his Greek accent roughening every vowel sound, anger glittering in the golden blaze of his eyes. ‘I had had doubts about you for a while. There had been other … things that made me suspicious—’

‘Name them,’ she challenged.

‘I will not discuss them with you—’

‘You unreasonable, arrogant …’ she slammed back, so enraged with him that she was trembling. ‘In all the time we were together I never so much as looked at another man but that wasn’t good enough for you, was it? You’re jealous and possessive to the bone—you couldn’t even stand me spending time with Tom!’

Eyes glowing like the heart of a fire between black spiky lashes, Cristo closed his hands to her waist and lifted her off her feet to set her to one side. ‘I’ve told you. We’re not having this discussion.’