Lynne Graham - The Secrets She Carried

That bombshell had burst on Cristo only weeks after the end of their affair. An audit had found serious discrepancies in the books of the health spa Erin had been managing for him. Products worth a considerable amount of money had gone missing. Invoices had been falsified, freelance employees invented to receive pay cheques for non-existent work. Only Erin had had full access to that paperwork and a reliable long-term employee had admitted seeing her removing boxes of products from the store. Clearly on the take from the day that Cristo hired her, Erin had ripped off the spa to the tune of thousands of pounds. Why had he not prosecuted her for her thieving? He had been too proud to parade the reality that he had taken a thief to his bed and put a thief in a position of trust within his business.

Erin was a box of crafty tricks and no mistake, he acknowledged bitterly. No doubt Morton was equally unaware that his butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth employee played a very creditable game of strip poker. That she had once met Cristo at the airport on his birthday wearing nothing but her skin beneath her coat? And that even the coat had gone within seconds of entering his limousine? Did she cry out Morton’s name and sob in his arms when she reached a climax? Seduce him as only a very sensual woman could while he tried to give the business news his attention instead? Most probably she did, for she had learned from Cristo exactly what a man liked.

Disturbed that he still cherished such strong memories of that period of his life, Cristo poured himself a whisky and regrouped, his shrewd brain swiftly cooling the tenor of his angry reflections. The phrase, ‘Don’t get mad, get even’ might well adorn Cristo’s gravestone, for he refused to waste time on anything that didn’t enrich his life. So, Erin was still out there using her wits and her body to climb the career and fortune ladder. How was that news to him? And why was he assuming that Sam Morton was too naïve to know that he had caught a tiger by the tail? For many men the trade-off of as much sex as a man could handle would be acceptable.

And Cristo registered in some surprise at his predictability that he was no different from that self-serving libidinous majority. I could go there again, he thought fiercely, his adrenalin pumping at the prospect of that sexual challenge. I could really enjoy going there again. She’s wasted on an old man and far too devious to be contained by a male with a conventional outlook. He began to read the file, discovering that Erin’s wealthy employer was a widower. He could only assume that she had her ambition squarely centred on becoming the second Mrs Morton. Why else would a scheming gold-digger be working to ingratiate herself and earn a fairly humble crust? He was convinced that she would not have been able to resist the temptation of helping herself to funds from Sam Morton’s spas as well.

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.