Spellbound in His Arms

  Chapter Six

  It was a long night and Jackie didn’t get much sleep. Mixed emotions of fear and desire tormented her. She jumped at every little noise and held her breath, watching the windows and the door.

  And as if this wasn’t enough, Michael’s face haunted her with eyes filled with passion and desire. She felt his lips hot and demanding conquering her mouth, sending heat waves throughout her body. Oh, how she longed to hide in his strong arms.

  With the first light of dawn, Jackie jumped out of bed and pulled the curtains back, carefully examining outside. It was worse than she’d expected. The storm had destroyed the magnificently maintained yard and she felt sad seeing the ruined bushes and toppled trees.

  Then she thought about Michael again and decided to hurry up and call the attorney. After that Michael would have no reason for staying around.

  And then what?

  She would be left out here all by herself, prey to whoever was hiding in the woods watching this place.

  A shiver raced up her spine. She hurried to the ensuite bathroom, trying to push these thoughts out of her mind. One thing at a time, she decided. She would take care of Michael first and then examine the folders. Maybe she would be able to find what she was looking for and be out of the house by nightfall.

  This thought made her feel a little better, and by the time she walked downstairs, she looked relaxed and more confident than she actually felt.

  ***

  Michael was in the kitchen.

  Watching her come in, he couldn’t help but admire her uncompromising posture. She had been through so much the last few days but still looked confident and ready to confront the whole world. He was mesmerized by this fearless woman and wished they didn’t have to be on opposite sides.

  No matter what though, he had to admit she was the most magnificent, most breathtaking opponent, he ever had to face.

  “Good morning,” she said simply, avoiding looking at him.

  “Good morning. How are you feeling today?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “How is your head?

  “I told you, I’m fine!” Jackie walked over to the refrigerator and poured herself some milk, ignoring the steaming coffee he had prepared. Obviously, she didn’t want anything from him.

  “It’s okay,” he said smiling and took a sip from his cup. “I haven’t poisoned the coffee.”

  Jackie looked at him sharply. “I’ll call the attorney and straighten everything out,” she said coldly. She seemed determined to keep her distance.

  “And how, exactly, do you intend to do that?” he asked, and she looked at him surprised.

  “What do you mean?” she asked, watching him carefully.

  “I mean the phone is dead.”

  Jackie sighed. “Well, it wasn’t working last night either,” she admitted. “But I thought it would be all right after the storm was over.”

  “Well, it’s still dead” he confirmed and ran his fingers through his hair.

  “Don’t you have a cell phone?” she asked suddenly and looked at him suspiciously.

  “I’ve tried it,” he replied. “There’s no signal out here.”

  “Well, we have no other choice then than to drive to town.”

  She saw the ironic look on his face and got alarmed. “What now?”

  “I’m afraid that’s not possible either,” he said.

  “And why is that?” she asked cautiously.

  “Because the road is closed.”

  “What do you mean closed?”

  “Closed means closed,” he answered, losing his patience. “I went to check it earlier. A big tree has fallen on the bridge down the road and destroyed it. There is no way to get across the creek.”

  Jackie took a deep breath. “But there must be another way,” she insisted.

  “If there is, I don’t know it,” he lied.

  “I’ll check it out myself,” she said stubbornly and walked out the door.

  Be my guest! Michael thought. With the bridge gone, there was no way a car could make it across. She could walk all the way to town, if she wanted to, but it was a several hours walk. And besides, she would still have to cross the creek, which was full of water due to the storms these last few days. Which meant, that being soaked wet, she would be sick by the time she got to town, if she ever made it there.

  Michael smiled, thinking of her determined and defiant attitude. He was sure she was capable of trying to cross the creek and walk to town, but of course, he was going to stop her.

  For now, he didn’t have to worry about that. With the dress and sandals she wore this morning, there was no way she would try to cross the creek and walk to town. All she was doing was blowing off steam.

  He got up and decided to go ahead with his plan. He had been up for hours and had already checked the documents in the folders, trying to determine which one was missing. As far as he could tell, the company’s shares, the will and the title deeds of the property were all in the folders. Then what was the document the intruder stole last night? He was trying hard to remember, if there was anything else in these folders.

  Damn! His birth certificate stating Philip Manos as his father! Now things were even more complicated and he had to hurry up. There was no time to waste.

  He pulled out his gun and left the house, determined to hunt the intruder down. He had to be somewhere around there, since by the time he stole the documents and escaped to the woods, the storm was almost over. Which meant, that the bridge was already damaged and there was no way, he could make it across. Unless…

  No, Michael thought and shook his head in denial. He couldn’t possibly know that there was another way.

  ***

  Jackie waited, hidden behind a huge tree trunk. She had no intention of walking down to the bridge. There was no reason to. She was sure he wouldn’t lie about something so obvious, and besides she already knew there was another way out. Her instructions had covered all the areas and she was prepared for just about anything.

  That’s a lie! She scorned herself. She wasn’t prepared for Michael and especially, for the way she responded to him.

  She shifted impatiently. Tormented by wild thoughts, she felt a headache starting. She had been in some pretty difficult and sometimes even dangerous situations before, but this time it was different. This was personal.

  She thought back to when she was told that her parents were killed in the plane crash. She was only eight years old. Where would she be now if Stephanos and Martha hadn’t taken her in? She had no other relatives except Martha—her mother’s distant cousin—whom she had never met before. She could still remember how scared she was when Martha and her husband, Stephanos Demiris, had come to Los Angeles to take her back to Atlanta with them.

  Jackie smiled as she remembered the happy home the Demirises had offered her. Stephanos and his wife were wonderful and treated little Jackie no different than their own daughters, Maria and Aphrodite. Maria was three years older than Jackie and turned out to be a real sister and her best friend. Little sweet Aphrodite was only a few months old when Jackie came to live with them. And now, Maria was dead and Aphrodite in grave danger.

  Jackie felt her body stiffened. She couldn’t allow anything bad to happen to Aphrodite. She had to find out the truth.

  At first, Stephanos had begged her not to come. He was a very sweet and unselfish person, but also a very superstitious man. Jackie, on the other hand, was a very realistic person. She only believed in facts and things that could be proven and this made her a very good and successful, investigative reporter. She didn’t share Stephanos’ opinion that something unnatural—some curse—was responsible for all the deaths in the family. She knew when a lot of money was at stake people were apt to get greedy and very dangerous. And eight hundred acres right on the beach of one of the most beautiful and popular Greek islands could be a very good reason to kill. The treasure she had discovered in the underground secret room was just additional icing on the cake.


  “No”, she said out loud. “Someone very human is responsible for all these deaths.” She was sure about that, wasn’t she? She remembered the weird feeling she had the other night in the old mansion right before Michael appeared. She couldn’t deny there had been moments where she had her doubts.

  Stop that! She reprimanded herself anxiously and turned her attention to the mansion.

  ***

  Eric Manos watched his father answer the phone and frowned, seeing the irritated look on his face.

  “Take care of it!” Philip Manos finally yelled angrily and slammed the phone down.

  “What now?” Eric asked anxiously.

  “We have a problem!” his father replied and stood up.

  Eric sighed. “You mean another one. I thought you said that this was going to be a breeze.”

  “Shut up!” His father interrupted him violently. “Everything was taken care of until you got involved.”

  “Now don’t try to blame everything on me!” Eric retorted angrily. “It’s not my fault that the old fool sold the place.”

  “You know damn well he had no other choice!” his father retorted and slammed his fist on the desk.

  The loud noise made Elizabeth jump in her chair. She gave a worried look towards the closed door that led to the office of her boss. His son was there and that was bad news. Eric was nothing but trouble. The only thing that kept him out of jail was his father’s money and high profile social connections.

  She checked her watch anxiously. It was two o’clock and her appointment wasn’t until four-thirty. Suddenly, she felt a shiver racing up her spine. What if something went wrong? What if someone saw her?

  She shook her head violently, trying to push this thought out of her mind. Nothing would go wrong, she tried to persuade herself. Besides, she had no other choice. Sooner or later, Manos would found out about the money that was missing and then….

  ***

  Jackie started getting impatient, thinking of all the things she had to do before nightfall. She was determined not to spend another night in this place, not after what happened last night.

  She saw Michael coming out the front door of the mansion and felt a rush of relief. He was going to look for the intruder, just as she had anticipated. She waited, until after he entered the woods and then hurried back to the mansion.

  Walking inside the study, she noticed the secret door was closed this time and smiled. So it was Michael she thought. It had to be him.

  She opened the entrance to the underground secret room, walked downstairs, and opened the steel door. Then she sat on the sofa and carefully started going through the documents that were in the folders left on the mahogany table.

  She set the Demiris Company shares aside and then turned her attention to the other documents. She read through every piece of paper—a will and the property titles—and finally, exhausted and shocked as well, she leaned back in her chair and raised her arms above her head. Stephanos was in for a big surprise.

  What now? she wondered. This could change everything. She thought of Stephanos and sweet little Aphrodite. What should she do? Maybe, she could…no, she pushed the thought right out of her mind. She couldn’t do that—she couldn’t destroy the will—and she was sure Stephanos wouldn’t want her to either.

  After a moment’s hesitation, she put all the documents back in their folders and placed them back in the cabinet. For now, this was the only place safe enough to hide them. She needed to talk to Stephanos and leave the decision up to him.

  She left the secret room, closing the steel door behind her and climbed up the stairs. Then she turned the hound’s head to close the opening, carefully taking care to leave everything as she found it, and went back to the kitchen. She was in a desperate need of a hot cup of coffee.

  ***

  A few minutes later, Michael walked in the kitchen, to find Jackie sitting at the table, holding a steaming cup of coffee in her hands.

  “Where have you been?” she asked innocently and immediately got alarmed, seeing the frown on his face. What now? she wondered.

  “Nancy Felini is dead!” he said and gave her an accusing look.

  “What?” Jackie asked, confused. She was about to ask him who Nancy Felini was, when it suddenly, dawned on her…the attorney!

  “She’s dead!” Michael repeated, without taking his eyes off her face.

  “I don’t understand,” Jackie whispered and her hands holding the coffee cup started to shake violently.

  “She was found murdered this morning.”

  “Murdered?” Jackie screamed and jumped up, spilling coffee all over the place.

  Not another murder! she heard a voice in the back of her mind.

  Suddenly, she saw the coffin again and Maria’s face white and motionless.

  ***

  Michael watched her going pale and grabbed her right before she hit the floor. This time he was sure her reaction was genuine. She had no idea about the murder.

  He was even shocked himself and furious that he hadn’t foreseen it. His partner had filled him in on the details. The attorney had been found dead in her office by the cleaning lady this morning. Someone had cut her throat and turned her entire office upside down. Whoever had done it was obviously looking for something.

  Michael was still very puzzled. He had gone to the woods, looking for some clues that could lead him to the intruder but had found nothing. The man had vanished from the face of the earth.

  He had probably parked his car before the bridge and, after the storm, crossed the creek on foot and managed to get away. Unless he knew of the back way to the property. But, that wasn’t common knowledge. Only the owners of the house and some people very close to them knew of the little dirt road which ran all the way down to the beach and up the other side of the hill. The road twisted and turned in the woods and someone could get lost very easily. No car had driven on it for decades and weeds had grown and covered it from plain sight.

  Michael walked around for a while trying to find some tracks and then called his partner, Tony, to get an update. When he told Jackie that his cell phone had no signal, he wasn’t actually lying. His personal cell phone didn’t have a signal out here. But what he had failed to explain was that he always carried a cell phone that the police department provided him which had a wider range of coverage.

  Tony informed him that Jackie was a distant relative of Stephanos Demiris’ wife. She grew up in Atlanta living with Stephanos, his wife and their two daughters after her parents were killed in a plane crash.

  So she wasn’t actually a relative but close enough, since she was raised by Stephanos Demiris. But what was she doing here and how much did she and Stephanos know about everything that was going on? And what about Maria? Tony had checked into her death. Her car had run off the road and caught fire. Talking to the detective who had investigated the accident, Tony had gotten the idea that he didn’t believe it was an accident at all. The car had run off the road for no apparent reason. The wreck had happened in bright day light, no rain or snow, and very light traffic. There were no witnesses and the police had to finally close the case when they hadn’t been able to find any evidence to prove anything different.

  Too weird of an accident! Michael thought. Just like Alexandra’s.

  ***

  Jackie started coming around. She opened her eyes to find herself lying on her bed and Michael sitting next to her. She must have fainted which was very unlike her.

  “What happened?” she asked. She shook her head to clear her grogginess, when the memory of their conversation in the kitchen jolted her upright. Her eyes flew wide open and she grabbed his hand, looking him straight in the eyes. “What’s going on?” she asked scared and confused.

  “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “But I intend to find out. And let’s start with you!”

  “What do you mean?” she asked and pulled her hand away.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked. “And what where you looking for in t
he secret room?”

  “So it was you hiding in the secret passage, spying on me!”

  He looked at her for a moment and then nodded his head in acceptance. “Yes,” he said simply.

  She moved away, trying to put some distance between them.

  “You don’t have to be afraid of me, Jackie,” he said softly and reached for her hand. “I would never do anything to harm you.”

  “How do I know that?” she yelled at him and slid off the bed. “Ever since I met you, all you’ve done is lie to me and keep me in the dark, while people are getting killed!”

  “I haven’t lied to you.”

  “Oh, yes you have! You told me you’re the owner of this house, not to mention the fact that you never explained what you were doing out here the other night and how you found me this time.” She was on the offensive, not wanting him to know she had read the will and that she now knew he was telling the truth about being the owner of the mansion. In any case, the fact he was telling the truth about the property didn’t change her gut feeling he was hiding other important things from her.

  Michael remained silent. Jackie could tell there was a battle going on inside him. He probably contemplated what he would say to her. Oh, how she wished he would be honest with her. She wanted the truth—the entire truth.

  ***

  It was almost five o’clock in the afternoon and Tony Mavrikis, Michael’s partner, was getting very impatient sitting at a corner table in a small restaurant in Plaka—the historic district of Athens—right below the sacred hill of Acropolis. He had been sitting at that table for the last forty-five minutes, trying to blend in with the tourists coming in and out of the place and watching everybody very carefully.

  A few minutes later, a heavy, middle-aged woman with short blond hair came through the front door. Tony observed her for a couple of minutes, trying to make sure no one had followed her. He watched her as she searched the place impatiently, and then turned to look behind her at the couple who had just entered the restaurant. She seemed rather scared and ready to flee, so Tony stood up in order for her to see him.

  She looked over in his direction and stood undecided for a couple of seconds. Then she walked over to his table and sat on the edge of her chair, squeezing her purse nervously.