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Which meant what? Kayla wondered, curious. Had Philomena hoped that the boy she had brought into the world thirty-odd years ago might be doing better for himself by now? Was that what Leon had meant when he’d said she wasn’t happy with the way he had turned out?
Dismissing it from her mind, she moved to help Philomena, but her hostess waved her aside with a warm but incomprehensible protest, pointing to the reclining seats in the welcoming shade of a sun umbrella. Not wishing to offend, Kayla went inside and donned a bikini with matching red and white wrap, which she tied, sarong-style, just above her breasts, before coming back outside into the now deserted garden.
A short time later Philomena emerged from the house with two glasses of something cool and refreshing—juice for her, Kayla realised gratefully, and something a little stronger for Leon.
‘I’ll take it out to him,’ she volunteered, putting her glass down on a nearby table and leaving a thankful Philomena hurrying back inside, because the telephone had started ringing inside the house.
Her discarded wrap had fallen down behind the chair, and wasn’t very easy to reach, so with a little sliver of excitement Kayla left it where it was and proceeded to take the glass to Leon as she was.
For the last twenty-minutes or so her ears had been tuned to every sound coming from the dirt road—from the slamming down of a boot to the chink of metal being laid down on sun-baked stones. Now, as she rounded the corner of the house, Kayla’s heart kicked into overdrive.
With his shirt removed, and faded blue jeans having replaced his linen trousers, Leon was crouched down, securing a nut on the spare wheel, and for a few moments Kayla could only stand there, watching him unobserved.
His body was beautiful. The bronzed skin sheathed muscles that were flexing as he worked, revealing the tension in his straining biceps and across his wide shoulders, in the tapering structure of his strong and sinewy back.
‘Philomena thought you’d like something to drink,’ Kayla told him, dry-mouthed, noticing before he turned around how his hair waved below the nape of his neck like jet against burnished bronze.
He dropped the spanner he was using and stood up, his movements cool and easy. That knowing curve to his mouth suggested that he was well aware of her reluctance to let him think that it was entirely her idea.
‘That’s very good of her.’ His answer and his lopsided smile assured her that two could play at that game. His eyes, however, were tugging over her scantily clothed body in a way that was making her feel naked.
‘You’ve been a long time. You should have let me help you,’ Kayla remarked, handing him the glass. The accidental touch of his fingers against hers sent a sharp little frisson through her.
‘And do you think I would have achieved much with you looking like that?’
Kayla swallowed, watching him drink, trying not to make it too obvious that she was having difficulty staying unaffected by his state of undress.
In fact she was finding it impossible not to allow her gaze free rein over his superb body—from the contoured strength of his smooth chest, with its taut muscles and flat dark nipples, to the black line of hair that started just above his navel and ran down inside the waistband of the denim that encased his flat stomach and narrow hips.
He was like a beautiful sleek stallion. All leanness and rippling muscle, with the power to dominate and excite, to control and to conquer using the pulsing energies and surging potency of his body.
‘Do you see what I mean?’ he taunted softly.
Yes, she did, and she could feel those energies transmitting their sensual messages along her nerve-endings, tugging shameless responses from every erogenous zone in her body.
Beneath the satiny white cups of her bikini her burgeoning breasts throbbed, sending a piercing arrow of need to the heart of her loins.
He was so raw, so masculine, and so shamelessly virile. She wanted to know what it was like to have a man like him filling her, taking her to the wildest edges of the universe with him while she lay beneath him, sobbing her pleasure, in glorious abandon to his thrilling and governing hands.
Shocked by her thoughts, she tried to shake them away, feigning an interest in his truck to try and restore some sense of propriety in herself, grappling for equilibrium.
‘Did this thing come with the house?’ she queried in a tight, strained voice, slapping the grimy, battered bonnet. ‘Or did you have to buy it?’
‘It’s mine,’ Leonidas answered, taking a breath from quenching his thirst and watching her from under the thickness of his dark lashes.
‘Perhaps it’s time you bought a new one,’ she suggested cheekily, amused, deciding that it wasn’t only the tyre that needed changing. The bodywork looked as if it wouldn’t object to a lick of fresh paint either.
‘Perhaps it’s time you stopped having a laugh at my expense.’
Was that what she was doing? ‘I’m sorry.’ Seeing his eyes darkening, quickly Kayla strove to suppress her mocking banter. After all, he probably couldn’t afford anything better, she thought. Not like Craig, with his company Jaguar and his inflated expense account. This man would have no such perks. ‘I didn’t mean to laugh about it—honest.’
‘Didn’t you?’ He had emptied his glass with one final long draught. Setting it aside, he came to where Kayla stood with her hand resting on the top of the radiator grid, as though in apology to the vehicle itself. ‘I suppose you measure a man’s status by the type of car he drives, huh?’
‘No.’
‘What would you prefer? A Porsche? Or a Mercedes?’ he asked roughly.
‘Well, both would be nice...’ Her voice tailed off when she noticed how forbidding he looked, and she realised that she wasn’t just imagining that hardening in his voice. ‘I wasn’t making fun of you. Not really,’ she tagged on, suddenly afraid that he might think less of her if he thought she had been. ‘I suppose I was just getting my own back.’
‘For what?’
‘For embarrassing me earlier. Making me feel awkward. When you said I was being too inquisitive about your private life.’
He laughed very softly then, his strong implacable features suddenly losing some of their austerity. His eyes, however, were disturbingly reflective as they rested on her face.
‘And I thought you were doing it just to prompt some reaction from me,’ he murmured silkily, with no apology for silencing her earlier.
‘Prompt some reaction from you?’ Kayla’s throat contracted with heightening sexual tension. ‘Why would I want to do that?’
‘Because I’m probably one of the only men you’ve met who isn’t instantly falling over himself to respond to your temptingly sexy signals.’
‘I’m not giving off any signals!’ Kayla breathed, mortified. ‘And I’m certainly not trying to get your attention.’
‘Aren’t you?’ Those shrewd eyes tugged over her flushed, indignant features, regarding, assessing and stripping her of her deepest and hottest secrets. ‘You wouldn’t have come out here looking like this...’ an all-encompassing glance took in breasts thrust tantalisingly upwards by the shaping of the cups and skimpy briefs barely skimming her abdomen ‘...if you weren’t.’
Shamefully, she wished she had bothered to retrieve her cover-up before flaunting herself in front of him like this. Because that was what she had been doing, she admitted silently. Flaunting herself.
She wanted to say something to redeem herself. Or simply to run away. Anything but stay there and face him like this.
She wished she had run when he suddenly reached up and cupped her cheek, his broad thumb playing across the softness of her pouting lips.
‘If I made love to you, Kayla,’ he said huskily, ‘it would be a fleeting moment’s pleasure. That’s all. No commitment. No strings. And I don’t think you came here to let some man with his own issues to sort out use you like that. A girl like you needs something more than anything I could offer you. Something more meaningful. Not a brief fling to try and forget the man who cheated on you with a few hours of what I can’t deny would be sensational pleasure.’
He was deadly serious, but even his words were exciting her. Or was it his thumb, tracing the curve of her plump lower lip, forcing her to close her eyes against the reckless desire to taste him? To inhale his musky animal scent mingling with the smell of grease and metal and everything that made this man exciting to her?
‘Who said I want you to make love to me?’ she murmured in pointless protest, her eyes inky beneath lashes still half-lowered against his gaze.
‘You’re inviting it with every denial you utter,’ he breathed hoarsely, his voice overlaid with desire. ‘And you’re not so naïve as not to realise that you’re making me as hard as a rock.’
‘You’re wrong!’ she argued breathlessly, and in the only way she knew of saving face she pulled away from him, almost tripping over her own feet in her flip-flops as she virtually ran back to the house.
Upstairs, away from Philomena’s shrewd eyes, she went into the shower-room and peeled off the bikini that seemed to be sticking to her.
Why on earth was she so attracted to him? she berated herself under the cool jets of the shower, trying to lather away the sensual heat from her body and that elusive scent of him that still clung to her skin where he had briefly touched her.
He had admitted himself that he was a man with issues.
Woman issues! Which was why he had shut her up, coming back from the beach today.
Well, what did she care? His business was his business. As far as she was concerned, he was simply a man who had helped her out of a difficult situation. Nothing more. It was just that she couldn’t seem to stop making a fool of herself when she was with him, let alone concentrate on anything but him when she wasn’t!
She tried to think about the past couple of months. Her ex. What had driven her here. Tried to stir up some other emotions to blot out the crazy, reckless feelings she was experiencing for Leon.
But, try though she did, feeling bitter suddenly seemed like a wasted emotion—because Craig and what he had done didn’t seem to matter so much any more.
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_074699ba-f2e7-5e44-80e6-4f3d6493c010)
KAYLA DIDN’T SEE Leon the next day, or the day after that, and when he did come down to the cottage again, looking stupendous in a white T-shirt and light, hip-hugging trousers, it was only to deliver logs to Philomena.
‘So you’re still roadworthy, then?’ Kayla remarked, almost coyly, when he came into the sitting room after offloading and stacking the logs beside the huge indoor oven, still embarrassingly mindful of their conversation the last time they had met.
‘Just about,’ Leonidas reassured her with a self-effacing grimace. ‘And I see that you’re just about as cheeky as ever.’
‘No, I’m not,’ Kayla asserted, thrilled nevertheless by the sensual gleam in those midnight-black eyes that seemed to promise some delightful retribution if she didn’t stop. Wildly she wondered if he had been right the other day, and she had been taunting him solely for his attention. Because despite all he had said about no attachments and no strings, she wanted that attention now—like crazy! ‘We were wondering why we hadn’t seen you,’ she said, as nonchalantly as she could.
‘We?’ He picked up on her deliberate choice of pronoun—and on the little tremor she couldn’t keep out of her voice. Obviously, from the way his mouth compressed in mild amusement. ‘Are you saying you missed me?’
‘No.’ Kayla was glad that Philomena had left the room—though not before she’d noticed how the woman had laid a grateful hand on Leon’s arm for the work he had just done. The unspoken affection the two of them shared touched Kayla immensely.
Yet she had missed him, she thought, and Leon knew it too—evidently from the way he laughed in response.
‘In that case you won’t object to spending the day with me,’ he said, deliberately misinterpreting what she had said. ‘Philomena told me you were asking one of her neighbours about the little island the other day—about if you could book a trip across there.’
He meant that dark mass of land she could see jutting out of the sea from practically every aspect of this hillside.
‘She also mentioned that you spend far too much time worrying that you aren’t doing enough to help her around the place. She wants you to enjoy your holiday—so do I—and as there are no organised trips to that island I’ll be happy to take you over there myself.’
Even as he was suggesting it Leonidas told himself that he was being unwise. He had assured Kayla—as well as himself—that he wasn’t prepared to have any sort of relationship with her, but try as he might he just couldn’t keep away. Yet if he spent time with her, he warned himself, he would be deceiving her with every word he uttered. And if he didn’t...?
If he didn’t then he’d go mad thinking about her, he admitted silently, feeling the thrust of his scorching libido flaring into life just from sparring with her, not to mention from the scent of her, which was acting on his senses as powerfully as if he’d just opened the door on some willing wanton’s boudoir.
Her appearance wasn’t helping his control. She was wearing white shorts, which showed off far too much of those deliciously creamy legs, and a sleeveless lemon blouse tied under her breasts. It revealed just enough of her shallow cleavage to make him want to see more, and left her gradually tanning slender midriff delightfully bare.
‘Thanks, but I think I’ll give it a miss today,’ she said, disappointing him.
‘Suit yourself,’ he muttered, turning away. He was relieved that the decision had been made—especially since he had been entertaining the strongest desire to tug open that tantalising little blouse and mould her sensitive breasts to his palms until she sobbed with the pleasure.
‘Well...’
Her sudden hesitancy stopped him in his tracks. Battling to control his raging anatomy, he didn’t turn around, his breath locking in his lungs as he heard her tentative little suggestion behind him.
‘If you could just give me a minute...?’
He swung round then, his desire veiled by his immense powers of self-control. His eyes, as they clashed with hers, were smouldering with a dark intensity and he saw an answering response in the darkening blue of hers that was as hungry as it was guarded.
Almost cleverly guarded, he thought, but not quite enough. She was as on fire for him as he was for her, he recognised, regardless of any feelings she might still be harbouring over that louse who had let her down.
Kayla, as she stood there, captured by the powerful hold of his gaze, felt a skein of excitement unravelling inside her and knew that a watershed had been reached. That with one look and one inconsequential unfinished sentence a silent understanding had somehow passed between them. She had crossed a bridge that was already burning behind her and she knew there could be no turning back.
* * *
‘No rowing boat today?’ Kayla remarked, surprised when, after driving them to a beach further along the coast, Leon guided her towards a small motor boat moored alongside a wooden jetty. ‘I didn’t think you’d be seen dead in anything less than fifty years old!’ she said laughingly.
‘Didn’t you?’ he drawled, with a challenging and deliciously sensual gleam in his eyes as he handed her into the boat. ‘Contrary to your thinking, hrisi mou, I can...’ he hesitated, thinking of the words ‘...come good when circumstances demand.’
‘And do circumstances demand?’ she enquired airily, in spite of her pulse, which was racing from his nearness and his softly spoken endearment.
‘Oh, yes,’ he breathed with barely veiled meaning. ‘I think they do.’
* * *
It was a day of delight and surprises.
With effortless dexterity Leonidas steered the boat through the sparkling blue water, following the rocky coast of his own island to begin with, and pointing out coves and deserted beaches only accessible from the sea.
Having a field-day with her camera, Kayla lapped up the magic of her surroundings whilst using every opportunity to grab secretive and not so secretive shots of this dynamic man she was with: at the wheel, in profile, with his brow furrowed in concentration, or turning to talk to her with that sexy, sidelong pull of his mouth that never failed to do funny things to her stomach. She captured him looking out over the dark body of water they were cutting through, his T-shirt pulled taut across his broad muscular back, his black hair as windswept as hers from the exhilarating speed at which they were travelling.
She’d need to remember, she realised almost desperately, wondering why it was so important to her to capture everything about this holiday. This island. These precious few hours. This man.
Suddenly aware, he glanced over his shoulder and, easing back on the throttle, said challengingly, ‘Don’t you think you’ve taken enough?’ She was about to make some quip about it being her ‘fix’, but he cut across her before she could with, ‘What are you going to do? Put them on the internet?’
With a questioning look at him, not sure how to take what he’d said, she pretended to be considering it, and with a half-tantalising, half-nervous little giggle, answered, ‘I might.’
‘You do that and our association ends right now.’ His contesting tone and manner caused her to flinch.
‘If you’re that concerned, then keep it,’ she invited, holding the camera out to him. She hadn’t forgotten what a private person he was. ‘I promise I’m not going to publish them on the web, but take it if you don’t trust me not to.’
For a moment her candour made Leonidas hold back. How could he demand or even expect integrity from her when he wasn’t being straight himself?
Briefly he felt like flinging caution to the winds and telling her the truth. Only the thought of the repercussions that could follow stopped him.
She would be angry, that was certain. But he had come here seeking respite from all the glamour and superficiality that went hand in hand with who he really was, and he wasn’t ready yet to relinquish his precious anonymity. It didn’t help reminding himself that it was primarily because of trusting a woman that he had felt driven to take some time out. Because of being too careless and believing that a casual but willing bed partner would share the same ethics as he.
Not that this girl was in any way like the mercenary vamp with whom he had unwisely shared the weekend that had proved so costly to his pride and reputation. But his billionaire status and lifestyle still generated interest, despite his best attempts to keep it low-key—and never more so since his unfortunate affair with the media-hungry Esmeralda—and Kayla was only human after all. What a boost it would be to her bruised ego after being ditched so cruelly by her fiancé for news of her liaison with a man whose corporate achievements weren’t entirely unknown to filter back to the world press. One text home to this Lorna might be all it would take to bring the paparazzi here in their droves.
‘It’s stolen enough of your time from me for one day,’ he said, smiling. Yet he still took the camera she was offering and stowed it away in a recess beneath the wheel.
They had lunch on the boat—a feast of lobster and cheeses, fresh bread and a blend of freshly squeezed juice. Afterwards there were delicate pastries filled with fruit and walnuts, and others creamy with the tangy freshness of lime.
Kayla savoured it all as she’d never savoured a meal before, and there was wonder mixed in with her appreciation.
‘This must have set you back a fortune,’ she couldn’t help remarking when she had finished.
‘Let me worry about that,’ he told her unassumingly.
‘But to hire a boat like this doesn’t come cheap...’ Even if only for a day, she thought. ‘And as for that lunch...’ She wondered if he would have eaten as well had he been alone and decided that he wouldn’t, guessing that he must have been counting on her being unable to resist coming with him today.
‘What are you concerned about, Kayla?’ he asked softly, closing the cool box that had contained their picnic before stowing it away. ‘That I might have spent more than you think I can justifiably afford? Or is it finding yourself in my debt that’s making you uneasy?’
