Modern Romance February Books 1-4. Maisey Yates

be a little more gracious?’

      An angry flush of chagrin mantled Winnie’s cheekbones. Suspicion infiltrated her, swiftly followed by comprehension. Hadn’t she just told him that one of the richest men in the world was her grandfather? In Eros’s eyes, she had evidently become an eligible bride because she was no longer a penniless cook. ‘No, I don’t,’ she snapped back resentfully. ‘You certainly wouldn’t have asked me to marry you two years ago!’

      ‘Not unless I wished to be tried as a bigamist,’ he fielded with sardonic bite. ‘I wasn’t free to marry then and Teddy didn’t exist. But now we have Teddy to consider and I would like my son to carry my name.’

      ‘He’s perfectly happy with my name!’ Winnie parried with spirit. ‘You know very well that you don’t really want to marry me, Eros. I’m just a woman you slept with who became inconveniently pregnant.’

      Eros ignored that statement. ‘I want my son in my home and I can’t have him without his mother.’

      Winnie lost her angry colour and dropped her gaze, the pain of rejection slicing through her. ‘Oh, thank you very much,’ she framed curtly.

      ‘Thee mou...’ Eros growled in sudden seething frustration. ‘Of course I want you too!’

      Winnie rose from her seat and set her glass down with a sharp little snap. ‘Well, maybe...just maybe, Mr Ego, I don’t want you!’ she slung back.

      ‘It would take me only five minutes to prove otherwise,’ Eros bit out in unhesitating challenge. ‘Let me list all the many reasons why we should marry.’

      ‘Oh, spare me the lecture, please,’ Winnie muttered witheringly. ‘Or why not start with the fact that the idea would never have occurred to you if I hadn’t told you that I was related to Stam Fotakis?’

      Eros stared back at her in shock, noticeably turning pale beneath his bronzed skin, the angles of his high cheekbones starkly prominent and taut. ‘You actually think I want you for the money you may one day inherit?’ he breathed in incredulous rage.

      No, definitely not a gold-digger, Winnie decided, reckoning that no man could fake that amount of disbelief and outrage. It was time for her to bow smartly out of their civil little dinner date before they came to physical blows. ‘I think I should go home now.’

      A hand closed round hers and jerked her back around before she could walk indoors again. Shimmering sea-glass eyes locked to her flushed face like lasers. ‘This has nothing to do with you being a member of the Fotakis family. This is between us.’

      ‘Well, no, actually it’s not,’ Winnie argued, dry-mouthed with tension. ‘This is about you wanting Teddy and having to take me too and apparently make the best of a bad bargain.’

      ‘Thee mou... Where are your wits?’ Eros growled down at her with lancing impatience. ‘I want you.’

      ‘You didn’t want me so much that you came looking for me two years ago!’ Winnie flared back at him in an outburst that, despite her best efforts, emerged as accusing in tone.

      ‘I was married. Our relationship was wrong. That is why I didn’t seek you out again,’ Eros breathed in a fierce undertone. ‘I didn’t want to be tempted back into our affair.’

      ‘A pity you didn’t feel like that when you first met me!’ Winnie tossed back at him accusingly. ‘We’d all have been a lot happier if you’d done the right thing from the start!’

      ‘But we wouldn’t have had Teddy,’ Eros pointed out unarguably. ‘And now that I have met him, I wouldn’t change the past even if I could.’

      Alarmingly conscious of the hand closed round her narrow wrist, the fingers lazily stroking her arm as if to soothe her, Winnie dropped her head, knowing that in spite of the unhappiness Eros had caused her, she would never wish that Teddy had not been born because he had brought so much love, light and comfort into the world with him. Eros had broken her heart but Teddy had healed her, giving her the focus and the strength to rebuild her life.

      ‘I do want you,’ Eros grated, pushing up her chin, green eyes blazing bright as crystal in sunlight, crushing her soft full mouth under his, tasting her with a ravenous hunger that electrified her where she stood.

      Her lips parted and something tightened deep down inside her pelvis as his tongue plunged into the sensitive interior of her mouth. A faint tremor racked her, her tongue tangling with his, her body instinctively straining towards him. Her breasts were full and tender and the burst of heat between her thighs compelled her headlong into his lean, muscular length, craving the contact that that overwhelming hunger had unleashed. The hard thrust of his arousal against her stomach was unmistakeable.

      The sure, deft exploration of his hands over the swell of her bottom and then up over her tender breasts, cupping, squeezing, partially soothed the raw need traversing her and yet simultaneously drove it even higher. A whimper of choked sound was wrenched from her throat. She was utterly lost in the powerful sensations coursing through her, urging her on and destroying her every defence because what she was feeling was utterly mindless.

      ‘Look at me...’ Eros urged, his dark, deep, insistent drawl sending a tingling sensation down her taut spine. ‘I want you. You want me. It’s very simple.’

      With a mighty mental exertion, Winnie forced her body back from the lure of his and stepped back a further pace for good measure. Her cheeks were burning with mortification and inside herself she was beating herself up for revelling in that kiss. ‘No, it’s not simple.’

      ‘But it could be if we both act like reasonable people,’ Eros intoned. ‘I don’t want to be forced into a custody battle with you.’

      Winnie froze. ‘C-custody?’ she stammered in horror. ‘Battle? Why would you do that?’

      ‘Because if you say no to marriage, I have no other option,’ Eros replied without hesitation. ‘I want Teddy in my life, Winnie, and I won’t settle for anything less.’

      Winnie was pale and still in retreat from him. ‘Obviously I’m willing to agree arrangements for you to see Teddy,’ she reminded him. ‘I wouldn’t have come tonight if I hadn’t been willing.’

      His lean dark features were shuttered and hard. ‘Occasional meetings here in London? That’s not enough. I want more.’

      Winnie steeled her backbone to stay upright and she stared back at him, struggling to conceal her horror at the pressure he was putting on her. ‘You can’t have more,’ she told him flatly. ‘You can see Teddy whenever you’re able but I won’t agree to anything beyond that.’

      His extraordinary eyes narrowed to glittering shards of green. ‘Then we go to court and, be warned, I will arm myself with every piece of ammunition that I can lay my hands on to strengthen my own case...’

      ‘You’re threatening me,’ she whispered shakily, a chill spreading through her body from deep down inside her, surprise and fear assailing her in a sickening wave.

      ‘You’re leaving my child in the care of a woman who was accused of working in a brothel, her name and her face plastered all over the gutter press!’ Eros condemned.

      Winnie, literally, felt faint with shock that he should already be aware of that embarrassing truth. He was talking about her sister Vivi, poor Vivi, whose first job had inadvertently led to her reputation being ruined. Vivi had believed she was working for a modelling agency but in fact it had also been an escort agency, which was raided by the police and closed down for operating illegally as a brothel. Being both photogenic and naive, Vivi had been branded as a prostitute by the tabloids as she was seen fleeing the premises that same day.

      ‘And your other sister, who rarely goes out in public and suffers from panic attacks. How safe is Teddy with her?’ Eros enquired lethally. ‘What if she has one of those attacks when she’s supposed to be looking after my son?’

      ‘I