Page 5 of Vows of Revenge

His frown deepened. Yes, he had to make allowances for the fact that she’d been working all day long in the heat and the dust, so would hardly have been looking her best... There was a questioning look in his half-closed eyes now. And yet she seemed to be almost...self-effacing. Was that the word? About herself and her appearance. Flustered at even the most innocuous of attentions from him. She was tall, and yet her shoulders were hunched—maybe not just from kneeling, but as if she were trying to hide her height. And her straggly, tugged-back hair, covered in dust and needing a good wash, did absolutely nothing for her either.

It was as if she could not care less. Her awkward manner had been obvious. His expression changed suddenly. Until she’d made that impassioned plea for preserving the antiquities she was excavating. Then her eyes had lit, making him notice them for the first time...

Grey-blue, with that silvery sheen...

He frowned very slightly.

Intriguing—and quite at odds with the rest of her...

His ruminations about Yorgos Andrakis’s daughter were interrupted by his driver returning, getting back into his seat, gunning the engine, driving off.

Damos put Kassia Andrakis and his plans for her out of his head, and took out his phone to check his messages.

CHAPTER TWO

KASSIASATONthe bed in her little room in thepensionshe and others in the excavation team were staying at. She was staring at the back of the business card that had been handed to her by a chauffeur in a peaked cap that afternoon. A chauffeur of any kind—let alone in a peaked cap—was, to put it mildly, out of place on an island like this. But then the man who’d had the card delivered to her was totally out of place.

His handmade suit and shoes...his silk tie, gold watch—the whole caboodle!

But now at least she knew who he was.

Damos Kallinikos.

The name on the business card meant nothing to her, even though Dr Michaelis had told her he’d said he knew her father—hence inviting her, rather than him, the dig’s director, for dinner this evening. Or that was what both Kassia and her boss could only assume, for there was certainly no other reason for singling her out. She wasn’t the type of female who got asked to dine by drop-dead gorgeous men for her own sake—she knew that well enough.

As for the company Damos Kallinikos headed, according to the printed side of the business card, she’d never heard of that either. New money, by the sound of it. New money springing up in Greece after the financial crash in the first decade of the century, which had ruined countless lives and provided an opportunity for those canny and ruthless enough to take advantage to scoop up some bankrupt bargains.

It was what her father had done, she knew—boosting his already considerable wealth by snapping up businesses that had gone under in the crisis at rock-bottom prices. And he’d scooped up another round only a few years ago, when the global pandemic had hit, all but destroying Greece’s vital tourist industry during those lengthy lockdowns that had immobilised the world, sending yet more businesses struggling. From deserted hotels to abandoned, unsellable, untransportable inventory, he’d turned their loss into yet more profit for himself.

Was that what this Damos Kallinikos had done too? Even if he hadn’t, she could still hear his voice saying‘tax deductible’as if in justification for caring about his country’s treasured past. But she could hear Dr Michaelis’s hopeful voice as well.

‘Kassia, I do hope you will accept his dinner invitation and do your best to persuade him to sponsor us, so we can have a second season next year. Chatting to this man over dinner may well just swing it for us.’

She gave a sigh. Well, she would do her best—though she wasn’t comfortable about it. Oh, not about pitching for sponsorship, but for a quite different reason.

As she sat on her bed Damos Kallinikos was vivid in her mind’s eye—and so were his drop-dead good looks. Looks that had sent the colour flaring into her cheeks.

She made a face. What on earth did it matter that Damos Kallinikos looked the way he did? A man like that would not look twice at a woman like herself—someone totally lacking the kind of appeal that females like Maia, for example, possessed. Her mouth twisted. Hadn’t her father drummed that into her all her life?

The sneering echo of her father’s voice stung in her memory.

‘Look at you! You’re like a piece of string! A stick! Not even a decent face to take a man’s eye off your stringy body! Your mother might have cost me a fortune to be rid of her, but at least she had looks!’

She sighed inwardly, accepting the truth of her father’s criticism. Her mother was petite and shapely, with china-blue eyes set in a heart-shaped face and softly waving blonde hair. Kassia’s own lack of looks were a constant cause for complaint by her father.

‘No man will ever want you for yourself! It will only be for my money—for who I am, not you!’

That was his regular accusatory refrain.

She silenced the sneering voice. She was never going to let herself get sucked into her father’s scheming, and to that end she should be grateful that her plain looks ruled her out of it. Had she looked like Maia, her father would be touting her all over Athens and beyond. Marrying her off to whoever would be most valuable to him as a son-in-law, making use of her to his own advantage.

As it was, thankfully, he’d all but written Kassia off, telling her to busy herself with her digging in the dirt and to keep out of his way, except for on those few unexpected occasions when he summoned her back to Athens for some social event where he wanted a daughter—even one as unprepossessing as she was—at his side for some reason. She always obeyed such summons, for she knew her father had got himself made a patron of the provincial museum she worked for, and would make difficulties if she refused.

She stared down at the business card in her hand. This was another summons. In black scrawl on the back Damos Kallinikos had simply written:

The marina, eight o’clock.

She gave a sigh, wishing it were Maia who was being summoned—the girl had already expressed her envy at Kassia getting to spend the evening with the drop-dead fabulous Damos Kallinikos...

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