Her healthy survival instincts and enduring cunning offended Cristo’s sense of justice. Had he really believed that such a cool little schemer might turn over a new leaf in the aftermath of their affair? Had he ever been that naïve? Certainly, he had compared every woman he had ever had in his bed to Erin and found them all wanting in one way or another. That was a most disconcerting truth to accept. Clearly, he had never got her out of his system, he reflected grimly. Like a piece of baggage he couldn’t shed, she had travelled on with him even when he believed that he was free of her malign influence. It was time that he finally stowed that excess baggage and moved on and how better to do that than by exorcising her from his psyche with one last sexual escapade?
He knew what Erin Turner was and he also knew that memory always lied. Memory would have embellished her image and polished her up to a degree that would not withstand the harsh light of reality. He needed to puncture the myth, explode the persistent fantasy and seeing her again in the flesh would accomplish that desirable conclusion most effectively. A hard smile slashed Cristo’s handsome mouth as he imagined her dismay at his untimely reappearance in her life.
‘Look before you leap,’ his risk-adverse foster mother had earnestly told him when he was a child, fearing his adventurous, rebellious nature and unable to comprehend the unimaginably entertaining attraction of taking a leap into the unknown. In spite of all his foster parents’ efforts to tame his passionate temperament, however, Cristo’s notoriously hot-blooded Donakis genes still ran true to form in his veins. His birth parents might not have survived to raise their son but he had inherited their volatile spirits in the cradle.
Without a second thought about the likelihood of consequences, indeed merely reacting to the insidious arousal and sense of challenge tugging at his every physical sense, Cristo lifted the phone. He informed the executive head of his acquisitions team that he would be taking over the next phase of the negotiations with the owner of the Stanwick Hall Hotel group.
‘Well, what do you think?’ Sam prompted, taken aback by Erin’s unusual silence by his side. ‘You needed a new car and here it is!’
Erin was still staring with a dropped jaw at the top-of-the-range silver BMW parked outside the garages for her examination. ‘It’s beautiful but—’
‘But nothing!’ Sam interrupted impatiently as if he had been awaiting an adverse comment and was keen to stifle it. Only marginally taller than Erin’s five feet two inches, he was a trim man with a shock of white hair and bright blue eyes that burned with restive energy in his suntanned face. ‘You do a big important job here at Stanwick and you need a car that suits the part—’
‘Only not such an exclusive luxury model,’ she protested awkwardly, wondering what on earth her colleagues would think if they saw her pulling up in a vehicle that undoubtedly cost more than she could earn in several years of employment. ‘That’s too much—’
‘Only the best for my star employee,’ Sam countered with cheerful unconcern. ‘You’re the one who taught me the importance of image in business and an economical runabout certainly doesn’t cut the mustard.’
‘I just can’t accept it, Sam,’ Erin told him uncomfortably.
‘You don’t have a choice,’ her boss responded with immoveable good humour as he pressed a set of car keys into her reluctant hand. ‘Your old Fiesta is gone. Thanks, Sam, is all you need to say.’
Erin grimaced down at the keys. ‘Thanks, Sam, but it’s too much—’
‘Nothing’s too good for you. Take a look at the balance sheets for the spas since you took over,’ Sam advised her drily. ‘Even according to that misery of an accountant I employ I’m coining it hand over fist. You’re worth ten times what that car cost me, so let’s hear no more about it.’
‘Sam …’ Erin sighed heavily and he filched the keys back from her to stride over to the BMW and unlock it with a flourish.
‘Come on,’ he urged. ‘Take me for a test drive. I’ve got some time to kill before my big appointment this afternoon.’
‘What big appointment?’ she queried, shooting the sleek car into reverse and filtering it out through the arched entrance to the courtyard and down the drive past the immaculate gardens.
‘I’m having another bash at the retirement thing,’ her boss confided ruefully.
Erin suppressed a weary sigh. Sam Morton was always talking about selling his three country-house hotels, but she believed that it was more an idea that he toyed with from time to time than an actual plan likely to reach fruition. At sixty-two years of age, Sam still put in very long hours of work. He was widowed more than twenty years earlier and childless; his thriving hotel group had become his life, consuming all his energy and time.
Thirty minutes later, having dropped Sam off at his golf club for lunch and gently refused his offer to join him in favour of getting back to work, Erin walked back into Stanwick Hall and entered the office of Sam’s secretary, Janice, a dark-haired fashionably clad woman in her forties.
‘Have you seen the car?’ she asked Janice with a self-conscious wince.
‘I went with him to the showroom to choose it—didn’t I do you proud?’ the brunette teased.
‘Didn’t you try to dissuade him from buying such an expensive model?’ Erin asked in surprise.
‘Right now, Sam’s flush with the last quarter’s profits and keen to splurge. Buying you a new car was a good excuse. I didn’t waste my breath trying to argue with him. When Sam makes up his mind about something it’s set in stone. Look at it as a bonus for all the new clients you’ve brought in since you reorganised the spas,’ Janice advised her. ‘Anyway you must’ve noticed that Sam is all over the place at the moment.’
Erin fell still by the other woman’s desk with a frown. ‘What do you mean?’
‘His moods are unpredictable and he’s very restless. I honestly think that he’s really intending to go for retirement this time around and sell but it’s a challenge for him to face up to it.’
Erin was stunned by that opinion for she had learned not to take Sam’s talk of selling up seriously. Several potential buyers had come and gone unmourned during the two years she had worked at Stanwick Hall. Sam was always willing to discuss the possibility but had yet to go beyond that. ‘You really think that? My word, are half of us likely to be standing in the dole queue this time next month?’
‘Now that’s a worry I can settle for you. The law safeguards employment for the staff in any change of ownership. I know that thanks to Sam checking it out,’ Janice told her. ‘As far as I know this is the first time he’s gone that far through the process before.’
A slight figure in a dark brown trouser suit, silvery blonde hair gleaming at her nape in the sunlight, Erin sank heavily down into the chair by the window, equal amounts of relief and disbelief warring inside her, for experience had taught her never to take anything for granted. ‘I honestly had no idea he was seriously considering selling this time.’
‘Sam’s sixtieth birthday hit him hard. He says he’s at a turning point in his life. He’s got his health and his wealth and now he wants the leisure to enjoy them,’ Janice told her evenly. ‘I can see where he’s coming from. His whole life has revolved round this place for as long as I can remember.’
‘Apart from the occasional game of golf, he has nothing else to occupy him,’ Erin conceded ruefully.
‘Watch your step, Erin. He’s very fond of you,’ Janice murmured, watching the younger woman very closely for her reaction. ‘I always assumed that Sam looked on you as the daughter he never had but recently I’ve begun to wonder if his interest in you is quite so squeaky clean.’
Erin was discomfited by that frankly offered opinion from a woman whom she respected. She gazed steadily back at her and then suddenly helpless laughter