The Blackmailed Bride. Kim Lawrence

      ‘You owe me nothing, Serge.’ Abruptly Javier changed the subject. ‘About the other thing…’ His dark angled eyebrows lifted and his eyes, startling blue in a face that was an even, deep gold, narrowed. ‘You’re sure about this, Serge?’

      Serge sighed and looked grim. ‘I’m afraid so. The reports you heard were right.’

      ‘And you know who it is?’

      ‘A waiter working at the resort, a Luis Gonzalez, youngish…about twenty five. He came to work there at the start of the season…’

      Javier didn’t make a note of the name but Serge knew that he would not forget the name or forgive the guilty party for the crime he had foolishly committed. Javier made a friend in a million but he was an implacable enemy.

      ‘References?’ Javier enquired, controlling his impatience; control was one of the things Javier prided himself on.

      ‘Impeccable forgeries.’

      ‘Nobody else is involved, nobody higher…?’

      Serge Simeone shook his head.

      Javier shrugged and squinted against the midday sun through the window, his expression inscrutable. ‘Well, that’s something.’

      When it had come to his attention that a member of staff in the large resort hotel they owned down on the coast was using his position to deal drugs to guests, Javier, unsure as to how deep the rot was, had not risked involving any of the staff there; instead, he had gone to someone whose integrity he trusted totally.

      ‘You haven’t contacted the police yet?’

      ‘You asked me to wait. What are you going to do, Javier?’ His friend turned and for a moment Serge experienced a spasm of pity for the culprit. Javier’s long, angular, aristocratic face had the texture of cold marble; his deep set eyes were equally chilling. Serge knew that Javier had precious little sympathy with recreational drug use and even less with those who peddled the stuff, after his younger sister had nearly lost her life to addiction.

      ‘We’re going to pay Luis a visit.’

      Kate Anderson tried not to show her shock as she flicked through the pile of grainy, slightly out-of-focus photos her younger sister had silently handed her after she’d asked, ‘Surely they can’t be that bad…?’ Now she knew they weren’t talking a couple of topless shots on the beach which even their conservative parents could have laughed off.

      ‘It could be anyone…?’ she croaked, trying desperately to put a positive slant on a very negative situation as she handed them back to her sister, who tore the incriminating images into shreds and let them drop to the floor.

      While the negatives were not in their possession, both sisters knew this defiance was just an empty gesture.

      ‘It’s not anyone, it’s me! You’ve got to help me, Kate! You have to do something,’ Susie added, her expression an accurate reflection of her total faith in her sister’s ability to extract her from this present dilemma. After all, she’d been doing it successfully for the past twenty years. ‘You can’t let mum and dad find out…I’d die…’

      Kate thought it was much more likely she’d have her generous allowance cut off, but then as far as Susie was concerned that probably amounted to much the same thing!

      ‘That would be…awkward,’ Kate admitted thinking of her parents’ faces if confronted by semi-nude photos of their younger daughter. She didn’t want to think about the consequences if they actually got into the hands of the press. She could think of several tabloids that would love to print compromising shots of a high court judge’s daughter.

      ‘What if he sends those photos to Chris…? He’ll never believe I wasn’t sleeping with Luis.’

      ‘You weren’t?’

      Susie’s wails got louder. ‘See? Even you thought I was. Luis was someone to hang around with and go clubbing, he was fun… You don’t believe me,’ she accused. ‘I can tell…’

      ‘I believe you. Now hush, Susie, I’m thinking…’ Kate pleaded as she concentrated on the problem facing them.

      The frown line between her feathery brows, which like her lashes were dark in dramatic contrast to the silver-blonde hair colour both sisters had inherited from their mother, deepened as she caught her lower lip between her even white teeth.

      Unlike her sister, Kate’s features weren’t strictly symmetrical; her mouth was too wide and full and her aquiline nose had never inspired men to poetry. Her almond-shaped brown eyes, without a doubt her best feature, were unfortunately more often than not concealed behind the round lenses of her wire-framed spectacles.

      With or without specs, the first impression people received of Kate Anderson was that she was a young woman with a lively intelligence, sharp wit, and boundless reserves of energy.

      ‘Susie got my looks; Kate’s the sensible one.’ Kate had lost count of the number of times she’d heard her mother explain away her supposed deficiencies to people.

      ‘What she lacks in looks she makes up for in personality,’ was her father’s kinder assessment.

      Kate knew these were essentially accurate assessments, and she hadn’t done so badly out of the deal. Sensible had given her a lifestyle she enjoyed; but just occasionally, especially when she saw the way men reacted when Susie entered a room, she wished that she’d been standing a bit closer to the front of the queue when they’d handed out the sex appeal factor.

      A spasm of sulky annoyance passed over Susie’s pretty face at this impatient dismissal; her tears in general evoked a more sympathetic response.

      Kate dropped down into the wicker chair and pulled her knees up to her chin; her irritation bubbled to the surface. ‘What on earth possessed you to get involved with the man in the first place…? You’re supposed to be engaged to Chris… Are things all right between you and him, or are you having second thoughts?’

      ‘Don’t start on about me being too young to settle down again, Kate!’ Susie scowled. ‘I’m not like you; I don’t want a career and being engaged doesn’t mean you can’t have any fun,’ she announced with a toss of her blonde head.

      Kate didn’t swallow this hard-nosed attitude for one minute, Susie was wilful but she was a long way from being as callous as she liked to pretend.

      ‘Fun! Couldn’t you have stuck to beach volley-ball?’

      This evoked a watery smile. ‘Well, if you had arrived last week, like you were meant to, I wouldn’t have been so bored…’ Susie stretched one long sun-tanned leg in front of her. The complacent contemplation of the smooth expanse of shapely golden flesh made the sulky line of her lips lift attractively.

      Only Susie, Kate decided, could turn this thing around so that her sister had the ultimate responsibility—Susie really was totally impossible, Kate reflected with rueful affection.

      ‘I had to work, you know that.’

      ‘Work?’ Susie snorted in disgust. ‘It’s all you ever think about. No wonder Seb dumped you.’ She lifted her head, pushing a strand of long blonde hair from her eyes, and grimaced apologetically. ‘Sorry, that was a bitchy thing to say,’ she admitted. ‘But,’ she added swiftly in her own defence, ‘this was the holiday from hell, even before Luis turned out to be a low-life, what with Mum and Dad spending every day traipsing around boring churches and things, wanting me to come along.’ Her horrified expression was an accurate indicator that these pastimes weren’t Susie’s idea of pleasure. ‘I always said a family holiday at our age was asking for trouble…’

      ‘I thought you decided it wouldn’t be so bad when you realised Dad was footing the bill,’ Kate couldn’t resist observing.

      ‘I just thank God they didn’t book that awful place in the mountains you fancied so much. There wasn’t anything to do there