Page 54 of Vows of Revenge

Her throat closed painfully, as if trying to stifle the word. How could she bear to hear it...think it...feel it? She wanted to silence it, deny it, thrust it from her. But she couldn’t. That was the agony of it all...she couldn’t...

Because that’s what it was—I realise it now. I went and fell in love with him. I didn’t know it, and didn’t realise it, and now...

Now she was left with it—trapped with it. Imprisoned with it. And it was the worst thing possible.

To love a man who could use me like that. Oh, dear God, fool that I was! That I am. Fool, fool, fool!

A sob rose again, but she stifled it. Her mother had made such an effort for her, telling her to come straight to Spain, that she would be safe here, out on the yacht they’d hired, sailing off the coast.

Kassia knew from Dr Michaelis, who was so kindly allowing her indefinite leave, and from her mother’s housekeeper in the Cotswolds, that Damos was trying to find her. Emotion twisted inside her, like painful cords tightening.

Heavily, she got to her feet, following her mother down to the main deck. The stewards had set the table for lunch, and memory knifed through her yet again. Of that very first evening with Damos. Aboard his yacht. When she had been tasked to do her best to persuade him to sponsor the excavation.

Her throat constricted.

All fake. All totally fake.

It hadn’t been the excavation that he was interested in, that had brought him to the island.

It was me. He needed to get to meet me—it was a pretext, that was all.

A pretext that had gone on and on...

Until he had me where he wanted me.

In his bed. Ready to be paraded in front of her father.

Damos Kallinikos’s latest squeeze. His latest bed warmer. Whom Cosmo Palandrou would never touch with a bargepole, so he’d walk away from doing any kind of business deal with her father. Leaving the coast clear for Damos to make his own move on Cosmo’s company.

The only thing he was ever interested in...

Misery twisted again. And self-condemnation. And bitterness...

Dimly, she became aware that the captain had come down from the bridge and was addressing her mother.

‘I do apologise,’ he was saying, ‘but I’m afraid we’ve been summoned back to port tomorrow. The owner requires the immediate use of a yacht—this particular one. You will be upgraded to a more expensive charter—gratis, of course—to continue your cruise.’

Her mother looked harassed, but could only comply.

And the next day, as the yacht nosed its way into the marina, its owner was waiting on the quay.

It was Damos.

Damos’s expression was grim. Finally he had tracked down Kassia. Discovering that the yacht her mother and stepfather had chartered was one of his own had been the only piece of good fortune afforded him. He had recalled it immediately.

Kassia was on board—he knew that from the yacht’s captain—and now she was clearly visible on deck as the yacht moored. He was seeing her again for the first time since she had fled from him that nightmare evening in Athens. He felt emotion kick in him—powerful emotion. Painful emotion...

As mooring was completed he walked up to the lowered gangplank. Kassia was as white as a sheet.

‘I would like to talk to you, Kassia,’ he said.

He kept his voice neutral, but the emotion that was as painful as it was powerful kicked in him again.

She didn’t answer. Her mother did.

Barely touching her daughter’s shoulder, Kassia’s mother was indeed petite, with coiffed, tinted hair, a skilfully made-up face, and she was wearing exactly the kind of very expensive casual-chic yacht-wear that perfectly set off her trim, well-preserved figure.

Absently, he found himself realising just why Kassia—so tall, so racehorse-slender—had always compared herself so unfavourably to her mother, thereby excluding herself from any claim to beauty just because she was not like her mother in looks.

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