LITMIR.BIZ

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body. ‘Sam always likes to wind down with a chat at the end of the day and he’s very excited about the possibility of selling up.’

      ‘That’s all right for him, but if he does sell up where’s it going to leave you and the rest of the employees?’ Deidre questioned worriedly. ‘We couldn’t possibly manage on my pension.’

      Erin patted her mother’s tense shoulder gently. ‘We’ll survive. Apparently the law protects our jobs in a takeover. But I’ll find work somewhere else if need be.’

      ‘It won’t be easy with the state the economy’s in. There aren’t many jobs out there to find,’ the older woman protested.

      ‘We’ll be all right,’ Erin pronounced with a confidence that she didn’t feel and a guilty conscience that she had not felt able to tell her mother that Cristo Donakis was Sam’s potential buyer.

      But that news would only inflame Deidre Turner, who would also demand to know why her daughter had not made instant use of her access to Cristo to finally tell him that he was a father. In addition her mother was a constant worrier, always in search of the next black cloud on the horizon, and Erin only shared bad news with the older woman if she had no other choice. Checking that her daughter, Nuala, Lorcan’s twin sister, was still soundly asleep, curled up in a little round cosy ball inside her cot, Erin returned to bed and lay there in the darkness feeling every bit as anxious as her mother, if not more, as she struggled to count blessings rather than worries.

      They lived in a comfortable terraced house. It was rented, not owned. Deidre, predictably imagining less prosperous times ahead, had decided that Erin borrowing money to buy a property for them was far too risky a venture. Her mother’s attitude had irritated Erin at the time, but now, with the future danger of unemployment on her mind again she was relieved to be a tenant living in modest accommodation. Sam had reassured her about her job, reminding her that the current legislation would protect his staff with guaranteed employment under the new ownership. But there was often a way round such rules, Erin ruminated worriedly, and, when she was already aware that Cristo didn’t want her on his staff, it would only be sensible to immediately begin looking for a new position. Unhappily that might take months to achieve but it was doable, wasn’t it? She had to be more positive, stronger, fired up and ready to meet the challenges ahead.

      But, Cristo was not a challenge. He was like a great big massive rock set squarely in her path and she didn’t know how to get round such an obstacle. He believed she had stolen from him. But why hadn’t he pursued that at the time? Why hadn’t he called in the police? Erin was thinking back hard, reckoning that by the time Cristo received proof of her supposed theft he would have been married. Had he put the police on her, the fact that she was his ex would soon have emerged and perhaps got into the newspapers. Would that have embarrassed him? She didn’t think that the Cristo she recalled would have embarrassed that easily. But that publicity might have embarrassed or annoyed his bride. Was it even possible that Lisandra and Erin had both been in a relationship with Cristo at the same time? And that he had feared having that fact exposed? After all, Cristo had got married barely three months after ditching Erin and few couples went from first meeting to marrying that fast. Had he been two-timing both of them? She had never had cause to believe that he was unfaithful to her but refused to believe that he would be incapable of such behaviour. After all, what had she ever really known about Cristo when she had not even suspected that he was about to dump her?

      Erin had always liked things safe and certain and she never took risks. The one time she had—Cristo—it had gone badly wrong. On that level she and Cristo were total opposites because nothing thrilled Cristo more than taking a risk or meeting a challenge. So when he had started calling her to ask her out after finally beating her at swimming she had said no, sorry, again and again and again until he had finally manoeuvred her into attending a party at his apartment, urging her to bring friends as her guests.

      Her presence bolstered by the presence of Elaine and Tom, it had proved a strangely magical evening with Cristo, she later appreciated, on his very best behaviour. At the end of the night Cristo had kissed her for the first time and that single kiss had been so explosive, it had blown the lid off her wildest dreams … and terrified her. She had known straight off that Cristo Donakis was a high-risk venture: lethally dangerous to her peace of mind.

      ‘I like you … I do like you,’ she had told Cristo lamely while still shaking like a leaf in the aftermath of the intense passion that had flared up between them. ‘Why can’t we just be friends?’

      ‘Friends?’ Cristo had echoed as though that word had never come his way before.

      ‘That’s what I’d prefer,’ she had said brightly.

      ‘I don’t do that,’ he had told her drily.

      With those reservations she’d had more sense at the outset of their affair than she had shown later on, she acknowledged painfully. And once she had had the twins, her life had been turned upside down. She was ashamed to realise that she had been so angry with Cristo in that hotel suite that she had actually been threatening to tell him she was the mother of his children. What aberration had almost driven her to that insane brink? He would not want her children, would never agree to take on the role of father, would only angrily resent the position she put him in and make her feel small and humiliated, a burden he resented. Surely she was entitled to retain some pride when there was no perceptible advantage to telling him the truth?

      Cristo had, after all, once confided in her that one of his friends’ girlfriends had had a termination. ‘It broke them up,’ he had commented flatly. ‘Few couples survive that sort of stress. I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready for children. I prefer my life without baggage.’

      And she had got the not exactly subtle message he had taken the trouble to put across, his so clever dark eyes pinned to hers: Don’t do that to me! Revealingly, it had been the one and only time he ever chose to make her a party to confidential information about someone he knew for Cristo was, by instinct, very discreet. She had taken it as a warning that if she fell pregnant, he would want her to have a termination and their relationship would be over. It still infuriated her that it had actually been entirely his fault that she had conceived and, although she had later grown desperate enough to try and contact him to ask for financial help, she had known even then that the announcement she had to make of his impending fatherhood would infuriate him. Cristo was too arrogant and controlling to appreciate surprises from any source. That a woman could give birth to a baby without a man’s prior agreement to accept the responsibility would no doubt strike him as very unfair. No, she saw no point whatsoever in telling Cristo that he was the father of two young children.

      Even so, what was she planning to do about his threat to reveal that file of impressive evidence? Cristo was threatening the security of her entire family. Everything she had worked to achieve could vanish overnight. Not only Erin, but her mother and her children would pay the cost of her losing her job and salary. On the other hand, if she could sink her pride enough to play Cristo’s cruel game, that file would never see the light of day and at the very least she would have another year of safe employment and plenty of time in which to search for an alternative position. What was one weekend out of the rest of her life, really? She pictured her mother’s face earlier, drawn and troubled as she fretted about the hotel group even changing hands. Life had taught Deidre Turner to fear the unknown and the unexpected. She did not deserve to be caught up in the upheaval that was gathering on her daughter’s horizon and there was little Erin would not have done to protect her children from the instability she had suffered growing up.

      Unhappily, Erin believed that the entire situation was her own fault. Hadn’t she ignored everybody’s advice in getting involved with Cristo in the first place? Nobody had had a good word to say about Cristo, pointing out that his reputation as a womaniser spoke for him. And why had she made herself even more dependent by agreeing to go and work for him? Was that wise? her friends had asked worriedly. And no, nothing she had done that year with Cristo had been wise. Hadn’t she hung on in there even when the going got rough and her lover’s lack of commitment was blatantly obvious? He had not even managed to make it back into the UK to celebrate her last birthday with her. She had asked for trouble

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