A Greek Escape(21)
‘You see,’ Leonidas remarked, looking pleased with himself as Philomena drew her gently away from the door. ‘I said she would want you to stay.’
The appreciative look Kayla gave her hostess turned challenging as she faced the man who had brought her there. ‘Then what were you arguing about?’ she quizzed.
‘Philomena has no one to scold nowadays, so she likes to scold me.’ His mouth as he directed a look towards their hostess was pulling wryly. ‘Philomena bore seven children, but her one claim to fame, as she likes to call it, is that she delivered me. I’m eternally grateful to her for introducing me to this universe,’ he expressed with smiling affection at Philomena, ‘but she does tend to imagine that that gives her licence to upbraid me at every given opportunity.’
‘For what?’ Kayla was puzzled, still not convinced.
One of those impressive shoulders lifted as he contemplated this. ‘For leaving the island. For coming back. For not coming back.’
Kayla noted the curious inflexion in his voice as he made that last statement. Her smile wavered. ‘And what about just now?’
‘Just now?’
Leonidas looked at the woman who had pulled him screaming into the world. She had been there—never far away—throughout his childhood. A comfort from his father’s strict and sometimes brutal regime of discipline, his rock when his mother had died.
‘I don’t think she’s happy with the way I’ve turned out,’ he commented dryly to Kayla, and thought that if it were true he wouldn’t blame Philomena. There were times lately, he was surprised to find himself thinking, when he had been far, far from happy with himself.
‘Oh?’ Kayla clearly wanted to know more, but he had nothing more to offer her.
Gratefully he expressed his thanks to Philomena, adding something else, which brought Kayla’s cornflower-blue eyes curiously to his as he started moving away.
‘I’ve told her to take care of you,’ he translated, with a blazing smile that made Kayla’s stomach muscles curl in on themselves. And that was that. He had gone before she could utter another word.
Kayla settled in to her new accommodation with remarkable ease, and as she had suspected, despite the language barrier, she found Philomena Sarantos to be a warm and generous hostess.
She wondered what Leon had meant about Philomena being unhappy with the way he had turned out. Had he meant because of his lifestyle? Not having a steady job? Because he seemed content to drift from place to place?
Two days passed and she saw nothing of him. But then, what had she expected? Kayla meditated. Hadn’t he made it clear from the beginning that he didn’t welcome intrusion into his life? And, although he had invited her to stay with him at the farmhouse the morning after that tree had come down, she wondered if it hadn’t been merely a hollow gesture on his part. He’d known she would refuse, so he’d been perfectly safe in offering her his roof over her head.
What did it matter? she decided now. She’d had enough to occupy her time without bothering herself about Leon over the past couple of days.
The previous day she had driven up to the villa after Lorna’s parents had texted her with the estimated time they would be arriving. They had brought some local men with them who were arranging for the removal of the tree, and someone else who, having inspected the building, pronounced the place off-limits for the time being.
After arranging with the men for the necessary works to be carried out, her friend’s parents had been extremely concerned as to where Kayla would stay. But having satisfied them—just as she had done with Lorna, over the phone the previous day—that she had found suitable alternative accommodation, she had seen the couple off to spend a few days on Corfu and—in their own words—‘make the whole trip worthwhile’.
Now, with the sun having just risen and another glorious day yawning before her, Kayla traversed the dusty path that led from Philomena’s cottage and gasped with delight when it brought her down onto the sun-washed shingle of a secluded cove.
Striding down through the scrub, Leonidas came to where the beach opened out before him and stopped dead in his tracks.
Kayla was wading, shin-deep, in the translucent blue water, moving shorewards. She was looking down into the water and hadn’t spotted him yet.
He would have considered the fine white cotton dress she was wearing with its sheer long sleeves and modest yoke demure in any other circumstances, because it made her look almost angelic with her loose blonde hair moving in the breeze. But she had evidently—perhaps unintentionally—allowed the sea to lap too high to preserve her modesty, for now the garment clung wetly to her body, so that the gold of her skin and her small naked breasts were clearly visible beneath.