Strange Adventure

by Craven, Sara

  She walked over to the window and stood looking down at the service station area which was being used by quite a number of vehicles. She had a sudden urge to dress and rush downstairs and beg the driver of one of those vehicles to take her away from here—take her home. But she knew that such an action would merely be taking her out of the frying pan into the fire.

  The hand holding the curtain aside froze as she heard the key turn in the lock behind her and the door open. She could not look round, but went on staring down at the cars and toy figures moving round the petrol pumps and the bustle that she could not hear but which could be no louder than the pounding of her own heart.

  He was standing behind her. She could feel his breath warm on her neck, then his hands touched her shoulders lightly, his fingers sliding under the neckline of her robe. She continued to cling to the curtain, willing herself to relax, to endure what was going to follow because it was what she wanted—it really was, only she was being stupid and young and frightened, and there was no need to be frightened of Alan who loved her.

  And then with a suddenness that was almost more shocking than action itself, his caressing hands slid down inside her robe, cupping her breasts with a sensual urgency that drew from her at last a cry of outrage and a complete

  rejection of the madness that had brought her to this situation.

  'Alan.' She tore herself away from the intimacy of his caress, forcing herself to turn and face him. 'I'm sorry—but I—I can't ...'

  The words died on her trembling lips, as she stared unbelievingly into the dark, unsmiling face-of Troy Andreakis.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  `You!' The word was almost torn from her throat as she faced him, her hands instinctively gathering the folds of the robe protectively about her body.

  The harsh lines of his face had a perceptibly sneering expression as he observed her.

  'But of course, pethi mou. Whom else did you expect?' His voice was heavy with irony. 'After all, your father must have told you that I intended to see you this weekend. You have chosen a strange rendezvous, I admit, but ...'

  'Oh, stop it!' She pressed her fingers against suddenly throbbing temples. 'Where's Alan? What have you done with him?'

  His mouth hardened. 'What do you expect me to have done? Murdered him in a fit of jealous rage? You flatter yourself, my sweet one.' His eyes went over her, their glitter chilling her. 'Besides, if I judged your reaction correctly just now, I have little to be jealous of. He is more to be pitied than blamed, I think.'

  'Where is Alan?' she demanded again, her voice rising hysterically.

  'On his way back to Kings Winston, nursing a split lip,' he said almost laconically.

  'You hurt him! '

  `Only a little—a mere trifle compared with the injury he would have done me.' There was no escaping the grimness in his tone—no point in trying to evade his anger by denying what must be self-evident.

  'How did you find us?' Suddenly she felt deathly cold. She edged past him and went over to the fire, sinking down in front of it on her knees. 'You couldn't have known —couldn't have guessed ...'

  'I came down earlier than I intended.' He came and stood beside her, leaning his powerful shoulders against the wall as he stared down at her. 'I saw the Landrover at

  your gate—in fact I almost collided with it—and when I realised you were the passenger, I was curious and I followed.'

  She remembered too late the blazing headlights of that other car, and the warning blare of its horn. It would have been so easy for him to wait further on and then quietly fall in behind them. Both she and Alan had been too preoccupied to realise they might be followed.

  She gave a little groan and buried her face in her hands. The room was very quiet, only the sharp click of his lighter disturbing the silence as he lit the inevitable cheroot. When at last she looked up, she had in some measure regained her self-control and was beginning to think clearly again.

  `Does—does my father know?' she asked in a low voice.

  He was staring broodingly into space, but at the sound of her voice, he looked down at her and she saw a frown deepening the lines on his face.

  'Haven't you left your concern for him a little late?' he said curtly.

  `What do you mean?'

  He made an impatient gesture. 'I mean it might have been better to have considered the effect this—escapade would have before you embarked on it. But since you ask, no, I have told him nothing. And you?'

  'I left a note. They'll find it in the morning,' she said dully.

  'I think not. I think it would be better if you found it tonight and destroyed it before more harm is done,' he said.

  She shifted uneasily. 'But I'm not going home.'

  That much at least she had clear in her mind. She had some money with her, and this would have to support her until she found work of some kind.

  `Oh, but you are.' His voice was silky. 'When you have dressed yourself, we will be on our way.

  `You can't make me.' She looked at him defiantly.

  `Yes, I can, pethi mou,' he said drily. 'But we will not quarrel. If you prefer to remain here for the night, then we will do so.' He looked sardonically down at Lacey, whose lips had parted in alarm at the implication in his words.

  am not totally heartless, you see. I don't deprive you of one lover without providing you with another in his place. And if your heart is set on anticipating your marriage vows tonight ...' He flicked his cheroot butt into an ashtray and bent, gripping her arms and lifting her inexorably to her feet. 'Perhaps your father will not be too angry with us when we tell him we were carried away by our feelings.'

  `You're mad!' She pushed her hands against his chest, trying vainly to thrust him away from her. 'The only reason I came with Alan was so that I wouldn't have to marry you. You said you wouldn't have wanted me if I'd—been with another man.'

  `Perhaps not.' His lips twisted almost self-derisively. 'But all the more reason, my sweet one, to make sure of you myself here and now.'

  `But you never will be sure.' Her words were wild, born of the desire to hurt him, to send him from her. 'Even if you marry me, you'll never really know if I belong to you alone. I hate you. Can't you see that? I hate you!'

  His laugh was soft, but to Lacey's quivering senses, it seemed to fill the room with menace.

  `So you tell me, pethi mou. but what will you say in the morning, I wonder? Besides, hatred may add an extra spice to our relationship. Undiluted adoration can become a wearying trait in a woman.'

  She struck at him blindly, fear and anger getting the better of her, but he evaded the blow effortlessly, pinioning her wrists behind her in one lean hand and watching, a little cruelly, as she struggled impotently against his superior strength. At last she stood unmoving, her breasts rising and falling unevenly with the stress of her quickened breathing, and her eyes brilliant with furious tears. With almost insolent calculation, he made her wait for his kiss, his other hand caressing her throat and her ears and the clear young line of her jaw. Dry-mouthed, she summoned all her will to fight the feeling of warm languor that in spite of herself was threatening to invade her whole body.

  As if he sensed her inner struggle, Troy Andreakis smiled and his mouth came down on hers, not to crush and de-

  mand as she had expected, but lightly in the merest whisper of a caress that teased as it aroused.

  Her wrists suddenly were free. He was not holding her or coercing her in any way. The only contact between them was this breath of a kiss, coaxing and tantalising, making her forget that all she had to do was step backwards away from him, prompting her instead to move forward, close to him, so close that she could feel his body hardening against her own, making her want to slide her arms around his neck and draw him down to her. Almost unknowingly, her lips parted for him as the wave of longing his slow, expert awakening of her had engendered began to overwhelm her.

  His kiss deepened intimately, evoking sensations from her she had never dreamed could exist, and sh
e knew she wanted to feel his arms around her, to know again the strength that only minutes before she had defied so desperately.

  `Troy?' she whispered, the ache in her voice echoing that other unfamiliar ache that had taken possession deep in her body.

  'Say that you belong to me.' There was a fierce quietness in the words he ground out against her lips. 'Tell me that you're mine, and that you will be my wife.'

  'Yes,' she said. Her body was trembling now in reaction, and there was the sharp bitterness of tears in her throat. Tears of shame, she thought, at her own weakness, at the wantonness she had not known she possessed.

  `Very well.' He stood away from her with such suddenness that she found herself swaying, her eyes flying to his dark face in swift alarm. Now go and dress yourself and we will take the happy news to your father.'

  `But ...' The word was uttered before she could stop herself and a wave of hot colour flooded her body. She could not have been more obvious if she had thrown herself at his feet and begged him to take her, she thought furiously, pressing her hands to her burning face. She turned away hurriedly, avoiding his gaze and the mockery she knew it would hold, and walked across to the bathroom where she had left her clothes.

  When she returned, he was standing smoking another

  cheroot, and he watched in silence as she re-packed the few items she had taken from her case. The task completed, she stood with lowered gaze as he strolled across the room, and lifted the case off the bed.

  'In answer to your unfinished question,' he said almost casually, 'it is simply that I think tonight's lesson has gone far enough. But remember this, pethi mou. Run away from me again, and you will not find me so forbearing. Now we will go to your father.'

  He walked across the room and opened the bedroom door, holding it so that Lacey could walk out ahead of him into the corridor.

  Vanessa's train was late, Lacey thought as she glanced at at her watch. After a moment's indecision, she walked slowly back up the platform avoiding the small groups of passengers who were heralding the Easter rush to come, and entered the station buffet. She ordered herself a cup of coffee and took it to a seat by the window.

  She had not imagined when she had first asked Vanessa to spend Easter at Kings Winston that it would be to act as her bridesmaid, and she wondered wryly what Vanessa had thought when her letter had arrived. Her reply of acceptance had been circumspect in the extreme, but Lacey had no doubt that she would demand a fuller account of Lacey's whirlwind courtship on her arrival.

  Courtship. Lacey suppressed a little sigh almost unconsciously as she sipped her coffee. Was that really the way to describe the series of events leading her so inevitably to a quiet ceremony in the parish church on Easter Monday?

  Ever since her return home with Troy that night weeks before, she had realised that she no longer had control over her own destiny. Her life had taken on a strange disturbing momentum of its own, and in spite of herself, she was being swept along with it.

  She was thankful that at least she had been able to insist on a quiet wedding, instead of the big, fashionable affair in London that she had dreaded might be forced upon her. Her own inclination notwithstanding, she had been able to use her father's health as a more urgent excuse. He

  had suffered another slight attack, and been ordered to rest by his doctor.

  In consequence there had been frequent business conferences over the future of Vernon–Carey held at Kings Winston. These were invariably attended by Troy Andreakis with advisers and executives from his corporation, but although he was so often at the house, Lacey found she saw little of him. It was true that at first she had made a determined effort to keep out of his way, nevertheless it was disconcerting to find that he made no attempt to seek her out or exhibit any apparent awareness of her behaviour.

  Nor when they were together had he shown any overwhelming desire to make love to her. In fact since the night he had found her at the motel, he had only kissed her once, 'and that was when he had put the large uncut emerald she now wore on her engagement finger. And as her father and Michelle had both been present at the time, it had been less of a kiss than a formality.

  Lacey set her cup back in her saucer and gave herself an angry mental shake. She should be glad of it, she told herself vehemently. She had no wish for him to behave as her lover. It was quite bad enough to know that in a few short days she would have to accept him as a husband with all a husband's rights. The few prolonged conversations she had had with him since their engagement had served to drive this point gallingly home.

  `Where do you want to spend our honeymoon?' he asked almost idly one evening when he had joined her after dinner in the drawing room where she was quietly playing the piano. 'Apart from the usual place, of course.'

  Lacey's cheeks grew warm as she realised the implication in his words.

  `I wish you wouldn't,' she exclaimed helplessly.

  `Wouldn't what?'

  `Say—things like that.'

  `Does it disturb you so much to be reminded of what our exact relationship will be?' His eyes assessed her coolly. 'Perhaps I do it because I hope one day I'll get a reaction that will prove there really is a woman under that polite well-behaved schoolgirl exterior you present to me

  these days. Is there, Lacey mou?' His voice sank almost to a whisper. 'Or is it just an exquisite fragile shell that my money is buying for me?'

  There was an odd bitterness in his tone, but she chose to disregard it, stung by his taunt.

  'There is a saying "caveat emptor"—let the buyer beware,' she said, her voice clipped and brittle.

  'I have heard it.' His smile was mirthless as he got up. He walked across to her and stood looking down at her for a moment. Then his hand reached out and circled her throat, his thumb brutally forcing up her chin so that she was obliged to meet his gaze. 'But I think it is you that needs to beware. In fact I promise you it is.'

  'I'm not afraid of you,' she said a little breathlessly, hoping his grip on her throat would not betray the sudden tumult of her pulses.

  'Not now, perhaps, in your father's house with people nearby to run to. But soon, pethi mou, there will only be my arms to run to—or run from.'

  'I know that.' She pulled herself free, willing herself to withstand him and give him no hint of the treacherous warmth that his touch aroused in her. 'Don't you realise that my every waking hour is sickened by the thought?'

  He shrugged, his dark eyes under their heavy lids enigmatic. 'Fire your little barbs,' he said almost casually. `You'll pay for them all eventually, my dove. Willingly or unwillingly. The choice is yours.'

  He had left her then and Lacey had slumped over the piano keys, feeling the release from an almost unbearable tension.

  Remembering, now, she felt a swift shiver curl along her spine. There had been no tenderness in his attitude, nothing that could give her anything to hope for in their relationship. Just talk of payment and possession. And there was the other aspect of their bargain—his need for a companion for his young sister. That too was not without complications. Troy had elaborated little on what her father had already told her, except to repeat that Eleni had been thoroughly spoiled by her stay in America, and that he expected Lacey to befriend her when they arrived on Theros.

  Lacey wondered wryly whether he meant her to be a friend or a guard to the wayward Eleni, and she felt dubious about the girl's possible reaction when she was presented to a brand-new sister-in-law who was also a complete stranger to her. She had suggested tentatively that Eleni should come to England for the wedding, perhaps even act as her bridesmaid with Vanessa, but Troy had vetoed the suggestion emphatically.

  Eleni was not being rewarded for her recent behaviour by a trip to England, he had said coldly, adding that in any case his elderly aunt Sofia, who lived at his villa and was at present, Lacey, gathered, giving Eleni some reluctant chaperonage, was a very religious woman and would not care to be away from the island during Holy Week. And that, Lacey felt, was unanswerable. />
  She was aroused from her unhappy reverie by the noise of the train's arrival. As she emerged from the buffet, it had already halted and she. could see Vanessa leaning out of the window of a first class compartment scanning the people on the platform in search of her.

  'Van!' she called, breaking into a run, and was rewarded with an answering wave.

  `Well,' Vanessa greeted her with a warm hug, and she stood back grinning, 'of all the dark horses! I wonder if there'll be a Greek tycoon waiting for me when I finally leave prison. Honestly, Lacey, your engagement knocked the whole convent sideways. The only one to take it in her stride was Reverend Ma, and she told me to give you her blessing and say she had never had any doubt you would ultimately establish yourself entirely satisfactorily.' Vanessa mimicked the nun's resonant tones with a fair degree of accuracy and threw in a grimace for good measure.

  Lacey gave a forced little smile. 'I'm glad she approves.'

  Vanessa gave her a considering look. 'Are you?' she said drily. 'Well, lead me to the waiting taxi. I've had quite enough travelling for one morning.'

  On their way back to Kings Winston, Vanessa regaled her friend with stories and gossip about the other girls who had been at the convent with them, and Lacey was shocked to find how remote all that part of her life now seemed.

  Yet it was not so very long ago that she had seriously considered spending the rest of her life in that environment, she thought. She came back with a start to what Vanessa was saying.

  `I'm dying to meet your fiancé, Lacey. Is he at Kings Winston now?'

  `Er—no. I think he's in London, but I'm not sure,' Lacey said vaguely, and flushed slightly as she met a puzzled look from Vanessa.

  `Is this some new casual approach to offset that awful blushing bride image?' Vanessa inquired after a pause.

  No, not really. It's just that he really is very busy, and it's not always easy to keep track of his comings and goings,' Lacey said rather lamely.