A Greek Escape (3 page)

‘No,’ she refuted quickly, sitting down on the bench, and earned herself the twitch of a smile from that mocking, masculine mouth as he set the plates and cutlery down on a small, intricately wrought iron table that looked as though it had seen every winter for decades. ‘So, why are you asking me to lunch if you want to be left alone?’

‘Good question,’ he responded without looking at her. He was using a fish slice to turn their lunch. Spitting oil splashed onto the glowing logs, making them sizzle. ‘Perhaps it’s the best way of keeping an eye on you,’ he said when he had finished.

‘Why?’ She fixed him directly with eyes that were as vivid as cornflowers. ‘Why are you so worried about my bothering you? Why do you think I need keeping an eye on?’ she queried, frowning. ‘Unless…’

‘Unless what?’ he urged, calmly setting the fish slice aside.

Her heart was beating unusually fast. ‘You have something to hide.’

Squatting there, with his hands splayed on his bunched and powerful thighs, he was studying her face with such unsettling intensity that for a few moments Kayla wondered if her
original supposition about him was right. He really was on the run from the law. Why else would he object so strongly to being photographed?

Leonidas made a half-amused sound down his nostrils. ‘Don’t we all?’ he suggested through the charm of a feigned smile, and thought,
Particularly you, my scandal-mongering little kitten
.

For a moment he saw tension mark the flawless oval of her face. What was it? he wondered. Excitement? Anticipation? The thrill of getting some juicy snippet about him to pad out some gossip column she couldn’t fill with the misfortunes of some other unsuspecting fool?

‘Does valuing my personal space necessarily mean I have to be hiding something?’ he put to her, a little more roughly, and saw her mouth pull down as she contemplated his question.

It didn’t. Of course it didn’t, Kayla thought in an attempt to allay her suspicions about him.

‘No,’ she responded, pushing her hair back behind one ear, wondering why she was finding it so easy to let herself be persuaded.

Disconcertingly, those midnight-black eyes followed her agitated movement before he swung away from the fire, went back into the house.

‘What about you?’ he quizzed, after he’d returned with a couple of chunky glasses, which he also set down on the table before returning to the makeshift barbecue.

‘What
about
me?’ Kayla enquired, noticing how the muscles bunched in his powerful legs as he dropped down on his haunches. Her mouth felt unusually dry.

‘You’re here on your own,’ he remarked. ‘Which can mean only one of two things.’

‘Which are?’ she prompted cautiously, watching him wield the fish slice and slide some fish onto one of the earthenware
plates he had brought from the house. He handed it to her, before dishing out another portion for himself.

‘You’re either running away…’ He put his own plate down on an upturned fruit crate opposite the bench and retrieved the rustic bowl from the table.

‘Or…?’ she pressed, swallowing, feeling his eyes watching her far too intently as she took a chunk of the wholesome-looking bread he was offering her.

‘Or…you’re chasing something.’

‘Like what?’ she invited, frowning, feeling as though those keen dark eyes were suddenly giving her a mental frisking. She had the feeling that behind that casual manner of his lurked a blade-sharp brain that was assessing her every reaction, and that every word and response from her was being systematically weighed and measured.

Leonidas’s mouth compressed. ‘Dreams. A good time.’ He moved a shoulder in a deceptively nonchalant way.
Another sensation-charged story to smear the Vassalio name
. ‘So which is it for you, lovely Kayla?’

With her pulse doing an unexpected leap at the way he had addressed her, Kayla viewed him with mascara-touched lashes half-shielding her eyes.

How could he be so perceptive? So shrewd? He was living here like a gypsy. Whether he was alone or with someone she couldn’t tell—although from what he had said she would have put money on it that there wasn’t anyone else in residence. A man close to nature, who wasn’t
afraid of hard work, yet with a keen mind behind all that physical strength and potent energy. And a comprehension of human nature that even Craig with his university degree and his boardroom ambitions hadn’t possessed.

She had no intention, however, of telling this unsettling hunk that his first assumption was right. That she
was
running away, and that she hadn’t fully realised it until now. Her
broken engagement and her recently bruised heart weren’t things she wanted to discuss with anyone—least of all a man she had only just met, who didn’t really want her there…even if he obviously felt obliged to share his lunch with her.

Looking down at her plate, and the mouth-watering meal she was tucking in to, she shrugged and said, ‘I’ve been doing some temporary work since leaving a job I’d been in for five years. I thought it would be a good idea to come somewhere quiet and have a think about what I want to do if I have to move on.’
If Lorna’s company folds and I have to apply for something more permanent
, she thought, and prayed for Lorna and Josh’s sake that it wouldn’t come to that. Though they
had
been facing a lot of problems recently.

He nodded, whether in approval or simply in response to what she had said she wasn’t sure. Positioning himself on the crate from which he had retrieved his plate, he said, ‘You mean you’re…what is it you call it…?’ He pretended to search for the word. ‘Freelance?’

Brows drawn together, Kayla said hesitantly, ‘Loosely speaking.’ Filling in for Josh and Lorna when she’d been at her worst, after their bookkeeper had suddenly taken off with someone she’d met on the internet, was simply helping two people she cared about a great deal.

Leonidas reached around him for a stoneware vessel that was standing on an old tree stump beside him, hooking his thumb through the handle and bringing it over his shoulder like some ancient warrior at a feast before offering some to Kayla.

A hunter, she ruminated. Like those warring Greeks who had fought to keep their lands from invading Romans. Clever. Living by his wits. Untamed.

‘It’s homemade and non-alcoholic. Try it,’ he invited smoothly, thinking that if ‘loosely speaking’ meant skirting around the truth then the local wine would have been much better at loosening her tongue to his advantage. However, she
was driving, and he had to maintain some responsibility for that. ‘What were you doing in your job?’ he persevered after she’d nodded her assent, reining in the desire to curb the small talk and cut straight to the chase.

‘Accounts. I’m a qualified bookkeeper,’ she answered, taking the glass he had filled for her and trying a sip. It tasted zesty and refreshing, with lime and other citrus juices blended with something that made it fizz. ‘Why are you smiling like that?’ If one could call that curious twist to his mouth a
smile
, Kayla thought.

Because that’s about as unlikely as my being a nightclub singer
, Leonidas considered, amazed and amused by what he decided must be barefaced lies.

‘You don’t
look
like a bookkeeper,’ he remarked, studying her unashamedly in view of the yarn she was spinning him. Beautiful long hair and captivating features. Elegant swan-like neck, small but alluring figure. What he didn’t expect was the hard desire that kicked through his body, mocking his efforts to remain in command even as he acknowledged her reaction in the colour that stole across her fine translucent skin.

‘What’s a bookkeeper supposed to look like?’ she queried with a betraying little wobble in her voice, feeling his gaze like a hot brand over her scantily clad body and bare legs.

‘Not blonde, beautiful and way too intrusive for her own good.’

She laughed nervously at his double-edged compliment,
feeling a stirring in her blood that had nothing to do with the zesty punch, the good food, or the way the warm wind was sighing through the silver leaves of an olive tree that stood at the edge of the shady terrace above the overgrown garden.

‘What about you?’ she asked quickly, to try and stem the ridiculous heat that was pulsing through her veins. ‘I thought this place was derelict. How long have you lived here?’ She glanced up at the house, which she had believed was uninhabited.
Most of it was in a serious state of disrepair, but one wing of the old building looked as if it had been renovated in recent years. ‘I take it you
do
live here?’

‘For the time being,’ he said uncommunicatively, adding after a moment or two, ‘I thought it would be as good a place as any to…what is the expression…? Bed down for a while.’

‘You mean…you’re just bumming around?’

Leonidas laughed, showing strong white teeth, and through the thick fringes of his lashes he surveyed the young woman sitting opposite him with guarded circumspection, wondering how far she was planning to carry this little charade. Yesterday she had displayed all the characteristics of an opportunity-grabbing undercover reporter, and again this morning, when she had wandered in here with that infernal camera—even if she
had
seemed genuinely distressed when she’d leaped into that hot, angry tirade about her phone, her fridge and her supposedly broken-down car. But if his suspicions about her were right—and he had little reason to doubt that they were—then from the questions she was asking and her response to the answers he was giving he had to admit that she was one hell of a good actress.

‘I prefer to call it opting out,’ he stated laconically.

‘So…do you work?’ Kayla enquired.

‘When I need to.’ Which was twenty-four-seven a lot of the time, he thought grimly. If she was here intent on making a killing out of the Vassalio name, then she would know that already.

And if she wasn’t…

If she wasn’t, he thought, irritated, refusing to give any credence to that possibility, then she shouldn’t have inflicted herself upon him in the way she had.

‘And what do you do? For a living, I mean?’

She was still treading cautiously, still playing the innocent.
If she’d been trying for an Oscar, Leonidas thought, she would have won it hands-down.

‘I’m in construction.’
As you probably well know
, he tagged on silently.

‘A builder!’ Kayla interpreted, realising her assessment of him was right. He
was
a man who worked with his hands.

‘Loosely speaking.’ Deliberately Leonidas lobbed her own phrase back at her. Playing along with her whatever her game was, he thought with increasing annoyance. And suddenly he was fed-up with pussyfooting around.

Slinging his plate onto the table, he stood up, thrusting his hands into his pockets, intimidation in his stance and every hard inch of him as he said grimly and with lethal softness, ‘OK, Kayla. This has gone far enough.’

‘What has?’

He had to hand it to her. She looked and sounded perplexed. He might even have said shocked.

‘The charade is over, sweet girl.’

‘What charade?’ Kayla didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. ‘I don’t understand…’

‘Don’t you?’ He laughed rather harshly. ‘Do you think I don’t know what your little game is? Don’t know why you’re he re?’

‘No.’ She had leaped to her feet and stood facing him now with her hands on her hips, her eyes wide and contesting.
‘You’ve obviously got me mixed up with somebody else! I don’t know who you think I am, but whoever it is I’m not the person you were expecting.’

‘I was hardly
expecting
anyone—least of all another blood-sucking female with her own self-motivated agenda! Unless you’re going to tell me you’ve come all this way by yourself to slap a petition on me as well!’

‘No, I haven’t!’ Kayla riposted, wondering what the hell he was talking about. ‘And whatever your problem is—whoever
it is you’ve come here to escape from—I’d appreciate it if you didn’t take it out on
me!
’

She was gone before he could utter another word.

I
T WAS THE
crash that woke her.

Or had it been the rain and thunder? Kayla wondered, scrambling, terrified, out of bed. She had been tossing and turning in a kind of half-sleep for what seemed like hours, although it might only have been minutes since the storm began.

Now, as she pulled open her bedroom door, the full force of the gale made her cry out when it almost blew her back into the room. In the darkness she could see an ominous shape lying diagonally across the landing and a gash in the sloping roof, which was now open to the wind and the driving rain.

Kayla gasped as lightning ripped across the sky, so close that the almost instantaneous crash of thunder that followed seemed to rock the foundations of the house.

Fumbling to turn on the light switch, she groaned when nothing happened.

‘Oh, great!’

Finding the chair where she had folded the jeans and shirt she had travelled in two days ago, with trembling hands she hastily pulled them on over her flimsy pyjamas, and then groped around for her bag and the small torch she always carried on her keyring.

Debris was everywhere as she moved cautiously under the fallen tree-trunk. Twisted branches, leaves, twigs and pieces
of broken masonry and plaster scrunched underfoot as she picked her way carefully downstairs.

It was as if the whole outdoors had broken in, she thought with a startled cry as another flash of lightning streaked across the sky. The crash that followed it seemed to rock the villa, causing her to panic at the torrent of rain that was coming in on the raging wind.

And then she heard another sound, like a loud hammering on the external door to the villa, and mercifully a voice, its deep tone muffled, yet still breaking through to her through the tearing gale and the rain.

‘Kayla! Kayla? Answer me! Are you in there? Kayla! Are you all right?’

The banging persisted until she thought the door was caving in.

Reaching it and tugging it open, she almost cried with relief when she saw the formidable figure of Leon standing there, his fists clenched as though to knock the door down if it wasn’t opened. Rain was running down his face and his strong bronzed throat in rivulets.

It took all her will-power not to sink against him as he caught her arm and shouted something urgently in his own language.

‘Get out of here! Quickly!’ he ordered, reverting to English. ‘There’s been a landslide further up the mountain. This house might not be safe to stay in.’ And as she hesitated, casting an anxious glance at her belongings, ‘We’ll come back for your things in the morning!’ he shouted above the wind and the lashing rain. ‘You’re coming with me!’

Petrified, rooted to the spot by the sound of splitting timber somewhere close by on the riven hillside, Kayla felt herself suddenly being whipped off her feet. She was only pacified by the realisation that she was in a pair of strong, powerful
arms, being held against Leon’s sodden warmth as he ran with her to the waiting truck.

He had left the vehicle’s lights on, and after he had set her quickly down on the passenger seat Kayla saw him race around the bonnet with his head bent against the storm, his purposeful physique only just discernible through the rain-washed windscreen.

He opened the driver’s door, his long hair dripping, and as he climbed into the cab beside her and slammed the door against the wind she noticed that his shirt, which was unbuttoned and hanging loose, like his jeans, was soaked through and clinging to his powerful torso.

‘Thank you! Oh, thank you!’ Dropping her head into her hands as the truck started rumbling away, Kayla couldn’t think of anything else to say. ‘I didn’t know what was happening!’ she blurted out when she had recovered herself enough to sit up straight and turn towards him. ‘I woke up and thought the world was coming to an end!’

‘It would have been for you,’ Leonidas stated with grim truthfulness, ‘if that tree had fallen on you.’

But it hadn’t, she thought gratefully. Nor was she now exposed to the damage it had caused. Thanks to
him
, she realised, and wondered how she would have coped if he hadn’t been passing right at that moment.

‘What happened?’ she queried, baffled, as she began to gather her wits about her. ‘Did you just happen to come by?’

‘Something like that,’ he intoned, without taking his attention from the zig-zagging mountain road. The truck’s wiper blades were barely able to cope even at double-speed with the torrential rain.

At half-past one in the morning?

For the first time noticing the clock on the dashboard, Kayla realised exactly what the time was. Had he been out late, seen
what had happened as he had driven past? Or had he been in bed? Had he heard the landslide and driven down especially?

Of course not, she thought, dismissing that last possible scenario. No man she knew of would be so gallant as to risk his own safety for a girl he didn’t even know let alone like. And it was patently obvious from her two previous meetings with him that he clearly didn’t like her. Or
any
of her sex, if it came to that!

‘Why are you doing this if you think I’m someone who’s out to make trouble for you?’ she enquired pointedly, her hair falling, damp and dishevelled, around her shoulders.

‘What would you have preferred me to do?’ Every ounce of his concentration was still riveted on the windscreen. ‘Leave you there to swim? Or worse?’

Kayla shuddered as she interpreted what ‘worse’ might easily have meant.

‘Is it always like this on these islands?’ she queried worriedly, staring out at the truck’s powerful headlights cutting through the sheets of rain.

‘If you come here in the spring it’s a chance you take,’ he returned succinctly.

Which she had, Kayla thought, deciding that he probably thought her stupid on top of everything else.

‘What’s likely to happen to the villa?’ she asked anxiously, watching the gleaming water cascading off the hills and filling every crack and crevice on the rugged road. ‘That tree came right through onto the landing.’

‘We’ll go down and inspect the damage in the morning.’

‘But the furniture and furnishings. And my things,’ she remembered as an afterthought. ‘Everything’s going to get wet.’

‘Only to be expected,’ he answered prosaically, changing gear to take a particularly sharp bend. ‘With a hole in the roof.’

A hysterical little laugh bubbled up inside of her. Nerves, she decided. And shock. Because there was certainly nothing
funny about the havoc this storm had wreaked upon the little Grecian retreat her friends had worked so hard for.

‘What am I going to say to Lorna?’ She was worrying about how she was going to break the news to her, thinking aloud. ‘She and Josh have got enough problems as it is.’ And then it dawned on her. ‘Oh, heavens!’ she breathed, still shaking inside from her ordeal. ‘Where on earth am I going to stay? Tonight? Tomorrow? At all?’

‘Well, tonight you’re going to stay with me,’ he told her in a tone that was settled, decisive. ‘And tomorrow, when you’ve telephoned your friend to let her know what has happened, we’ll think of something else.’

We
, he’d said, as though they were in this thing together. Which they weren’t, Kayla thought. Yet strangely she gleaned some comfort from it—along with a contradictory feeling of being indebted to him, too.

‘Like what?’ She didn’t know where to begin, or even if the island had any other suitable or affordable accommodation. Lorna had offered to let her stay in the villa rent-free, and although Kayla had insisted on paying her, it was still only a nominal amount. The alternative was that she could fly home…

‘There are three hotels on this side of the island. One of them—the largest—is closed for refurbishment,’ Leon was telling her, ‘but I’m sure as it’s out of season one of the other two will be able to accommodate you.’

‘I can’t stay with you tonight,’ she informed him. ‘It’s such an imposition, for one thing.’ She didn’t even
know
him! And from what she had seen of him over the past couple of days neither did she want to. ‘You said yourself you wanted to be left alone.’

‘Which you’ve failed to acknowledge since the day you arrived,’ he told her dryly. ‘So why break with tradition?’

‘I’m sorry.’ Now she felt even worse. ‘You don’t have to do this. I’m only making a nuisance of myself…’

‘What would you prefer me to do?’ he asked. ‘Put you out into the storm?’ He laughed when he saw the anxiety creasing her forehead. ‘Relax,’ he advised. ‘You’re coming back with me. So, no more arguments to the contrary—and definitely no more apologies. Understood?’

Uneasily, Kayla nodded.

‘I didn’t hear you,’ he stated over the rumble of the engine and the jaunty rhythm of the wiper blades trying to keep pace with the interminable rain.

‘Understood!’ she shouted back, and kept her gaze on the windscreen and her hands in her lap until he brought them safely off the road and onto the paved area of the old farmhouse.

The part of the house he led her into was remarkably clean and tidy. It was surprisingly well-furnished too, even though most of the furniture looked worn and in need of replacing, and the tapestries on two of the walls, like the once colourfully striped throws over the easy chairs, were faded from the sunlight and with age. But with its whitewashed walls and cool stone floors it had an overall rustic charm that offered more comfort than she had imagined from the outside.

She was too tired and weary from her experiences to take too much interest in how he was living, and said only after a cursory glance around her, ‘I’m really not happy about this.’

She didn’t know anything about him, for a start, even if he
had
just rescued her from a house that might possibly be unsafe. He was still a stranger, and up until now a decidedly hostile one.

‘I’m afraid you’ve no choice,’ he told her, opening a cupboard and pulling out towels and spare bedlinen, ‘because I’ve no intention of trying to find you a hotel tonight. No hotelier would welcome you turning up at this hour—even if it were
safe enough to do so. And if you really don’t profess to know me—’ He broke off, his speculative gaze raking over her as if, by some miracle, he was at last beginning to believe her. ‘I’m not a criminal,’ he stated. ‘Unless, of course, the police want to charge me with some driving offence I don’t yet know about.’

Kayla smiled, relaxing a little, as he had intended her to.

Clever, she thought. Clever and probably very manipulative, she decided, but was too tired to worry about that tonight.

After she had declined his offer of any refreshment, and the room he showed her into was rustic but practical, with the same weary air about its furnishings. Like downstairs, the walls looked as though they hadn’t been whitewashed in a long time. A big wooden bed took pride of place, and from the few masculine possessions scattered around the room she gathered that
he
had been using it up until now.

‘I’m afraid it isn’t five-star, but it’s warm and dry and the sheets are clean.’ They looked it too. Crisp and white, if a little rumpled, and there was a definite indentation in the plump and inviting-looking pillow. ‘Well, I was only in them for half an hour,’ he enlightened her, with his mouth tugging down at one side.

So he had been to bed and got up again—which could only have meant that he must have driven down in the storm especially.

‘Think nothing of it,’ he advised dismissively as their eyes clashed.

Kayla wanted to say something, to thank him at the very least for deserting his bed in the middle of the night to come and see if she was all right. But his manner and all that had gone before kept her mute.

‘What will
you
do?’ she enquired, glancing down at the bed he’d given up for her. Suddenly worried that she might have given him the wrong idea, quickly she tagged on, ‘That wasn’t meant to sound like…’

‘It didn’t,’ he said, although the way his gaze moved disconcertingly over her body did nothing to put her at ease. ‘Don’t worry about me.’ He’d started moving away. ‘There’s a perfectly adequate sofa in the living room.’

Adequate, but not comfortable. Not for his manly size. She had noticed it on the way through and thought now that it wouldn’t in any way compensate for losing the roomy-looking bed he’d imagined he would be occupying.

‘I really feel awful about this.’

‘Don’t,’ he replied. ‘I’m sure you’re used to better. As I said, it isn’t five-star.’ His tone, however, was more cynical than apologetic, and a little dart of rebellion ran through her as their eyes met and locked.

She didn’t tell him that she had had a taste of luxurious living and it wasn’t something she was keen to get back to. Not when it had meant accompanying Craig to company dinners and luxury conference weekends where she had watched her ex paying homage, she realised now, to people he merely wanted to impress—people he knew could further his corporate ambitions—without really liking them at all.

‘I’m more than grateful for—’ A sudden vivid flash, accompanied by a deafening crack, had her cutting her sentence short with a startled cry.

‘It’s all right,’ he said. His voice came softly from somewhere close behind her as the thunder seemed to reverberate off the very walls. ‘This house might look as though it’s seen better days, but I can assure you, Kayla, the roof is sound. No tree is going to fall in on us, I promise you.’

Her visible fear had brought him over to her. She only realised it as she felt his hands on her shoulders through the thin fabric of her shirt, warm and strong and surprisingly reassuring in view of his previous attitude towards her.

‘I’m all right.’ She took a step back and his hands fell away from her. She wondered what was most unsettling. The
storm—or the touch of this stranger whose bedroom she was unbelievably standing in.

‘Of course you are,’ he said. ‘But get out of those damp clothes. And get a good night’s rest,’ he advocated, before leaving her to it.

He was right about her clothes being damp, she realised with a little shiver after he had gone. Just the short journey from the villa to the truck and then from the truck to this house had been enough to soak her shirt and jeans. She was grateful to peel them off.