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CHAPTER ONE
THETINYCHURCHat the top of the hill was cute beyond words.
Efemia, the Greek island tucked away in a forgotten corner of the Aegean, was the kind of place tourists cooed over and excitedly photographed from the outside while, inside, pious grandmothers clutched their rosaries and whispered fervent prayers.
It was the very last place Imogen Callahan expected to be. Certainly the last place she’d anticipated her frantic search would culminate. For several stunned seconds, she stared up at the dazzling whitewashed, blue-domed structure, with the slightly unevenly spaced windows, the sparkling Aegean its picture-perfect backdrop, still unable to comprehend what her private investigator had discovered. Unable to comprehend what was about to happen within the sacred walls. If indeed the report was true.
Had he gone insane? Or was this another of those multi-tiered games he excelled at, where most participants didn’t even know they were playing until it was too late, and he was striding away with his prize?
Imogen firmed her lips as, from inside the chapel, the crescendo of voices sang the last refrain of a Greek hymn. She willed her hands not to shake as she mounted the last few steps, reached out and grasped the cool, solid aged iron handle.
Whatever game was going on, it was past time it came to an end. It had to, before she went out of her mind. She’d spent far too many nights tossing and turning, the unknown eating an acid path through her chest.
Through her life.
Well, no more.
With a deep breath in, she wrenched the heavy door open, the sound of old hinges creaking in the silence making her cringe.
Sunlight slanted through stained-glass windows, bathing the small congregation in streaks of vivid colour. But the couple at the head of the altar were shrouded in muted shadow. That didn’t stop her from gaining an impression of a tall, towering frame and broad shoulders, of sculptured features and a penetrating gaze whose force was immediate, laser sharp and commanding as he turned towards her.
As was far too predictable with this man...if it was him... She shivered in bone-deep awareness, the overpowering magnetism that was never far already eddying around her. Then she grew impatient with herself for doing so. It could be a stranger for all she knew. Another dead end.
Still...she needed to make sure. Nothing but absolute certainty would suffice.
So she forced herself to step forward through the doors. To clear her throat. To tilt her chin and aim her gaze at the priest who stood in a circle of light two steps above the couple, his hands folded benevolently in front of his robes.
‘I’m not sure what’s going on here. But this farce needs to end. Right now,’ Imogen announced, tone firm, intent unwavering.
The shocked silence, broken almost immediately by fervent whispering, then gawping expressions that ensued were like a scene from thetelenovelasher late grandmother had loved to devour. Except this wasn’t make believe. This was herlife.
She swallowed again as stunned expressions began to grow disapproving, then downright hostile, her words and the click of her heels as she advanced commanding every gaze.
At the top of the aisle, the priest frowned, his own gaze turning less benevolent the closer she got.
Imogen didn’t need to look down to be reminded of what she looked like.
The blow-out hairdo she’d let her stylist talk her into had got even wilder as the hours grew smaller, the heavier than usual make-up dramatising her every feature as a precursor to highlighting every emerald sequin of her thigh-skimming dress in the blinding sunlight, the red-soled heels looking positively indecent in the small, hallowed space.
She knew she looked completely out of place in a church, but she refused to be embarrassed by her appearance.
She’d been at a nightclub in Athens when she’d received the text from the PI.
A rare occurrence in and of itself because she’d rarely socialised in the past ten months. Returning to her apartment to change hadn’t even occurred to her. The visceral need to rush here,to know, had been all-encompassing.
Feeling every inch of the congregation’s judgment, she wanted to blurt that this wasn’t how she usually dressed; that she wasn’t one for short, barely there dresses that flaunted more skin than fabric. That she was more at home in power suits than cocktail dresses. But she didn’t owe anyone an explanation of how she lived her life these days. Not since she’d finally offered one last sacrifice and stepped out from under her father’s thumb.
Instead, she raised her chin, boldly met censorious gaze after censorious gaze until one by one they began to fall away. Of course, the gazes fell to her skimpy, thigh-skimming hem, bare legs and sky-high Louboutins, especially when she started to move towards the couple who were also turned towards her, as frozen as the rest of the congregation who were now beginning to whisper louder in Greek.
The priest skirted the couple and stepped towards her, arms outstretched as if shielding them from whatever harm he imagined Imogen intended to do to them.
Rapid-fire words were launched at her.
She shook her head, her long dark hair falling about her shoulders as she carried on down the aisle. ‘I’m afraid I don’t speak Greek. But I sincerely hope you understand English because, like I said, you need to stop this...whatever this is before you make a serious mistake.’
‘And what mistake would that be?’
Imogen froze mid-step, finally brought to a halt by the cool query that didn’t come from the priest but from the prospective groom.
