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‘So what’s it to be, Kayla?’
Her name dripped from his lips like ambrosia from the lips of Eros, although she doubted that even the Greek god of love could have harboured the degree of sensuality this man possessed.
She didn’t want to go home, that was for sure. Yet neither did she want to be indebted to a total stranger—even if he did look like the answer to every woman’s darkest fantasy! That didn’t alter the fact that he was a stranger, and no woman in her right mind would agree to stay with a man she didn’t even know. So where did that leave her? she asked herself. On the ground outside?
Very quietly, Leonidas said, ‘Pack a bag and come with me.’
‘You know I can’t stay with you.’
‘I’m not going to try and talk you into it. Pack a bag,’ he instructed again, without offering her any idea of what his plans were. ‘I’ll finish mopping up here.’
* * *
Leon had asked her to follow him in the car. The little hatchback coughed a few times when Kayla tried to start it, which brought him over from the cab of his truck to investigate.
The engine fired into life just as he was approaching the bonnet.
Looking up at him through the car’s open window with a self-satisfied glint in her eyes, Kayla asked, ‘Do you believe me now?’
That masculine mouth pulled to one side, although he made no verbal response. Perhaps he was a man who didn’t like being reminded of his mistakes too often, Kayla thought, unable to help feeling smug.
‘It needs a good run,’ he said, speaking with some authority. ‘It’s probably been standing idle for too long, which isn’t good for any car.’
Following his truck down the zig-zag of a mountain road, Kayla was tempted to stop and take in the breathtaking views of the sea and the sun-drenched hillsides. But she kept close behind Leon’s truck, envying his knowledge of every sharp bend, admiring the confidence and safety with which he negotiated them.
After guiding her down past a cluster of whitewashed cottages, he pulled up outside another, with blue shutters and, like the rest, pots of gaily coloured flowers on its veranda.
‘Since you refuse to stay with me, I will have to leave you in the capable hands of Philomena,’ Leon told her, having come around the truck to where Kayla was just getting out of the car.
‘Philomena?’
‘A friend of mine,’ he stated, moving past her. ‘There is one small snag, however,’ he went on to inform her as he swung her small single suitcase out of the boot.
‘Oh?’ Kayla looked up at him enquiringly as he slammed the lid closed.
‘She doesn’t speak any English,’ he said.
‘So why would she want me staying with her?’ Kayla practically had to run after him. It was obvious that he wasn’t going to allow that rather large drawback—to Kayla’s mind, at any rate—to interfere with his plans.
‘Her family have all grown up and moved away,’ he tossed back over his shoulder. ‘Trust me. She will be very glad of the company of someone else—especially another woman.’
‘But have you asked her?’ Kayla wasn’t sure that anyone—no matter how lonely they might be—would welcome a guest turning up unexpectedly on their doorstep.
‘Leave the worrying to me,’ he advised, and uneasily Kayla did.
He had said Philomena was a friend, but as he brought Kayla through to the homely sitting room of the little fisherman’s cottage without even needing to knock, she calculated that the woman in dark clothes who greeted them with twinkling brown eyes and a strong, character-lined face was old enough to be his grandmother.
Her affection for Leon was clear from the start, but suddenly as they were speaking the woman burst into what to Kayla’s ears sounded like a fierce outpouring of objection. The woman was waving her hands in typically European fashion and sending more than a few less than approving glances Kayla’s way.
‘She isn’t happy about my staying here and why should she be?’ Kayla challenged, taking in the abundance of framed family photographs and brightly painted pottery and feeling as much mortified as she felt sympathetic towards the elderly woman.
‘She’s happy, Kayla,’ Leonidas told her, breaking off from a run of incomprehensible Greek. He started speaking very quickly in his own language again, which brought forth another bout of scolding and arm-waving from a clearly none-too-pleased Philomena.
‘I’m sorry,’ Kayla apologised through the commotion, hoping the woman would understand as she picked up her suitcase and starting weaving through the rustic furniture towards the door.
‘No, no! No, no!’ A lightly restraining hand came over Kayla’s arm. ‘You stay. Stay Philomena, eh?’ The look she sent Leonidas shot daggers in his direction. Her voice, though, as she turned back to Kayla, was softer and more encouraging, her returning smile no less than sympathetic as a work-worn, sun-dappled hand gently palmed Kayla’s cheek. ‘You come. Stay.’
A good deal of gesticulation with a far warmer flow of baffling Greek seemed to express the woman’s pleasure in having Kayla as her guest.
‘You see,’ Leonidas remarked, looking pleased with himself as Philomena drew her gently away from the door. ‘I said she would want you to stay.’
The appreciative look Kayla gave her hostess turned challenging as she faced the man who had brought her there. ‘Then what were you arguing about?’ she quizzed.
‘Philomena has no one to scold nowadays, so she likes to scold me.’ His mouth as he directed a look towards their hostess was pulling wryly. ‘Philomena bore seven children, but her one claim to fame, as she likes to call it, is that she delivered me. I’m eternally grateful to her for introducing me to this universe,’ he expressed with smiling affection at Philomena, ‘but she does tend to imagine that that gives her licence to upbraid me at every given opportunity.’
‘For what?’ Kayla was puzzled, still not convinced.
One of those impressive shoulders lifted as he contemplated this. ‘For leaving the island. For coming back. For not coming back.’
Kayla noted the curious inflexion in his voice as he made that last statement. Her smile wavered. ‘And what about just now?’
‘Just now?’
Leonidas looked at the woman who had pulled him screaming into the world. She had been there—never far away—throughout his childhood. A comfort from his father’s strict and sometimes brutal regime of discipline, his rock when his mother had died.
‘I don’t think she’s happy with the way I’ve turned out,’ he commented dryly to Kayla, and thought that if it were true he wouldn’t blame Philomena. There were times lately, he was surprised to find himself thinking, when he had been far, far from happy with himself.
‘Oh?’ Kayla clearly wanted to know more, but he had nothing more to offer her.
Gratefully he expressed his thanks to Philomena, adding something else, which brought Kayla’s cornflower-blue eyes curiously to his as he started moving away.
‘I’ve told her to take care of you,’ he translated, with a blazing smile that made Kayla’s stomach muscles curl in on themselves. And that was that. He had gone before she could utter another word.
* * *
Kayla settled in to her new accommodation with remarkable ease, and as she had suspected, despite the language barrier, she found Philomena Sarantos to be a warm and generous hostess.
She wondered what Leon had meant about Philomena being unhappy with the way he had turned out. Had he meant because of his lifestyle? Not having a steady job? Because he seemed content to drift from place to place?
Two days passed and she saw nothing of him. But then, what had she expected? Kayla meditated. Hadn’t he made it clear from the beginning that he didn’t welcome intrusion into his life? And, although he had invited her to stay with him at the farmhouse the morning after that tree had come down, she wondered if it hadn’t been merely a hollow gesture on his part. He’d known she would refuse, so he’d been perfectly safe in offering her his roof over her head.
What did it matter? she decided now. She’d had enough to occupy her time without bothering herself about Leon over the past couple of days.
The previous day she had driven up to the villa after Lorna’s parents had texted her with the estimated time they would be arriving. They had brought some local men with them who were arranging for the removal of the tree, and someone else who, having inspected the building, pronounced the place off-limits for the time being.
After arranging with the men for the necessary works to be carried out, her friend’s parents had been extremely concerned as to where Kayla would stay. But having satisfied them—just as she had done with Lorna, over the phone the previous day—that she had found suitable alternative accommodation, she had seen the couple off to spend a few days on Corfu and—in their own words—‘make the whole trip worthwhile’.
Now, with the sun having just risen and another glorious day yawning before her, Kayla traversed the dusty path that led from Philomena’s cottage and gasped with delight when it brought her down onto the sun-washed shingle of a secluded cove.
* * *
Striding down through the scrub, Leonidas came to where the beach opened out before him and stopped dead in his tracks.
Kayla was wading, shin-deep, in the translucent blue water, moving shorewards. She was looking down into the water and hadn’t spotted him yet.
He would have considered the fine white cotton dress she was wearing with its sheer long sleeves and modest yoke demure in any other circumstances, because it made her look almost angelic with her loose blonde hair moving in the breeze. But she had evidently—perhaps unintentionally—allowed the sea to lap too high to preserve her modesty, for now the garment clung wetly to her body, so that the gold of her skin and her small naked breasts were clearly visible beneath.
As she waded forward the sun struck gold from her hair, illuminating the lustrous gold of lashes that lay against her cheeks as her interest never wavered from the water.
Transfixed by her beauty, he noticed the grace of her movements, the way her progress changed the light, making her breasts appear indistinct one moment and then tantalisingly defined the next. A virginal siren, tantalising enough to set his masculine hormones ablaze as his gaze swept the length of her tunic, which only reached the tops of her slender thighs.
She looked up—and when she saw him she put her hand to her mouth in shock. Then her bare feet were running lightly over the shingle towards the white floppy hat he had only just noticed lying discarded nearby.
‘I didn’t see you,’ she called out, snatching up the hat that had been covering her ever-present camera and the rest of her things lying there on the shingle.
‘Evidently not.’ He couldn’t contain the slow smile that played across his mouth as he noted the purposeful way she covered her wet top with the hat, her own smile feigning nonchalance, as though she didn’t care.
‘Have you been standing there long?’
Not nearly long enough, Leonidas thought, struggling to keep control of his unleashed hormones and the effect she was having on him. He was glad he hadn’t simply worn bathing shorts, as he’d been tempted to do, and instead had donned linen trousers with a loose, casual shirt.
She had probably had enough of men lusting after her for their own primeval satisfaction—including that fiancé of hers—without having to endure the same kind of treatment from him.
‘You shouldn’t go bathing like that without a chaperone,’ he chided softly, the dark lenses of his sunglasses revealing nothing of his thoughts.
‘I didn’t mean to.’ Beneath the pale swathe of her hair a modestly clad shoulder lifted almost imperceptibly. ‘The sea was beckoning me while I was paddling and I just got carried away.’
‘It has a way of doing that, and before you know it—’ He made a gesture with his hand like a fish taking a dive. ‘It’s nature drawing us back to itself.’
He saw her golden head tilt and was struck by the vivid clarity of those cornflower-blue eyes as she surveyed him. ‘What a beautiful thing to say.’
Leonidas laughed. ‘Was it?’ He found himself swallowing and his throat felt dry. He had been accused of expressing himself in many ways in his time, he recalled, but beautifully had never been one of them.
She had turned round to gather her things and was starting to pull on white cropped leggings.
‘How are you getting on with Philomena?’ he asked.
Thrusting her feet into flip-flops, Kayla retrieved the hat she had momentarily discarded and turned back to face him, keeping its wide brim strategically in place across her breasts.
‘She’s great.’ Her face lit up with genuine warmth. ‘She reminds me of my gran.’
‘That’s good.’ He knew he was looking self-satisfied as he flipped open the notebook he’d taken out of the back pocket of his trousers. ‘And what does your grandmother think of your being here alone?’ He was in danger of sounding distracted, but it was vital he got something down. Something he’d forget if he didn’t consign it to paper this very instant. ‘Isn’t she afraid you’ll fall prey to some licentious stranger?’
‘No.’ Picking up her camera and sunglasses, which she slid onto her head, Kayla pushed a swathe of golden silk back off her shoulder with the aid of the sunscreen bottle she was holding. ‘She died. A few months ago.’
The sadness in her voice required nothing less than Leonidas’s full attention. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Yes. So am I,’ Kayla responded, reaffirming his suspicion that she had cared a great deal for her elderly relative.
‘You were close?’ He didn’t even need to ask.
She nodded. ‘Mum and I never really were. And after Dad left he was never the loving father type whenever I got to see him, so we just drifted apart over the years. But Gran—Mum’s mum—she filled the void in every way she could.’
She was looking over her shoulder out to sea but Leonidas knew that she wasn’t seeing the white-crested waves and the indigo blue water. She was hiding emotion—nothing more—because she was embarrassed by it.
‘So you lost your fiancé on top of losing a grandmother?’ he commented, with a depth of feeling he wasn’t used to. ‘That’s rough.’
She shrugged. ‘At least I had Lorna,’ she told him with a ruminative smile. ‘On both counts she was there for me. She helped me through.’
‘Tell me about her,’ he said somewhat distractedly Kayla thought as she started walking casually a step or two ahead of him, because he was busy scribbling in a notebook.
But she told him anyway, about the friend she had known from her first day at school who had come to mean as much as a sister to her. About the interior design work that Lorna and her husband were involved in, and how brilliant they were at what they did, but how, with the state of the market and then losing their biggest customer, things had become extremely difficult for them recently. She even went on to tell him how she might find herself looking for another job if things didn’t improve.
He wasn’t really listening, she decided, relieved, feeling that she had gabbled on too much.
‘What are you writing?’ She stopped on the shingle, turning to him with her chin almost resting on the hat she was still clutching to her beneath her folded arms.
‘Just jotting down a few things I don’t want to forget.’ He had snapped the notebook closed and was stuffing it into his back pocket.
‘You were sketching.’ Suddenly it dawned. ‘You were sketching me.’
‘Leave it, Kayla.’ His words were laced with a warning not to pursue it.
‘You were sketching me. Oh, no!’ Kayla hid her face in the wide brim of her hat. How could he? With the ends of her hair all lank and dripping, and she wasn’t even wearing any mascara, let alone a bra! ‘I look like a drowned and lashless rat!’
‘You look like an angel,’ Leonidas told her, voicing his earlier thoughts.
‘You can’t be serious!’ Kayla protested, bringing her head up, clinging to her crushed hat as her only defence against those shaded yet all-seeing eyes.
‘I never joke about beauty. Particularly the beauty of a woman,’ he said, in a voice that seemed to trickle with pure honey.
And you would have known scores of those! Known just what to say to make them feel like you’re making me feel now, Kayla thought hectically. Weak-kneed and breathless and wanting so much to believe that all he was saying was true!
She pulled a face, and in spite of everything managed to say with a tremulous little laugh, ‘Does that line usually work?’
The firm masculine mouth compressed, and she couldn’t seem to drag her gaze from it as he prompted, ‘Does it work in what way?’ Now that mouth took on a mocking curve. ‘In getting you into my bed?’
Kayla felt heated colour steal into her cheeks. Which was ridiculous, she thought. She was hardly a novice to male attention. She’d been planning a wedding, for heaven’s sake! Yet there was something about this man that was more exciting and more dangerous to her than any other man she had ever met.
‘Isn’t it customary?’ she returned somewhat breathlessly in answer to his reference to getting her into bed.
‘Possibly,’ he acceded, ‘but not in this case. And not with someone who has been made to feel so unsure of herself that she blushes at the mere mention of a man and woman finding pleasure in each other. Or a man taking any interest in her. There’s really no need to hide from me, Kayla.’
Perhaps there wasn’t. But when he took the hat she was clutching to her like a shield and his hand accidentally brushed the sensitised flesh above her modest neckline she realised that it was herself that she was afraid of. Of feelings that were too reckless and wild to think about. Purely physical feelings that had surfaced the moment she had first seen him standing on that other beach a few days ago.
Now, with her wet top doing nothing to protect her from his gaze, she could feel her blood starting to surge and the peaks of her breasts tightening in response to his hot regard, so that all she could think about was that hard masculine body locked in torrid sensual pleasure on some bed. And not just any bed. On hers!
‘Are you saying that your interest is purely aesthetic?’ she queried, her voice croaking from her shaming thoughts and the knowledge of how her rapidly rising breasts were betraying her to him.
