LITMIR.BIZ

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lace bra and panties, a blue garter adorning one slim stocking-clad thigh.

      ‘I like the underpinnings,’ Cristo teased, fiery dark eyes welded to her scantily clad figure as he appraised her with lingering intensity. ‘But I’ll like you out of them even better and after a week of celibacy it’s overkill.’

      ‘Is it?’ Her brows lifted, her uncertainty visible.

      Laughing, Cristo picked her up and dropped her down on the gloriously comfortable bed. ‘You look gorgeous but I did notice that the separate bedrooms made your mother more comfortable in our home, latria mou.’

      ‘I wanted tonight to be special,’ Erin whispered, running a possessive hand up a shirt-clad arm.

      He sat up and discarded his shirt with alacrity, revealing a hard brown torso taut and roped with muscle. She spread her fingers there instead, revelling in the solid reassuring beat of his heart. ‘I forgot to tell you that I loved you.’

      ‘And as punishment you have to tell me at least ten times every day,’ Cristo delivered, lowering his head to claim a long passionate kiss that sent her hands up to clasp his head. ‘You know, I thought it might take you much longer to forgive me for not being there when you needed me … and even worse marrying another woman.’

      Erin smiled. ‘No, I know you’ve been through tough times too. What I didn’t understand is why you were suddenly doing all the romantic stuff you never did before. Do you remember what our first ever row was about?’

      ‘I forgot Valentine’s Day once we were dating. Well, actually I didn’t. I’d always avoided the mushy stuff as it raises unfair expectations and I was embarrassed about the one I sent you before you agreed to go out with me.’

      ‘A card?’ Erin scorned. ‘A card would rouse expectations?’

      Cristo winced. ‘I thought that sort of thing, like meeting each other’s families, should be kept for someone you’re serious about. We had only been together eleven months and twenty three days …’

      Her eyes widened. ‘You counted how long we were together?’

      ‘I was always a maths whizz,’ Cristo fielded deadpan.

      Erin was impressed. She glanced around her candlelit flower-bedecked bower and smiled happily at what that display said: she had finally made the grade for the mushy stuff! He would never ignore Valentine’s Day again. She gazed up at him, enthralled by his lean, darkly handsome features and the tender look in his beautiful dark eyes.

      ‘I missed you so much!’ he breathed suddenly. ‘Something would remind me and then, boom, all these images would flood my head. And then I would remember what I thought you had done and get really angry that I was thinking about you again.’

      Erin reached up and kissed him. ‘That time is gone. Now we’ve got something better and stronger, something that will last—’

      ‘For ever,’ he slotted in with determination.

      Her eyes slid shut as he claimed her parted lips in another hungry, demanding kiss. Heat spread inside her with tingling, burning energy and she gave herself up to desire and happiness without any sense of fear at all.

      Two years later, Erin hosted the grand opening of Cristo’s first spa hotel on Thesos. Built beside a secluded beach and surrounded by lush pine forest, it provided a back-to-nature retreat with luxury on tap for the discerning traveller, and as the latest must-have place to go it was already fully booked six months in advance. As Cristo had been held up, Vasos and Appollonia Denes were by her side.

      A sea change had taken place in her relationship with the older couple. The passage of time had soothed the bad memories of the past and Erin’s natural resentment. Appollonia had grown stronger and calmer and as she recovered from her excessive nervousness and fatal tendency to apologise for everything had confided that her greatest fear had always been that Cristo would discover what she had done and refuse to forgive her. Once the secret was out, Appollonia had had to deal with her guilt, and forging a healthy, normal relationship with Erin and the twins had gone a long way to achieving that.

      Vasos had ultimately accepted a loan from Cristo to save his business but had insisted that Cristo accept a partnership in the firm, an arrangement that had left both men with their pride and principles intact. Cristo had been overjoyed that Erin’s intervention had wrought a change in his foster father’s stubborn outlook.

      For the first year of her marriage Erin had spent a great deal of time checking out the spa facilities in her husband’s hotel empire and travelling a great deal. Jenny and the twins had often accompanied her while her mother was a frequent visitor to Thesos. During the second year Erin had begun supervising the final touches to the new island spa, which was providing much needed work for the locals and had already prompted the opening of several tourist-type businesses in the village.

      Sheathed in a shimmering silver evening gown, she posed for photographers and waved back as Sam and his former secretary, Janice, raised their glasses to salute her from across the room. Sam Morton was about to embark on a worldwide cruise with his recently acquired bride. Erin smiled warmly at the other couple, currently engaged in chatting to her mother, Deidre, thinking that she had been blind not to appreciate that Janice cared about Sam and that her removal from the scene would make it easier for Sam to see Janice in a different light. Sam had had to retire before he could appreciate how much he missed Janice’s company and a friendly dinner date to catch up on news had eventually resulted in his second marriage.

      ‘You look amazing, Mrs Donakis,’ a rich dark drawl purred above her head as a possessive hand curved to her hip.

      Erin whirled round. ‘Cristo, when did you get back?’

      ‘Half an hour ago. I had the quickest shower and change on record,’ he confided. ‘That’s it, though. I won’t be off on another trip for at least six weeks.’

      Erin feasted her eyes on her handsome husband. He looked spectacular in his dark designer suit. The female photographer was watching him as though dinner had just walked through the door, but Erin was accustomed to the buzz that Cristo brought to the women in a room and it didn’t bother her. Jenny came through the door with Lorcan and Nuala. Nuala, adorable in a fancy party dress, skipped over to show it off to her father, little hands holding out the skirt as if she were about to perform a curtsy.

      Lorcan took his hands out of his pockets at his father’s request and then ran off to try and climb the huge palm tree in the centre of the foyer.

      ‘Lorcan!’ Cristo yelled, and he strode over to lift his squirming son off the trunk and imprisoned him under one arm, talking to the little boy before setting him down again.

      ‘Lorcan’s such a boy,’ Nuala pronounced, rolling her eyes with pained superiority.

      Erin’s mother held out her hands to the children and they latched onto her immediately, begging her to take them down to the beach.

      ‘I wonder what the third one will be like,’ Cristo commented, his dark golden gaze dipping briefly to the barely perceptible bump visible below Erin’s dress.

      ‘A mix of our genes, some good, some bad.’

      ‘I can’t wait to see our baby,’ Cristo confessed.

      A warm sense of tenderness filled Erin, and only their public location stopped her leaning in to hug him. She hadn’t initially been sure about how another child would fit into their busy lives, but one of the main reasons she’d come round to the idea had been the awareness that Cristo had missed out on the experience of the twins as babies. While she had conceived faster than she had expected, she had thoroughly enjoyed having a supportive, interested male by her side to share every development in her pregnancy and the sight of Cristo with tears in his eyes when he saw the first scan of their child was one she would never forget.

      The evening wore on in chats with influential people and business associates. The twins were whisked home to bed and Cristo, his attention consistently returning to his wife’s lovely

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