LYNNE GRAHAM - Bond Of Hatred

As soon as she was eighteen, Sarah had found other accommodation. She had done her utmost to give Callie a secure and loving home. She had made her sister her number one priority. And Callie had thrived. A golden girl with the long-legged lithe good looks of a Californian blonde. Smart into the bargain, Sarah observed with helpless pride. It hadn’t been easy to keep her lively extrovert sister’s mind on the necessity of studying to get on in the world.

But Sarah had managed it. Callie had passed her A levels and gone on to university to study languages. Sarah had been as proud as any mother could have been. She had taken on another job part-time in the evenings so that Callie wouldn’t be short of money. Everything had been going so well before Damon Terzakis had entered her sister’s life.

‘I’ve met this truly fabulous Greek!’ Callie had gushed down the phone. ‘He’s incredibly handsome and rich and crazy about me...’

‘Sounds too good to be true,’ Sarah had murmured tautly, disconcerted by Callie’s excitement. Callie’s boyfriends normally came and went without Callie enthusing about any of them. A beauty from her early teens, Callie had taken young men very much in her stride.

‘I’ll bring him over to meet you some time soon,’ Callie had promised.

But weeks had passed before Sarah had finally met Damon. He had been twenty-five, boyishly good-looking and full of careless charm. His lustrous brown eyes had helplessly followed Callie’s every move. He had talked to Sarah as though she were Callie’s mother rather than her sister, painstakingly courteous and deferential. By the end of the evening, Sarah had felt like a middle-aged matron of at least fifty.

Damon had gone out of his way to stress that his intentions were serious. Reaching for Callie’s hand, he had said, ‘I love your sister very much and I want to marry her.’

Behind her polite smile, Sarah had ironically been appalled. She had considered Callie far too young to make such a commitment. She had worried that Callie would abandon her studies outright or, at the very least, allow romance to take over to the detriment of her work. But Sarah had been too sensible to allow her feelings to show. One hint of opposition and Callie was likely to rebel. Her sister was headstrong and opinionated. Only tact and diplomacy were likely to win Sarah a hearing.

‘Of course marriage,’ Damon had stated smoothly, ‘it would be in the future.’

Sarah had rewarded him with a beaming smile. ‘I think that’s very sensible,’ she had said. ‘Both of you have all the time in the world.’

‘Don’t talk platitudes,’ Callie had snapped, withdrawing her hand from Damon’s abruptly.

‘But we have already discussed this, Callie mou ,’ Damon had protested and, turning his attention back to Sarah, he had added, ‘Our love must be seen to have stood the test of time if I am to have any hope of winning my brother’s consent to our marriage.’

‘Your brother’s consent?’ Sarah had repeated helplessly.

‘Greek families function on the basis of a strict hierarchy,’ Callie had intervened witheringly. ‘At the top of the family pecking order is the dominant male. Damon’s father is dead. His brother, Alexis is the big wheel in the Terzakis tribe.’

Faint colour had darkened Damon’s good-looking features. He had cast Callie a look of surprisingly strong reproof.

‘I don’t think you should take cheap shots at Damon’s big brother,’ Sarah had told her unrepentant sister while she’d prepared supper in their tiny kitchen. ‘Or his family. He was offended—’

‘Stuff!’ Callie had muttered, still angry. ‘He’s a grown man with a responsible job. But when he talks about Alex he acts like a little boy. He never stops talking about him. Alex this...Alex that. You’d think Alex was God in his life.’

‘Damon is Greek,’ Sarah had reminded her gently. ‘His culture, his background and his upbringing are bound to differ greatly from yours. If you really love him, Callie...all that goes with the territory.’

Sarah surfaced from the past and found herself perched on a bench in the park down the road from the hospital. To think that all those months ago she had actually been relieved to hear Damon mentioning the necessity of obtaining his brother’s approval before he could marry!

Alarm bells had only really gone off the day she’d caught the name Terzakis on the evening news and glimpsed a forbiddingly handsome male, surrounded by executives and cameras, refusing to comment on his acquisition of some company in New York. She had bought a serious newspaper the next day on the way into work and she had read all about Alexis Terzakis with growing consternation. That evening she had rung Callie and asked her to come home for a night. Callie had come with bad grace, demanding to know what all the fuss was about.

‘You said that Damon was running his family’s hotel in Oxford,’ Sarah had reminded her. ‘What you didn’t say was that the Terzakis family are billionaires!’

‘Alex is the billionaire,’ Callie had said drily. ‘Damon just gets pocket money.’

‘I thought Damon’s family were hoteliers—’

Callie had burst out laughing. ‘Sarah, you are dumb! Don’t you ever read the business columns? Damon’s family own a shipping line, an international string of hotels, engineering plants, finance companies...you name it, they own it!’

Sarah had been disturbed. She had genuinely had no idea that her sister’s boyfriend was from so wealthy a background. Damon had seemed very unassuming. He had settled that evening into their shabby lounge without a shade of discomfort. She remembered Callie referring to her own job as secretarial and quickly dismissing the subject.

Actually Sarah was a humble filing clerk in a big anonymous office and she had not climbed the ladder any higher because the frequency with which she had held down two jobs had meant that she had no time to spare for evening classes. Sarah had spent countless evenings over the past seven years waitressing or cleaning for extra money to stretch their tight budget.

She had tried not to feel hurt that evening she’d first met Damon when Callie had asked her in advance not to mention those latter sources of income. Callie had been embarrassed by her sister’s acceptance of such low-grade employment. And, sadly, Sarah had understood. Callie had always wanted to be somebody and that vein of insecurity had been stirred when she’d found herself mixing with students from far more comfortable backgrounds than her own. She hadn’t wanted anyone to know that the source of the cheap but fashionable clothes she wore with such panache had been a sister, who regularly cleaned office blocks after closing time.

And now Callie was gone. Sarah raised trembling hands to her face as if she could somehow contain the anguish inside her. She could not imagine life without Callie. Callie with her raw energy, boundless untidiness and quick temper. Callie had been born when Sarah was six. Sarah, a quiet, rather lonely child, had delighted her parents by displaying not the smallest atom of jealousy. She had been enchanted by her baby sister. She had read her stories, picked her up when she fell over, taught her nursery rhymes before she started school and later helped her with her homework. With two parents working full-time, there had been plenty of opportunity for Sarah to fill in the gaps in Callie’s days when their mother was too tired or too busy.

‘Miss Hartwell.’

Sarah lifted her aching head like a sleepwalker and focused on Alex Terzakis in disbelief. He looked alien against the backdrop of the scruffy park.

‘Allow me to offer you a lift home,’ he drawled flatly.