A Greek Escape(47)
Since she had last seen him he seemed to have changed his whole persona. The designer stubble was gone, as was the long, unruly hair. Now expertly cut, the jet-black layers waved thickly against a pristine white collar, although the mid-grey suit he wore, with its fine tailoring, could do nothing to tame the restless animal energy of the man beneath.
Clean-shaven, he looked harder—and even more dynamic, if that were possible. The evidence of the high-octane lifestyle he had disguised so well on the island was emblazoned on every hand-sewn stitch of his designer clothes. She had often thought him totally out of place in the run-down environs of the farmhouse. Today he was exactly where he belonged. Here, in the halls of business, he cut a figure of formidable power in his dress, his manner, and in the overwhelming authority he exuded.
Kayla couldn’t think, paralysed by the dark penetration of his gaze and the mockery touching his stupendous mouth. When she did eventually manage to drag her gaze from his it was with a confused look at Josh, and she blurted out the first thing that came into her head.
‘Not Mr Woods…?’
It was the wrong thing to say, and she realised it when she saw the dismayed look on Lorna’s tense and nervous features. But it was with a Mr Woods that the appointment had been made.
‘Woods couldn’t make it.’
Leonidas’s response drifted down to Kayla as though through a thick fog. She was hot and perspiring. Her clothes, so fresh and cool only minutes before, now seemed to be sticking to her.
‘Mr Vassalio’s the main man. Havens Exclusive is one of the companies within his group. He wanted to see us for himself,’ Lorna told her. ‘Isn’t that right, Mr Vassalio?’
‘Leonidas, please.’ The smile he gave Lorna could have melted a polar ice-cap, and Kayla saw her friend visibly relax.
‘Leonidas.’ Smiling up into the perfect symmetry of his dark masculine features, Lorna repeated the name as if it was some sort of coveted trophy. She was positively glowing in the man’s effortless charm, Kayla realised, wondering what her friend would say if she told her what a cheat he was. What a liar!
‘Perhaps Miss Young would sit here…’ he was already pulling out the chair beside his ‘…and fill me in on anything I might need to know.’
It was all purely a formality. Like his handshake, Kayla thought with a little shiver. She knew he would already have had Havens suss out their financial credibility and their ability to meet their commitments before he’d let one of his companies consider investing a penny.
But was this just a bizarre coincidence? Or had he specifically arranged for Havens to take advantage of Josh and Lorna’s expertise, armed with the knowledge that she, Kayla, worked at Kendon Interiors? Had he known when he’d telephoned her last night that he’d be coming here today? If so, why hadn’t he said so? Or had his intention been to give her the shock of her life? To get his own back for refusing to have dinner with him? Because if it had, he had succeeded. And how!
She couldn’t stop her eyes from straying to him as he began talking business with Josh and Lorna. She couldn’t help noticing how richly his hair gleamed in the light of the window behind him. Nor could she keep her ears from tuning in to the resonant tones of his voice, any more than she could stop the subtle spice of his aftershave lotion acting on her nostrils like some exotic aphrodisiac.
His hands were a magnet for her guarded yet brooding gaze—long, tapered hands that had made her cry out with their tender and manipulative skill. The dark silky hairs that peeped out from under an immaculate shirt cuff were an all too painful reminder of his dark and dangerous virility.
He had been stupendous before. Now he was no less than sensational! A man who would turn heads with his dynamism and that air of unspoken authority. A man who was wealthy and ruthless and powerful. She’d known that before she’d left the island. But this man she didn’t know at all.
Seeing him in full corporate action, power-dressed and dominating everyone else in the room, she couldn’t believe that this was the man she had taken the initiative with and pleasured so uninhibitedly that last morning, and it left her feeling as mortified as if she had tied him up first and chained him to the bed.
Except that this man could never be chained or dominated…
Heat suffusing her body, she looked up and met his eyes just as he was finishing saying something to Josh about the FT Index. From the smouldering burn of his gaze as it dropped to her fine blouse she knew he had guessed what she was remembering, and from the discreet curve of his mouth she knew, with shaming certainty, that he was remembering it too.