Angel of Death

Had they been lovers? Was it over? Or was the woman Elena refusing to let him go?

She was so disturbed by her own thoughts that she crept back the way she had come and took another route to her bungalow, but she could not shake off what she had seen. If Pandora found out about her husband and that woman, it could bring on another miscarriage.

She skipped dinner that evening and stayed in her bungalow learning some more Greek, listening to an audio tape Milo had lent her.

Next morning she went out for a walk to the sea after an early breakfast. Fetching up near the isolated house again she stopped to stare, wondering again who lived there. While she was staring she heard a footstep, the sharp snap of a twig someone had stood upon, the rustle of grass parting as a body came through it.

Miranda turned in the direction of the sounds. A man in black shorts and a white t-shirt was only a few feet away, walking briskly towards her. She recognised him with a painful twist of the heart.

She could barely breath. It was him. On the beach two days ago, she had not been imagining things or hallucinating. It had been Alex Manoussi walking at the edge of the sea.

He saw her a second later and stopped moving, staring at her, then he came on in a calm, unhurried fashion, his long, bare brown legs gleaming in the sunlight, and gave her a polite bow of the head.

‘Mrs Grey. Good morning.’

‘What are you doing here?’ she whispered, then, before he could answer hysteria swept through her. ‘Did you follow me here? Are you stalking me? I suppose you’ve already told Terry where to find me so that he can send someone to kill me? Or has he asked you to do it?’

His hand came up and clamped over her mouth, his long, slim fingers cool.

‘You’re hysterical. Try to be calm.’

She tried to bite him but could only mumble at his palm, voice muffled by the flesh pushing down against her teeth. ‘You . . . bastard . . .’

‘Ssh . . .’ he murmured. ‘You don’t need to be frightened of me! I did not follow you here. I didn’t need to, I was already here.’

Then he let his hand drop away from her mouth. She took one long, unimpeded breath.

‘You expect me to believe that?’

‘It’s true. This is my hotel. I own it,’ he expanded. ‘Pan is my sister.’

A tide of disillusion and hurt swept over her. ‘She set me up? It was all a plot to get me here? She lied to me?’ She had liked Pandora and her husband the minute she met them, had never suspected for an instant that they might not be straight with her. Why should she?

While she had been busy feeling sorry for Pandora, worrying about her, trying to help her, Pandora had been conspiring with Alex Manoussi to lure her here.

Alex shook his head. ‘No, Pan didn’t tell you any lies. Everything she told you was the truth. Except . . .’

‘Except what she left out!’ Miranda said with fierce contempt. ‘She didn’t mention you, for instance, didn’t tell me you were her brother, or say she knew Terry Finnigan. I know he visited your home and met your family, he told me so. So she knew all about me!’

He sighed. ‘I did talk to her about you, and I asked her not to mention me, but I didn’t tell her anything about Terry. What she knows about that she heard from your mother. I simply said that you might not come if you knew I would be here.’

‘I don’t believe you. How can I trust a word you say?’ She moved sideways to get away, but he put both hands on the trunk of the plane tree and fenced her between them, leaning towards her, his body very close yet not actually touching hers, merely reminding her how much more powerful his body was than her own. Her senses rioted. She had never been so aware of any man.

His expression was very serious, even brooding. ‘Don’t you know my sister better than to believe she would conspire against you? She likes you. And she needs help; if she doesn’t carry this baby full-term I’m afraid she may crack up. She really needs you, Miranda. Don’t turn against her because of me.’

‘Of course it was a pure coincidence that she was in the hospital at the same time as me!’ she said with biting sarcasm.

‘She had been asked to spend a few days having tests to check that the baby was still OK but she hadn’t arranged a date. When I heard you were in that hospital I admit I asked her to ring up and book herself in at the same time. As a foreigner, she was a private patient anyway, so it wasn’t difficult.’

She was breathing in the scent of his skin, faintly salty, and smelling of pine – aftershave or shower gel? she thought inconsequentially, so disturbed by her reactions to him that she leaned away, her head back and touching the tree trunk. He was far too close.

‘Why lie to me, though? Why didn’t she tell me the truth?’

‘Because I asked her not to! I’ve explained that.’

‘You haven’t explained why you didn’t want me to know!’

‘If she had told you she was my sister would you have come?’