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MILLS & BOON
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
Copyright
CHAPTER ONE
SHE would have to go back to the hotel and face Derek sooner or later, Chloe acknowledged grimacing slightly. At this early hour she had the beach to herself, but soon it would start to fill up with other holidaymakers. They had chosen this particular island deliberately because it was so small. There they would find the time and tranquillity to develop their relationship, Derek had told her, but she hadn’t realised then that the developments he had in mind entailed her sharing his bed. Oh, she wasn’t naïUve; their friendship couldn’t have remained platonic for ever, but she had never given Derek the slightest indication that by coming on holiday with him she was willing for them to be lovers. It only went to show how little one really knew about people one saw every day, Chloe reflected. She and Derek had worked together for eighteen months, and she had been drawn to him by his air of solid dependability, his conversation’s lack of sexual innuendo. Their friendship had developed slowly over the months they had known one another, and Chloe had felt no qualms or inner warnings at all when Derek had suggested they spend their summer holiday together. A mistake, as she now acknowledged. She had been a little concerned when he suggested Greece, but had stifled her fear by reminding herself that she couldn’t go on refusing to visit such a beautiful part of the world simply because of something which was over and done with for good.
She lifted her head, unaware of the attractive picture she made in her brief white shorts and thin cotton top. Her skin was already faintly tanned, the warm colour emphasising the silver fairness of hair which reached well below her shoulders in a heavy cascade. She lifted one slender arm to push her hair out of her eyes, unconscious grace in the simple movement. Normally for the office she wore her hair up. Perhaps she was to blame for Derek’s behaviour after all, she reflected with a touch of wry humour. Wasn’t there something in the Bible about the dangerous enticement of unbound hair? Just another example of the male sex’s ability to blame women for their own failings!
One or two people stopped to greet her as she walked leisurely back towards the hotel complex. Although she and Derek had only arrived the previous day, Chloe’s graceful carriage and strikingly attractive features made her instantly recognisable—something she had become accustomed to during the days she had worked as a model for a Paris fashion house. Not that Monsieur René would employ her now, she thought ruefully. It was true that her legs and waist were still as slender as ever, but maturity had brought a seductive swell to the breasts and hips which at eighteen had been almost unnoticeable.
In the hotel foyer overhead fans reminiscent of a turn-of-the-century film setting cooled the air. The hotel was one of the most luxurious Chloe had ever stayed in. Derek had chosen it, and although for herself she would have preferred something a little simpler she had made no demur, agreeing with him that for privacy one had to pay, and Thos island certainly guaranteed that. The hotel was the only one on the small Aegean island, and since, by modern standards, it was not a huge, soulless mass of sprawling concrete, but a tastefully designed and carefully laid out complex containing everything the discerning holidaymaker could want for his comfort, it was obviously proving very popular. A lucrative venture for whoever had financed it, Chloe reflected absently as she asked for her key, and debated the advisability of telephoning Derek from her own room, or going straight to his to see if he was up. By nature she was inclined to say what she thought and act accordingly and was inclined to expect others to do the same—an error she had fallen into too often. She ought to have made it abundantly clear to Derek before they came away that holidaying together, while it might further their friendship and enable them to get to know one another better, was not an invitation to him to share her bed.
Last night had been an eye-opener in more ways than one. He had sulked like a small child when she told him that they weren’t going to become lovers. Her soft mouth compressed in a firm, straight line as she remembered some of his remarks.
‘It isn’t as if you were a virgin!’ he had thrown furiously at her—as though that fact in itself by some unwritten law conferred a right on every man she met to sleep with her as and when the fancy took him. The young Greek boy behind the reception desk watched her in covert admiration. Her hair was the colour of the fine pale grains of sand on the beach, and her eyes as deeply amethyst as the sea just before sunset. Chloe glanced up and saw the way his eyes lingered on her breasts before he looked away, and her mouth compressed a little more. Damn Derek! Damn all men, especially…. Like a well trained animal her mind veered away seeking other channels. For her the old adage ‘What can’t be cured must be endured’ held a wealth of meaning, and when she had found it impossible to endure she had simply built a wall and locked away behind it the uncurable and the unendurable.
She would ring Derek from reception, she decided, reaching for the courtesy telephone. She was in no mood to endure another lengthy tirade, to hear him last night anyone would have thought that she was reneging on a bargain. She should have listened to Hilary, her flatmate, she acknowledged grimly. Hilary had warned her that there was more to Derek’s suggestion than met the eye, but Chloe had blithely ignored her. Because she hadn’t wanted to believe her, she admitted now. She had wanted this holiday, wanted and needed it. Her job in the public relations firm where Derek was an accountant was an arduous one and she had been reluctant to go away alone. As she had learned from bitter experience, a woman alone was like game in the open season where some men were concerned—men who simply refused to believe that a woman would go away alone simply to be alone. The simple truth was that she had agreed to go with Derek because he represented protection, ignoring Hilary when she pointed out that she might find that Derek might have ideas of his own. They were just good friends, she had stressed, ignoring Hilary’s unkind hoot of laughter. If Hilary hadn’t been planning her wedding the two of them might have been able to go away together. At twenty-three Chloe was beginning to find that the majority of her girlfriends were no longer single, while she herself….
Her fingers trembled as she dialled Derek’s room number. Oh God, what was happening to her? She mustn’t think of that now. She had put it all behind her and that was where it was going to stay. Where it had to stay for the sake of her sanity.
There was no reply from Derek’s room. Puzzled, Chloe hung up. Perhaps he had already come down for breakfast? They had arrived at the hotel only the previous afternoon by boat from Piraeus and Derek had suggested that they have an early night. That had been when the quarrel started as Chloe remembered it.
‘The kyria is worried? Something is wrong?’ the young Greek asked her hesitantly.
He was good-looking as only young Greek boys can be, small and slim with liquid dark eyes and white teeth in a healthily tanned face.
‘Mr Simpson doesn’t seem to be in his room,’ Chloe told him. ‘I expect he’s gone into breakfast without me. I’ll go and look for him.’
To her surprise the boy frowned, shaking his head from side to side vehemently, which she already knew in Greece signified a negative response.
‘The kyrios has left,’ he informed an astounded Chloe. ‘He went this morning. I have here his key.’ As though challenging her to disbelieve him he produced a key from the cubbyholes behind him. It was Derek’s, but Chloe felt sure the boy must have made a mistake. Derek had probably just gone out for a walk as she had done herself.
‘He can’t have left,’ she insisted calmly. ‘We only arrived yesterday. Perhaps you misunderstood.’
‘No misunderstand,’ the boy insisted stubbornly. ‘He come down this morning early and ask for the documents he place in safe keeping. I give them to him and he asks what time the boat goes to Piraeus. I tell him, and he say to have his bags collected from his room.’
A cold, sinking feeling had taken possession of Chloe’s stomach. Surely Derek would never go to such lengths simply because of their quarrel? He was not like that. Or was he? Did she really know him at all? A man who coolly expected a girl to sleep with him simply because they were on holiday together—and Chloe had paid for her own holiday—and then spent the entire evening sulking because she refused. But to forfeit his own holiday….
Stop panicking, Chloe told herself. There was a simple explanation for all of this. There had to be. Derek simply could not leave—for one thing, her passport had been in that envelope in safe keeping, and her travellers’ cheques. She started to shake as the consequences of Derek’s actions began to reach her. The young Greek boy, alarmed by her pale face and bemused expression, retreated to an office off the reception and returned accompanied by a plump middle-aged man.
‘Kyria, I am the manager. Stephanos tells me that you are concerned that your friend has left….’
‘You mean that he has left?’ Chloe demanded, only half aware that she was being dexterously escorted through the busy foyer to a small private room, luxuriously furnished as an office with cool floor tiles and heavy masculine furniture. For some reason the office filled her with a sense of atavistic dread, but she pushed the sensation aside. She must get to the bottom of Derek’s outrageous behaviour.
‘I regret that this is so,’ the manager told her, eyeing her curiously. ‘Please sit down, kyria. Would you like something to drink? Our sun can have ill effects on those not used to it. Have you had breakfast?’
‘Did he leave anything for me? A package? A note?’ Chloe asked, without any real hope of an affirmative answer. She knew already by some extra sense that Derek, in the same mood of spiteful bitterness which had prompted him to leave, had taken with him her passport and travellers’ cheques.
‘If you will excuse me I shall check,’ the manager said formally.
He was gone just long enough for Chloe to study her surroundings a little more closely. They were both elegant and expensive, and there was no reason for her to experience this fear that in some way they threatened her, and yet she did.
She knew the moment the manager opened the door that Derek had left her nothing, and the full enormity of her situation dawned. She had no money to speak of, and far more important, no passport. Oh why, oh why had she so blithely agreed to Derek’s suggestion that they simply share the envelope to be placed in safe keeping? Why had she allowed him to persuade her into handing over her passport at all? Why hadn’t she kept it? Because she had simply not thought. Derek had suggested that placing it in safe keeping was the sensible thing to do, and she had agreed.
She glanced down at her hands folded loosely together, right over left, the fingers of her right hand holding her ring finger. It was a defensive pose she remembered well from those first bleak months when the pain in her heart was as raw as the tender skin where her wedding ring had once been. Now the defensive movement was a symbolic one only, for there was no band of pale skin to betray the fact that she had once worn a man’s ring on that finger. A band of gold linking together two hearts and two bodies, or so she had romantically thought on the day it was placed there. She should have learned her lesson then. No man was to be trusted. Not a single, solitary one. Well, she was well served by her own stupidity now—trapped on a tiny Greek island with something like ten pounds in her bag and no passport. What did one do in such circumstances? Vague thoughts of approaching the British Consul flitted through her mind, only to be instantly dismissed as she acknowledged that somewhere as tiny as Thos which didn’t even run to a tourist information office was hardly likely to possess anything as grand as a British Consul. It wasn’t even as though she were on the type of package holiday where one could appeal to the representative of the tour operators; Thos and the hotel were too small for that kind of thing. What on earth was she to do?
The first and most sensible course of action seemed to be to confide in the manager, which Chloe did, skirting lightly round the reason for Derek’s sudden departure with her passport and travellers’ cheques, but she suspected from the sudden gleam in his eyes that he knew there was more to the story than she was telling him.
‘The kyrios was not affianced to you?’ he asked smoothly when Chloe had finished. ‘There was no….’
‘He was a friend—nothing more,’ Chloe retorted more sharply than she had intended. ‘And a very poor friend, as it now turns out!’
‘A bad friend is more dangerous than a thousand enemies,’ the hotel manager remarked sapiently. ‘Although it might be possible for you to leave Thos without your passport the authorities in Athens would not let you leave the country. I shall speak to my head office in Athens, to see what is to be done, and meanwhile I suggest you fill in a form I will give you—for the authorities, you understand.’
The form was long and detailed and the manager explained that it was one normally used if tourists lost any item of luggage or other personal belongings. The amount of detail seemed incredible to Chloe, but knowing how sensitive Greeks could be to criticism she refrained from saying anything, hesitating only when it come to ‘Married Status’ before writing quickly with a grimace of distaste ‘Separated’ and then hurriedly folding the paper.
When he returned the manager suggested that she might care to go and have a belated breakfast, but Chloe had no appetite for food. Instead she returned to the beach, avoiding the convivial crowds already gathering round the huge, Olympic-sized swimming pool.
Only when she had reached the far end of the curving bay, almost out of sight of the hotel, did she stop, sitting with her knees drawn up under her chin as she stared out to sea, memories which had been pursuing her for two years suddenly breaking past the barriers she had erected against them to come flooding into her mind with their bitter legacy of pain and anguish. She should never have come back to Greece, she acknowledged. It acted as too powerful a stimulant on her mind. True, Thos was not Rhodes, and Derek not Leon, but when Derek had tried to kiss her last night, forcing the unpleasant moistness of his mouth on hers, it had triggered off the memories, especially of that last awful quarrel when Leon had practically tried to rape her and then accused her…. She shivered suddenly despite the heat of the sun.
She had been twenty when she had met Leon Stephanides, and a very young twenty at that. Although she had been working in Paris for three years as a model, her life had been almost as cloistered as that of a young novice. She lived with a family known to her employer—a family who guarded her as strictly as they might have done one of their own daughters—and after the exhaustion of a ten-hour day of modelling she had wanted to do nothing more in the evening that simply kick off her shoes and relax. Until Leon came into her life. Everything had changed then. She had responded to him like a tender young plant to the sun, expanding and unfurling in the warmth of his presence. How fatally easy she had made it all for him!
She had been delirious with joy when he proposed to her. Her parents had flown to Paris for the wedding—a huge affair, for Leon was the head of a Greek shipping empire. Her mother had suggested then that they might be rushing things, but Chloe had pushed her gentle warning aside. She loved Leon and he loved her. What a gullible fool she had been! Why on earth hadn’t she stopped to think? Why hadn’t she questioned why Leon, a wealthy, handsome Greek should look outside his own nationality for a wife? Why hadn’t she asked why there had been no customary arranged marriage for him?
Because she had been besotted with love, that was why. That Leon, thirty, worldly, and experienced, to her naïve twenty-one, should actually love her had seemed so close to a miracle that she had not been able to question anything, least of all this lordly, almost god-like man whose cool lips teased her own into heated submission, whose lean fingers against her breast aroused such a turmoil of emotions that she was almost sick with wanting him. She who had never known passion was suddenly caught in its turbulent maelstrom.
Their honeymoon had been all she had dreamed of and more. Leon had taken her to the heights, had taught her unskilled body to recognise a deeply sensual core she had never known it possessed. The very texture of his skin beneath her fingers had been sufficient to turn her bones to water, her senses to mindless, feverish pleasure. Never once in the month they spent together on the Riviera had she doubted Leon’s love. Never once had she questioned that as his wife hers was the most important place in his life. And how bitterly she had paid for those mistakes!
‘Kyria!’ Chloe was jolted out of the past by the breathless voice of one of the waiters who had obviously come looking for her. ‘If you will please return to the hotel, the manager would speak with you,’ the boy began respectfully as Chloe uncurled her slender limbs and got to her feet. Although her features were not regular enough for perfect classical beauty the fragility of her bone structure combined with the deep amethyst colour of her eyes and the pale fairness of her hair made people stop and take notice of her, and nowhere more so than in Greece, where her fair colouring drew constant glances of admiration from the Greek men.
‘A sea nymph’, was how Leon had once described her, with skin as translucent as the most perfect pearl and hair the colour of moonwashed sand, and she, like the gullible fool that she was, had been taken in by his meaningless flattery, never dreaming that it was all merely a façade to blind her to the truth—a truth so ugly that even now she could not bear to face up to it. Not even her parents knew the real reason she had left Leon. No one did. It was a bitter secret which would remain locked away in her heart until the day she died.
As she followed the waiter back to the hotel she tried to push aside her preoccupation with the past and concentrate instead on the situation she now found herself in. The manager greeted her with a smile which did much to banish the worst of her fears, and once again she was ushered into the luxurious office and invited to sit down.
‘By the greatest of good fortune one of our most influential directors was at the Athens office when I telephoned there this morning,’ he told Chloe. ‘I explained to him the unfortunate circumstances you find yourself in and he has promised to do all he can to put matters right.’
Smiling gratefully, Chloe stood up. She could only hope that the manager’s faith in his superior was not ill founded.
‘For now you must just enjoy your holiday. As soon as I have more news you will be informed of it,’ the manager told her with another smile.
Which was comforting, but in actual fact told her very little, Chloe reflected a little later alone in her room. Her hotel expenses had been paid before she left England, fortunately, and Thos was not large enough to merit the need for large amounts of ‘spending money’. Still, it was an uncomfortable feeling to be alone in a foreign country with nothing more than ten pounds in small change.
She was a little late going down for dinner and found that most of the tables in the elegant dining room were already occupied. A smiling waiter found her a chair at a table with a pleasant middle-aged couple from Surrey who were spending their second holiday on Thos. Neither of them seemed to find anything unusual in the fact that Chloe was apparently alone.
‘Thos isn’t large enough to warrant the hiring of a car,’ Richard Evans told Chloe over coffee, ‘and like most of these small islands it isn’t really geared for them—thank goodness. I sometimes envy these Greek millionaires who buy themselves one of these tiny islands. There’s something about owning one’s own island that’s very dear to the heart of most men—especially Britons. It comes from being an island race, I suppose.’
Chloe agreed with him. She could still remember her own girlhood envy of Enid Blyton’s tomboy heroine with her own small island domain.
One reminiscence led to another, and when the manager suddenly appeared at her elbow Chloe was astonished to realise how quickly the evening had flown. She had been enjoying herself so much that she had actually almost forgotten about her stolen passport and travellers’ cheques.
‘Have you any news for me?’ she asked the manager, hoping against hope that Derek had come to his senses and perhaps left her passport at the airport.
‘You are to go to Athens,’ he told her in reply. ‘Everything is arranged. A helicopter is here to take you, and when you get there you will be met….’
‘Athens?’ Chloe began to protest, remembering the lengthy sea journey from the port of Piraeus to Thos. ‘But….’
‘It is necessary, kyria,’ the manager assured her quickly. ‘The loss of a passport is not to be treated lightly. There are documents to be completed, officials to see….’
He was quite right, Chloe accepted resignedly, and her passport was not simply lost, but stolen. She gnawed at her lip, trying to estimate how long she would be in Athens and what she would need to take with her. Surely one change of clothes would be sufficient?
‘You will spend the night at our sister hotel in Athens,’ she was told, ‘and then in the morning you will be taken to see the officials who deal with such matters.’
They were going to a lot of trouble on her behalf, Chloe thought, starting to thank him for his assistance. It was nothing, she was told with a beaming smile. If she would just pack whatever she needed for the brief stay in Athens, he would escort her to where the helicopter waited.
Chloe had never travelled in such a machine before, and said as much when, fifteen minutes later, she and the manager were walking across the tarmac-enclosed space at the rear of the hotel which she had not realised existed until this moment.
It was an enjoyable method of travelling, she was assured, especially when time was short. ‘The consortium which owns this hotel also owns others, and its executives frequently use company helicopters to travel from hotel to hotel.’
It would certainly save her a good deal of time, Chloe reflected. If she was lucky she could be back on Thos within twenty-four hours with all the tangles of her missing passport satisfactorily sorted out. While she was in Athens it might not be a bad idea to visit the British Embassy there, she decided, just to inform them of the position, although she would have to be careful what she said. She was furious with Derek, but she had no desire to brand him as a criminal.