‘I’m trying to be serious, Kayla.’

‘Why?’ she breathed against the velvety texture of his skin, delighting in the way his breathing was growing more and more ragged from her kisses.

But as her fingers trailed teasingly along the inside of one powerful thigh Leonidas suddenly clamped his hand down on hers, resisting the temptation to let it wander.

‘Because I don’t believe you’re the type of girl who does this without knowing what sort of man she’s getting herself involved with and without demanding some degree of emotional commitment.’

And he wasn’t offering any. She couldn’t understand why telling herself that caused her spirits to plummet the way they did.

‘I’m not demanding anything,’ she uttered, knowing that the only way to save face was to get the hell out of there.

Scrambling out of bed, managing to shrug off the hand that tried to restrain her, she heard his urgent, ‘Kayla! Kayla, come back here!’

About the Author

ELIZABETH POWER wanted to be a writer from a very early age, but it wasn’t until she was nearly thirty that she took to writing seriously. Writing is now her life. Travelling ranks very highly among her pleasures, and so many places she has visited have been recreated in her books. Living in England’s West Country, Elizabeth likes nothing better than taking walks with her husband along the coast or in the adjoining woods, and enjoying all the wonders that nature has to offer.

Recent titles by the same author:

 A DELICIOUS DECEPTION

 BACK IN THE LION’S DEN

 SINS OF THE PAST

 FOR REVENGE OR REDEMPTIONN

Did you know these are also available as eBooks?

Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

A Greek Escape
Elizabeth Power

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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For Alan—and all those wonderful sandwiches that kept me going!

CHAPTER ONE

‘THAT’S IT! THAT’s the one we want! Stop wasting time, you idiot, and take it!’ The camera clicked the second before the bird took off from its rock and flapped away over the crystalline water. ‘Didn’t think I’d let you get away, did you?’

From her vantage point on the rocky hillside overlooking the shingle beach Kayla Young swung round with a swish of long blonde hair, embarrassed that someone might have overheard her. There was nothing but a warm wind, however, passing over the craggy scrubland, and the relentless sun beating down from a vividly azure sky, and Kayla’s shoulders drooped in relief.

She wasn’t sure when she had first started talking to herself. Perhaps coming away all by herself to this lovely island wasn’t doing much for her sanity, she thought, grimacing. Or perhaps it was a defence mechanism against the knowledge that today, back in England, the man she had thought she’d be spending her life with was an hour away from marrying someone else.

The wounds of betrayal were no longer so raw but the scars remained, and in defiance of them Kayla brought the SLR’s viewfinder to eye level again. Only her clamped jaw revealed the tension in her as, silently now, she appraised the beauty around her.

Misty blue mountains. Translucently clear water. Surprisingly hunky Greek…

She’d been following a line inland, coming across the deserted beach, but now Kayla brought her viewfinder back to the shoreline in a swift doubletake.

Bringing her camera down, she could see him clearly without the aid of the zoom lens, and she found herself homing in on him with her naked eyes.

Black wavy hair—which would have been way past his collar had he been wearing one—fell wildly against the hard bronze of his neck. In a black T-shirt and pale blue jeans he was pulling fishing tackle from the wooden boat he had recently beached, and from the contoured muscles of his arms, and the way the dark cotton strained across his wide muscular chest, Kayla instantly marked him as a man who worked with his hands. A battered old truck was parked close to her rock, on the road just above the beach, and as the man started walking towards it—towards her—Kayla couldn’t take her eyes off him.

For some reason she couldn’t quite fathom she lifted her camera to zoom in on him again, and felt an absurd and reckless excitement in her secret survey. A few days’ growth of stubble gave a striking cast to an already strong jaw, mirroring the strength in his rugged features. They were the features of a man toughened by life—a man who looked as fit as he was hard. A man not much more than thirty, who would probably demand his own way and get it—because there was determination in that face, Kayla recognised, as well as pride and arrogance in the way he carried himself, in the straight, purposeful stride of those long legs.

A man one definitely wouldn’t want to mess with, she decided, with a curious little tingle down her spine.

She could see it all in every solid inch of him—in the curve of his tanned forehead and those thick winged brows that were drawing together now in a scowl because…

Dear heaven! he was looking up! He had seen her! Seen her pointing the camera straight at him!

As her agitated finger accidentally clicked the shutter closed she realised the camera had caught him—and, as he shouted something out, she realised that he was aware of it too.

She stood stock-still for a second as he quickened his stride; saw him moving determinedly in her direction.

Oh, my goodness! Suddenly she was pivoting away with the stark realisation that he was giving chase.

Why she was running, Kayla didn’t know. Surely, she thought, it would have been better to stand her ground and brazen it out? Except that she hadn’t felt like brazening anything out with a man who looked so angry. And anyway, what could she have said? You caught my eye as I was sizing up the view and I couldn’t stop looking at you.

That would really have been asking for trouble, she assured herself, with her blood pounding in her ears and her legs feeling heavy. She darted an anxious glance back over her shoulder and saw the man was gaining on her now, along the stony uphill path that led to the safety of the villa.

And why had she been looking at him anyway? she reprimanded herself. She had had enough of men to last her a lifetime! It could only have been because he had an interesting face; that was all. Apart from that she wouldn’t have looked twice at him if he had rowed across that water accompanied by a fanfare. She had learned the hard way that men were just lying, cheating opportunists—

‘Oooh!’

Tripping over a stone, she struggled to keep herself upright, hearing her pursuer’s footsteps bearing down on her.

Too late, though. She came a cropper on the hard and dusty path and lay there for a few moments, winded and despairing, but surprisingly unharmed.

She heard the pound of his footsteps and suddenly he was there, standing above her. He was breathing hard, and his tone was rough as he tossed some words at her in his own language.

Utterly awestruck by the speed at which he must have run to have caught up with her, Kayla raised herself up on her elbows, her hair falling like pale rivers of silk over her shoulders.

Having little more than a few words of Greek to get by with, she quavered, ‘I don’t understand you.’ Like him, she was breathless, and shaken by his anger as much as her fall.

He said something else that she couldn’t comprehend, while a firm hand on her shoulder—bare save for the white strap of her sun top—pulled her round to face him.

Up close, his features were even more arresting than she’d first imagined. His cheekbones were high and well-defined under dark olive skin. Thick ebony lashes framed eyes that were as black as jet, and his brooding mouth was wide and firm.

‘Are you hurt?’ His question, delivered roughly in English this time, surprised her, as did that small element of concern.

‘No. No thanks to you,’ she accused, sitting upright and brushing dust off her shorts, trying to appear less intimidated than she was feeling.

‘Then I will ask you again. What do you think you were doing?’

‘I was taking photographs.’

‘Of me?’

Kayla swallowed, fixing him with wary blue eyes. ‘No, of a bird. I snapped you by accident.’

‘Accident?’ From the way one very masculine eyebrow lifted it was clear that he didn’t believe her. His hostile gaze raked over her the pale oval of her face. ‘What is this…accident?’ he emphasised pointedly.

His anger hadn’t cooled. Kayla could feel it bubbling just beneath the surface. Despite that, though, his voice had a deep, rich resonance, and although his English was heavily accented his command of her language was obvious as he demanded, ‘Exactly how many did you take?’

‘Only the one,’ she admitted, her breathing still laboured from that chase up the hillside. ‘I told you. It was an accident.’

‘Well, as far as I’m concerned, young woman, it was one accident too many. Exactly who are you? And what are you doing here?’

‘Nothing. I mean, I’m on holiday—that’s all.’

‘And does the normal course of your holiday usually include sticking your nose into other people’s business? Spying on people?’

‘I wasn’t spying on you!’ From the way those accusing ebony eyes were studying her, and from the suspicion in his voice, Kayla began to experience real fear. Perhaps he was on the run! Wanted by the police! That would go some way to explaining his anger over being photographed. ‘My camera…?’ Trying to hide her misgivings, she glanced anxiously around and spotted the expensive piece of equipment lying in the scrub nearby.

Stretching out in a bid to reach it, she was dismayed when the man leaped forward, snatching it up before she could.

‘Don’t damage it!’

He looked angry enough, she thought. But her camera was something she treasured. A gift to herself to replace her old one after she had discovered Craig was having an affair. Some women comfort-ate. She went out with her camera and snapped anything and everything as a form of therapy, and over the past three months she had needed all the therapy she could get!

‘Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t?’

Because it was expensive! she wanted to fling back. And because it’s got every photograph I’ve taken since I got here yesterday. But that would probably only make him more inclined to wreck it, if his mood was anything to go by.

‘Perhaps I should simply keep it,’ he contemplated aloud, his gaze sweeping over her still pale shoulders and modest breasts with unashamed insolence.

‘If it makes you happy,’ she snapped, needled by the way he was looking at her. But there was something about that gaze moving over her exposed flesh that produced a rush of heat along with a cautioning tingle through her blood. After all, she didn’t have a clue who he was, did she? Supposing he really was wanted by the police?

A bird swooped low out of the pine forest above them, its frenzied shriek making her jump before it screeched away, protesting at the human intrusion.

For the first time Kayla realised just how isolated the hillside was. Apart from a cluster of whitewashed fishermen’s houses, huddled above the beach at the foot of the mountain road, there was no other sign of human habitation, while the nearest village with its shop and taverna was nearly three miles away.

As she was scrambling to her feet a masculine arm shot out to assist her.

The sudden act of gallantry was so unexpected after all his hostility that Kayla automatically took the hand he was offering. It felt strong and slightly callused as he pulled her upright, bringing her close to his dominating masculinity. Disconcertingly close.

Her senses awakened to the outdoor freshness of him, to the aura of pulsing energy that seemed to surround him, and to an underlying masculine scent that was all his own.

Swallowing and bringing her head up—in her flat-heeled pumps, she still only reached his shoulder—she took a step back and said in a voice that cracked with an unwelcome tug of unmistakable chemistry, ‘I’m not afraid of you.’

‘Good.’ His tone was terse, and still decidedly unfriendly. ‘In that case you won’t mind me telling you that I don’t like interfering young women depriving me of my privacy. So if you want to enjoy your so-called “holiday”,’ he emphasised scornfully, dumping the offending camera into her startled hands, ‘you’ll stay out of my way! Is that clear?’

‘Perfectly! And I can assure you, Mr… Mr…No-name,’ she went on when he didn’t have the decency to tell her. ‘I’ve certainly got no wish to deprive you of anything. Least of all your privacy!’ Deciding now that he was probably nothing more dangerous than a bad-tempered local, she pressed on, ‘In fact you have my solemn promise that I’ll do everything I can while I’m here to see that you maintain it.’

‘Thank you!’

Kayla bit back indignation as he swung unceremoniously away, striding back down the path without so much as a glance back.

A few minutes later, coming up through the scrub below the modern white villa where she was staying, she heard the distant sound of a vehicle starting up, and guessed from the roughness of its engine that it was the truck she had seen parked at the head of the beach.

Kayla was still smarting from the encounter as she fixed herself a microwave meal that evening in the villa’s well-equipped kitchen. With open-plan floors, exposed roof rafters above its galleried landing and spectacular views over the rolling countryside, the villa belonged to her friends, Lorna and Josh. Knowing how much she needed a break, they had offered Kayla the chance to get away for a couple of weeks.

She had barely met a soul since the taxi driver had dropped her off here yesterday, so why did the first person she bumped into have to be so downright rude?

Slipping the dish into the microwave oven, she stabbed out the settings on the control panel, her agitated movements reflecting her mood.

Still, better that he was rude than charming and lying through his teeth, she thought bitterly, her thoughts straying to Craig Lymington.

How easily she had fallen for his empty promises. She had believed and trusted him when he’d professed to want to be with her for life.

‘He’ll break your heart. You mark my words,’ her mother had advised unkindly when Kayla had enthused over how the most up-and-coming executive at her company, Cartwright Consolidated, had asked her to marry him.

They had been engaged for two months, and Kayla had been deliriously happy, until that night when she’d discovered those messages on his cell phone and realised that she wasn’t the only woman to whom he’d whispered such hollow and meaningless words…

‘All men are the same, and the high-flying company type are the worst of the lot!’ her mother had warned her often enough.

But Kayla hadn’t listened. She’d believed her mother was simply embittered and scarred by her own unfortunate experience. After all, hadn’t her own husband—Kayla’s father—been a company executive? And hadn’t he deserted her in exactly the same fashion fifteen years ago, when Kayla had been just eight years old?

Because of that and her mother’s warnings she had grown up determined that the man she eventually decided to settle down with would never treat her in such an abominable way.

But he had, Kayla thought. And she had been rudely awakened and forced to admit—to herself at least—that her mother was right. They were the worst of the lot! It was a realisation doubly enforced when she had had to suffer the demeaning overtures of one or two other male members of management who had tried to capitalise on her broken engagement.

After leaving the company where she’d worked with Craig, trying to put the pain and humiliation of what he had done behind her, she might have been able to pick up the pieces of her life if she had been allowed to. But her mother’s condescending and self-satisfied attitude—particularly when she’d heard that Craig really was getting married—had made everything far, far worse.

Consequently when Lorna had offered her the chance of escaping to her isolated Grecian retreat for a couple of weeks Kayla had jumped at the chance. It had seemed like the answer to a prayer. A place to start rebuilding her sense of self-worth.

But now, as she took her supper from the bleeping microwave and prodded the rather unpalatable-looking lasagne with a fork, it wasn’t thoughts of Craig Lymington that troubled her and upset her determined attempts to restore her equilibrium. It was the face of that churlish stranger she’d been unfortunate enough to cross this morning, and her shocking awareness of him when he’d pulled her to her feet and she’d felt the impact of his disturbing proximity.

Leonidas Vassalio was fixing a loose shutter on one of the ground-floor windows, his features as hard as the stones that made up the ancient farmhouse and as darkly intense as the gathering clouds that were closing in over the mountains, warning of an impending storm.

The house would fall down if he didn’t take some urgent steps to get it repaired, he realised, glancing up at the sad state of its terracotta roof and the peeling green paint around its doors and windows. The muscles in his powerful arms flexed as he twisted a screw in place.

It was hard to imagine that this place had once been his home. This modest, isolated farmhouse, reached only by a zig-zagging dirt road. Yet this island, with its rocky coast, its azure waters and barren mountains, was as familiar to him as his own being, and a far cry from the world he inhabited now.

The rain had started to fall. Cold, heavy drops that splashed his face and neck as he worked and reflected on the whole complicated mess his life had become.

To the outsider his privileged lifestyle was one to be envied, but personally he was tired of sycophants, superficial women and the intrusion of the paparazzi. Like that interfering slip of a girl he’d caught photographing him on the beach this morning, he thought grimly, ready to bet money that she was one of them. For what other reason would she have been there if she wasn’t from some newspaper? He had had enough of reporters to last him a lifetime, and they had been particularly savaging of late.

He had always shunned publicity. Always managed to keep a low media profile. Anyone outside of Greece might not instantly have recognised him, even though they would most certainly have recognised the Vassalio name. It was his brief involvement with Esmeralda Leigh that had thrust him so starkly into the public eye recently.

Nor had it helped when a couple of the high-ranking executives he had trusted to run one of his UK subsidiaries, along with an unscrupulous lawyer, had reneged on a verbal promise over a development deal and given the Vassalio Group bad press—which in turn had brought his own ethics into question. After all, as chairman, Leonidas thought introspectively, the buck stopped with him. But he had been too tied up at the time to be aware of what was going on.

That ordinary people had been lied to and were having their homes bulldozed from under them didn’t sit comfortably on his conscience. Nor did being accused of riding roughshod over people without giving a thought to their needs, breaking up communities so as to profit from multi-million-pound sports arenas and retail/leisure complexes and expand on Vassalio’s ever-increasing assets. The fact that everyone affected had been compensated—and very well—had been consigned only to the back pages of the tabloids.

He had needed to get away. To forget Leonidas Vassalio, billionaire and successful businessman, for a while and sort out what was important to him. And to do that he had needed to get back to his roots. To enjoy the bliss of virtual anonymity that coming here would offer him. Because only one other person knew he was here. But now it looked as though even that might have been too much to expect, if that nosy little blonde he’d caught snooping around today had lied about why she was here.

And if she hadn’t, and she really had been photographing birds, why had she been standing there taking a picture of him? Had she just fancied snapping a bit of local colour? One of the peasants going about his daily business? Or could it be that she’d just happened to like the look of him? he thought, with his mouth twisting cynically. In other circumstances he would have admitted unreservedly to himself that he hadn’t exactly been put off by the look of her. Especially when he’d noted that she’d been wearing no ring.

But bedding nubile young women wasn’t on his agenda right now. Heaven only knew the physical attributes he’d been endowed with acted like a magnet on the opposite sex, and he’d never met one yet that he’d wanted to bed who hadn’t been willing, but, no, he determined as he oiled a hinge. Whatever her motives were, and no matter how affected she’d been by that spark of something that had leaped between them and made her pull back from him as though she’d been scorched when he’d pulled her to her feet, that girl certainly hadn’t had bedroom games in mind.

She had to be staying in one of those modern villas that had sprung up further down the hillside. That was the direction she had been heading in when he’d caught up with her. He wondered if there was anyone with her, or if she was staying there alone. If she was, he deliberated with his hackles rising, then she had to be here for a reason. And if that reason was to intrude on his peace and solitude…

Finishing what he was doing, annoyed at how much thought he was giving to her, he rushed inside, out of the rain.

She was going to find out the hard way that she couldn’t mess with him!

CHAPTER TWO

THE THREE-MILE drive to the main village to get provisions had seemed like an easy enough mission, particularly when last night’s storm had caused a power cut and made her fridge stop working.

Unless the thing had broken before then, Kayla thought exasperated, having come downstairs this morning to a cabinet of decidedly warm and smelly food.

But the polished voice of the car’s satellite navigation system had let her down badly when it had guided her along this track. And now, having parked the car in order to consult the map and try and work out where she was, the little hatchback that her friends kept here for whenever they visited the island refused to start.

She tried again, her teeth clenched with tension.

‘Come on,’ she appealed desperately to the engine. ‘Please.’

It was no good, she realised, slumping back on her seat. It had well and truly packed up.

Lorna had given her the name of someone she could call in an emergency who spoke relatively good English, Kayla remembered, fishing in the glove compartment for the man’s number. But when she took her cell phone out of her bag she discovered that she didn’t have a signal.

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.’

‘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.

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