CHAPTER ONE
‘YOU KNOW, IT’S you I blame.’
Bastiaan’s aunt tried to laugh as she spoke, but it was shaky, Bastiaan could tell.
‘It was you who suggested Philip go and stay in your villa at Cap Pierre!’
Bastiaan took the criticism on board. ‘I thought it might help—moving him out of target range to finish his university vacation assignments in peace and quiet.’
His aunt sighed. ‘Alas, it seems he has jumped out of the frying pan into the fire. He may have escaped Elena Constantis, but this female in France sounds infinitely worse.’
Bastiaan’s dark eyes took on a mordant expression. ‘Unfortunately, wherever in the world Philip is he will be a target.’
‘If only he were less sweet-natured. If he had your...toughness,’ Bastiaan’s aunt replied, her gaze falling on her nephew.
‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ Bastiaan replied dryly. ‘But Philip will toughen up, don’t worry.’ He’ll need to, he thought caustically. Just as he himself had had to.
‘He’s so impressionable!’ his aunt cried. ‘And so handsome. No wonder these wretched girls make a beeline for him.’
And, of course, so rich, Bastiaan added cynically—but silently. No point worrying his already anxious aunt further. It was Philip’s wealth—the wealth he would be inheriting from his late father’s estate once he turned twenty-one in a couple of months—that would attract females far more dangerous than the merely irksome spoilt teenage princess Elena Constantis. The real danger would come from a very different type of female.
Call them what one liked—and Bastiaan had several names not suitable for his aunt’s ears—the most universal name was a familiar one: gold-diggers. Females who took one look at his young, good-looking, impressionable and soon to be very rich cousin and licked their lips in anticipation.
That was the problem right now. A woman who appeared to be licking her lips over Philip. And the danger was, Bastiaan knew, very real. For Philip, so Paulette, his housekeeper at Cap Pierre, had informed him, far from diligently writing his essays, had taken to haunting the nearby town of Pierre-les-Pins and a venue there that was most undesirable for a twenty-year-old. Apparently attracted by an even more undesirable female working there.
‘A singer in a nightclub!’ his aunt wailed now. ‘I cannot believe Philip would fall for a woman like that!’
‘It is something of a cliché...’ Bastiaan allowed.
His aunt bridled. ‘A cliché? Bastiaan, is that all you have to say about it?’
He shook his head. ‘No. I could say a great deal more—but to what purpose?’ Bastiaan got to his feet. He was of an imposing height, standing well over six feet, and powerfully built. ‘Don’t worry...’ he made his voice reassuring now ‘... I’ll deal with it. Philip will not be sacrificed to a greedy woman’s ambitions.’
His aunt stood up, clutching at his sleeve. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I knew I could count on you.’ Her eyes misted a little. ‘Take care of my darling boy, Bastiaan. He has no father now to look out for him.’
Bastiaan pressed his aunt’s hand sympathetically. His maternal uncle had succumbed to heart disease when Philip had just started at university, and he knew how hard her husband’s death had hit his aunt. Knew, too, with a shadowing of his eyes, how losing a father too young—as he himself had when not much older than Philip—left a void.
‘I’ll keep Philip safe, I promise you,’ he assured his aunt now, as she took her leave.
He saw her to her car, watched it head down the driveway of his property in the affluent outskirts of Athens. Then he went back indoors, his mouth tightening.
His aunt’s fears were not groundless. Until Philip turned twenty-one Bastiaan was his trustee—overseeing all his finances, managing his investments—while Philip enjoyed a more than generous allowance to cover his personal spending. Usually Bastiaan did nothing more than cast a casual eye over the bank and credit card statements, but an unusually large amount—twenty thousand euros—had gone out in a single payment a week ago. The cheque had been paid into an unknown personal account at the Nice branch of a French bank. There was no reason—no good reason—that Bastiaan cou
ld come up with for such a transfer. There was, however, one very bad reason for it—and that he could come up with.
The gold-digger had already started taking gold from the mine....
Bastiaan’s features darkened. The sooner he disposed of this nightclub singer who was making eyes at his cousin—and his cousin’s fortune—the better. He headed purposefully to his study. If he was to leave for France in the morning, he had work to do tonight. Enterprises with portfolios the size of Karavalas did not run themselves. His cousin’s fortune might be predominantly in the form of blue chip stocks, but Bastiaan preferred to diversify across a broad range of investment opportunities, from industry and property to entrepreneurial start-ups. But, for all their variety, they all shared one aspect in common—they all made him money. A lot of money.
The cynical curve was back at Bastiaan’s mouth as he sat himself down behind his desk and flicked on his PC. He’d told his aunt that her son would toughen up in time—and he knew from his own experience that that was true. Memory glinted in his dark eyes.
When his own father had died, he’d assuaged his grief by partying hard and extravagantly, with no paternal guardian to moderate his excesses. The spree had ended abruptly. He’d been in a casino, putting away the champagne and generally flashing his cash lavishly, and it had promptly lured across a female—Leana—who had been all over him. At just twenty-three he’d been happy to enjoy all she’d offered him—the company of her luscious body in bed included. So much so that when she’d fed him some story of how she’d stupidly got herself into debt with the casino and was worried sick about it, he’d grandly handed her a more than handsome cheque, feeling munificent and generous towards the beautiful, sexy woman who’d seemed so keen on him...
She’d disappeared the day the cheque had cleared—heading off, so he’d heard, on a yacht belonging to a seventy-year-old Mexican millionaire, never to be seen again by Bastiaan. He’d been royally fleeced and proved to be a complete mug. It had stung, no doubt about it, but he’d learnt his lesson, all right—an expensive one. It wasn’t one he wanted Philip to learn the same way. Apart from taking a large wedge of his money, Leana had damaged his self-esteem—an uncomfortably sobering experience for his younger self. Although it had made him wise up decisively.
But, unlike Bastiaan, Philip was of a romantic disposition, and a gold-digging seductress might wound him more deeply than just in his wallet and his self-esteem. That was not something Bastiaan would permit. After his experience with Leana he’d become wise to the wiles women threw out to him, and sceptical of their apparent devotion. Now, into his thirties, he knew they considered him a tough nut—ruthless, even...
His eyes hardened beneath dark brows. That was something this ambitious nightclub singer would soon discover for herself.
* * *
Sarah stood motionless on the low stage, the spotlight on her, while her audience beyond, sitting at their tables, mostly continued their conversations as they ate and drank.
I’m just a divertimento, she thought to herself, acidly. Background music. She nodded at Max on the piano, throat muscles ready, and he played the opening to her number. It was easy and low-pitched, making no demands on her upper register. It was just as well—the last thing she wanted to do was risk her voice singing in this smoky atmosphere.
As she sang the first bars her breasts lifted, making her all too aware of just how low-cut the bodice of her champagne satin gown was. Her long hair was swept over one bare shoulder. It was, she knew, a stereotypical ‘vamp’ image—the sultry nightclub singer with her slinky dress, low-pitched voice, over-made-up eyes and long blonde locks.
She tensed instinctively. Well, that was the idea, wasn’t it? To stand in for the club’s missing resident chanteuse, Sabine Sablon, who had abruptly vacated the role when she’d run off with a rich customer without warning.
It hadn’t been Sarah’s idea to take over as Sabine, but Max had been blunt about it. If she didn’t agree to sing here in the evenings, then Raymond, the nightclub owner, lacking a chanteuse, would refuse to let Max have the run of the place during the day. And without that they couldn’t rehearse...and without rehearsals they couldn’t appear at the Provence en Voix music festival.
And if they didn’t appear there her last chance would be gone.
My last chance—my last chance to achieve my dream!
Her dream of breaking through from being just one more of the scores upon scores of hopeful, aspiring sopranos who crowded the operatic world, all desperate to make their mark. If she could not succeed now, she would have to abandon the dream that had possessed her since her teenage years, and all the way through music college and the tough, ultra-competitive world beyond as she’d struggled to make herself heard by those who could lift her from the crowd and launch her career.
She’d tried so hard, for so long, and now she was on the wrong side of twenty-five, racing towards thirty, with time against her and younger singers coming up behind her. Everything rested on this final attempt—and if it failed... Well, then, she would accept defeat. Resign herself to teaching instead. It was the way she was currently earning her living, part-time at a school in her native Yorkshire, though she found it unfulfilling, craving the excitement and elation of performing live.
So not yet—oh, not yet—would she give up on her dreams. Not until she’d put everything into this music festival, singing the soprano lead in what she knew could only be a high-risk gamble: a newly written opera by an unknown composer, performed by unknown singers, all on a shoestring. A shoestring that Max, their fanatically driven director and conductor, was already stretching to the utmost. Everything, but everything, was being done on a tiny budget, with savings being made wherever they could. Including rehearsal space.
So every night bar Sundays, she had to become Sabine Sablon, husking away into the microphone, drawing male eyes all around. It was not a comfortable feeling—and it was a million miles away from her true self. Max could tell her all he liked that it would give her valuable insight into roles such as La Traviata’s courtesan Violetta, or the coquettish Manon, but on an operatic stage everyone would know she was simply playing a part. Here, everyone looking at her really thought she was Sabine Sablon.
A silent shudder went through her. Dear God, if anyone in the opera world found out she was singing here, like this, her credibility would be shot to pieces. No one would take her seriously for a moment.