let the arrangements take their course and wait for Eros to get stung in the tail by Stam Fotakis just as she and her sisters had been. Eros would not get her as a wife and he would not get Teddy either and, bearing in mind the way he had threatened her and Vivi and Zoe, that was exactly what he deserved... Wasn’t it?
She had to look after Vivi and Zoe. Hadn’t that always been her role as big sister? Yet her sisters had been separated from her as children and she had not been able to prevent them from suffering through unhappy and challenging experiences in foster care. That sad failure still on her conscience, Winnie knew that there was nothing she wouldn’t do to protect her sisters’ well-being now that they were adults.
And naturally she wanted nothing more to do with Eros, naturally she didn’t want to live with the man! After all, he had pulled the wool over her eyes before and hurt her terribly. Obviously, she didn’t want to give him another opportunity! Eros was her fatal flaw, her weakness. It was a shameful truth but there it was. She had no common sense around him and her defences were paper-thin. If she didn’t guard herself, she would get hurt again and spending too much time exposed to Eros was an inexorable way of putting herself in jeopardy. She would just be an accident waiting to happen, she thought with a shiver of foreboding.
WINNIE WOULD HAVE been surprised to appreciate that her future husband on paper only was well aware of the size and calibre of the odds stacked up against him. Eros was shrewd and he already knew that his future grandfather-in-law loathed him for the sin of turning his granddaughter into an unmarried mother. Forewarned was forearmed as far as Eros was concerned and no sooner had Eros received a cool little phone call from Winnie informing him that she had thought the situation over and that she would marry him than he began putting in place the kind of security he had never dreamt he would have to hire.
Nevertheless, Stamboulas Fotakis was devious, and Eros had no intention of letting the older man control or manipulate him. Stam would have to be satisfied with having shocked Eros with the news that he was a father at their first meeting, for it was the only winning move he would get to make in the game unfolding. Eros would not allow either his wife or his child to be damaged by the conflict between himself and Teddy’s great-grandfather. Stam would have to wise up and accept the status quo, Eros reflected grimly, determined to protect his future family from every malign influence, including that of an old man who was bitter and unforgiving.
While Eros was plotting with the same dexterity that his future grandfather-in-law excelled at, Winnie was shyly admitting that she was about to marry Teddy’s father to John and Liz Brooke and receiving their entirely innocent approval and congratulations, for she had never told them that Eros had been a married man at the time of her son’s conception. Vivi rolled her eyes in sympathy for that concealment of the unlovely truth and sat chatting to one of the teenage foster kids at the kitchen table while Zoe, as usual, busied herself round the kitchen as a background girl, hoping to deflect any interest anyone might have in her.
‘I know it may seem old-fashioned for you young parents to get married these days but I’m very pleased,’ Liz confided, squeezing Winnie’s small hand, her plump face wreathed in a bright smile of pleasure. ‘Marriage seems more secure to my generation. I wasn’t criticising.’
‘No, I know you weren’t.’ Winnie gave the older woman a hug while John, a quiet man at the best of times, beamed approval and mentioned that it would do Teddy good to have a father around.
The very first pang of guilt pierced Winnie at that moment because she knew she would be leaving Eros straight after the wedding to return to her grandfather’s house. Teddy wasn’t going to have a father around. Instead he would only enjoy occasional visits from him. Unfortunately for her, it went against her inherently honest nature to deceive anyone, even Eros. She knew that Eros was expecting her to stay with him, to act as a wife and a mother by his side, and the awareness of that lowering fact prevented her from experiencing even an ounce of satisfaction over the reality that she would be spiking Eros’s big guns and threats with superior power.
Now, however, Winnie was finally looking beneath those superficial reactions and admitting a less welcome truth to herself. Frankly, she was terrified of the mere prospect of having to live with Eros, she admitted guiltily. In such a position she would end up letting her guard slip and she would let him hurt her all over again. In reality she was being a total coward about Eros because she was struggling to keep everyone else happy. She wanted to please her grandfather, save John and Liz and protect her siblings, and she could see no way other than marrying Eros to achieve those goals. What other option did she have?
So, of course, she was going to have to leave Eros after the wedding. That would make her grandfather and her sisters happy and it would also ensure that she didn’t need to risk herself in Eros’s radius again. It wouldn’t make Eros happy, she acknowledged ruefully, but since she couldn’t credit that he really wanted to marry her, she was convinced that he would soon see the benefits of almost immediately regaining his freedom.
Her grandfather phoned her when she returned home, telling her with positive good cheer that he had deposited sufficient funds in her bank account to cover what he called ‘wedding fripperies.’ ‘All you have to do is buy your and your sisters’ dresses. I will take care of everything else.’
In that assumption, however, Stamboulas Fotakis discovered himself to be sadly mistaken because Winnie’s future husband informed him that the ceremony of marriage had to take place on the island of Trilis because it had been where his ancestors had married. Stam had never viewed Nevrakis as a sentimental man but on that one point the younger man was stubbornly immovable, and Stam knew that he could hardly refuse his future grandson-in-law the right to use the island and the house he had already promised him because it would be a sign of bad faith. Exasperated, Winnie’s grandfather found himself having to adjust his plans to fit someone else’s and it had been a very long time since Stam had suffered through that experience and bitten his tongue.
Perfectly conscious that he was creating waves, Eros flew out to Greece and organised a helicopter to take him out to the private island where no Nevrakis of his acquaintance had set foot in over thirty years. Even when his parents had still been together they had not visited the island because his father had very much preferred city life. The house had been renovated in the eighties, presumably sometime after Winnie’s grandfather had acquired ownership, and since then it had been maintained in pristine condition, so, on that score, Eros had no complaints. The property was fully fit for occupation and for wedding catering.
Eros stood on the cliff gazing out to sea, enjoying the sunlight slowly tapering into a peach-coloured sunset while he thought with satisfaction about showing that same view to his son and to his wife. He was certain that Winnie had absolutely no idea of her grandfather’s intention of stealing her and Teddy back on their wedding day. Unfortunately for Fotakis, the minute he had gone into a rant at their first meeting, insisting that neither Winnie nor Teddy actually needed Eros in their lives, Eros had smelled a rat and acted accordingly.
Where Winnie was concerned, however, he was convinced that she did not have a single sly, cheating bone in her little curvy body. That was, after all, what had first attracted him to her, he freely acknowledged.
He could read her expressive face like a picture book. She scored low in the feminine guile and calculation stakes and she didn’t play power games like her grandfather or like many of the women Eros had met in his thirty years. No, what you saw was what you got with Winnie, unlike her grandfather, prepared to pressure a bridegroom into a wedding that he had no intention of allowing to become a marriage. Stam, however, was known for having done something similar with his eldest son, refusing to accept the wife his son had chosen and eventually becoming estranged from his own flesh and blood over his choice of partner. It was a track record that telegraphed a loud warning to Eros that he was dealing with a man who only ever paid heed to his own feelings and beliefs. He had displayed sufficient antipathy for Eros to recognise that the older man would not willingly accept him as a member of his family