Irresistible Greeks: Secrets and Seduction. Julia James

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       CHAPTER FOUR

      IN the early hours of the following morning, Erin rocked her son, Lorcan, on her lap. A nightmare had wakened him and it always took a while to comfort him and soothe him back to sleep.

      ‘Mum …’ he framed drowsily, fixing big dark eyes on her as she smoothed his short tousled curls back from his brow, lashes lowering again as tiredness swept him away again.

      Much like her son, Erin was utterly exhausted. When she had arrived back at Stanwick to collect her car Sam had wanted a briefing on Cristo’s impressions, which had stretched into a meeting that lasted a couple of hours. Sam was keen for his properties to join the Donakis empire because he sincerely believed that a businessman of Cristo’s standing could take his three hotels—his life’s work—to a higher level. For the first time Erin had felt uncomfortable with the older man, too aware that she was not being entirely honest with him. He didn’t know she had had a previous relationship with Cristo Donakis and she did not want him to know. If Sam were to realise that Cristo was the guy who had ditched her and ignored her letters and calls for assistance when she found herself pregnant, he would automatically distrust the younger man. And why should her messy personal life interfere with Sam’s plans for retirement? Letting that happen, she felt, would be more wrong than continuing to keep her secrets.

      Lorcan shifted against her shoulder, his curly black hair tickling her chin, a warm weight of solid sleeping toddler.

      ‘Tuck him back into bed quickly,’ a voice advised quietly from the doorway.

      As Deidre Turner, a small blonde woman, moved past to hastily flip back the bedding and assist her daughter in settling the little boy back into his cot, Erin sighed and stood up. ‘I’m sorry Lorcan wakened you again.’

      ‘Don’t be silly. I don’t have to get up as early as you do in the morning,’ her mother replied. ‘Go back to bed. You look like you’re sleepwalking. I don’t know what Sam’s thinking of, keeping you at work so late. He has no appreciation of the fact that you want to spend time with your family in the evening.’

      ‘Why should he have? He’s never had children to worry about,’ Erin murmured soothingly, twitching the covers back over her son’s small prone body. ‘Sam always likes to wind down with a chat at the end of the day and he’s very excited about the possibility of selling up.’

      ‘That’s all right for him, but if he does sell up where’s it going to leave you and the rest of the employees?’ Deidre questioned worriedly. ‘We couldn’t possibly manage on my pension.’

      Erin patted her mother’s tense shoulder gently. ‘We’ll survive. Apparently the law protects our jobs in a takeover. But I’ll find work somewhere else if need be.’

      ‘It won’t be easy with the state the economy’s in. There aren’t many jobs out there to find,’ the older woman protested.

      ‘We’ll be all right,’ Erin pronounced with a confidence that she didn’t feel and a guilty conscience that she had not felt able to tell her mother that Cristo Donakis was Sam’s potential buyer.

      But that news would only inflame Deidre Turner, who would also demand to know why her daughter had not made instant use of her access to Cristo to finally tell him that he was a father. In addition her mother was a constant worrier, always in search of the next black cloud on the horizon, and Erin only shared bad news with the older woman if she had no other choice. Checking that her daughter, Nuala, Lorcan’s twin sister, was still soundly asleep, curled up in a little round cosy ball inside her cot, Erin returned to bed and lay there in the darkness feeling every bit as anxious as her mother, if not more, as she struggled to count blessings rather than worries.

      They lived in a comfortable terraced house. It was rented, not owned. Deidre, predictably imagining less prosperous times ahead, had decided that Erin borrowing money to buy a property for them was far too risky a venture. Her mother’s attitude had irritated Erin at the time, but now, with the future danger of unemployment on her mind again she was relieved to be a tenant living in modest accommodation. Sam had reassured her about her job, reminding her that the current legislation would protect his staff with guaranteed employment under the new ownership. But there was often a way round such rules, Erin ruminated worriedly, and, when she was already aware that Cristo didn’t want her on his staff, it would only be sensible to immediately begin looking for a new position. Unhappily that might take months to achieve but it was doable, wasn’t it? She had to be more positive, stronger, fired up and ready to meet the challenges ahead.

      But, Cristo was not a challenge. СКАЧАТЬ