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‘Amen to that,’ Winnie muttered, leaning closer, her heartbeat quickening as the achingly familiar scent of him drenched her.
‘I have just two small requests,’ Eros breathed thickly, leaning down to brush his sensual lips softly across hers, awareness surging through her body like a rocket to awaken every nerve ending into a sweet ache of anticipation.
‘And what are they?’ she mumbled in a dizzy haze.
‘We admit we love each other every day.’
‘Easy... I can do that,’ she sighed dreamily. ‘And?’
‘We go through another wedding ceremony, one in which you mean every word you say,’ Eros instructed, toying with her bottom lip in the most erotic way.
Winnie trembled. ‘We can do that too. In fact, it would mean a lot to me,’ she confided. ‘But if you don’t kiss me soon, I might change my mind.’
Eros flicked his tongue between her parted lips. ‘I want much more than a kiss, kardoula mou,’ he husked.
Winnie’s slender fingers sank into his black curls to tip him closer. ‘And you think I don’t?’ she teased, buoyant with happiness, every fear laid to rest.
‘I don’t want to be surprised half-naked by our nanny,’ Eros confided, pulling back from her with a groan at the necessity to bend down and scoop her up into his arms. ‘We’re going to bed.’
They didn’t make it up the stairs all in one go. Eros paused to kiss her and things got a little hot and heavy on the first landing and then they heard their nanny Agathe’s measured voice outside and they fled to their bedroom. Later they would get up and be good parents and bathe Teddy and play with him awhile before putting him to bed, but just at that moment, they were both punch-drunk on a wave of love and lust, made all the keener by the knowledge that they could so easily have held on to their pride and lost each other. And in renewing their love, they found fresh confidence and exulted in that intimacy.
* * *
Six months later, Winnie smoothed her maternity frock down over the slight bump of her pregnancy. Yes, ultimately Eros had got his way. At least, she had agreed to try for another child but she certainly hadn’t expected to conceive the very first month and indeed had assumed that it might take the better part of a year. Eros had confessed, however, that he was very motivated to delivering the required result and she had to admit that from the moment she had conceived, no newly expectant mother could possibly have been more spoiled and supported than she had been.
It had been a very busy few months. Eros had bought a house more suited to a toddler’s needs in London and they were spending more time there so that Winnie could see her sisters on a regular basis. As they were slowly transforming the house on Trilis into a comfortable and less imposing family home and their main base, it also made sense to have somewhere else to go when the building work on the home front reached crucial stages. Winnie found the island more relaxing and she was forging friendships there. She loved the fact that her son could run wild in their extensive grounds and that the property was large enough for her sisters to join her there whenever they had time off. Eros was travelling less and he had set up a working office in the house.
Two months after they had admitted their love for each other, they had had a wedding blessing ceremony in the little church by the harbour and that had strengthened them as a couple. Saying those vows and meaning them, not to mention her steadily improving grasp of the Greek language, had been a crucial acceptance of their new future together. Eros had insisted that he had only suggested it to benefit from a second wedding night and the apparently unbeatable lure of all those buttons, which were actually hooks. But Winnie, who had been disconcerted by the many little romantic touches her husband had thought up to embellish the occasion—not least the surprise presence of her foster parents, John and Liz—wasn’t fooled. He had made that day as special as he made her feel and she could not have been happier.
That very evening they were holding a party in honour of her grandfather’s seventy-fifth birthday and he was bringing her sisters with him. Winnie smiled cheerfully. It had taken months for Stam Fotakis to recognise the wisdom of putting away the big guns and making the best of his eldest granddaughter’s marriage and family. Eros had had to visit the older man to personally invite him to visit them on the island while Winnie had done her bit in insisting on throwing the birthday party for him. Offered a virtual red carpet, Stam had grasped the opportunity with alacrity and any loss of face involved by that climbdown had been wonderfully soothed by his great-grandson, Teddy, running across the lawn to greet with him with a delighted shout of excitement.
‘Your sisters are looking very well,’ her grandfather remarked, scanning Vivi in her fuchsia-pink dress, a daring colour for a redhead, but frowning at Zoe, who was practically welded to a seat with its back to the wall. ‘Zoe’s going to have to get over that shyness.’
‘It’s not shyness. She just doesn’t like crowds,’ Winnie said defensively.
‘I offered that husband of yours a business deal and he turned me down,’ Stam informed her grimly. ‘He doesn’t trust me. Said it would put me in the driver’s seat if he lost his shirt. He’s shrewd. I’m beginning to like that about him. I wouldn’t like to see you married to a fool.’
Winnie grinned at that grudging admission but tactfully made no comment. Across the room, Vivi was rifling frantically through a magazine and then passing it to Zoe to read. Curious, Winnie walked over just as Eros appeared and fell into step beside her, Teddy clutching his hand.
‘What are you looking at?’ she asked Vivi.
‘Don’t ask,’ Vivi advised, white with suppressed anger.
Zoe grimaced. ‘The Duke of Mancini has taken over another bank. He must be minted.’
‘Let me see...’ Winnie grasped the business magazine, ignoring the photo of the very good-looking Italian banker who had destroyed her sister’s reputation. ‘Have you ever come across him in business?’ she asked Eros.
‘No, he’s rather too rich for my blood.’ Eros curled an arm round his wife’s back and didn’t even raise a brow when Vivi vented a very rude word. ‘A member of the Italian elite.’
‘Pig!’ Vivi pronounced with fierce loathing. ‘He’s a pig!’
‘Don’t read the article,’ Winnie advised softly.
‘That’s the guy who labelled her a prostitute in the tabloids, isn’t it?’ Eros prompted in an undertone as they moved on. ‘I remember the name from the investigation I had done.’
‘Yes, that’s him and, like a rose in a dung heap, he is still flourishing against all the odds!’ Winnie muttered bitterly.
‘I wouldn’t take any bets on that continuing,’ Eros murmured as his son wriggled deftly free of his hold. ‘Not with Stam gunning for him. I could almost, but not quite, feel sorry for the guy.’
‘Grandad has never once mentioned his name,’ Winnie protested.
‘Stam likes to play his cards close to his chest,’ Eros breathed, striding across the floor of the ballroom to stop his son from clamberi
ng up on a chair to reach the precious birthday cake. He ignored the screams of protest that followed with the cool of a practised parent and, surprisingly quickly, Teddy ditched his fake sobs and started chattering to his father instead.
Man and child looked so alike with their matching green eyes and black curls that it always lifted Winnie’s heart to see them together. When Agathe appeared to reclaim the little boy, Winnie relaxed more because Teddy was too lively to be anything other than an accident waiting to happen at an adult party. Some outside exercise and supper would better suit his needs.
Eros brought her a soft drink while she was out on the terrace. ‘Remember the massive row we had out here on our wedding day?’ he prompted.
‘I don’t want to remember that,’ she said truthfully. ‘I was feeling so miserably unhappy and angry.’
‘You have to go through the bad stuff to get to the good stuff,’ Eros told her philosophically. ‘My ego was squashed beyond recovery when my bride walked out on me.’
Winnie gazed up into his darkly handsome face, fingers tingling at the prospect of brushing back that silky black hair from his brow, eyes lost in the mesmeric enticement of his, her body slowly humming to life like an engine being switched on. ‘If it was, you made a very fast recovery.’
‘But then I had you to recover with,’ Eros husked, easing her back against the railings to hungrily claim a kiss, groaning as she strained against him. ‘You are a witch, agape mou. Now I have to stay out here until I’m fit to be seen in company again.’
‘I think we can manage that,’ Winnie whispered with a wanton little shift of her hips that made his lean, powerful length shudder in response against hers. ‘I love you so much, Eros.’
‘And for some reason I love you even when you’re teasing the hell out of me,’ he admitted raggedly.
* * *
