The Tycoon's Mistress. Sara Craven
how easily Eloise would have been seduced.
After all, she thought, I was planning to give up my job, my lifestyle, my independence. I shouldn’t judge anyone else.
Her own meetings with her father over the past two years had been mainly confined to lunches in London, with the conversation constrained.
Perhaps I should have made more of an effort, Cressida thought as she drank her coffee. Perhaps I should have played the hypocrite and pretended to like her. Even looked for her good points. Told myself that, whatever my personal feelings, she loved Dad and was making him happy.
Only, I never believed that. I just didn’t want to be proved right quite so comprehensively.
She sighed, and turned resolutely to the computer screen. It was little use rehashing the past, she told herself forcibly. She had to try and salvage something from the present to ensure her father had a future.
She worked steadily for a couple of hours, but found little to comfort her.
Her father’s company pension was indeed all that was left. All his other assets had been liquidised to make him a major shareholder in Paradise Grove. And he’d borrowed heavily too.
If he recovered from his heart attack, it would be to find himself insolvent, she realised unhappily.
His whole way of life would have to be downsized. She’d have to rent a larger flat, she thought, or even a house. Make a home for him—and Berry, who’d be needed more than ever. But how could she afford it?
I won’t worry about that now, she told herself, glancing at her watch.
It was time she took a shower and dressed, and got over to the hospital again.
As she pushed back her chair, she noticed for the first time the small icon at the bottom of the screen indicating there was an e-mail message for her.
Someone else believes in an early start, Cressida thought wryly, as she clicked on to the little envelope and watched the message scroll down.
I am waiting for you.
The words were brief, almost laconic, but they had the power to make her stiffen in shock and disbelief.
She twisted suddenly in her chair, staring over her shoulder with frightened eyes.
The room was empty. And yet she felt Draco’s presence as surely as if he was standing behind her, his hand touching her shoulder.
She said, ‘No,’ and again, more fiercely, ‘No. It’s not true. It can’t be…’
And heard the raw panic that shook her voice.
CHAPTER TWO
THERE was a rational explanation. There had to be.
Someone, somewhere, must be playing a trick on her, and had accidentally scored a bullseye.
All the way to the hospital Cressy kept telling herself feverishly that this was the way it had to be. That it must be one of her colleagues…
Except that they were all under the impression that she was still sunning herself on an island in the Aegean. She hadn’t told anyone from work that she was back.
And, anyway, the message was too pointed—too personal to have come from anyone else but Draco. Wasn’t it?
But how the hell did a Greek fisherman with one small, shabby boat and a half-built house manage to gain access to a computer, let alone have the technical know-how to send electronic mail halfway across Europe?
It made no sense.
Besides, he only knew my first name, she reminded herself with bewilderment. He can’t possibly have traced me with that alone.
Her mind was still going round in ever decreasing circles as she went up in the lift to the Intensive Care Unit. But she steadied herself when the sister in charge met her with the good news that her father’s condition had greatly improved.
‘He’s asleep at the moment, but you may sit with him.’ Calm eyes looked squarely into Cressida’s. ‘You can be relied on not to make emotional scenes, Miss Fielding? He really doesn’t need that kind of disturbance.’
‘Of course not.’ Cressy said steadily. ‘I just want him to get better.’
She fetched some coffee from the machine in the corridor, then quietly took up her vigil, forcing herself to composure. She couldn’t afford to send out any negative vibrations.
And she hadn’t time to worry about mysterious e-mail messages or who might have generated them. Her father was her priority now, and nothing else could be allowed to matter.
That worrying grey tinge seemed to have gone from James Fielding’s face. He looked more his old self again, she thought, surreptitiously crossing her fingers.
If he continued to make good progress he could soon be moved to a private room, she told herself. The premiums on his private health insurance had been allowed to lapse, but she would pay.
She said under her breath. ‘I’ll look after you, Daddy—whatever it takes. I’ll make sure you’re all right.’
He woke up once, gave her a faint smile, and fell asleep again. But it was enough.
Apart from the hum of the various machines, the unit was quite peaceful. And very hot, Cressy thought, undoing another button on her cream cotton shirt.
Almost as hot as it had been in Greece.
For a moment she could feel the beat of the sun on her head, see its dazzle on the water and hear the slap of the small waves against the bow of the caique as it took her to Myros.
Myros…
She noticed it the day she arrived, when she walked across the cool marble floor of her hotel bedroom, out on to the balcony, and looked across the sparkle of the sea at the indigo smudge on the horizon.
As she tipped the porter who’d brought up her luggage, she asked, ‘What is that island?’
‘That, thespinis, is Myros.’
‘Myros.’ She repeated the name softly under her breath.
She stayed where she was, fingers lightly splayed on the balustrade, lifting her face to the sun, listening to the distant wash of the sea and the rasp of the cicadas in the vast gardens below.
She could feel the worries and tensions of the past months sliding away from her.
She thought, with bewilderment and growing content, I really need this holiday. I didn’t realize it, but Martin was quite right.
Her work was always meticulous, but she’d made a couple of mistakes in the last few weeks. Nothing too dire, and nothing that couldn’t be swiftly put right without inconvenience to the client, but disturbing just the same.
Martin had looked at her over his glasses. ‘When was the last time you took a break, Cress? And I don’t mean Christmas and the usual Bank Holidays. I mean a real, live, away-from-it-all, lie-in-the-sun break. The sort that ordinary people have.’
‘I have time off,’ she had said. ‘Last time I decorated my sitting room at the flat.’
‘Exactly.’ He’d sat back in his chair, his gaze inflexible. ‘So you take the rest of the afternoon off, you visit a travel agent and you book yourself at least three weeks of total relaxation in some bit of the Mediterranean. Then get yourself some sun cream and a selection of pulp fiction and go. And that’s an order,’ he had added as Cressy had begun to protest pressure of work.
She’d obeyed mutinously, agreeing to the travel company’s first suggestion of an all-inclusive trip to the latest in the Hellenic Imperial hotel chain.
‘They’re all the last word in luxury,’ the travel clerk had enthused. ‘And there’s a full programme of sport and entertainment on offer. This one only opened recently,