A Greek Escape(56)
It was for that reason that she still couldn’t bring herself to tell Lorna about meeting him in Greece. Lorna, who always thought the best of people, would instantly imagine that he had cast his company’s business their way because Kayla had recommended them. She might even think he was doing it as a favour to her, Kayla, and she couldn’t bear her friend to be deceived by him as she had, when nothing could be further from the truth.
‘His money doesn’t interest me,’ Kayla tried to say nonchalantly, which produced a knowing little laugh from her friend.
‘Well, no. I can see that there’s far more that would interest you before you even got to his wallet! Gosh! If I wasn’t married—and pregnant…’
‘Which you are,’ Kayla emphasised, managing a smile, knowing that her friend was only jesting. Lorna adored Josh, and her one desire in life was to give birth to their healthy baby. Dropping an almost envying glance to her dearest friend’s burgeoning middle, Kayla decided right there and then that whatever it took to help Lorna fulfil that desire she would do, regardless of the cost to her own emotions.
During that week Leonidas went away on some unexpected business, returning a couple of days later to steal Kayla away early from the office and take her to a charity auction, where canapés were handed round on silver dishes and champagne flowed like water from a spring.
It was an event where the proceeds from the various items on offer went to a tsunami relief fund, and it soon became clear to Kayla that it was because of Leonidas’s attendance and his company’s support of the event that so many people had got involved.
‘Did you enjoy that?’ he asked her afterwards, when they were in the car, pulling away. ‘As far as you were able to, of course, bearing in mind that your enjoyment level was probably stuck on zero in view of who you were with.’
Like her, he had refused the champagne after the first half-glass, and she was beginning to discover that his driving standards—as with most of what he did—were impeccable.
‘Very amusing,’ she remarked dryly, turning to look out of the window, secretly admiring the gardens surrounding the grand English country manor his company had hired to host the event. ‘What was the object of the exercise in bringing me here today? To show me how charitable you can be?’ She’d been surprised when he had paid over the odds for a small and not particularly well done watercolour of one of the local landmarks. ‘There are those who might say you can afford to be.’
‘You would be one of them, I take it?’ When she didn’t answer, already wishing she hadn’t been so quick to snipe at him like that, he went on, ‘It isn’t about affording it, Kayla. It’s about having enough clout to make others aware of the importance of events like this and bringing everyone together to contribute.’
Which he had done—and very successfully, she accepted, secretly impressed. Although she couldn’t bring herself to admit it aloud, privately she couldn’t deny that she had enjoyed herself—very much.
He took her to a West End show one evening—one she had wanted to see and for which she had been unable to get tickets. Afterwards, coming out of the exclusive restaurant where he had taken her for a late dinner, they were leapt on by photographers who almost succeeded in trampling her to death before Leonidas got her into the waiting limousine he’d had one of his aides bring to whisk them away.
‘How do you cope with all this?’ Kayla challenged, and he could tell from the all-encompassing gesture of her small chin that she meant the security and the car and the public demands his billionaire status made upon him, and not just the frightening intrusion of the paparazzi.
‘One learns to live with it,’ he said in a matter-of-fact voice, and then, more solicitously, asked, ‘Are you all right?’
She nodded, but he could see that she wasn’t. That anxious line between her eyes assured him that she was anything but happy being there with him. Also, being jostled by those photographers had caused the fine white silk of her dress to tear, and her beautiful hair, which she had styled so elegantly before they had left the house, was coming out of its combs. She looked as if she had been out in a gale—or with a far too impassioned lover.
The thought made him hard, but he steeled himself against it. She wasn’t ready to accept him back into her bed just yet.
Consequently, when they reached the house he left her to go to bed alone and went straight to his study, where he spent hours catching up on some pressing paperwork in an endeavour not to give in to the almost overwhelming urge to mount the stairs two at time, rip back her bedcovers and watch her hollow protests dissolve beneath the surging demands of their entwined bodies.