Deception and Desire Read Online Free Page A

little picture of a man in Greek national costume beside the number – doodles were a habit of Ros’s, a throwback to her art school days.
    â€˜I should think if you lost your Filofax you’d have a good deal more to worry about than your sister’s telephone number!’ he had teased her. Ros carried everything in her Filofax, from credit cards and passport to addresses of friends and business contacts and her all-important engagement diary.
    Well, it wasn’t only her Filofax that was lost now, Mike thought grimly. It was Ros herself too.
    He put his foot down hard on the accelerator and manoeuvred skilfully through the now thinning rush-hour traffic and the rain.
    He would ring Maggie as soon as he got home.

Chapter Two
    Maggie Veritos was drinking iced coffee on the patio of her home in Kassiopi, Corfu, when the telephone began to ring. She wriggled her feet back into her flip-flops, rose from her white plastic patio chair and went into the house, screwing up her eyes in an effort to adjust to the dim light after the brightness of the evening outside.
    The telephone was on the farthest wall of the inner room. She unhooked it and pushed aside her thick fall of light-brown hair to put it to her ear.
    â€˜Hello. Maggie Veritos.’
    Nothing but a series of crackles came down the line.
    â€˜Hello?’ she repeated. Still nothing.
    Maggie sighed. It wasn’t unusual. The telephone system in Corfu was unreliable, to say the least. More often than not it was impossible to get through and conversations, carried on over a background of static, tended to fade or even get cut off altogether. But at least the telephone was in working order now, theoretically. For a year after it had first been installed it had remained unconnected, nothing more or less than an ornament. Maggie had accepted the fact with good grace – she had learned that the Corfiote workman couldn’t be hurried. ‘ Mañana ’ might be a word of Spanish origin but it also applied to the attitude of most natives of Corfu. She had almost given up hope of ever having the use of her own telephone when one day the engineers had arrived and to her amazement remained long enough to do the job. Now all that was needed was for someone to improve the lines.
    â€˜Hello!’ she said again, without much hope, and when the crackles continued unabated she replaced the telephone and shrugged.
    If someone wanted her they would try again. It could be a wrong number, of course – very common – or it could be a friend inviting her round for the evening.
    Or it could be Ari, telephoning from his office in Kerkira to say he’d be late home again …
    Maggie’s mouth tightened a shade. On balance that was probably who it was. Ari often telephoned these days to say he’d be late, and Maggie was all too horribly sure what lay behind the constant stream of excuses. For a long while she’d tried to talk herself out of her growing suspicion. Ari was kept very busy – as an architect on an island where development was springing up all over the place there was plenty of work, and with his own practice to sustain he took on every offer that came his way. Besides this, he was in many ways typically Greek. Though his sense of ‘ family’ was very strong his attitude towards women tended to be macho. Maggie had realised early on that he had no intention of allowing himself to be tied down in the role of dutiful husband. After a long session at the office he liked to have a drink with ‘the boys’ – friends from his old crowd and new business acquaintances.
    Maggie had tried not to be hurt that he no longer rushed home to her as he had done when they were first married, tried to tell herself that as long as she didn’t nag, as long as she let him have his freedom, he’d get over this restlessness. But it was cold comfort. She might have her own friends in the English community, and she