Dark Apollo. Sara Craven

       CHAPTER ONE

      ‘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