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He had to keep her out of the kitchen—stop her going in there before he had a chance to explain. He cast a surreptitious glance over her shoulder at the table in the centre of the room, heaving with incriminating evidence. He should have told her before. Should have kept her in bed...
‘Kayla...’
The way he spoke her name never failed to turn Kayla’s bones to jelly.
‘Say it again,’ she murmured huskily.
‘What?’ He looked tense, she thought, and mystified too.
‘The way you say my name.’
‘Kay-lah.’
She groaned her satisfaction and nestled against his chest above the gaping V of his dark satin robe. His skin smelled of the lingering traces of shower gel overlaid with a sensual musk.
‘It should be censored—or at least X-rated,’ she purred, with her tongue coming out in a provocative caress of that bared skin. It felt silky and tasted slightly salty...
Dear heaven!
Leonidas dragged in a breath, at a loss for the words he needed to say. He didn’t know what powers this girl used to bewitch him, but even as he struggled to engage his normally incisive brain his body was responding with an urgent message of its own. It was taking all the mental strength he possessed not to rip down her panties, lay her down right here on the marble floor and enjoy the pleasure of having her beneath him, with himself in the driving seat this time. But he had to get her out of this room!
Swiftly his mouth swooped down over hers in a bid to distract her enough to manoeuvre her back into the hall. But he hadn’t reckoned on how distracting her soft mouth would be to him.
Feeling her warm body against his, he could only respond to it in a kiss that went on and on, until they both came up for air and her head dropped back against his shoulder.
A few moments later, lifting her head, she murmured, ‘What is that?’
Leonidas’s spine pulled into a tight, tense rod. All he had succeeded in doing was turning her round, so that their positions were reversed, and she was now looking at the plans he’d set up on an easel. Allowing her to pull out of his arms, he felt the slaying blow of defeat.
Stepping down into the kitchen and dumping the bread bag on the table, bewildered, Kayla couldn’t take it in. There were papers. Lots of papers. A laptop and a memo pad. And what she had thought were sketches looked like some sort of plan...
‘What is it?’ Her eyes skittered from the easel to the table and then the briefcase standing open on the floor. ‘Is it something you’re working on? Some building work...?’
Leonidas took a step towards her. ‘Kayla, I can explain.’
‘Explain?’ She looked at him with confusion in her questioning blue eyes. ‘Explain what?’
What was he doing with what looked like a whole set of plans for some development scheme? And a big, big development scheme by the look of it, she realised, when her gaze swept back over the table. Something proposed by the Vassalio Group—a big, big developer. She knew that much as her eyes took in the recognisable black and gold logo at the top of the plan she was staring at.
‘I don’t understand...’ Why had his cosy farmhouse kitchen taken on the look of some executive’s pad? Why was he looking so serious?
At that moment his cell phone rang from somewhere, shrilling across the sudden pregnant silence.
He pulled it out of the pocket of his robe, his eyes never leaving hers as he intoned incisively, ‘Vassalio.’ And then the penny dropped.
It was like an unashamed declaration directed specifically at her, Kayla thought, realising she had started to tremble.
Vassalio. Leon. Leonidas Vassalio. She knew the name. Of course she did! She’d heard it often enough in the media, seen the company logo on billboards and advertising for commercial developments, but she’d never taken much notice of it until now.
‘You lied to me,’ she accused in a virtual whisper when he cut the call short, feeling so shocked and betrayed that it was almost painful to breathe. ‘You’ve lied to me ever since I got here!’
‘Misled,’ he corrected as he dropped his phone back into his pocket.
As if it made a difference!
‘Most of it was what you assumed.’
‘Hah! Like I assumed I knew who you were when we were doing what we were doing just now?’
Leonidas Vassalio. The man she had just taken advantage of—and who had let her!
‘How could you do it?’ She was referring to the sex, shame creeping over her, scorching her already flushed cheeks. What a laugh he must have been having—and at her expense!
‘You didn’t give me much choice,’ he reminded her dryly.
‘You could have stopped me any time you wanted to!’
‘Really?’ A sceptical eyebrow arched sharply. ‘You think I’m that superhuman?’ His mouth twisted in hard self-derision. ‘Show me any red-blooded man you think would be capable of resisting being dragged out of sleep by a sex-goddess with no panties on.’
He made her feel cheap, and she wished fervently that she could turn back the clock instead of just standing there, hating herself for feeling the burn of desire stir deep down inside her where she was still moist and slightly tender from their spontaneous and unrestrained coming together.
‘If it makes you feel any better,’ he said, running fingers through his long dishevelled hair, ‘I didn’t intend for things to go as far as they did.’
‘Oh, really?’ she shot back, her features distorted with self-disgust. ‘What a bonus it must have been for you when they did!’
‘It wasn’t like that.’ He sounded defensive, exasperated—angry, almost. ‘Why the hell do you think I didn’t take things to their natural conclusion the other day on that island?’
‘Because it was more fun stringing me along.’
‘That isn’t true.’
‘Isn’t it? And what about just now? You wouldn’t have thought twice about doing it again.’
‘That wasn’t my motive,’ he stated decisively. ‘I was trying to coax you into the sitting room so that I could break it to you gently who I am without it flaring up into the mess we find ourselves in now.’
‘You mean instead of me finding out for myself what a rotten lying cheat you really are?’
‘If that’s what you want to believe,’ he rasped, grim-mouthed. ‘But it was never my intention to deceive you.’
‘Why?’ It was a small cry from somewhere deep down inside of her. ‘Why should I believe anything you say?’
‘All right. I deserve that,’ he accepted with no loss of dignity. He clearly wasn’t a man to grovel or to eat humble pie. ‘Look, I apologise for not telling you before now,’ he continued. ‘But I didn’t know who you were when you first arrived. For all I knew you were a snooping journalist on a mission for a story, and I came here for some privacy. To get away from all the media attention and publicity that’s been dogging me over this past year. I wasn’t going to risk losing all that for a girl I didn’t even know. Apart from which, I found it rather refreshing being with someone who wasn’t playing up to me because of the size of my bank balance.’
‘So you used me!’ Kayla breathed. ‘Just for your own amusement.’
‘That isn’t what I’m saying. But if you want to think that, then there’s nothing I can do to stop you.’
‘You could have trusted me enough to tell me the truth!’
He made a self-deprecating sound down his nostrils. ‘A man in my position can’t afford to trust.’
‘Which just goes to show the type of people you mix with,’ she tossed back, refusing to give any quarter. He had lied to her. Deceived her. And, though it was killing her to acknowledge it, that made him no better than Craig.
‘I can’t argue with that,’ Leonidas conceded. ‘But I don’t suppose it would make any difference to tell you that you don’t fall into their category.’
‘You mean because none of the others have been such a push-over as I’ve been?’ Near to tears, it came out almost on a sob, but there was no way in a million years that she was going to let him see that. Forcing aggression into her voice, she uttered, ‘A builder. Hah! You must have been laughing up your exclusive designer sleeve!’
Ignoring that last remark, he said, ‘That was your interpretation when I said I was in construction—which, as you can see...’ he gestured to the plans on the easel, the others on the table ‘...I am.’
‘And you let me think it! That’s worse than lying! That’s...’
‘Kayla, stop it!’ He made a calming gesture with his hands. ‘I can understand how you must feel.’
‘Can you?’ Her eyes were dark and tortured, and her mouth was twisted in wounded accusation. No wonder he’d got nasty about her taking photographs of him in the beginning!
‘I’ve said I’m sorry, haven’t I?’
‘And you think that makes it all right? An apology from the great Leonidas Vassalio!’ Her bitter little laugh made him visibly wince.
‘No, it doesn’t make it all right.’ Beneath the robe his tanned chest fell in hopeless frustration. He hadn’t intended it to sound as dismissive as it had come out. ‘I was constantly aware that I was going to have to tell you sooner or later.’
‘Oh, really?’ Kayla shot him a look of pure incredulity. ‘Like when, exactly? After we’d had sex again?’
‘Kayla, stop it!’ He was moving towards her, but she backed away.
‘So how did you imagine I’d respond?’ She’d come up against a chair, the one where she’d sat that morning after he’d rescued her from the villa, but she didn’t want to think about that now. ‘By being grateful to you?’
‘Which is exactly why I’ve never said anything,’ Leonidas admitted raggedly.
‘Because it would have spoilt your fun!’
‘Because I didn’t want to hurt you.’
‘Oh, you wouldn’t have hurt me, Leon!’ Hadn’t she been hardened by Craig? And before that her father? she reflected bitterly, before tagging on with painful cynicism, ‘I’m sorry. Is it Leon? Or should that be Leonidas now?’
The emphatic distaste she placed on the name everyone knew him by made him flinch. But he couldn’t blame her, he thought. He had misled her, and then been stupid enough to imagine he might be let off lightly when he came clean and admitted it. But she had been hurt too deeply before and he should have known better, he realised. It was crass of him to have thought she would be anything but angry and bitter, especially after finding out in the way she had.
‘You wouldn’t have hurt me, Leonidas,’ she reiterated, in an attempt to ease the pain of another betrayal—and by a man she had believed was different from men like Craig and her father and all the others. A construction worker who’d come here to fish and sketch and live rough for a while because he valued his solitude and his privacy. Except all the time she’d been naïve enough to imagine he’d been sketching he’d been controlling his multi-billion-pound empire! ‘I just wouldn’t have touched you with a bargepole.’
But she had, she thought bitterly, remembering just how eagerly she had touched him—with her mouth and her hands and her whole reckless and stupidly trusting body. Tears stung her eyes as she thanked her lucky stars that she hadn’t quite succeeded in giving him her heart as well.
‘Kayla...’ He made another move towards her, but she backed away again, knocking the chair into the table this time and pushing some of his papers askew. ‘I’m still the same person I was when you were driving me wild for you upstairs.’
‘No, you’re not! You’re as bad as every other company man—’ she breathed it with venom ‘—I’ve ever met. Only worse. Because you’ve arrived! And to think I was trying to suggest things you could do to make life better for yourself!’ She couldn’t believe she could have been so stupid. Such an unbelievable fool!
‘Which I found very endearing,’ he added earnestly.
‘Don’t touch me!’ She made a small panicked sound as he took another step towards her, the thought of what his lips and hands could do to her exciting her in a way that made her feel sick with herself. ‘You know exactly what I think about men like you!’
‘Then we’ve both been misguided,’ he concluded, his shoulders drooping, suddenly seeming to give up trying to placate her. ‘You for taking everything at face value, and I for imagining I could get away with letting you. I just wanted to believe that for a while at least my name and my money weren’t the most important things about me.’
There was something in his voice that had her silently querying the inscrutable emotion in that strong, rugged face. ‘Is that supposed to make me feel bad?’ she challenged. ‘Because it doesn’t.’
‘No. I’ve already told you,’ he persisted. ‘It wasn’t my intention to hurt you, or to let things go as far as they did.’
‘And what about Philomena?’ Her gaze had fallen to the bag with the loaf the woman had lovingly baked for him. ‘Does she know?’ she threw at him, hurting, remembering how eagerly she had driven up here to see him, with nothing but making him want her on her mind. ‘Does she know what a fool you’ve been taking me for? Or didn’t you risk telling her?’
Thick black lashes came down over his incredibly dark eyes. ‘I’ve never taken you for a fool,’ he stated, exhaling deeply. ‘As for Philomena...she knows I had my reasons.’
‘And she went along with them?’ She couldn’t believe that of the gentle yet down-to-earth Philomena.
‘What do you think?’ he said.
She remembered the argument that had ensued the day he’d first taken her down to the cottage, the remonstrations by Philomena since, which seemed to leave him no more than mildly amused.
‘You’re despicable,’ she breathed, as a fragment of memory tugged at her consciousness in relation to something he had said about having had a trying year.
Unscrupulous. Ruthless. Riding roughshod over people. Those were words she had heard in connection with the name Leonidas Vassalio. And then she remembered. It was that stunning American model turned actress—Esmeralda Leigh. She’d publicly named him as having fathered her child. It was she who had called him unscrupulous, when he had challenged the proof of his paternity—though there had been no close-up photograph of him in the article Kayla remembered reading. Just a long shot of him leaving his office, looking rather different from how he looked now, which had been inset in a full-colour spread of Esmeralda lounging in the drawing room of her exquisitely and expensively furnished Mayfair home.
‘Esmeralda was right. You are unscrupulous!’
‘And if you had read the outcome of that fiasco you would have the sense to realise that anything the woman says is fabricated. Her claims were proven to be totally untrue.’
‘Well, she wasn’t the only one who was good at lying, was she?’ Kayla reminded him grievously, realising now what he’d meant that day when he’d referred to a petition being slapped on him. ‘Was it because of her that you decided to get your own back when you met me? Were you afraid if I knew who you were I might try and get pregnant so I could use you as a ticket to an easy life? Well, stuff your money! And stuff you! Not everyone puts as much value on money as on truth and integrity! I might not be in your league when it comes to material wealth, but at least I can hold my head up and know that what you see is what you get. That everything about me is real. You wouldn’t understand that if it was scrawled all over one of your concrete eyesores, and as far as I’m concerned, Mr Vassalio, I never want to see you again!’
CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_55e964ea-0bb2-569b-9177-edb83250b6b3)
‘I HAD HOPED your time in Greece would make you feel better,’ remarked Yasmin Young, an abrupt and artificially blonde forty-five-year-old to Kayla, who had just come downstairs and declined her mother’s offer to cook her breakfast. ‘But ever since you’ve been back you haven’t eaten properly. You’re too thin. And you’ve been going around like someone who’s lost a shilling and found sixpence. I was right when I said you were unwise, cutting your holiday short like that. I’ve told you before,’ she reiterated, going over what seemed to Kayla like a mantra from her mother these days. ‘He isn’t worth wasting any more time over, you know. None of them are.’
She was talking about Craig. Kayla hadn’t told her mother anything about meeting anyone while she had been away. But the maternal advice applied equally to how she was feeling about Leonidas—and had been ever since she’d returned to the UK on that wet and windy mid-May morning, hurting and feeling so gullible and betrayed. And all because she had been stupid enough to get herself emotionally involved with a man right out of the same mould as Craig, her father and all the others. Because she had, Kayla thought, berating herself—even if she had only realised it when it was too late.
‘I know,’ she responded now, even managing to feign a smile as she poured herself a hasty cup of coffee. She shook her head at her mother’s concerned suggestion that she should at least try and eat some toast.
‘I’d better go or I’ll be late,’ she said, rushing out of the door without bothering to finish her coffee.
At least she wasn’t out of work and dependent upon her mother to help support her, she thought in an attempt to brighten herself up as she sat in heavy traffic on her way to work. At least she still had a job. And it promised to be a potentially permanent one if Josh and Lorna managed to land the huge contract they had been hoping to secure for the past few weeks.
It would be the break they needed and they were both beside themselves with excitement—particularly as their potential client was Havens Exclusive, a company that provided luxury homes and apartments for the higher end of the market. Kayla was keeping her fingers crossed for them both.
Without her having to worry about things like whether Kendon Interiors would still be trading this time next year, Lorna might have a chance with her pregnancy this time, she thought, hoping fervently that her friend would be able to carry this baby to full term. And being busy again could only be good for her too, Kayla decided, because apart from the satisfaction of being able to stay in a job she enjoyed, it helped keep her mind off Leonidas.
She hadn’t heard from him since that morning she had stormed out of the farmhouse. Not that she’d wanted to, or even imagined that she would. He didn’t know where to find her, for a start.
She’d wasted no time in leaving the island after driving back to Philomena’s that last morning, having discovered that there was a ferry leaving that day.
‘Leon...he good man,’ Philomena, having guessed what had happened, had tried to tell her gently. He could act stupidly sometimes. Like most men! At least that was what the woman had seemed to be saying with her gestures and a world-weary rolling of her eyes.
Well, he hadn’t shown any evidence of his virtuous qualities with her! Kayla seethed, still hurting from the way he had deceived her, even though it was more than six weeks on. She tried not to think about how he had rescued her that night in the storm and helped her with the clean-up operation the following day. Nor did she want to think about the affection he’d shown towards Philomena. Remembering just filled her with longing, and with such an aching regret that things couldn’t have been different that at times it almost took her breath away. He was a rat when all was said and done. She didn’t need him or want him! And she certainly never intended to be so taken in by anyone again! So why did she spend every waking moment trying not to think about him? Why did the thought of never seeing him again leave her feeling so down and depressed?
