Modern Romance - The Best of the Year. Miranda LeeЧитать онлайн книгу.
driver had long dark hair just like Kasma’s.
‘She’s following us,’ Dmitri told her flatly. ‘Make sure your belt is safely fastened. I may have to take evasive manoeuvres but I’ve already alerted the police.’
‘Evasive manoeuvres?’ Tabby gasped when there was a sudden jolt at the rear of the car. ‘She’s trying to ram us? Is she crazy in that tiny little car?’
Dmitri didn’t answer. His concentration was on the road because he had speeded up. Tabby’s heart was beating very, very fast as she watched in the mirror as the red car tried to catch up with them again. They were zooming round corners so fast that Tabby felt dizzy and she was still watching Kasma’s car when it veered across the road into the path of another car travelling the other way.
‘Oh, my word, she’s crashed...hit someone else!’
Dmitri jammed on the brakes and rammed into Reverse to turn and drive back. He leapt out of the SUV. The team from the other security car were already attending to the victims of the crash, carrying the passenger to the verge, the driver, still conscious, stumbling after them. The red sports car had hit a wall and demolished part of it. Tabby slowly climbed out, her tummy heaving as she approached the scene of frantic activity. Dmitri was talking fast on his phone as he approached her. ‘Stay in the car, Mrs Dimitrakos. You don’t need to see this. Miss Philippides is dead.’
‘Dead?’ Tabby was stunned, barely able to credit that the woman who had been speaking to her only minutes earlier could have lost her life.
‘She wasn’t wearing a belt—she was thrown from the car.’
‘And the people who were in the other car?’ Tabby asked.
‘Very lucky to be alive. The passenger has a head wound and the driver has a leg injury.’
Tabby nodded and got back slowly into the SUV, feeling oddly distanced from everything happening around her. That sensation, which she only vaguely recognised as shock, was still lingering when she gave a brief statement at the police station with a lawyer sitting in, volunteering information she couldn’t understand in the local language. That completed, she was stowed in a waiting room with a cup of coffee until Acheron strode through the door. He stalked across the room, emanating stormy tension, and raised her out of her seat with two anxious hands.
‘You are all right? Dmitri swore you were unhurt but I was afraid to believe him,’ Acheron grated half under his breath, his lean, darkly handsome features taut and granite hard as he scanned her carefully from head to toe.
‘Well, I was fine until you made me spill my coffee,’ she responded unevenly, setting the mug down and rubbing ineffectually at the splashes now adorning her pale pink top. ‘Are we free to leave?’
‘Yes, I’ve made a statement. Thee mou,’ Acheron murmured fiercely. ‘Kasma had a knife in her bag!’
‘A knife?’ Tabby repeated in horror.
‘But for Dmitri’s presence she might have attacked you!’ Acheron lifted a not quite steady hand and raked long brown fingers through his luxuriant black hair. ‘I was so scared when I heard she’d come here, I felt sick,’ he confided thickly.
‘She’s dead,’ Tabby reminded him in an undertone.
Acheron released his pent-up breath and said heavily, ‘Her brother, Simeon, is on his way to make the funeral arrangements. He’s a decent man. I hope you don’t mind but I’ve asked him to stay with us.’
‘Of course, I don’t mind. No matter what’s happened, your father’s family deserve your consideration and respect.’
‘Melinda’s flying back to London,’ Acheron volunteered. ‘She was responsible for the messages on the mirror.’
‘Messages...there was more than one?’ Tabby queried in consternation.
Acheron told her about the message he had seen at the villa in Tuscany and how Dmitri had instantly worked out that Melinda had to be the perpetrator when the nanny did it a second time. Confronted that same morning after breakfast by Dmitri, Melinda had confessed that Kasma had approached her in London and had offered her a lot of money to leave the messages and to spy on Acheron while keeping Kasma up to date with information on where they were staying. It was Melinda who had warned Dmitri that Kasma was actually on the island, news that had alarmed Acheron into making an immediate return.
The fountain of questions concerning Kasma that had disturbed Tabby earlier in the day was, by that stage, returning fast, but the haunted look in Acheron’s lustrous dark eyes and the bleak set of his bronzed face silenced her. He escorted her out to a car, and she slid in, appreciating the air-conditioned cool on her overheated skin.
‘I have a lot to explain,’ Acheron acknowledged flatly and then he closed his hand over hers.
In a reflexive movement, Tabby rejected the contact and folded her hands together on her lap. ‘After the way you behaved that last night and the fact that you haven’t been in touch since, I think holding hands would be a bit of a joke,’ she said bluntly. ‘You don’t need to pretend things you don’t feel to pacify or comfort me. As you noted, I’m unhurt. It’s been a horrible day but I’ll get over it without leaning on you.’
‘Maybe I want you to lean on me.’
Tabby raised a brow, unimpressed by that unlikely suggestion. ‘I’d prefer to fall over and pick myself up. I’ve been doing it all my life and I’ve managed just fine.’
Acheron compressed his wide, sensual mouth. ‘I should have explained about her weeks ago but the subject of Kasma rouses a lot of bad memories...and reactions,’ he admitted with curt reluctance.
‘Kasma’s the reason you thought someone might have pushed me down the stairs at the villa,’ Tabby grasped finally.
‘Maybe she made me a little paranoid but she did destroy my relationship with my father before he died.’
‘And that’s why he wrote that crazy will,’ Tabby guessed.
‘I told you that I only met my father’s family about eighteen months ago. I only agreed in the first place because it seemed to mean so much to him. What I didn’t mention before is that the week before that dinner engagement took place at his home, I met Kasma without knowing I was meeting Kasma,’ he told her grittily.
Tabby frowned. ‘Without knowing it was her?’ she echoed. ‘How? I mean, why?’
‘I doubt if I could ever adequately explain why from Kasma’s point of view. She introduced herself to me as Ariadne. She certainly knew who I was,’ he delivered with perceptible bitterness. ‘I was in Paris on a stopover between flights and she was staying in the same hotel. I’ve never believed that was a coincidence. I believe I was set up. I was alone. I was bored. She targeted me and I fell for it...and you could not begin to understand how deeply I regret taking the bait.’
Tabby was studying him with confused eyes. ‘The bait?’
‘I had a tacky one-night stand with her,’ Acheron ground out grudgingly, dark colour accentuating his spectacular cheekbones, his jaw line clenching hard on the admission. ‘A couple of stolen hours from a busy schedule of work and travel. I’m being honest here—it meant nothing more to me. Although I treated her with respect I never pretended at any stage that I wanted to see her again.’
Tabby averted her eyes, reflecting that respectful treatment would not have compensated Kasma for his ultimate rejection, when presumably she had persuaded herself that she could expect a much keener and less fleeting response.
‘She picked me up in the hotel restaurant. Afterwards she started acting as though she knew me really well. To be frank, it was a freaky experience and I made my excuses and returned to my own room.’
Tabby was swallowing hard at a level of honesty she had not expected to receive from him. ‘But if she already knew who you were, why did she lie about her own identity?’
Acheron