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Dark Apollo
Sara Craven
SEDUCED!Nic Xandreou thought Katie was a gold digger out to trap his brother into marriage. Camilla knew her sister better and was determined to champion her cause even if it meant a visit to Xandreou's stronghold on the island of Karthos. Camilla Dryden had always been the sensible one in her family, but she had walked into the lion's den, not realizing the risk she was running. Nic Xandreou wasn't accustomed to hearing the word no . Especially from a woman.He was a dangerously sexy man used to women who were sweet, docile and silent! Camilla was anything but. She seemed to enjoy their war of words as much as he. And, as Nic was eager to prove, there was one place they'd be sure to agree - the bedroom!"Ms. Craven does a magnificent job with this daring story… ." - Romantic Times
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#u0c180488-77bc-557e-b402-d7d02afd3121)
Excerpt (#u46ed3952-affa-5ede-90f4-ad349a24dea7)
About the Author (#u7f7445d1-24e4-5303-a49d-5bf48c5aea0b)
Title Page (#uce76df12-a4f2-51cb-90a4-5256c3adc90f)
CHAPTER ONE (#uf08f7910-9f0d-5c03-8eea-15302444ee7a)
CHAPTER TWO (#ua9fec0f6-8512-539c-bf2a-224114b4820a)
CHAPTER THREE (#ua74bd31a-7e3b-52e0-a762-8b5a740367e4)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
Endpage (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
“How dare you speak to me like that?”
His voice was molten.
Camilla met his gaze. Eyes dark as obsidian, she thought with a strange clarity, and as hard as flint. But with a small flame burning…
Just as she was burning inside.
She drew a deep angry breath. “Because it wasn’t me that you…seduced and abandoned in Athens. It was my sister, Katie.” A sob rose in her throat. “And you can’t even remember what she looks like.”
SARA CRAVEN was born in South Devon, England, and grew up surrounded by books, in a house by the sea. After leaving grammar school she worked as a local journalist covering everything from flower shows to murders. She started writing for Harlequin Mills & Boon in 1975. Apart from writing, her passions include films, music, cooking and eating in good restaurants.
Dark Apollo
Sara Craven
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_6bfcd11d-94c2-5da3-b839-5f0df2d6347a)
‘BUT he loves me.’
‘I wouldn’t count on it.’ Camilla Dryden spoke more brusquely than she’d intended, and repented instantly as she saw her sister’s eyes cloud with bewildered hurt.
‘Katie, love,’ she went on more gently, ‘you hardly know each other. It was a holiday romance. Just—one of those things.’
She could hardly believe her own ears. One cliché” was following another, and she wasn’t surprised to see Katie shaking her head.
‘It wasn’t like that. I knew as soon as I met Spiro that there would never be anyone else. And he feels just the same about me.’
Camilla winced inwardly. ‘Then why wasn’t he on that flight? Or any of today’s other flights, for that matter?’
‘I don’t know. Something must have happened to prevent him—delay him.’
Camilla could make a cynical guess what that ‘something’ might be. Spiridion Xandreou had probably remembered, just in time, that he had a fiancée—or even a wife—already.
This is what comes, she thought seething, of allowing an impressionable eighteen-year-old to spend Easter in Greece.
It had seemed a perfectly acceptable invitation at the time. Lorna Stephens, Katie’s best friend, was going to Athens to visit her aunt, married to a Greek businessman. The two girls had been working hard for their public examinations, and deserved a break from their studies.
How could Camilla have guessed that Lorna’s aunt was the kind of irresponsible idiot who’d allow her niece and her niece’s friend to be chatted up by personable Greek waiters?
If only it had stopped at chat, Camilla thought with a silent groan. Or if Katie had been sophisticated enough to realise she was being spun a line by an experienced charmer.
On her return, she’d informed her elder sister that, although she was still prepared to take her A levels, they no longer mattered because she was engaged to be married.
Camilla had taken a deep, steadying breath, and done some gentle probing.
What had emerged was hardly reassuring. Spiro, it seemed, worked in a marvellous and famous restaurant where Katie had gone for a meal with the family party. Spiro had served at their table, and the following evening Katie and Lorna had managed to return to the restaurant alone.
‘Of course, he’s not really just a waiter.’ Katie’s eyes had been full of stars, and a new womanly awareness which had struck a chill to Camilla’s heart. ‘His family own the restaurant, and masses of other things beside—hotels, even a shipping line. From what Spiro says, they must be amazingly wealthy. Isn’t it incredible?’
‘It certainly is,’ Camilla had agreed, but Katie had been oblivious to the irony in her voice.
‘When my exams are over, Spiro’s flying over to meet you, and ask formally if he can marry me.’ She had smiled tenderly. ‘He’s very old-fashioned.’
Well, he’d certainly chosen the right route to Katie’s heart, Camilla had thought savagely. Katie was old-fashioned too, a shy, gentle girl, who before that Athenian spring had had her heart set on university and an academic career. First love should have come gently to her too, not force-fed under a Greek sun by some plausible Lothario.
She’d thought, She’s going to be so hurt.
But, to her surprise, letters with Greek stamps had begun to arrive regularly and frequently.
Perhaps Spiro Xandreou knew Lorna’s rich uncle, and assumed Katie came from the same kind of background.
Little does he know, she’d thought, looking round their small flat. When he realised that Katie’s only relative was an older sister working for a busy secretarial agency to keep a roof over their heads, this so-called engagement would be a thing of the past.
Camilla had never been to Greece, but she had a shrewd idea that marriages there were still very much tied up with property, and the size of a bride’s potential dowry. Katie had no financial qualification to recommend her to the family of a young waiter on the make.
For a time, it had seemed as if Katie was having second thoughts about her romance as well. She had been silent and preoccupied, and spent a lot of time alone in her room. She’d lost weight too, and there were shadows under her eyes.
But then another letter arrived, and Katie, bubbling with renewed happiness, had revealed that Spiro was flying to London at the end of June.
But his flight had landed without him, and Katie had eventually returned to the flat alone, almost distraught with worry.
And now Camilla had to make her see reason.
‘Surely he’d have sent word if he’d been delayed,’ she said. ‘I think,’ she added carefully, ‘we’re going to have to accept, darling, that he’s simply changed his mind…’
‘He can’t have done.’ Bright spots of colour burned in Katie’s cheeks. ‘We’re going to be married. He—he has to come here. Oh, Camilla, he’s simply got to.’
Camilla looked at her in sudden horrified understanding. She didn’t have to ask why, she thought. It was all there in Katie’s tear-bright eyes and trembling mouth, in the curious blend of dignity and shame in her face as she looked back at her sister.
Her voice broke. ‘Oh, no, Katie. For God’s sake—not that.’
‘It’s quite true. I’m going to have Spiro’s baby. But it’s all right, because he loves me, and we’re going to be married as soon as it can be arranged.’
Camilla’s voice was weary. ‘You’ve actually told him you’re pregnant?’ She gave a mirthless smile. ‘And you wonder why he wasn’t on that plane.’
‘You’re not to say that.’ Katie’s voice shook with intensity. ‘You don’t know him. He’s decent and honourable.’
‘So decent, so honourable he couldn’t wait to seduce a girl on her first trip abroad.’ Camilla shook her head, her throat aching with grief and bitterness. ‘Oh, Katie, you fool.’ She sighed. ‘Well, now we have to decide what to do for the best.’
‘I know what you’re going to say.’ Katie’s face was suddenly pale. ‘Don’t even think it, Milla. I’m having this baby.’
‘Darling, you haven’t thought it through. You’ve got your university course—your whole life ahead of you. You can’t imagine what it would be like trying to cope with a baby as well…’
‘But that isn’t what I’ve chosen. I’m going to marry Spiro. It isn’t the life I’d planned, I agree, but it’s the life I want—the only one, now and forever.’
‘Katie—you can’t know that.’
‘Mother knew it, when she met Father. And she was younger than me,’ Katie said unanswerably. ‘And you can’t say they weren’t happy.’
No, Camilla thought. She couldn’t say that. Her parents had loved each other deeply and joyously until a jack-knifing lorry had brought that love to a premature end, leaving her at nineteen with the sole responsibility for a vulnerable adolescent.
And what a hash I’ve made of it, she castigated herself. She needed her mother’s wisdom to tell her how to support Katie through this crisis. I don’t know what to do, she thought, and felt a hundred years old.
She felt even older when she woke the next morning. It had been a terrible evening. Katie had managed to telephone the restaurant in Athens, only to be told with polite but impersonal regret that Spiro no longer worked there. Nor could they say where he’d gone.
I bet they can’t, Camilla had thought, seething. They’re probably inundated with calls like this.
All night long, Camilla had heard the sound of Katie’s desolate sobbing through the thin partition wall. She’d tried to go to her, but Katie’s door was locked. Besides, what could she do, or say—she who had never been even marginally tempted to fall in love herself? She was the last person in the world to know what comfort or advice to offer, she’d told herself unhappily.
To her surprise she found Katie already up, and making breakfast in the tiny kitchenette. Her sister looked wan and red-eyed, but her face was set with determination.
‘I’m going to find him, Milla,’ she said.
‘But you can’t trail round every restaurant and taverna in Athens asking for him. It would be like searching for a needle in a haystack.’ Dismayed, Camilla took the beaker of coffee Katie handed her.
‘Not Athens.’ Katie shook her head. ‘Spiro comes from an island called Karthos. It’s in the Ionian Sea, south of Corfu. I shall go there. His family must know where he is.’
Camilla took a wary sip of the strong black brew. ‘Katie,’ she said hesitantly, ‘has it occurred to you that Spiro may not—want to be found?’
‘That’s not true,’ Katie said calmly. ‘If it were, I’d know it here.’ She put her hand on her heart.
The simplicity of the gesture and the profound trust it implied made Camilla’s throat ache with unshed tears.
He’s not worth it, she thought savagely.
There were a thousand arguments she ought to be able to use to stop Katie embarking on this crazy and probably fruitless quest, but somehow she couldn’t think of one.
Instead, she said, ‘Then I’m going with you.’
‘Milla, do you mean it?’ Katie’s face was transfigured. ‘But what about the agency? Will Mrs Strathmore give you the time off?’
‘I’ve a whole backlog of leave I haven’t taken.’ Camilla gave her a reassuring smile. ‘And Mrs Strathmore can lump it. She won’t sack me. She relies on me to handle the ghastly clients the others won’t work for. I’ll call in and explain on the way round to the travel agency.’ She tried to sound positive and encouraging, but her heart was in her boots.
What the hell will we do if we don’t find him? she wondered. Or, even worse, supposing we find him and he doesn’t want to know?
She sighed silently. They would cross that bridge when they came to it.
‘We’ll find him.’ Katie seemed to have read her thoughts. Her voice and face were serene. ‘It’s fate. The Greeks have always believed in fate.’
And in the Furies, Camilla thought grimly. The so-called Kindly Ones inexorably pursuing the erring, and wreaking their vengeance on them.
Well, she would be a latter-day Fury, trailing Spiro Xandreou, no matter how well he might have covered his tracks.
She said, ‘There’s no such thing as fate,’ and surreptitiously crossed her fingers under the kitchen table.
* * *
The Hotel Dionysius was small, fiercely clean, and frankly basic. Camilla sat at a plasticcovered table in a corner of the outside restaurant area, a tall glass of freshly squeezed orange juice in front of her. She was sheltered from the glare of the midday sun by a thatched roof, interwoven with a sprawling and healthy vine. Beyond the hotel’s tiny garden with its hibiscus hedge lay the main square of Karthos town.
The island was only a remote dot in the Ionian Sea, but it was bustling with tourists. So far Camilla had heard French, German and Dutch being spoken, as well as English, and she and Katie had been lucky to get the last two vacancies at the hotel.
She’d left Katie sleeping in their whitewashed shuttered room on the first floor. She was beginning to feel the effects of her pregnancy, and had been miserably sick on the flight to Zakynthos, and the subsequent long ferry trip. The temperature on Karthos was already up in the eighties, and she’d agreed with little fuss to Camilla’s suggestion that she should rest and leave the initial enquiries for Spiro to her sister.
Camilla had been sorely tempted to cancel this whole wild-goose chase after a reluctant telephone call to Lorna Stephens’ Greek uncle. She’d explained, without going into detail, that she was anxious to trace a young waiter from the restaurant Clio, and wondered if he could help.
