‘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