A Greek Escape(44)
‘You’re despicable,’ she breathed, as a fragment of memory tugged at her consciousness in relation to something he had said about having had a trying year.
Unscrupulous. Ruthless. Riding roughshod over people. Those were words she had heard in connection with the name Leonidas Vassalio. And then she remembered. It was that stunning American model turned actress—Esmeralda Leigh. She’d publicly named him as having fathered her child. It was she who had called him unscrupulous, when he had challenged the proof of his paternity—though there had been no close-up photograph of him in the article Kayla remembered reading. Just a long shot of him leaving his office, looking rather different from how he looked now, which had been inset in a full-colour spread of Esmeralda lounging in the drawing room of her exquisitely and expensively furnished Mayfair home.
‘Esmeralda was right. You are unscrupulous!’
‘And if you had read the outcome of that fiasco you would have the sense to realise that anything the woman says is fabricated. Her claims were proven to be totally untrue.’
‘Well, she wasn’t the only one who was good at lying, was she?’ Kayla reminded him grievously, realising now what he’d meant that day when he’d referred to a petition being slapped on him. ‘Was it because of her that you decided to get your own back when you met me? Were you afraid if I knew who you were I might try and get pregnant so I could use you as a ticket to an easy life? Well, stuff your money! And stuff you! Not everyone puts as much value on money as on truth and integrity! I might not be in your league when it comes to material wealth, but at least I can hold my head up and know that what you see is what you get. That everything about me is real. You wouldn’t understand that if it was scrawled all over one of your concrete eyesores, and as far as I’m concerned, Mr Vassalio, I never want to see you again!’
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘I HAD HOPED your time in Greece would make you feel better,’ remarked Yasmin Young, an abrupt and artificially blonde forty-five-year-old to Kayla, who had just come downstairs and declined her mother’s offer to cook her breakfast. ‘But ever since you’ve been back you haven’t eaten properly. You’re too thin. And you’ve been going around like someone who’s lost a shilling and found sixpence. I was right when I said you were unwise, cutting your holiday short like that. I’ve told you before,’ she reiterated, going over what seemed to Kayla like a mantra from her mother these days. ‘He isn’t worth wasting any more time over, you know. None of them are.’
She was talking about Craig. Kayla hadn’t told her mother anything about meeting anyone while she had been away. But the maternal advice applied equally to how she was feeling about Leonidas—and had been ever since she’d returned to the UK on that wet and windy mid-May morning, hurting and feeling so gullible and betrayed. And all because she had been stupid enough to get herself emotionally involved with a man right out of the same mould as Craig, her father and all the others. Because she had, Kayla thought, berating herself—even if she had only realised it when it was too late.
‘I know,’ she responded now, even managing to feign a smile as she poured herself a hasty cup of coffee. She shook her head at her mother’s concerned suggestion that she should at least try and eat some toast.
‘I’d better go or I’ll be late,’ she said, rushing out of the door without bothering to finish her coffee.
At least she wasn’t out of work and dependent upon her mother to help support her, she thought in an attempt to brighten herself up as she sat in heavy traffic on her way to work. At least she still had a job. And it promised to be a potentially permanent one if Josh and Lorna managed to land the huge contract they had been hoping to secure for the past few weeks.
It would be the break they needed and they were both beside themselves with excitement—particularly as their potential client was Havens Exclusive, a company that provided luxury homes and apartments for the higher end of the market. Kayla was keeping her fingers crossed for them both.
Without her having to worry about things like whether Kendon Interiors would still be trading this time next year, Lorna might have a chance with her pregnancy this time, she thought, hoping fervently that her friend would be able to carry this baby to full term. And being busy again could only be good for her too, Kayla decided, because apart from the satisfaction of being able to stay in a job she enjoyed, it helped keep her mind off Leonidas.
She hadn’t heard from him since that morning she had stormed out of the farmhouse. Not that she’d wanted to, or even imagined that she would. He didn’t know where to find her, for a start.