The bathroom door stood ajar and he pressed it back. Fresh from the shower, Winnie was already towelling herself dry, a glorious vision of tumbled dark hair and damp pink sensuality, chocolate-brown eyes anxious as they zeroed in on him.
‘Er...what?’ she muttered awkwardly.
‘Entaxei... Okay, you win,’ Eros breathed tautly, his bone structure rigid. ‘I’ll tell you about my marriage.’
CLUTCHING HER TOWEL to her full breasts, Winnie froze in astonishment and stared back at Eros. ‘But you don’t want to talk about it...’
Eros shrugged a bare bronzed shoulder. ‘I owe you,’ he said flatly, striding back into the bedroom to rifle through the drawers in the dressing room.
Having followed him on stiff legs, Winnie sank down uneasily on the foot of the bed, watching while he dragged out a pair of jeans and began to pull them on, lean muscles flexing with his every graceful movement. Colour burned her cheeks and she couldn’t think straight for several moments because Eros was knocking her off balance on too many different levels at once.
‘You seem shocked that I’m willing to talk about my first marriage,’ Eros commented in surprise.
‘Even quite recently, you weren’t willing to do that,’ Winnie pointed out tightly, struggling to get her flailing emotions under control.
Eros sent her a steady look from his stunning green eyes. ‘I was too angry then but you’re my wife now. You have a right to know certain facts.’
Winnie nodded dumbly, fearful of what was coming next, wanting to know about that marriage and yet in the strangest way reluctant to know, because she was convinced that he was certain to tell her things that would hurt.
‘A property developer called Filipe Mantalos gave me my first business loan when the banks wouldn’t touch me,’ Eros told her, disconcerting her yet again with that opening. ‘I believe I mentioned Filipe to you before?’
‘Yes, I remember. He helped you out when you were starting up,’ she recalled vaguely.
Eros compressed his wide sensual mouth. ‘Without Filipe’s support and backing I would never have got that first business venture off the ground and into profit. At the time, Felipe was a widower with a daughter he adored called Tasha.’
Unprepared for the sound of that familiar name, Winnie flinched, wondering what else he was about to tell her. Had his first wife, Tasha, also been his mentor’s daughter? When he had first mentioned Filipe, Eros had been quite clear about Filipe’s role in his life when he was a younger man. For all intents and purposes, Filipe had been the father Eros’s own father had been too selfish to be and clearly the relationship had meant a lot to Eros.
‘Eight years ago, Filipe developed a brain tumour. He had surgery but the tumour returned and was eventually deemed inoperable,’ Eros told her gravely. ‘Filipe was always a very practical man. He immediately began sorting out his affairs and working out how best to protect Tasha, who was still a student. He was a wealthy man and he asked me to look after his daughter’s inheritance until she was old enough to handle the money herself but, because she was young and vulnerable and very much in love with me, he asked me if I would consider marrying her.’
‘Consider...marrying her?’ Winnie erupted into sudden speech with wide incredulous eyes. ‘What age was she, for goodness’ sake? Very much in love with you? You were already involved with her?’
‘No, prior to our marriage, I had no dealings with Tasha beyond sharing a dinner table with her occasionally in her father’s company. She was only seventeen and I haven’t dated a teenager since I was one myself,’ Eros countered drily. ‘I was simply a regular visitor to her home and a close friend of her father’s. Without any encouragement from me, Tasha decided that she had fallen in love with me and she convinced Filipe that it was a lasting love while I believed it was only a teenage infatuation. Her father, however, wanted her to be happy and he trusted me to look after her.’
‘Naturally, but—’
‘He knew I wasn’t in love with Tasha but neither was I in love with anyone else. He asked me to marry her and give the relationship a chance,’ Eros volunteered grimly. ‘He was dying. I couldn’t say no to him. Because I wanted him to leave this world in peace, I agreed and a wedding was arranged before Filipe’s condition deteriorated.’
‘You should’ve said no if you didn’t have feelings for her!’ Winnie argued helplessly. ‘It was emotional blackmail.’
Eros tensed even more. ‘It wasn’t like that. I believed that I knew what I was doing. I didn’t love Tasha but I did care what happened to her. She was a very emotional teenager and I didn’t want her to be alone and unprotected as I had once been myself. There are a lot of sharks in the world, particularly if you have money. And Filipe left Tasha very well provided for.’
‘If she was only seventeen, what age were you?’ Winnie pressed.
‘Twenty-five.’ Eros paced restively across to the windows, his discomfort at the subject he was talking about painfully apparent to her. ‘But it was a huge gap. She was a very young seventeen year old because her father had spoiled her and shielded her from real life. I was a very serious twenty five year old because my childhood had been less than idyllic and I knew how hard I would have to work to overcome my father’s bad reputation in business. Tasha and I had very little in common.’
Winnie released her pent-up breath in a slow hiss. ‘I think you were crazy to marry her. She would’ve been far too immature for you at that age and if she thought she loved you, marrying her was only encouraging her expectations.’
‘I didn’t encourage her.’ Eros’s proud dark head reared up and back and he sent her a reproving glance from glittering green eyes. ‘I didn’t take her to bed either. In fact, we never had sex.’
Brown eyes locked hard to his lean, darkly handsome features, Winnie stared back at him. ‘Never?’ she stressed in wonderment.
‘Never,’ Eros confirmed. ‘Tasha wanted us to have a normal marriage from the start but I disagreed. She wasn’t ready for an adult relationship and she deserved a husband who loved her. She also needed to have the freedom her father had denied her to enjoy all the usual youthful experiences. I hurt her pride a lot when I turned her down but I didn’t think there was an alternative.’
‘So, what happened after that?’ Winnie pressed, hanging on his every word, her mind buzzing with conjecture and shock and bewilderment. Whatever she had believed of Eros’s marriage, she had always assumed that it was a normal marriage between two people who had, at least, started out loving each other.
‘We made an agreement. Tasha wanted to study design and set up her own interiors business. She transferred to a student course in London and I told her that she was free to date anyone she wanted, which she duly did. Unfortunately, however, she couldn’t bring herself to extend the same freedom to me. She was too jealous, too possessive to accept the idea of me being with another woman,’ he admitted tautly. ‘And I did promise her that if she still felt the same way about me after she had graduated, I would give our marriage a try.’
‘Why on earth would you make a promise like that when you didn’t want her in the first place?’
Eros vented a groan.