A Greek Escape(20)

Very quietly, Leonidas said, ‘Pack a bag and come with me.’

‘You know I can’t stay with you.’

‘I’m not going to try and talk you into it. Pack a bag,’ he instructed again, without offering her any idea of what his plans were. ‘I’ll finish mopping up here.’

Leon had asked her to follow him in the car. The little hatchback coughed a few times when Kayla tried to start it, which brought him over from the cab of his truck to investigate.

The engine fired into life just as he was approaching the bonnet.

Looking up at him through the car’s open window with a self-satisfied glint in her eyes, Kayla asked, ‘Do you believe me now?’

That masculine mouth pulled to one side, although he made no verbal response. Perhaps he was a man who didn’t like being reminded of his mistakes too often, Kayla thought, unable to help feeling smug.

‘It needs a good run,’ he said, speaking with some authority. ‘It’s probably been standing idle for too long, which isn’t good for any car.’

Following his truck down the zig-zag of a mountain road, Kayla was tempted to stop and take in the breathtaking views of the sea and the sun-drenched hillsides. But she kept close behind Leon’s truck, envying his knowledge of every sharp bend, admiring the confidence and safety with which he negotiated them.

After guiding her down past a cluster of whitewashed cottages, he pulled up outside another, with blue shutters and, like the rest, pots of gaily coloured flowers on its veranda.

‘Since you refuse to stay with me, I will have to leave you in the capable hands of Philomena,’ Leon told her, having come around the truck to where Kayla was just getting out of the car.

‘Philomena?’

‘A friend of mine,’ he stated, moving past her. ‘There is one small snag, however,’ he went on to inform her as he swung her small single suitcase out of the boot.

‘Oh?’ Kayla looked up at him enquiringly as he slammed the lid closed.

‘She doesn’t speak any English,’ he said.

‘So why would she want me staying with her?’ Kayla practically had to run after him. It was obvious that he wasn’t going to allow that rather large drawback—to Kayla’s mind, at any rate—to interfere with his plans.

‘Her family have all grown up and moved away,’ he tossed back over his shoulder. ‘Trust me. She will be very glad of the company of someone else—especially another woman.’

‘But have you asked her?’ Kayla wasn’t sure that anyone—no matter how lonely they might be—would welcome a guest turning up unexpectedly on their doorstep.

‘Leave the worrying to me,’ he advised, and uneasily Kayla did.

He had said Philomena was a friend, but as he brought Kayla through to the homely sitting room of the little fisherman’s cottage without even needing to knock, she calculated that the woman in dark clothes who greeted them with twinkling brown eyes and a strong, character-lined face was old enough to be his grandmother.

Her affection for Leon was clear from the start, but suddenly as they were speaking the woman burst into what to Kayla’s ears sounded like a fierce outpouring of objection. The woman was waving her hands in typically European fashion and sending more than a few less than approving glances Kayla’s way.

‘She isn’t happy about my staying here and why should she be?’ Kayla challenged, taking in the abundance of framed family photographs and brightly painted pottery and feeling as much mortified as she felt sympathetic towards the elderly woman.

‘She’s happy, Kayla,’ Leonidas told her, breaking off from a run of incomprehensible Greek. He started speaking very quickly in his own language again, which brought forth another bout of scolding and arm-waving from a clearly none-too-pleased Philomena.

‘I’m sorry,’ Kayla apologised through the commotion, hoping the woman would understand as she picked up her suitcase and starting weaving through the rustic furniture towards the door.

‘No, no! No, no!’ A lightly restraining hand came over Kayla’s arm. ‘You stay. Stay Philomena, eh?’ The look she sent Leonidas shot daggers in his direction. Her voice, though, as she turned back to Kayla, was softer and more encouraging, her returning smile no less than sympathetic as a work-worn, sun-dappled hand gently palmed Kayla’s cheek. ‘You come. Stay.’

A good deal of gesticulation with a far warmer flow of baffling Greek seemed to express the woman’s pleasure in having Kayla as her guest.