Sara Craven - Dark Apollo

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Excerpt “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.”

About the Author 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.

Title Page Dark Apollo Sara Craven www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

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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 CRAVENwas 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.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

‘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.’