‘But I can’t marry him if I’m forced to marry Alexei Katsaros!’ Carissa’s tears overflowed.
‘Did Katsarossayhe wanted to marry you?’
‘As good as. He said my father had told him about me and he was anxious to meet. He believed we’d find a lot in common and that we had a future together.’ Carissa bit her lip. ‘I tried to fob him off but he didn’t hear a word I said. He cut me off and said his staff would be here in an hour to collect me. What will I do?’
Mina frowned. She didn’t like the sound of this. He might be rich but that didn’t excuse rudeness or give him the right to order Carissa around.
‘Tell me again exactly what your father told you.’
But as Carissa spoke, Mina’s hope that her friend had overreacted dissolved. There’d recently been a rift between her father and his employer. After years of faithful service it seemed Katsaros might dump him. Mina couldn’t approve of Mr Carter’s plan to use Carissa to cement his position, but such things happened. Several of Mina’s peers in Jeirut had been married to older men they barely knew to strengthen family or business links.
She gritted her teeth, watching Carissa’s hands flutter as she related the one-sided conversation with Alexei Katsaros. He hadn’t invited Carissa to his island hideaway but simply informed her of the travel arrangements. As if she were freight to be transported, not a woman with a life of her own.
Mina’s temper rose like steam from a kettle.
She prized her freedom, appreciating how different her life was in Paris, away from a world where every major decision was made by the male head of her family. Western women accepted freedom as their right, not knowing how precious that was. And here was some billionaire bully, trying to snatch that from Carissa. With the help of her own father!
It wasn’t right.
‘And there’s nothing I can do.’ Carissa sniffled.
‘Of course there is. They can’t force you onto the plane. Or into marriage.’
‘I can’t not go. What about my father’s job?’ She hiccupped. ‘But if I go, what about Pierre? His family will find a way to stop our wedding.’
Mina wanted to tell Carissa to grow a backbone and stand up for herself. But Carissa wasn’t made that way. Besides, she cared for her father, though he’d got her into this mess. Plus it sounded, from other things she’d said, as if Mr Carter hadn’t recovered from his wife’s recent death. That might explain why he’d slipped up at work. A good employer would make allowances for grief. Mina suspected Alexei Katsaros was a domineering tyrant, considering no one but himself.
Irresistibly, her thoughts dragged back to those fraught days after her father’s death. Her future and her sister’s had hung in the balance, their fate determined by a man with little sympathy for their hopes and wishes.
Mina remembered the horror of being utterly powerless.
She refused to let Carissa become a chattel to buy her father out of trouble, or satisfy Katsaros’s desire for a convenient, biddable wife.
‘I’ve packed a bag. I can’t reach my father, so I’ll have to go. But it means leaving Pierre.’ Carissa wrung her hands and Mina felt something snap inside.
Carissa was sweet but she had as much grit as a marshmallow. Between them, Katsaros and Carter could herd her into a marriage that would make her miserable for the rest of her life. Mina couldn’t change her friend into a woman who’d look a thug in the eye and send him packing, or tell her father he couldn’t marry her off to a stranger. But shecoulddelay things long enough for Carissa and Pierre to marry. A few days, a week at most.
‘How long before they collect you?’
Carissa’s answer was drowned by a sharp rap on the door. She gasped and grabbed Mina’s hands.
The last shred of doubt fled Mina’s brain as she read her friend’s terror and despair. Carissa was a pushover, but Mina wasn’t.
She got to her feet.
* * *
‘Still no sign of Carter, sir. He hasn’t been home.’
Alexei’s grip tightened on the phone and he ground his teeth in frustration. But he refrained from chewing out the head of his London office. It wasn’t MacIntyre’s fault Carter had done a bunk. Alexei should have acted sooner, but initially he hadn’t wanted to believe Carter’s guilt. The man had been at his side for years, the only person Alexei really trusted.
That was why his betrayal cut so deep. Trust came hard to Alexei. He’d seen his mother betrayed and cast aside, made into a victim and her life shortened, because she trusted too easily.
Alexei bore a lot of the blame. He’d been gullible, falling for his stepfather’s charm, believing the man genuinely cared. He’d persuaded his mother to let the guy into their lives. Too late they discovered he’d only cultivated Alexei to get to his mother and her dead husband’s insurance payment.
No one could accuse Alexei of gullibility now.
That was what made it so remarkable that, despite his caution, he’d come to believe in Carter. It wasn’t just his way with numbers. His almost uncanny knack for identifying problems and possible solutions. It was his reticence, his scrupulous separation of business and personal life. He’d been the perfect executive.