The Secrets She Carried

Snatching in a steadying breath, Cristo drove off. He felt out of control and he didn’t like that. When had ‘just sex’ become ‘must-have sex’? And what had happened to the exorcism goal? This was getting her out of his system? He thought of his marriage, an infallible reminder of the danger of undisciplined impulses, and straight away the electrifying heat in his blood cooled, his arousal subsiding to a more bearable level.

Erin’s mobile phone started ringing as she entered the villa. She snatched it out of her bag with a frown and answered it. ‘Mum?’ she queried into the excited barrage of her mother’s too fast hail of words. ‘Calm down. What is it?’

Cristo watched Erin begin to pace the hall in quick short steps. ‘What sort of an accident?’ she was asking urgently, her triangular face lint white with shock and dismay. ‘Oh m-my … word … how bad is it?’

Erin pressed a concerned hand to her parted lips and turned in a clumsy uncoordinated circle. Nuala had had an accident at the playground and had broken her arm. It was a fracture and required surgery. Erin’s heart was beating so fast with worry that she felt sick. Assuring her mother that she would be at the hospital as soon as possible, she ended the call.

‘Bad news?’ Cristo prompted.

‘It’s an emergency—you’ve got to get me home as fast as you can. I’m sorry. I’ll go and pack.’

Erin fled upstairs, nothing in her head but the thought of her daughter suffering without her mother’s support. She had never felt so guilty in her life. Nuala was hurt and about to have an operation and Erin couldn’t be with her. It would never have happened if Erin had stayed at home. Deidre Turner had tried to take the twins to the park in her daughter’s place. Nuela had squirmed to the top of the climbing frame and hung upside down in spite of her grandmother’s pleas for her to come down. When the child fell she might have broken her arm but she was exceedingly lucky not to have broken her neck. Knowing that her daughter had to be in pain and frightened, Erin felt her tummy churn with nausea. She should have told Cristo that she couldn’t make the weekend because she now had children, responsibilities. Staying silent on that score had been the act of an irresponsible parent.

‘What’s going on?’ Cristo questioned from the bedroom doorway.

Erin paused in the act of flinging clothes back into her case and twisted her head round. ‘How quickly can you get me back home?’

‘Within a few hours—we’ll leave as soon as you’re ready, but I’d appreciate an explanation.’

Erin folded her lips, eyes refusing to meet his, and turned back to her packing. ‘I can’t give you one. A relative of mine has had an accident and I need to get home … urgently.’

Cristo released an impatient sigh. ‘Why do you make such a song and dance about even simple things? Why can’t you tell me the whole story?’

Erin dealt him a numb, distanced look. ‘I don’t have the words or enough time to explain.’

Within fifteen minutes they had left the house to travel to the airport. Erin was rigid with tension and silent, locked in her anxiety about her daughter, not to mention her guilt that her mother was being forced to deal with a very stressful situation alone. This was her punishment for deceiving her mother about where she was staying for the weekend, she thought painfully. Her children needed her but she was not within reach to come quickly to their aid. Instead their next-door neighbour, Tamsin, a young woman with kids of her own, had come to the hospital to collect Lorcan so that her mother could stay on there and wait for Nuala to come out of surgery.

They were walking through the airport when Cristo closed a hand to Erin’s wrist and said curtly. ‘We have to talk about this.’

‘Talking isn’t what you brought me here for,’ Erin countered tartly. ‘I appreciate that you feel shortchanged but right now there’s nothing I can do about it.’

‘That’s not what I meant,’ Cristo said glacially, frustration brightening his black diamond gaze to brilliance in his lean, strong face. ‘I’ll get you back to Oxford as quick as I can but you have to tell me what’s going on.’

Erin nodded agreement and bit her lip. ‘Once we’re airborne.’

Tell him—he made it sound so simple. She thought of those phone calls she had made, desperate to tell him, desperate for his support in a hostile world. When she’d realised she was pregnant she had reached out in panic, not thinking about what she would have to say or how he would react. Those kinds of fears would have been luxuries when she was struggling just to survive. Now she was older, wiser, aware she was about to open a can of worms with a blunt knife and make a mess. But why not? Why shouldn’t Cristo know that he was a father? How he reacted no longer mattered: she already had a job, a roof over her head. She didn’t need him any more.

Ensconced in the cream-leather-upholstered luxury of Cristo’s private jet, Erin struggled to regain her composure but she was too worried about Nuala and her mother. Deidre Turner didn’t deal well with the unexpected and suffered from panic attacks. How could she have left her mother with the burden of the twins for the weekend when the older woman had already looked after them all week long? Her mother would have been tired, tested by the daily challenge of caring for two lively toddlers, who didn’t always do as they were told, a combination that was an accident waiting to happen.

Cristo released his seat belt and stood up, six feet four inches of well-groomed male, in a dark business suit that made the most of his lean, powerful physique. Shrewd dark golden eyes below sooty lashes welded to her, he dealt her an expectant look.

‘I have children now,’ Erin declared baldly, breaking the tense silence. ‘Twins of two and a bit, a boy and a girl—’

Unsurprisingly, Cristo was stunned. ‘Children?’ he repeated the plural designation in a tone of astonishment. ‘How could you possibly have children?’

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘THE usual way. I fell pregnant. I became a mother eight months later,’ Erin told him flatly.

‘Twins?’ Cristo bit out a sardonic laugh to punctuate the word.

‘Yes, born a little early. And my daughter, Nuala, got hurt in a playground accident this morning. She broke her arm and she has to have surgery on it. That’s why I have to get home asap,’ Erin completed in the same strained tone.

‘And you didn’t feel that you could mention the little fact that you’re a mother before this point?’ Cristo derided grimly.

Erin studied the carpet. ‘I didn’t think you’d be interested.’

‘I’m more interested in finding out who the father of your twins might be,’ Cristo admitted, his stubborn jaw line clenching hard. ‘Is it Morton?’