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 set 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.’
Erin followed him into the bathroom. ‘We definitely are, Cristo. You can’t accuse me of infidelity and expect me to accept it in silence! What’s wrong with you? You think I’m a thief as well but you said nothing about that either at the time. In retrospect don’t you find all this muck being flung at me a little strange?’
Cristo was engaged in stripping off his wine-stained clothing. ‘In what way strange?’ he queried curtly.
‘It’s beginning to look to me like someone set out to deliberately discredit me in your eyes.’
His handsome mouth took on a sardonic curve as he peeled off his jeans and left them in a heap. ‘That sounds like paranoia.’
Erin averted her attention as he stripped off his boxers and discovered that she was studying his long, powerful, hair-roughened thighs instead. The colour in her cheeks heightened as she lifted her head again, struggling to blot out the sight of the lean ropes of muscle banding his powerful torso. ‘There’s nothing paranoid about my suspicions—’
‘You cheated on me and I found out … get over it,’ Cristo advised witheringly as he switched on the shower and stepped in, utterly unconcerned by the nudity of his lean bronzed body. But then he had never been shy. ‘It’s ancient history. Don’t try to resurrect it.’
‘I wish I’d hit you with that bottle.’
Cristo rammed back the shower door and rested cold dark eyes of warning on her angry, defiant face. ‘Don’t you ever do anything like that again or I won’t be responsible for what I do.’
Erin clashed with scorching golden eyes and her tummy lurched. Rage washed over her again because butterflies were leaping in her pelvis. Infuriatingly her body was reacting to him with all the control of an infatuated adolescent. ‘I wish I had cheated on you … the way you treated me, I might as well have done!’
She stalked out of the bathroom. He had knocked her for six with that accusation. He had also taught her that she didn’t know him as well as she had always believed she did. Although she had recognised his reserve she had never dreamt that he might have the capacity to keep such big secrets from her. What else didn’t she know about Cristo? And what else had happened that had caused him to doubt her loyalty? What were those other ‘things’ he had grudgingly mentioned? Yanking the bedspread off the bed, and lifting a pillow, she made up the sofa on the far side of the room for her occupation.
‘You’re not sleeping over there,’ Cristo told her tautly.
‘I’m certainly not getting back into a bed with a man who thinks I’m a slut as well as a thief!’ Erin replied with spirit, pale hair bouncing on her shoulders as she spun round to face him.
Stark naked, Cristo was hauling fresh clothing from drawers. He shot her a censorious appraisal from brilliant dark eyes. ‘We have a deal—’
‘But I intend to add my own conditions,’ Erin declared thinly. ‘I’ll keep to our agreement if—’
‘Too late—we already have a deal.’
‘If that’s your attitude I’m sleeping on the sofa.’
His thick sooty lashes lowered on stunning golden eyes while he surveyed her. ‘Do you cheat at cards too?’
‘You ought to know—you taught me to play,’ she reminded him.
The silence buzzed like an angry wasp. Cristo continued to watch her, his attention locked to the sultry pink pout of her mouth. He wished he had kept his own shut and could not think why he had admitted that he knew of her betrayal. Everything had been going so well until she decided that honour demanded she now prove that she was pure as the driven snow. In exasperation he scored long brown fingers through his damp black hair. ‘What conditions?’ he demanded impatiently.
‘I’ll get back into that bed if—and only if—you agree to talk to Tom, who will verify that he passed the key card for the room to his brother and later dropped me off at the hospital a hundred miles away to be with my mother.’
Cristo looked pained. ‘That’s ridiculous.’
Erin tilted her chin. ‘No, it’s the least of what you owe me.’