A Greek Escape

Despairingly tossing the phone onto the passenger seat, she looked around at a Grecian panorama of sea and mountains and, closer to hand, pine woods and stony slopes leading down to this track.

Beyond the open windows of the car the chirruping of crickets in the scrub and the lonely tugging of the wind only seemed to emphasise her isolation. She didn’t have a clue where she was.

Glancing back over her shoulder, she recognised way below the group of rocks that ran seaward from the beach where she had seen that surly local yesterday, and that smaller island in the distance, clear as a bell today beneath the canopy of a rain-washed vividly azure sky.

With the sun beating relentlessly down upon her, with an unusable phone and only a broken-down car for company, Kayla glanced wistfully towards what looked like a deserted farmhouse, with a roof that had seen better days peeping above the trees at the end of the track.

Fat chance she had of making a call from there!

Or did she?

Sticking her head out of the window and inhaling deeply, she caught the distinct smell of woodsmoke drifting towards her on the scented air.

With her spirits soaring, she leaped out of the car, grabbed her precious camera and set off at a pace, her zipped-back sandals kicking up dust along the sun-baked track.

It was the truck she recognised as she came, breathless, into a paved area at the front of the house. A familiar yellow truck that had her stopping in her tracks even before she recognised its owner.

Wild black hair. Wild eyes. Wild expression.

Oh, no!

Coming from around the side of the house, the surly Greek was looking as annoyed as he looked untamed.

And justifiably so, Kayla decided, swallowing. She had invaded his territory again—unintentionally though it was—and she would have run like the wind if she had realised it a second sooner. As it was, she was riveted to the spot by the sheer dynamism of the man.

In blue denim cut-offs and nothing else but a dark tan leather waistcoat, exposing his chest and muscular arms, he exuded strength and raw, virile masculinity.

‘I thought I told you to stay away from me,’ he called out angrily to her, his long, purposeful strides closing the distance between them. ‘What do you want?’ As if he didn’t know! Leonidas thought, his scowling gaze dropping to the camera clutched tightly against her ribcage. ‘Didn’t you get enough photographs yesterday?’

He looked bigger and distinctly more threatening than he had the previous day, Kayla decided, unnerved. If that were possible!

‘I…I just want to use your phone,’ she informed him, ignoring his accusation and annoyed with herself for sounding so defensive, for allowing him to intimidate her in such a way.

‘My phone?’

She could feel her body tingling beneath the penetrative heat of his gaze. Her T-shirt and shorts felt much too inadequate beside such potent masculinity.

‘You do have one?’ she asked pointedly, trying not to let his unfriendliness get to her. From the way he’d queried her request she might have been asking him to give her a mortgage on Crete! ‘My car…’ She hated having to tell him as she sent a glance back over her shoulder. ‘It’s broken down.’

He peered in the direction she’d indicated. But of course he couldn’t see it, she realised, because it was way down the track, hidden by trees and scrub. And all she could focus on right then was the undulating muscles of his smooth and powerful chest, which was glistening bronze—slick with sweat.

‘Really? And what seems to be the trouble?’ he enquired with the sceptical lifting of an eyebrow. He looked at her with such disturbing intensity that Kayla felt as if her strength was being sapped right out of her.

Beneath the thick sweep of his lashes his eyes were amazingly dark, she noticed reluctantly. His nose was proud, his cheekbones high and hard, his mouth firm and well-defined above the dark, virile shadow around his jaw. As for his body…

She wanted to look at him and keep looking at him. All of him, she realised, shocked. She was even more shocked to realise that she had never been so aware of a man’s sensuality before. Not even Craig’s. But he had asked her a question, and all she was doing was standing here wondering how spectacular he would look naked.

Trying to keep her eyes off that very masculine chest, she uttered with deliberate vagueness, ‘It won’t go.’

That glorious chest lifted as he inhaled deeply. ‘Won’t move or won’t start?’ he demanded to know.

Entertaining a half-crazed desire to needle him, Kayla answered with mock innocence, ‘It’s the same thing, isn’t it?’

Now, as those glinting dark eyes pierced the rebellious depths of hers, she realised that this man would know when he was being taken for a fool, and warned herself against the inadvisability of antagonising him.

‘Does the engine fire when you turn the ignition key?’ he asked, his sweat-slicked chest lifting again with rising impatience.

‘No. Nothing happens at all,’ she told him, frankly this time. ‘So if you could just let me use your phone—if you have a signal—or if you don’t…if you have a landline…’ A dubious glance up at the house had her wondering if it had fallen into the state it was in long before telephones had been invented.

‘It’s Sunday,’ he reminded her succinctly. ‘Who are you going to call?’

She shrugged. ‘The nearest garage?’ she suggested flippantly, hoping the man whose name she had been given for emergencies would be at home. In fact Lorna had said to call her if she needed any help or advice, and right now Kayla felt she’d get more help from her friend back in England than the capable-looking hunk standing just a metre away.

Suddenly, without another word, he was walking past her.

‘Show me,’ he said over his leather-clad shoulder, much to her surprise.

She virtually had to run to keep up with him.

When they reached the car he held out a hand for the key and Kayla dropped it onto his tanned palm, noticing the cool economy with which he moved as he opened the driver’s door and leaned inside to start the ignition.

It fired first time.

‘I don’t understand…’ She turned from the traitorous little vehicle to face the man who had now straightened and was standing there looking tall and imposing and so self-satisfied that she could have kicked him—or the car. Or both! ‘I tried and tried,’ she stressed, with all the conviction she could muster, because scepticism was stamped on every plane and angle of his hard, handsome face.

He reached into the car again, switched off the engine and, dangling the key in front of her, said in his heavily accented voice, ‘Perhaps you would care to try again?’

She jumped into the car, keeping her defiant gaze level with his, almost willing the little hatchback to refuse to start for her. Because how on earth was he going to believe her if it did?

It did.

She flopped back against the headrest, her eyes closing with a mixture of relief and rising frustration.

‘There, you see. It’s simple when you know how.’

There was no mistaking the cool derision that drifted down to her through the open door, and suddenly Kayla’s control snapped.

‘It wouldn’t start! I couldn’t make it! And if you think I made it all up for some warped reason, just to come here and annoy you, then, believe me, I’ve got far more important things to do with my time! My phone won’t work! My sat-nav’s up the creek! And Lorna’s fridge has broken down and ruined all the food I bought. And all you can do is stand there and accuse me of lying! Well, I can assure you, Mr… Mr…’

‘Leon.’

She looked up at him askance, her blue eyes glistening with angry tears. ‘What?’

‘My name is Leon,’ he repeated. ‘And who is this Lorna you mention? Your travelling companion?’

‘No. I’m here on my own,’ Kayla blurted out without even thinking. A totally frustrating morning had finally taken its toll. ‘Lorna owns the villa where I’m staying.’ Lorna who—with her husband Josh—had miraculously come to her rescue by offering her a post in their interior design company after Kayla had found it too distressing to stay on at her old job.

‘And you say the fridge has broken down?’

‘Big-time!’ What was he going to do? Drive down and check that she wasn’t lying about that as well?

‘Have you eaten?’

‘What?’

His hand came to rest on the roof of the car as he stooped to address her through the open door. ‘I know I’m Greek and you’re English, but you seem to be having great difficulty in understanding me. I said, have you eaten?’

‘No.’

‘Then drive up to the house,’ he instructed. ‘I’ll be along directly.’

What? Kayla nearly said it again, only just stopping herself in time.

He was offering her hospitality? Surely not, she thought, amazed. He was hard, unfriendly, and a perfect stranger to boot.

Well, not perfect, she decided grudgingly. Only in appearance, she found herself silently admitting. Whatever else he was, he was lethally attractive. But some masochistic and warped urge to know more about him—along with the thought of all that festering food she was going to have to throw away—motivated her, against her better judgement, into doing what he had suggested.

He had almost reached the paved yard by the time Kayla put her camera in the boot, out of the sun, having decided it was for the best since it seemed to offend him so much. Involuntarily, her gaze was drawn to his approach.

Unconsciously her eyes savoured the whole sensational length and breadth of him, from those wide shoulders and muscular arms to that glistening bronze chest and tightly muscled waist, right down to his narrow denim-clad hips. Very masculine legs ended in a pair of leather sandals, dusty from his trek along the track.

There was a humourless curl to his mouth, she noticed as he drew nearer, as though he were fully aware of her reluctant interest in him.

‘Around the back,’ he advised with a toss of his chin, and waited for her to go ahead of him.

That small act of courtesy seemed oddly at variance with his manners on the whole, she decided, preceding him around the side of the rambling old farmhouse.

Don’t talk to any strange men. Never take sweets from a stranger.

Wondering what she was doing, ignoring all those clichéd warnings, Kayla realised her mother would have a fit if she could see her now.

‘So…are you going to tell me something about yourself?’ Leon whoever-he-was enquired deeply from just behind her.

‘Like what?’ she responded, still walking on ahead.

‘Your name would be a good start,’ he suggested incisively.

They had come around to the rear of the house, where weed-strewn shady terraces gave onto an equally overgrown garden.

‘It’s Kayla,’ she told him, following his example and deciding that last names were superfluous.

‘Kayla?’

Despite his overall unfriendliness, the way he repeated her name was like the warm Ionian wind that blew up from the sea, rippling through the tufted grass on the arid hills. An unexpected little sensation quivered through her. Or was it the sun that seemed to be burning her cheeks? The warm breeze that was lifting the almost imperceptibly fine hairs on her arms?

‘Come.’ He gestured to a rustic bench under a canopy of vines. Nearby were some smouldering logs within a purpose-built circle of bricks. Resting on a stone beside it was a grid containing several small plump, freshly prepared fish, their scales gleaming silver in the late morning sun.

‘Did you catch those yourself?’ She’d noticed a rod and fishing tackle in the back of his truck, and wondered if he went out every day to fish from the boat she’d seen him unloading the previous day.

‘Yes, about an hour ago.’ He was squatting down, repositioning a log on the fire. ‘What’s wrong?’ he enquired, looking up at her when she still stood there, saying nothing. ‘Are you vegetarian?’

She had been silently marvelling at how only this morning those fish had been in the sea—how he had already been down there, brought them back and prepared them for his lunch—but there was no way she was going to tell him that.

‘No,’ she replied, watching him place the grid on the bricks over the glimmering logs.

‘Then sit down,’ he commanded, before he turned and strode back into the house.

Left alone, Kayla took a few moments to study its sadly neglected exterior. With its ramshackle appearance, and the odd wild creeper growing out of its walls, it seemed almost to have become part of the hillside that rose steeply above it on one side. She wondered if it might just be a place he had found where it was convenient for him to shack up, and then looked quickly away as he emerged from inside with plates and cutlery and several different kinds of bread in a hand-painted bowl.

‘Do I take it that you don’t want any?’ he called out, noticing that she was still standing where he had left her.

The fish were starting to cook, skins bubbling, their aroma drifting up to her with the woodsmoke, tantalising and sweet.

‘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.’