Spellbound in His Arms by Angel Sefer

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