wasn’t listening to these powerful words as she literally bounced in her seat in frustration. ‘I said stop the car!’ she bellowed, grabbing the steering wheel.
There was a short-lived tussle during which the car slewed violently to the left, barely missing a large beech tree before Nikos, white-faced and cursing, brought the vehicle safely to standstill.
‘Are you mad?’ he thundered, raking her face with silver-shot blazing eyes. ‘You could have killed us.’
Katie, who had been thrown against the door, shook her head to clear the ringing in her ears. ‘Well, if you’d done what I said instead of ignoring me…’ she retorted, reaching for the door handle.
Long brown fingers came to cover her own.
‘You are not going anywhere…’
Katie turned her head impatiently towards him. ‘Shut up and phone for the fire brigade—that’s my flat over there with smoke pouring out of the damned window.’
‘Theos!’
CHAPTER FIVE
KATIE didn’t wait around to see if Nikos was doing as she requested. She tore open the door, which he no longer barred, and, gathering her long skirts, ran full pelt down the path to the entrance she shared with Sadie.
In between pounding on the door she fumbled in her purse for her key. Before she found it Sadie, dressed in a baggy pair of silk trousers and a low-cut top that made her look like an inmate of a harem, appeared blinking sleepily.
‘Where’s the fire…?’
Katie had no time to waste on explanations. ‘Upstairs.’
Sadie’s eyes widened as she appreciated for the first time the urgency in Katie’s manner. ‘You’re serious!’ She sniffed the air. ‘I can smell smoke.’
Katie barged unceremoniously past her friend. ‘That’s because my flat’s on fire, and Alexander is still in there!’ she yelled over her shoulder as she raced up the stairs two at a time.
She ignored Sadie’s alarmed cry of ‘Katie, you can’t go up there…he’s just a cat!’
The smell of smoke got stronger as she climbed the stairs, but when she arrived at the top all she could see that was out of the ordinary were a few puffs of pale smoke oozing from the gap under the door of her attic apartment—it wasn’t good, but Katie had expected worse. With any luck the fire brigade would arrive before it got out of hand.
For a moment she stood there indecisively, at a loss to know what to do next. What did people do under such circumstances…?
‘If in doubt cross your fingers,’ she declared unscientifically. Taking a deep breath, she opened the door.
She exhaled noisily with relief as no lethal fireball knocked her over, and she pressed a hand flat against her chest where her thudding heart was trying hard to escape.
Perhaps this is my lucky day after all… she mused. ‘Lucky…!’ She rolled her eyes. Oh my word, I’m turning into one of those irritating people who see a bright side to a calamity, no matter how dire. ‘There’s optimism, Katie, and then there’s insanity. Your flat is on fire because you forgot to turn off your iron—that’s not lucky, it’s disastrous.’
The sound of her own voice calmed her nerves and strengthened her resolve. Her flat consisted of an open-plan living-area-cum-kitchen and a small bedroom with en suite facilities. Though the main room was filled with an acrid smoke that stung the back of her throat and made her eyes water, Katie could see no more obvious signs of the fire, which seemed to advance her theory that it had started in the bedroom. That was where she had ironed the creases from her dress on the floor rather than be bothered getting out her ironing-board.
‘Alex…good puss, nice kitty,’ she called, advancing cautiously into the smoke-filled room.
She had barely gone a couple of yards into the room when the visibility became nil. The only thing she could now see was a dull orange coming from underneath her bedroom door; it was the only thing that gave her any sense of orientation in the gloom. It also gave her a deep sense of foreboding…how long would the door contain the flames?
At times like this a well-developed imagination was not helpful.
No good thinking about that, she told herself, just get on with it. The sooner you find that damned cat, the sooner you can get out. Despite this stoicism her knees were shaking as she cautiously proceeded.
She stopped every few feet to listen but there was no response to her calls.
Katie didn’t know why she had expected him to respond, because Alexander was not a nice kitty, or a good puss, he was a belligerent animal who brought live mice into her bedroom and spat when you tried to show him affection. If he’d been human, doctors would have said he had a personality disorder.
And if I had any sense, she reflected grimly, I’d leave him to fry!
‘Alex, puss, puss…’ Mid coaxing call she walked straight into a solid object—the coffee-table she’d discovered in the garage sale. The impact of solid teak on her vulnerable shin was enough to send her to her knees. She eased her weight from her bruised knee and felt the tangled fabric of her dress rip.
‘Damn!’
It was while she was on her knees that she realised the smoke was thinner nearer the floor. She decided to continue her search from this position.
She was crawling cautiously along when she heard a deep voice calling her name.
Nikos…well, if he wants to murder me this would be the ideal opportunity, she thought. If ever there was a situation where black humour was appropriate, this was it, she decided, continuing her search, studiously ignoring his increasingly urgent cries.
Her grim smile turned into a cough when she heard a loud sound of impact closely followed by a strong Greek curse. It must, she realised in retrospect, have been the cough that alerted him to her position because moments later she was aware of strong hands sliding underneath her arms and hoisting her off the ground.
‘Let me go, you fool!’
‘Be still and keep calm. I have you.’ He did, in an iron grip that made escape impossible. ‘You are quite safe now,’ a deep, soothing voice in her ear informed her.
Katie, who had no desire to be saved, knew instinctively that safety was something Nikos Lakis’s arms would never offer her. It was the thought of what they might offer that made her start to struggle in earnest. As several of her blows connected the reassuring note in his deep voice began to sound a lot more strained.
She let out a shriek as he stopped trying to gently soothe her when, reverting to character, without so much as a ‘by your leave’ he threw her resistant body over his shoulder fireman-fashion.
This is a classic case, she told herself, lapsing into exhausted passivity, of resistance being quite definitely futile.
Katie was forced to maintain this undignified position until they had reached
