‘Such details are available to anyone with the cash to have you investigated,’ Eros told her levelly.
‘You’re hateful,’ Winnie told him with a scornful, dismissive jerk of her slight shoulders. ‘I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man alive after an apocalypse! I have no respect for a man prepared to sink low enough to threaten my family while he tries to steal my son, and I wouldn’t trust a word you said—’
‘Teddy is my son and my family too,’ Eros reasoned, lifting his strong chin. ‘It is right that I do everything within my power—no matter how dirty I have to get—to do what I believe to be best for my son.’
Winnie had already retreated all the way back into the apartment. ‘Well, just you keep on telling yourself that if it makes you feel better but, unlike you, I have standards and rules I wouldn’t break... No—no matter what the temptation was!’
‘You can’t expect me to play nice in a situation where you expect me to accept that my own child will be perpetually out of my reach,’ Eros argued fiercely, green eyes snapping with intensity.
‘When the dust settles,’ Winnie responded curtly, ‘just remember that you are the one who wanted to make this a battle and fight dirty. I was the one prepared to be reasonable and fair.’
‘Really?’ Eros slanted a scornful brow. ‘Were you fair when you concealed the birth of my child from me? Were you fair when you denied Teddy his right to have a father? Were you being fair when you suggested that I could maybe arrange to be in London more often to see my son?’
Her heart-shaped face tight and pale with angry tension, Winnie screened her eyes and remained silent, reluctant to engage in further argument with him because it wasn’t getting her anywhere. No, none of that was fair. But it had not been any fairer on her when Eros had concealed the reality that he was a married man. It was, however, even more unjust when he threatened to expose her sisters in court as unsuitable carers for Teddy because of past experiences that neither young woman could have avoided or controlled.
Zoe had been bullied and abused in foster care. Vivi had been left to take the fall for a wayward young heiress from a powerful family. In short, life wasn’t fair, Winnie conceded unhappily. She had first learned that when her loving, hardworking parents had died at the hands of a drunk driver and she had learned it afresh when she had trustingly given her heart to a man who had broken it.
But Eros wasn’t going to get his hands on Teddy too, she swore vehemently to herself. She would fight back by appealing to her grandfather for help. The older man wanted her to marry some man of his choosing, so he would hardly support the idea of her marrying Eros, nor would he want Eros to have more power over his grandson than he had.
Indeed, so worked up was Winnie that she could not even wait until she got home to speak to Stam Fotakis. She phoned her grandfather on the way home and told him that Eros had demanded that she marry him.
‘It’s past time,’ Stam commented, sending her reeling with that unforeseen response. ‘But better late than never. He’s the boy’s father and when you marry him, my grandson gets his name and his birthright. Nevrakis isn’t from an old family but he has good social standing and pots of money and at least he’s not a spendthrift, womanising idiot like his late father...’
Winnie was gobsmacked by that reply enumerating Eros’s advantages and it momentarily silenced her.
‘Of course, you’ll marry him. Why wouldn’t you? He owes you a wedding ring,’ her grandfather informed her sternly. ‘It’ll put right everything that was done wrong. Tell me the date and I’ll even put in an appearance on the day.’
‘I was planning to ask you to get me a good lawyer to fight him,’ Winnie almost whispered, already reckoning that that was a hope doomed to failure.
‘No, you’ll have the benefit of my legal team when you’re divorcing him,’ Stam assured her with calm emphasis.
‘But if I don’t marry him, he’s threatening to fight me for custody of Teddy.’
‘But why wouldn’t you want to marry him and put everything right?’ the older man demanded in what sounded like honest disbelief. ‘You said you would marry to please me.’
‘Yes...anyone but Eros,’ Winnie mumbled shakily.
‘Nevrakis is my choice but don’t worry, you and the little boy will be coming home with me after the wedding,’ Stam informed her with immense satisfaction.
No way was he prepared to entrust Nevrakis with his granddaughter and great-grandson’s future happiness, Stam reflected grimly. He would care for Winnie and Teddy, and give them the support and security that they needed to flourish. How could he possibly trust Nevrakis to do that for him? Neither respect nor care had featured in Nevrakis’s behaviour during his affair with Winnie and Stam had never believed that a leopard could change his spots. Winnie and Teddy would be safer with him. It was his job to ensure that no further harm came to his family, so naturally they would have to leave Nevrakis and come home with Stam after the wedding. That was the only way that he could fully protect the pair of them from further harm.
It occurred to Winnie, even in her shell-shocked state of betrayal, that Eros wouldn’t like getting married and then finding that his wife and child had flown, and she tottered into the house, only to be engulfed by her sisters and their frantic questions. For the first time ever, she found herself being less than honest with her siblings. How could she tell them that Eros had threatened to expose their secrets and frailties in an open courtroom? It would seriously distress and frighten them.
My goodness, had her grandfather engineered Eros’s sudden reappearance in her life? What else was she to believe? Stam Fotakis was a control freak. He liked to pull strings, enjoyed manipulating people into doing his bidding. Was it her grandfather who had told Eros about Teddy? She should have worked out that reality from the minute Eros had appeared without warning, she censured herself severely. Where had her wits been when she’d accepted that that was only a coincidence? Combined with her grandfather’s admission that he wanted her to marry Eros and Eros’s sudden proposal, she felt as though she had been dangled like bait on a fish hook. What else didn’t she know? What else had either man not told her? It infuriated her to be left in ignorance.
‘Why the hell would you want to marry him?’ Vivi demanded furiously.
Zoe cleared her throat. ‘He’s gorgeous, he’s rich and she used to love him and he’s Teddy’s father. I disagree but I can understand where Grandad’s coming from. Those inducements do provide quite a strong argument.’
‘He’s a rat!’ Vivi objected.
‘We also have John and Liz and Grandad’s proposition to consider,’ Winnie reminded her sisters quietly. ‘He wants me to marry Eros and if I don’t have to live with him, I think, I think I’ll do it and that’ll be that, my duty done.’
‘But you can’t,’ Vivi argued emotively, her eyes full of compassion. ‘Let’s face it, you really don’t want to be forced to have anything to do with Eros Nevrakis.’
‘No, but beggars don’t have choices,’ Winnie breathed starkly. ‘This is the price for my having made the mistake of having an affair with him. I’ll do it for Teddy and for John and Liz.’
But she lay in bed that night thinking about that kiss she had succumbed to, and hating herself like poison for still being that weak and vulnerable with a man who had almost destroyed her two years earlier. She had spent weeks locked in her bedroom before she had found employment, listening to songs of heartbreak on endless replay until the reality that she was pregnant and had to make plans for the future had finally pierced her shell of self-pity and made her pick herself up and shake herself down again.
A marriage that was only a marriage on paper to satisfy her grandfather would suit her to perfection. Eros wouldn’t be able to threaten her or her sisters with her grandfather behind