coffee,’ she murmured, determined to hear what Kasma had to say since she sure as heck wasn’t going to receive any information from Acheron.
Grim-faced, Dmitri retreated to an even closer table.
‘I believe in getting straight down to business,’ Kasma informed her. ‘How much money do you want to walk out on this absurd marriage?’
Dumbstruck, Tabby stared at the older woman. ‘You can’t be serious.’
‘Oh, I’m always serious when it comes to Ash. We belong together and he would have married me, not you, had my stepfather not foolishly tried to force the issue in his will,’ Kasma contended confidently. ‘You must know how proud Ash is.’
‘Staying here, entering into this dialogue is a very bad idea, Mrs Dimitrakos,’ Dmitri leant closer to spell out.
Kasma shot a vicious burst of Greek at the older man and the look on her face was downright scary. With the sudden suspicion that Dmitri’s advice to retreat from the scene might well be the most sensible move, Tabby lifted her bag, settled some money on the table for the bill and stood up. Before she walked away, however, she had something to say. ‘No matter how much money you offered me I wouldn’t walk out on Acheron,’ she murmured tautly. ‘I love him.’
‘Not as much as I love him, you bitch!’ Kasma launched at her in a seething shout of fury that shook Tabby rigid.
Cupping her elbow firmly in his hand, Dmitri walked her away from the café at a fast pace. ‘Kasma Philippides is a dangerously unstable woman. Your husband has a restraining order out against her on Greek soil and she’s not allowed to approach him or make a nuisance of herself there. You can’t talk to her. You can’t reason with her. We’ve learned that the hard way.’
‘Ash should’ve warned me. If he’d warned me, I would’ve walked away immediately,’ Tabby protested defensively. ‘I could see that she was obsessed with him at the wedding but I didn’t understand how much of a problem she was in his life.’
‘He wasn’t expecting her to follow you here. He had no idea she was on the island. By the way, he’s flying back as we speak.’
Relief swept Tabby. He would finally have to tell her the whole story. But he had had to take out a legal restraining order to keep Kasma at a distance? What had driven him to take his father’s stepdaughter to court? That must have taken some nerve, particularly while his father was still alive. Had Kasma been acting like some sort of psycho stalker?
They were driving along the coast road when she noticed that Dmitri kept on looking worriedly in the driving mirror. Tabby glanced over her shoulder to notice the bright red sports car behind them. The 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,
