asking for you. Please…Mr C-Carides,’ he stuttered. ‘I don’t know what to do. He’s a total mess, and if Uncle Carl sees him like this there’ll be hell to pay,’ he predicted gloomily. ‘He drank enough to sink a battleship last night. He really isn’t himself.’
Christos did not display surprise—because he wasn’t surprised. He would have been more surprised if his cousin hadn’t fallen off the wagon. At times of stress—and presumably marrying the heiress of one of the richest men in Britain came under that title—his cousin always reached for a crutch.
‘I think you’ll find, Peter, when you have known Alex a little longer, that he is being himself.’
He would learn, as people generally did, that underneath the charm Alex possessed in abundance his cousin was essentially weak and, like many insecure men, inclined to be spiteful and manipulative when thwarted.
The younger man looked a little nonplussed by the languid response. ‘I don’t think you understand. He can hardly stand up and he keeps…’ He paused and glanced over his shoulder. ‘Crying…’
It was clear to Christos that in the young Englishman’s eyes these masculine tears were the most embarrassing feature of this situation. ‘And this should concern me because…?’ he enquired, in his deep, accented drawl.
The younger man’s expression betrayed his shock and revulsion at this casual response. ‘You’re not going to help?’
The reply, when it came, was unambiguous. ‘No.’
Under normal circumstances the younger man would not have dared speak his mind to the likes of Christos Carides, but the realisation that he was going to have to sort out the mess himself made him recklessly outspoken.
‘When Alex said you were a cold, callous bastard I gave you the benefit of the doubt!’
Christos smiled, revealing even white teeth and zero warmth. ‘Your mistake, I think,’ he observed mildly. ‘If you want my advice, for what it’s worth, I’d shove his head in a bucket of ice water, fill another with black coffee and force-feed it to him.
‘Don’t worry too much,’ he added. ‘He has the constitution of a hospital superbug. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m waiting for someone.’ With a slight inclination of his dark head he dismissed the younger man.
The stressed best man retreated a few feet, then turned back, his resentment roughening his young voice as he yelled back, ‘Uncle Carl is right. You and the rest of Carides family may think you’re a cut above everyone else, but when it comes down to it you’re no better than a damned pirate. No morals, no scruples and no manners.’
Peter saw that, rather than being offended by the insulting tirade, Christos was grinning, in that instant looking every inch a swashbuckling buccaneer—one, furthermore, likely to cut his throat on a whim!
‘Is that a direct quote?’
Peter was not a physical young man, but the mockery gleaming in the Greek’s dark eyes filled with him with an uncharacteristic desire to resort to physical violence. Not that he did, of course. He was angry, not insane! This was no sedentary businessman he was talking to. Christos Carides was only in his early thirties, and besides, he had to be six five if he was an inch—and he definitely worked out!
Cooling down slightly, Peter became belatedly aware that people were staring. And, being much less comfortable with this attention than his adversary, the young man gritted his teeth and stalked off with as much dignity as he could muster.
He would have been comforted to know that there was someone close by who would have applauded his reading of the Carides character—and added a few choice observations of her own!
Becca Summer, mingling with guests, was approaching the security cordon. At that moment her throat was so dry with nerves she probably couldn’t have strung two words together, and if she had she wouldn’t have been able to hear what she said above the heavy thud of her pounding heart. Six weeks earlier she hadn’t been similarly hindered.
Six weeks earlier she had been uncharacteristically vocal!
‘People like these Carides,’ she had declared, snarling the name contemptuously. ‘They make me sick! They think that just because they have money and power they can do anything they want.’ She’d looked at her sister, Erica, and swallowed past the emotional lump in her throat. ‘Regardless of who they hurt.’
‘You know, Becca, there’s not much point being mad,’ Erica had pointed out defeatedly.
‘You mean don’t get mad, get even?’ The old cliché had never made more sense to her than it had at that moment.
‘Get even?’ Erica had exclaimed with a laugh. ‘Are you serious? We’re talking about the Carides.’
‘So you think that people like the Carides imagine they can do anything they want?’ Becca had retorted.
‘I know they can, Becca.’
The bleak retort had made Becca’s eyes fill. She’d struggled to hold back the tears and declared fiercely, ‘One day I’ll teach them that they can’t walk all over people and get away with it! You see if I don’t.’
It had been said in the heat of the moment, and deep down she probably hadn’t really believed that such an opportunity would arise—but here she was, about to do her small part in balancing the scales of justice.
And she was already regretting it big-time!
Becca caught a passer-by staring at her head and quickly pulled off the knitted cloche—not the sort of head gear that people wore to posh weddings—crammed over her tangled titian hair. Pulling a not quite steady hand through her Pre-Raphaelite curls, she shook her hair back, letting it fan over the dark material of her coat.
Don’t give up the day job, Becca. Undercover work is definitely not for you, she told herself, repressing a worried grin.
Part of the problem was that she was not just scared out of her mind, she was exhausted. Hardly surprising, considering that the previous evening she had jumped in her ancient Beetle and driven through the night, halfway across the country, to get here.
Adrenaline and outrage—and seeing the newspaper article concerning the ‘society wedding of the year’ had given her a double dose of both—could, she discovered, take a protective big sister a long way.
Cars, on the other hand, needed petrol—which was why she had had to walk five miles along a lonely road to the nearest service station at three in the morning. A terrifying experience. And then, just to add to her misery, it had started to snow.
Snow in early November—how unlucky was that?
She had a blister on her right heel to bear witness to her trek, and a suspicion that spontaneity wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. After this was over it would be a relief to go back to her normal sensible, cautious, consequence-considering self!
Reckless just wasn’t her. It wasn’t in her nature to throw caution to the wind. In fact, her inability to be spontaneous had been one of the reasons Roger had cited for the failure of their relationship.
Her family and friends had been suitably supportive when the announcement—the
