The Blackmailed Bride Read Free Page A

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?’
    â€˜Don’t start on about me being too young to settle down again, Kate!’ Susie scowled. ‘I’m not like you; I don’t wanta 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.
    â€˜ 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.
    â€˜I had to work, you know that.’
    â€˜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…’
    â€˜I thought you decided it wouldn’t be so bad when you realised Dad was footing the bill,’ Kate couldn’t resist observing.
    â€˜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 but watch the grass grow.’
    â€˜There also wasn’t a Luis.’
    â€˜Actually, Katie,’ Susie began with an awkward rush, ‘the photos…I think he might have spiked my drink when we were by the pool. I mean, I’m not one hundred per cent positive,’ she added hurriedly, ‘but I know a girl who had her drink spiked…’
    Kate’s horrified gasp went ignored as her sister, oblivious to the fact she’d said anything to send chills through Kate’s blood, continued, ‘Oh, she was all right. Fortunately a gang of us arrived as the stuff was kicking in and the guy in question made a quick exit. She collapsed in the loos and we had an awful job getting her back home,’ she recalled. ‘It’s just B— her symptoms—’ Susie corrected herself with a display of discretion that surprised Kate ‘—I felt a lot like that. I could hardly get back to my own room, I felt so woozy, and I’d only had a glass of white wine…’
    â€˜What a total sleaze!’ Kate exclaimed in disgust. ‘We should call the police.’
    â€˜Get serious, Kate!’ Susie responded scornfully. ‘I could kick myself. I’m normally really careful about things like that—I never leave my glass on a table, I carry it around with me. Of course, I never accept a drink from a man I don’t know…’
    â€˜Of course,’ Kate responded faintly.
    As she had listened to Susie casually outlining the list of precautions which were obviously second nature to her, Kate wondered if she was herself extraordinarily trusting or just plain reckless, because even though she’d heard of such things happening since the advent of the so-called