Sara Craven - The Innocent's Surrender

Natasha realised that the brightly lit entrance she was being hustled through was completely unfamiliar to her.

‘What is this?’ she demanded huskily. ‘Where am I? Tell me at once.’

Silent, impassive, the men halted in front of a pair of double doors and knocked. The doors opened noiselessly.

They didn’t push her in. It wasn’t quite as crude as that. But somehow she was stepping forward, and they were moving backwards, and the doors were closing again behind her. Leaving her standing there, alone.

Except that she was not alone.

It was a very big room, but all Natasha noticed was the bed, lit on either side by tall lamps, like a stage set. Illumining, she realised dazedly, the man who was sitting in that bed, leaning back against a mound of snowy pillows, naked down to the sheet discreetly draped across his hips, and probably beyond, as he worked on the laptop computer open in front of him.

He unhurriedly completed whatever task he was engaged on, then Alex Mandrakis closed the lid, put the laptop on the adjacent table and looked at her.

‘Ah,’ he said softly. ‘The beauty I was promised, here at last.’

Sara Cravenwas born in South Devon and grew up in a house full of books. She worked as a local journalist, covering everything from flower shows to murders, and started writing for Mills & Boon ®in 1975. When not writing, she enjoys films, music, theatre, cooking, and eating in good restaurants. She now lives near her family in Warwickshire. Sara has appeared as a contestant on the former Channel Four game show Fifteen to One , and in 1997 was the UK television Mastermind champion. In 2005 she was a member of the Romantic Novelists’ team on University Challenge—the Professionals .

RUTHLESS AWAKENING

THE SANTANGELI MARRIAGE

ONE NIGHT WITH HIS VIRGIN MISTRESS

THE VIRGIN’S WEDDING NIGHT

By

MILLS & BOON®

www.millsandboon.co.uk

‘SO,’ NATASHA KIRBY said, glancing round the lamplit table, her gaze steady, her voice cool and even. ‘Is someone going to tell me what’s going on? What I’m doing here? Or do I have to guess?’

There was an awkward silence, then Andonis leaned forward, his smile cajoling. ‘Why, sister, it is only that it has been some time—too long—since you paid us a visit. Po,po,po , does there have to be a problem before we invite you here, for a little family party?’

‘No,’ Natasha agreed levelly. ‘But I usually come in the spring and early autumn in order to see your mother. Invitations at other times are rarely so last-minute—or so pressing,’ she added drily. ‘And if this is a party, I certainly don’t see many signs of celebration.’

On the contrary, she thought, the atmosphere at the house was more reminiscent of a wake. Her antennae had picked up on it as soon as she’d arrived. Although it was hardly surprising in view of recent events.

And while the meal itself had been splendid—her favourite lamb dish, she’d noted cynically, oven-baked with tomatoes, garlic and oregano until it melted off the bone—the conversation round the dinner table had been strained, almost muted.

Even Irini, the youngest of the late Basilis Papadimos’s three children, had been quieter than usual, as if she was deliberately reining back her normal overt hostility to her English foster sister. Which should, Natasha recognised, have been a relief. Yet, somehow, wasn’t…

There was another uncomfortable pause, while she watched Andonis look at his older brother, his shoulder lifting in a shrug that was almost resigned.

And Natasha sat back in her chair, sighing under her breath, as she thought, Oh God, there’s trouble. I knew it.

The problem was she did know. Because she knew them all—much too well. And had done since her childhood, she thought wryly.

Since the moment, in fact, when Basilis, that great, loud bear of a man who’d been her father’s friend, had swooped down in those bleak, traumatic days after Stephen Kirby’s sudden death and carried her off to his palatial home outside Athens, ignoring all the protests from the child-support agencies in London.

‘I am her godfather,’ he had rumbled, his eyes fierce under the heavy eyebrows, daring anyone to oppose him. ‘And, to a Greek, that bestows a lifetime of responsibility. Stephanos knew this, always. Knew I would happily accept his daughter as my own. There is no more to be said.’

And when the millionaire owner of the Arianna shipping line spoke with such finality, it was generally better to obey.

She had been welcomed gently by Madame Papadimos, who told her that she must call her Thia Theodosia, then smoothed her soft fair hair with caressing fingers, and gave her a handkerchief scented with sandalwood when the inevitable, bewildered tears began to rain down her white face.

The sons of the house, Stavros and Andonis, greeted her more exuberantly, clearly seeing in her another female victim, alongside their younger sister, Irini, for their teasing and practical jokes.

But being a joint target had not created any kind of bond between Natasha and the Greek girl, only two years older than herself. From the start, Irini had never exhibited even an atom of the philoxenia —the love of strangers—that was the heart of Greek hospitality. On the contrary…

Even though she was grieving, Natasha had soon realised that Irini had resented her from the first step she’d taken over the Papadimoses’ family threshold, and that little had happened since to change that in any way. That to the other girl she would always be the outsider—the interloper that her father had imposed upon them.

And sadly the attitude of Basilis himself had not helped the situation. Young as she was, Natasha became uncomfortably aware that Irini’s life was already one long, painful contest for her father’s attention. A contest that she seemed not to be winning.

Because where his only daughter was concerned, Basilis was kind enough but invariably remote in a way he never was with the boys. Or, Natasha had to admit, with herself, whom he treated with wholehearted affection.

And whether Irini behaved like an angel, or turned into a whining, spiteful, needy devil, as she could do at the drop of a hat, it made no noticeable difference. So, without any real incentive to be good, she usually chose the other option, with nerve-shattering results.

‘And to think her name means peace,’ Stavros had commented sourly one day, after a particularly spectacular row with screaming and door-slamming. ‘She should have been named Hecate of the Three Heads, because she whines like a dog, bites like a snake and looks like a horse.’

He’d been punished for his unkindness, but Natasha knew that he and Andonis had still used the name on the quiet to torment their sister.

And for all she knew, they might be doing so to this day, which could be why the other girl’s mouth had thinned into a line of ill-natured grievance, and her dark eyes snapped at the world with undisguised suspicion.

As she’d got older and more perceptive, Natasha had often wondered why Thia Theodosia, who must have realised the reason for Irini’s tears, tantrums and sheer bad temper, didn’t intervene—point out to her husband the damaging disparities in his treatment of his children.