‘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