A Greek Escape(65)

‘What are you doing here?’ He spoke in such a low whisper that she couldn’t tell whether he welcomed seeing her, but his eyes were penetrating and his features were scored with shock.

‘I came to check the villa. For the builder. I mean for Lorna.’ She was waffling, but she couldn’t help it. Just the sight of him, in a loose-fitting, long-sleeved white shirt tucked into black denim jeans seemed to be turning her insides to mush.

He looked like the old Leon, with his chest half-bared and that thickening shadow around his mouth and chin. But his hair—only slightly longer than when she had seen him last—was still immaculately groomed, and with that air of power that Kayla could never detach from him now he was still very much Leonidas—the billionaire. He looked leaner, though, she decided, and his eyes were heavy, and she remembered in that moment that he was in mourning.

‘I—I heard about Philomena.’ She made a helpless little gesture. ‘Just now. I went down there. I’m so…so sorry—’ Tears threatened and she broke off, unable to keep the emotion out of her voice.

He merely dipped his head in acknowledgment. Perhaps he didn’t trust himself to speak, Kayla thought.

‘I thought you were gone. I wasn’t sure if you’d even been here, and I wanted to see you. To tell you.’ She was prattling on again, but she didn’t know what else to say to him. He wasn’t making it particularly easy for her.

As he crossed the flagstones, taking his key out of his trouser pocket, she was struck, as she always was, by the grace and litheness with which he moved, and by his sheer, uncompromising masculinity.

‘Is that why you came?’ He glanced over his shoulder as he stooped to unlock the door.

‘Yes,’ she answered, because it was the only reason. She would never have had the courage to seek him out over anything less.

‘And who told you I was here?’ He pushed open the door, gestured for her to go inside.

‘No one. I just put two and two together,’ she said, moving past him with every cell responding to the aching familiarity of him beneath her flimsy feminine tunic and leggings.

‘And came up with four?’ He sounded impressed as he followed her in. ‘What made you so sure I was in the country?’

‘I’d been trying to ring you,’ she admitted, and then felt like biting off her tongue. But the atmosphere of the ancient farmhouse, with its familiar rusticity and evocative scents, was so overwhelming that she hadn’t stopped to think.

‘Oh?’ His tone demanded more as he guided her into the sitting room. It looked the same, with its jaded walls and tapestries and its faded striped throws over the easy chairs. ‘What about?’ He gestured for her to sit down.

‘Lorna’s been getting worried,’ she said, subsiding onto the sofa. ‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured, seeing the grooves already etched around his eyes and mouth deepening. ‘I didn’t want to mention it. Not right now.’

‘The world has to keep turning,’ he said, sounding resigned. ‘Do you want some coffee?’

‘Something cold,’ she appealed, thinking that nothing seemed so cold and detached from her as he did right then. She wondered if she should have come; wondered painfully if he was annoyed with her because she had.

He returned minutes later with two tall frosted glasses of an iced citrus drink.

‘So Lorna’s worried?’ he reminded her as she sipped the liquid gratefully. It was sharp and very refreshing. ‘What about?’

‘They haven’t received the contract that Havens were supposed to be supplying.’

‘Supposed to be?’ His eyes were darkly penetrative as he set his own glass down on a side table.

‘I was just worried that…’

‘Yes?’

Why was he looking at her like that? Kayla wondered. As though he wanted to plunder her very soul?

‘…that you might have changed your mind. About giving them that order.’

There. She had said it. So why didn’t she feel any relief? And why was he looking at her with his mouth turning down in distaste, as though she was something that had just crawled out from one of the cracks in the walls outside?

‘So you still think I’d do that? You are still so shot through with doubt and suspicion over what your father and your fiancé did to you that you think every man who carries a briefcase and has a secretary can’t be anything but an unscrupulous bastard?’