Lithe, bronzed and truly magnificent, Cristo reappeared with a towel wrapped round his lean hips just as a knock sounded on the bedroom door. ‘I told Vincenzo to bring up dinner,’ he remarked carelessly.
Erin scrambled out of bed naked and vanished into the bathroom to use the shower. She was on automatic pilot, desperate to escape his presence lest she lose what little distance she had contrived to achieve. Stepping out of the shower again, she saw the black towelling robe hanging on the back of the door and made use of it because she hadn’t packed anything that practical. She rolled up the sleeves, tied the sash tight.
Cristo had donned close-fitting jeans and a black tee. A heated trolley now stood beside the small table in the corner.
‘How did Vincenzo get all that food up here?’ she asked stiffly.
‘There’s a lift. The last owner was an elderly lady with mobility problems.’
‘When did you buy this place?’
‘About a year ago. I wanted somewhere to relax between business trips,’ Cristo said, sounding amazingly calm and distant after what they had just shared. ‘What would you like to eat?’
‘I’ll see to myself.’ Her tummy rumbled as, maintaining a scrupulous distance from his lean, powerful body, she studied the tempting array of dishes. She was surprised that she was so hungry but then nervous tension had pretty much killed her appetite over the previous forty-eight hours while she was forced to pretend to everyone around her that life was normal. She chose meat-stuffed tortelloni and Panzanella salad and lifted a slice of home baked bread.
His lean, darkly handsome face composed, Cristo poured wine for them both and sat down in a fluid movement. His assurance set her teeth on edge. He had blasted her pride and confidence out of existence because all of a sudden she didn’t know who she was any more. She was not the mature, self-contained woman she had believed she was and that acknowledgement hurt.
‘Doesn’t it bother you that you blackmailed me into bed?’ Erin shot at him abruptly.
‘It might have started out that way, but that’s not how it concluded,’ Cristo fielded smooth as glass, his gaze welded to her. Gleaming silvery fair hair tumbled loose round her slight shoulders, accentuating her flawless features. He had burned for her from the first moment he saw her standing wet and tousled beside the swimming pool where they had met. He had burned the same way when he met her again in Sam Morton’s office. He wasn’t happy that she set him on fire. He wasn’t happy that one wildly exciting taste of her had only primed him to want the next. Toxic, he reminded himself grimly.
Erin met cool, measuring, dark golden eyes that contained not an ounce of remorse and gritted her teeth, afraid to utter a word in her own defence, for what exactly could she say? They both knew that she had not played the part of an unwilling victim. ‘I don’t understand why you wanted me here,’ she admitted tightly. ‘After all, when we split up, you made it clear that you were bored with our relationship.’
Cristo became very still. ‘I never said I was bored.’
Barely forgotten frustration invaded Erin afresh. It was a throwback to the bewilderment of the past when she had tormented herself for months in the aftermath of their breakup wondering what she had done or not done to make him want his freedom back. Suddenly that old curiosity was biting into her like a knife point. ‘Then why did you ditch me?’
His lean, strong face was impassive. ‘I doubt that you want the answer to that question.’
Erin stabbed a piece of juicy tomato with her fork. ‘It’s a long time ago, Cristo,’ she said drily.
‘Precisely,’ he slotted in sardonically.
‘But I would still like to know why,’ Erin completed doggedly.
Cristo set down his wine glass, brilliant dark eyes pinned to her and she felt the chill like ice water spilling across her skin. ‘You cheated on me …’
Erin stared back at him in astonishment. ‘No. I didn’t.’
‘I caught the guy in your bed in your hotel room the night after your birthday bash,’ Cristo countered flatly. ‘You cheated on me.’
Erin was frowning. ‘Who did you see in my hotel room?’
Cristo shrugged a broad shoulder and dealt her a satiric glance. ‘I have no idea who he was. I let myself into the room intending to surprise you and instead I got the surprise.’
Erin was stunned. ‘But I wasn’t there—you didn’t see me.’
Cristo dealt her a scornful look. ‘I saw the man, the discarded clothes, the wine glasses and I could hear the shower running in the bathroom. I didn’t need to see you as well.’
Erin was so tense she was barely breathing. In a sudden movement she pushed back her chair and stood upright, her amethyst eyes bright with anger. ‘Well, actually you did because that wasn’t me in the bathroom! I didn’t even stay in London that night.’
Cristo gave her an unimpressed look. ‘It was your room and he was in your bed—’
Anger coursed through her in a torrent of incredulous rage. ‘And you’re only telling me this now, nearly three years later? Why didn’t you mention it at the time?’
‘I didn’t see any point in staging a messy confrontation. I had seen all I needed to see,’ Cristo derided with harsh assurance.
ERIN genuinely wanted to strangle Cristo at that moment. In the space of seconds she was reviewing the misery she had endured after their parting and finally grasping why he had dumped her with so little fanfare. Hostility at his latest misjudgement roared through her, her facial bones drawing taut below her fine skin. ‘You had seen all you needed to see—is that a fact?’ she snapped back furiously.
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