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,’