‘I’m not sure I agree,’ Eros sidestepped quietly. ‘I’m certain you could offer your granddaughter to any one of a dozen wealthy, successful men and create an enthusiastic stampede... Why me?’
‘You’re not a fool,’ Stam conceded, his weathered face grim at that grudging acknowledgement because he wasn’t sure he wanted a grandson-in-law strong enough to stand up to him.
‘I hope not,’ Eros said in a calmer tone, but his brain was working at supersonic speed in an effort to work out the mystery of Fotakis’s interest in him as a potential grandson-in-law. ‘A single parent, you said...’ he added, playing for time.
‘Ne... Yes, a handsome little boy, my great-grandson.’ Stam could not hide the possessive note in his voice or the pride because both his sons were dead and the sight of that little boy had softened his tough old heart. ‘He needs a father figure, for who can tell how many years I have left?’
‘You seem hale and hearty to me,’ Eros murmured drily. ‘But you still haven’t explained why you have chosen me for this role.’
‘And you still haven’t explained how much you’re willing to sacrifice to regain that island,’ Stam countered smoothly. ‘But I can assure you that if you fail to marry my granddaughter, I will ensure that you never reclaim Trilis.’
‘Then we would appear to have reached the end of our meeting,’ Eros retorted levelly, vaulting upright with the fluid grace of an athlete. ‘I have no desire to remarry, and while I would like to reclaim Trilis, the loss of my freedom would be too high a price to pay.’
Stam loosed a sardonic laugh. ‘Even if my great-grandson is also...your son?’
Those two words halted Eros in his tracks. His handsome dark head turned back, an expression of sheer incredulity etched in his lean bronzed features. ‘Impossible!’ he grated. ‘I have no children!’
Stam surveyed him with loathing, as yet unconvinced that Eros was entirely unaware that Winnie had been pregnant when she had left his country house. ‘Two more words: Winnie Mardas... Of course, you may not remember her?’
‘Winnie?’ Eros Nevrakis echoed in raw disbelief. ‘She’s your granddaughter?’
‘Surprise...surprise,’ Stam said meanly.
Eros hovered, his big powerful physique screaming with tension and scantily leashed energy. ‘And you say...she has had my child? My son?’
‘I do,’ Stam confirmed. ‘Of course, you’re fully able to carry out your own DNA testing if you so wish. That’s your business. All I care about is that you marry her without telling her that I interfered. Is that clear?’
Nothing was clear to Eros in that moment. He was in a severe state of shock laced with outrage. Two years back when he had last seen her, Winnie hadn’t told him that she was pregnant, hadn’t even hinted at such a possibility. She had just walked out of his life and never got back in touch. He was instantaneously enraged and equally appalled. A man had a right to know that he was a father, didn’t he? The days when a man was routinely left in ignorance of paternity were long gone. These days a man’s importance in the parenting stakes was supposed to be valued and acknowledged. Eros knew that the first person he would be consulting would be a lawyer.
‘Eros...’ Stam prompted. ‘Did you hear what I said?’
‘Is she here? Is she in Greece?’ Eros demanded wrathfully.
‘Sadly not, she’s still in London living with her sisters. I can give you the address.’
‘Please do.’ Eros’s clipped tone denoted savage impatience.
‘You are not to tell her that I gave you the address,’ Stam warned him as he tossed him a piece of paper already prepared with the relevant details. ‘You do not tell her that you have met me and discussed her personal affairs.’
‘You like to be the ringmaster without the applause?’ Eros said derisively. ‘Not sure I can deliver that.’
For all his seventy-odd years, Stam reared out of his chair like a coiled spring bouncing back into shape. ‘If you let out one word of my role in this mess, I will destroy you!’ he raked back at the younger man in threat. ‘And you know I can do it!’
‘But you don’t know me,’ Eros tossed back with perfect indifference to how Stam Fotakis felt about anything he did. He reckoned that Bull Fotakis could do many things to make business more challenging, but Eros was a billionaire in his own right with equally powerful friends and he was confident that the older man could not destroy him.
Stam dealt him a crushing appraisal in retribution for his disrespect. ‘A married man taking one of his domestic staff to bed? I understand you perfectly. You picked her because she was poor and powerless and unlikely to be indiscreet for fear of dismissal. You made her your mistress and shifted her down to your country house for sleazy weekends. Be assured that I know exactly what kind of a man you are! A cheating, manipulative bastard!’
Eros flung back his handsome head, black curls tumbling back from his brilliant green eyes. ‘And yet you want me to marry Winnie?’
‘I want my great-grandson legitimised,’ Stam ground out with finality. ‘You get your precious island back. I don’t expect you to live with Winnie or stay with her. In fact, I don’t want you to because she could do a hell of a lot better than you as a husband and that little boy will have me as a male role model! He doesn’t need you!’
Vexed way beyond the limit of expressing his explosive emotions, Eros swung on his heel and walked out, his wide shoulders and long back rigid while he mentally rained down the hellfire of revenge on Winnie and her offensive grandfather. How dared they?
How dared they?
Talk and behave as though he were powerless? Dismiss his rights as a father as though they did not exist? Suggest he could have no value as a parent? That, indeed, he would be a negative influence on his own child? They would pay for those slurs, one way or another they would both pay, Eros swore with inner vehemence.
Even worse, the implication that he was the sort of man who preyed on his domestic staff like some shady creep! Winnie had never been his mistress. Eros had never had one and certainly not during his marriage to Tasha. He had been celibate for years and then Winnie had appeared and somehow... His teeth gritted as he thrust the memory away, along with all his other memories of Winnie Mardas. The affair had been a mistake, a very human mistake but still a mistake. He knew that very well. Temptation had led to an error and then ultimately to freedom, he reminded himself, shelving that train of thought for something much more important.
He had a child... He had a son, whose name he didn’t even know! Engaged in frantic mathematical calculations, Eros worked out that his little boy had to be under two years of age, a mere toddler. A faint shard of relief touched him. That wasn’t too late for a child to meet his father for the first time. How much worse would it have been if he had never found out or if the child had been much older and embittered by his father’s long absence from his life?
Yeah, it could have been worse, he jeered at himself for such ruminations. But not much worse... Stam Fotakis threatening him, trying to stampede him into marriage when he had only just escaped an imprudent marriage, his first child estranged from him, the mother of his child equally estranged and her subsequent behaviour were inexcusable. Seriously, how could the situation have been worse?
And the whole chaotic fiasco stemmed from one mistake. Eros’s own mistake, he acknowledged grudgingly. He had naively agreed to marry a young woman he didn’t love and didn’t desire to soothe a dying man’s fears about his daughter’s future. But it had never been