Vows of Revenge

Chapter Eleven

CHAPTER ELEVEN

K ASSIA LAY ON the yacht’s sun deck under an awning. Her eyes were shut, but she was not sleeping. Thoughts, bitter and toxic, were circling in her head.

I deserve what my father threw at me—I deserve it!

She had been as cretinously stupid as he’d said.

Thinking it was me Damos was interested in.

There had been only one thing he’d wanted—and it wasn’t her.

Acid tears seeped beneath her eyelids. To think she had thought it mere chance, a coincidence, that she had bumped into Damos like that in Oxford...

Oh, fool to think that!

He planned it from the start—planned it all. Right from visiting the excavation. All that stuff about wanting to sponsor it...wanting me to tell him more over dinner on his yacht... Then ‘accidentally’ bumping into me at the Ashmolean, taking me for tea, visiting Blenheim together. And then that college dinner, where he ‘just happened’ to need a plus one—and needed another oh-so-convenient plus one at that Art Deco dinner-dance at the Viscari in London, dressing me up so that I was a fitting partner for him...someone a man like him would want to be seen with. And then—

Pain like a knife thrust into her.

Then taking me to bed...

For one reason only. The reason that had been slammed into her face that nightmare evening in Athens.

To get at my father...ruin his plans.

The pain of the knowledge forced upon her by her father was unbearable.

But I deserve it—I deserve it.

She deserved every last bit of the agony inside her.

‘Darling?’

Her mother’s voice came from the lower deck. It was full of concern. Concern that had been there since Kassia had thrown herself into her arms, swamping her petite frame, and burst into unstoppable tears. Despite her diminutive height, her mother had hugged her tightly. And now, days after she’d landed in Malaga from Amsterdam, following her desperate plea, her usually insouciant mother had gone into full maternal support role.

Kassia was abjectly grateful. She had never envisaged her butterfly mother being so full of feeling for her daughter’s misery.

Kassia heard her footsteps coming up the stairs. ‘Oh, darling...’ she said again, pity in her voice.

Her mother, supple from all the Pilates classes Kassia knew she did to keep her figure trim, limbered down beside her onto a cushion. She helped herself to one of her daughter’s hands, chafing it comfortingly.

‘It will pass,’ she said. ‘I promise you, it will pass.’ She drew back a little. ‘Come and have some lunch,’ she said. ‘John’s gone off in the launch—he and the first mate are after catching something big and inedible. It will probably take them all day. Goodness knows what the appeal of fishing is!’

Memory seared in Kassia... Damos learning how to fly-fish from Duncan MacFadyen, her sitting on the rug on the bank, watching him...

Loving him...

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.

‘My daughter has nothing to say to you, Mr Kallinikos,’ Kassia’s mother said crisply.

Damos’s mouth tightened. ‘But I have things that need to be said to her. Kassia?’ He addressed her directly now. ‘Please let me simply talk to you—that is all.’ He paused. ‘We can’t leave it like this.’

He saw her whiten even more, but hesitate. Her mother murmured something to her and she seemed to tremble. Then, lifting her chin, she looked at him.

‘Outside. At that café over there.’

She nodded towards one of the many cafés and restaurants lining the busy marina. It was the one closest to the yacht—her mother would be able to see them if they sat outside, Damos realised.

He gave a curt nod. Tension was racking through him.

He watched her walk down the gangplank, step past him. He caught a faint scent of her perfume and memory rushed back. Memory he had to thrust away. Not indulge...

She walked swiftly to the café across the cobbled stones of the quayside, and sat herself down at a table. Damos did likewise. A waiter came by and Damos ordered black coffee for himself and white for her. He knew her taste in coffee. Knew so much about her.

But not how she was going to respond to him now.

She wasn’t looking at him—wasn’t making eye contact. Her breathing was laboured, he could tell, and her expression tense.

The coffee arrived...the waiter disappeared. Damos began.

‘We can’t leave it the way it is, Kassia,’ he said. His voice was low, intense. ‘I have to try...try and make my peace with you.’

He sounded stilted, he knew. And he knew the words were inadequate. But they were all he had now...the only way he could express what he wanted to achieve. And so much depended on them—on what he was going to say now.

He felt emotion trying to rise up in him, but he crushed it back down. It would get in the way—complicate matters. And right now the matter was very simple. Brutally simple.

I want her back.

But even as he thought it he changed it. No, he did not want Kassia back.

I need her back—because without her my life is...

Unthinkable.

That was what these frantic days of trying to find her had shown him...shown him with all the tenderness of a fist slamming into his solar plexus. Over and over again.

‘Peace?’

There was incredulity in her voice. She was staring at him. Now she was making eye contact—and he could almost wish she was not.

‘Peace?’ she said again. ‘You did what you did to me and you think we can make peace over it?’

‘I have to try, Kassia—’ he began.

But she cut across him. ‘Try what? Try to tell me that you didn’t use me to get at my father? Try to tell me that everything that happened between us wasn’t a lie from the very first? Are you going to try and deny that? You lined me up from start to finish! Knowing exactly what you were doing!’

He tried to interrupt but she would not let him. Vehemence was in her face, in her voice.

‘You turned up at the excavation deliberately—are you doing to claim you didn’t? And you got me to come to dinner on your yacht deliberately—are you going to deny that too? As for Oxford...’ A choke broke from her. ‘I thought it was a coincidence! Bumping into you like that. But it wasn’t, was it? Was it? ’

He drew a breath, his face as tight as if it were made of wire. ‘No. But—’

She wouldn’t let him speak.

‘And after that it was easy, wasn’t it? So damn easy. Spending time with me...coming up with one reason after another to do so. Reeling me in until you had me exactly where you needed me to be.’ Her face contorted. ‘In your bed.’

The bitterness in her voice was acid on his skin. Her eyes like knives plunging into his flesh.

‘And then you could do what you’d intended to do right from the very start—make me a weapon to use against my father.’ Her voice twisted. ‘For money. For profit.’

Her eyes were on him still, but now there was a bleakness in them that struck him like a blow. And she struck him another blow with her next words, cutting him to the very quick.

‘You once told me that there was a difference between using opportunities that presented themselves and using people to achieve them.’ Her voice was hollow. ‘But that wasn’t a difference you took any notice of. I was an opportunity presenting itself to you and you took full advantage. You lied to me...made a fool of me...used me.’

She pushed her chair back, got to her feet. She looked down at him. Spoke again. But now her voice was hard. As hard as her expression. As hard as the look in her eyes.

‘I thought you were different from my father, not cut from the same vile cloth.’ She drew a breath, and he heard it rasp in her throat. ‘How wrong I was.’

She turned away and walked back to the yacht, coffee untouched. There was something about the way she was walking, about the way her shoulders were hunching, her head dropping. He launched to his feet—then realised he had to pay for the undrunk coffee. He snatched out his wallet and dropped a note on the table, then strode after her rapidly.

He had to catch up with her.

Had to tell her what he had flown to Spain to tell her—what he would cross the world to tell her.

If she would let him...

She gained the gangplank and ran up it, head still bowed.

Someone stepped into his path. Not her mother, but her stepfather.

‘Stay away from her, Mr Kallinikos. You’ve done quite enough damage. Leave our family alone.’

He spoke calmly, but with the authority of his years, of his place as Kassia’s guardian right now. Keeping her safe from men who made use of her...

Damos looked past him. A taxi was pulling up on the quayside. Kassia and her mother were walking down the gangplank. Kassia’s mother had her arm protectively around her daughter, despite the disparity in their heights. Kassia’s head was turned away from him. A steward was following them with their suitcases.

Kassia’s stepfather had gone to open the door of the taxi, ushering in his wife and stepdaughter. The steward put the suitcases in the boot, and Kassia’s stepfather got into the front passenger seat.

The taxi moved off. Damos watched it go.

Then the taxi turned out of the marina into the traffic. Lost to sight.

Like Kassia—lost.

Damos went on staring. Though his eyes were blind.