A Greek Escape(32)

They had lunch on the boat—a feast of lobster and cheeses, fresh bread and a blend of freshly squeezed juice. Afterwards there were delicate pastries filled with fruit and walnuts, and others creamy with the tangy freshness of lime.

Kayla savoured it all as she’d never savoured a meal before, and there was wonder mixed in with her appreciation.

‘This must have set you back a fortune,’ she couldn’t help remarking when she had finished.

‘Let me worry about that,’ he told her unassumingly.

‘But to hire a boat like this doesn’t come cheap…’ Even if only for a day, she thought. ‘And as for that lunch…’ She wondered if he would have eaten as well had he been alone and decided that he wouldn’t, guessing that he must have been counting on her being unable to resist coming with him today.

‘What are you concerned about, Kayla?’ he asked softly, closing the cool box that had contained their picnic before stowing it away. ‘That I might have spent more than you think I can justifiably afford? Or is it finding yourself in my debt that’s making you uneasy?’

‘A bit of both, I suppose,’ she admitted truthfully. After all, she’d always been used to paying her way when she was with a man, to never taking more out of a relationship than she was prepared to put in. Emotionally as well as financially, she thought with a little stab of self-derision as she remembered how with Craig she had wound up giving everything and receiving nothing, coming out a first-rate fool in the end.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Leonidas advised. ‘I promise you I’m not likely to starve for the rest of my holiday. As for the boat, I hired it to take myself off exploring today. Your coming with me is just a bonus, so there’s no need to feel awkward or indebted in any way. If you want to contribute something, then your enjoyment will suffice,’ he assured her, and refrained from adding that most women he’d known would have taken his generosity as their due.

The island, when they came ashore, was beautiful. Lonely and uninhabited, it was merely a haven for wildlife, with only numerous birds and insects making their voices heard above the warm wind and the wash of the sea in the cove where they had left the boat.

There was no distinct path, and the climb through the surprisingly green vegetation was hot and steep, but the feeling of freedom at the top was worth a thousand climbs.

It was like standing in their own uninhabited world. In every direction the deep blue of the sky met the deeper blue of the sea. Looking back across the distance they had covered, Kayla saw the hulk of mountainous land they had left with its forests and its craggy coastline slumbering in a haze of heat.

There were huge stones amongst the grass—sculpted stones of an ancient ruin, overgrown with scrub and wild flowers, a sad and silent testimony to the beliefs of some long-lost civilisation.

‘You said you came to sort out some issues?’ Kayla reminded him, venturing to broach what she had been dying to ask him since they had left that morning. ‘What sort of issues?’ she pressed, looking seawards at the waves creaming onto a distant beach and wondering if it was the one where she had first seen him over a week ago. ‘Woman issues?’ she enquired, more tentatively now.

He was standing with his foot on one of the stones that had once formed part of the ancient temple, with one hand resting on his knee. The wind was lifting his hair, sweeping it back off features suddenly so uncompromising that he looked like a marauding mythical god, surveying all he intended to conquer.

‘Among other things,’ he said, but he didn’t enlarge on the women in his life or tell her what those ‘other things’ were.

Kayla moved away from him, pulling a brightly flowering weed from a crack in what had formed part of a wall. She was getting used to his uncommunicative ways.

She was surprised, therefore, when he suddenly said, ‘I used to dream of owning this island when I was a boy. I used to sit on that hillside…’ he pointed to a distant spot across the water, indiscernible through the heat haze ‘…and imagine all I was going to do with it. The big house. The swimming pool. The riding stables.’

‘And dogs?’ Kayla inserted, her eyes gleaming, following him into a make-believe world of her own.

‘Yes, lots of dogs.’

So he liked animals, she realised, deriving warm pleasure from the knowledge. Contrarily, though, she wrinkled her nose. ‘Too costly to feed.’ Laughingly she pretended to discount that idea. ‘And too much heartache if they get sick or run away.’