A Greek Escape

chapterSIX

KAYLA DIDN’T SEE Leon the next day, or the day after that, and when he did come down to the cottage again, looking stupendous in a white T-shirt and light, hip-hugging trousers, it was only to deliver logs to Philomena.

‘So you’re still roadworthy, then?’ Kayla remarked, almost coyly, when he came into the sitting room after offloading and stacking the logs beside the huge indoor oven, still embarrassingly mindful of their conversation the last time they had met.

‘Just about,’ Leonidas reassured her with a self-effacing grimace. ‘And I see that you’re just about as cheeky as ever.’

‘No, I’m not,’ Kayla asserted, thrilled nevertheless by the sensual gleam in those midnight-black eyes that seemed to promise some delightful retribution if she didn’t stop. Wildly she wondered if he had been right the other day, and she had been taunting him solely for his attention. Because despite all he had said about no attachments and no strings, she wanted that attention now—like crazy! ‘We were wondering why we hadn’t seen you,’ she said, as nonchalantly as she could.

‘We?’ He picked up on her deliberate choice of pronoun—and on the little tremor she couldn’t keep out of her voice. Obviously, from the way his mouth compressed in mild amusement. ‘Are you saying you missed me?’

‘No.’ Kayla was glad that Philomena had left the room—though not before she’d noticed how the woman had laid a grateful hand on Leon’s arm for the work he had just done. The unspoken affection the two of them shared touched Kayla immensely.

Yet she had missed him, she thought, and Leon knew it too—evidently from the way he laughed in response.

‘In that case you won’t object to spending the day with me,’ he said, deliberately misinterpreting what she had said. ‘Philomena told me you were asking one of her neighbours about the little island the other day—about if you could book a trip across there.’

He meant that dark mass of land she could see jutting out of the sea from practically every aspect of this hillside.

‘She also mentioned that you spend far too much time worrying that you aren’t doing enough to help her around the place. She wants you to enjoy your holiday—so do I—and as there are no organised trips to that island I’ll be happy to take you over there myself.’

Even as he was suggesting it Leonidas told himself that he was being unwise. He had assured Kayla—as well as himself—that he wasn’t prepared to have any sort of relationship with her, but try as he might he just couldn’t keep away. Yet if he spent time with her, he warned himself, he would be deceiving her with every word he uttered. And if he didn’t…?

If he didn’t then he’d go mad thinking about her, he admitted silently, feeling the thrust of his scorching libido flaring into life just from sparring with her, not to mention from the scent of her, which was acting on his senses as powerfully as if he’d just opened the door on some willing wanton’s boudoir.

Her appearance wasn’t helping his control. She was wearing white shorts, which showed off far too much of those deliciously creamy legs, and a sleeveless lemon blouse tied under her breasts. It revealed just enough of her shallow cleavage to make him want to see more, and left her gradually tanning slender midriff delightfully bare.

‘Thanks, but I think I’ll give it a miss today,’ she said, disappointing him.

‘Suit yourself,’ he muttered, turning away. He was relieved that the decision had been made—especially since he had been entertaining the strongest desire to tug open that tantalising little blouse and mould her sensitive breasts to his palms until she sobbed with the pleasure.

‘Well…’

Her sudden hesitancy stopped him in his tracks. Battling to control his raging anatomy, he didn’t turn around, his breath locking in his lungs as he heard her tentative little suggestion behind him.

‘If you could just give me a minute…?’

He swung round then, his desire veiled by his immense powers of self-control. His eyes, as they clashed with hers, were smouldering with a dark intensity and he saw an answering response in the darkening blue of hers that was as hungry as it was guarded.

Almost cleverly guarded, he thought, but not quite enough. She was as on fire for him as he was for her, he recognised, regardless of any feelings she might still be harbouring over that louse who had let her down.

Kayla, as she stood there, captured by the powerful hold of his gaze, felt a skein of excitement unravelling inside her and knew that a watershed had been reached. That with one look and one inconsequential unfinished sentence a silent understanding had somehow passed between them. She had crossed a bridge that was already burning behind her and she knew there could be no turning back.

‘No rowing boat today?’ Kayla remarked, surprised when, after driving them to a beach further along the coast, Leon guided her towards a small motor boat moored alongside a wooden jetty. ‘I didn’t think you’d be seen dead in anything less than fifty years old!’ she said laughingly.

‘Didn’t you?’ he drawled, with a challenging and deliciously sensual gleam in his eyes as he handed her into the boat. ‘Contrary to your thinking, hrisi mou, I can…’ he hesitated, thinking of the words ‘…come good when circumstances demand.’

‘And do circumstances demand?’ she enquired airily, in spite of her pulse, which was racing from his nearness and his softly spoken endearment.

‘Oh, yes,’ he breathed with barely veiled meaning. ‘I think they do.’

It was a day of delight and surprises.

With effortless dexterity Leonidas steered the boat through the sparkling blue water, following the rocky coast of his own island to begin with, and pointing out coves and deserted beaches only accessible from the sea.

Having a field-day with her camera, Kayla lapped up the magic of her surroundings whilst using every opportunity to grab secretive and not so secretive shots of this dynamic man she was with: at the wheel, in profile, with his brow furrowed in concentration, or turning to talk to her with that sexy, sidelong pull of his mouth that never failed to do funny things to her stomach. She captured him looking out over the dark body of water they were cutting through, his T-shirt pulled taut across his broad muscular back, his black hair as windswept as hers from the exhilarating speed at which they were travelling.

She’d need to remember, she realised almost desperately, wondering why it was so important to her to capture everything about this holiday. This island. These precious few hours. This man.

Suddenly aware, he glanced over his shoulder and, easing back on the throttle, said challengingly, ‘Don’t you think you’ve taken enough?’ She was about to make some quip about it being her ‘fix’, but he cut across her before she could with, ‘What are you going to do? Put them on the internet?’

With a questioning look at him, not sure how to take what he’d said, she pretended to be considering it, and with a half-tantalising, half-nervous little giggle, answered, ‘I might.’

‘You do that and our association ends right now.’ His contesting tone and manner caused her to flinch.

‘If you’re that concerned, then keep it,’ she invited, holding the camera out to him. She hadn’t forgotten what a private person he was. ‘I promise I’m not going to publish them on the web, but take it if you don’t trust me not to.’

For a moment her candour made Leonidas hold back. How could he demand or even expect integrity from her when he wasn’t being straight himself?

Briefly he felt like flinging caution to the winds and telling her the truth. Only the thought of the repercussions that could follow stopped him.

She would be angry, that was certain. But he had come here seeking respite from all the glamour and superficiality that went hand in hand with who he really was, and he wasn’t ready yet to relinquish his precious anonymity. It didn’t help reminding himself that it was primarily because of trusting a woman that he had felt driven to take some time out. Because of being too careless and believing that a casual but willing bed partner would share the same ethics as he.

Not that this girl was in any way like the mercenary vamp with whom he had unwisely shared the weekend that had proved so costly to his pride and reputation. But his billionaire status and lifestyle still generated interest, despite his best attempts to keep it low-key—and never more so since his unfortunate affair with the media-hungry Esmeralda—and Kayla was only human after all. What a boost it would be to her bruised ego after being ditched so cruelly by her fiancé for news of her liaison with a man whose corporate achievements weren’t entirely unknown to filter back to the world press. One text home to this Lorna might be all it would take to bring the paparazzi here in their droves.

‘It’s stolen enough of your time from me for one day,’ he said, smiling. Yet he still took the camera she was offering and stowed it away in a recess beneath the wheel.

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.’

‘They couldn’t run away,’ Leonidas reminded her. ‘Not unless they were proficient swimmers.’

‘Haven’t you ever heard of the doggy paddle?’ She giggled, enjoying playing this little game with him. Her eyes were bright and her cheeks were glowing from an exhilaration that had nothing to do with their climb. ‘So you were going to build a house with a swimming pool? And have horses? Racehorses, of course.’

He shot her a sceptical glance. ‘Now you’re wandering into the realms of fantasy,’ he chided, amused.

‘Well, if you can own the island and have a house with lots of dogs, I can have racehorses,’ Kayla insisted light-heartedly.

‘They’d fall off the edge before they’d covered a mile,’ he commented dryly. ‘I was talking about what seemed totally realistic to a twelve-year-old boy.’

Tugging her windswept hair out of her eyes, Kayla pulled a face. ‘But then you grew up?’

‘Yes,’ he said heavily. ‘I grew up.’ And all he had wanted to do was run as far away from these islands and everything he had called home as he could possibly get.

‘What happened?’ Kayla asked, frowning. She couldn’t help but notice the tension clenching his mouth and the hard line of his jaw.

‘My mother died when I was fourteen, then my grandfather shortly afterwards. My father and I didn’t see eye to eye,’ he enlightened her.

‘Why not?’

‘Why do we not get on with some people and yet gel so perfectly with others? Especially those who are supposed to be closest to us?’ He shrugged, his strong features softening a little. ‘Differing opinions? A clash of personalities? Maybe even because we are too much alike. Why aren’t you close to your mother?’ he outlined as an example.

Watching a lizard dart along the jagged edge of the wall and disappear over the side, Kayla considered his question. ‘I suppose all those things,’ she admitted, rather ruefully. And then, keen to shrug off the serious turn the conversation had taken, she said, ‘So, are you going to sketch me a picture of this house?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’ She had seen him scribbling in his notepad again, when he had been waiting for her in the truck outside Philomena’s, and wondered what he could possibly have been doing if he hadn’t been sketching. He’d also been speaking to somebody on his cell phone at the same time, Kayla remembered, but had cut the call short, leaning across to open the passenger door for her when he had seen her coming. She’d wondered if he’d been speaking to a woman and, if he had, whether it was the woman at the heart of his ‘issues’.

‘It isn’t what I do,’ Leonidas said.

‘No son of mine is going to disgrace the Vassalio name by painting for a living!’

Leonidas could still hear his father’s bellowing as he ridiculed his talent, his love of perspective and light and colour, beating it out of him—sometimes literally—as he destroyed the results of his teenage son’s labours and with them all the creativity in his soul. Art was a feeling and feelings were weakness, his father had drummed into him. And no Vassalio male had ever been weak.

So he had channelled his driving energies into creating new worlds out of blocks of clay and concrete, in innovative designs that had leaped off the paper and formed the basis of his own developments. Developments that had made him rich beyond his wildest dreams. And with the money it had all come tumbling into his lap. Influence. Respect. Women. So many women that he could have had his pick of any of them. Yet he hadn’t found one who was more disposed to him personally than she was to the state of his bank balance. Not beyond the pleasures of the bedroom at any rate, he thought with a self-deprecating mental grimace. In that it seemed he was never able to fail.

‘So what about you, Kayla? Didn’t you have any aspirations?’

‘I suppose I did but not like yours,’ she said, twirling the stalk of a pink flower in her fingers. ‘I think I was always practical and realistic. Besides, I was brought up with the understanding that if you don’t expect you can’t be disappointed.’

‘And because of that you never allowed yourself to dream?’

He was sitting on one of the larger stones, one leg bent, the other stretched out in front of him, and Kayla tried to avoid noticing how the cloth of his trousers pulled tautly over one muscular thigh.

‘Of course I did,’ she uttered, wondering why she suddenly felt as if she needed to defend herself. ‘But I’ve never been one for mooning over things I can’t have. Especially things which are totally out of my reach.’

He leaned back and crossed his arms, his muscles bunching, emphasising their latent strength. ‘And you don’t believe that everything is within your reach if you jump high enough?’

He made it sound almost credible, which seemed quite out of kilter, Kayla thought, with his laid-back attitude to life.

‘If you jump too high you usually fall flat on your face. Anyway, you’re one to talk,’ she commented, still hurt over his refusal to give her a glimpse into even the smallest area of his life. ‘You don’t even have a steady job.’

‘I get by.’

‘But nothing that offers real security or fulfils your potential?’

‘And why is it so important to fulfil my “potential”?’ he quoted. His eyes were dark and inscrutable, giving nothing of his thoughts away.

‘Because everybody needs a purpose. Some sort of goal in life,’ Kayla stressed.

‘And what is your goal, glykia mou?’

The sensuality with which he spoke suddenly seemed to emphasise the isolation of their surroundings, and with it the fundamental objective of each other’s existence.

‘To be happy.’

‘And that’s it? Just to be happy?’ He looked both surprised and mildly amused. ‘And how do you propose to achieve this happiness?’

Cynicism had replaced the mocking amusement of a moment ago. She could see it in the curling of his firm, rather cruel-looking mouth—a mouth she was aching to feel covering hers again.

‘By staying grounded and true to myself, and not ever attempting to be something I’m not,’ she uttered—croakily, because of where her thoughts had taken her. Afraid that she was in danger of sounding a little bit self-righteous, she added, ‘By appreciating nature. Things like this.’ She cast a glance around her at the wilderness of the island. At everything that was timeless. Untrammelled and free. ‘By creating a happy home. Having children one day. And animals. Lots of animals.’

‘And that’s all it’s going to take?’ Again he looked marginally surprised. ‘Setting up home and having babies?’

‘It’s better than being a drifter,’ she remarked, knowing she was overstepping the mark yet unable to stop herself, ‘without any ambition whatsoever.’

‘You think I don’t have ambition?’

‘Well, do you?’ she challenged, aware that she had no right to, as she pulled her hair out of her eyes again, yet driven by the feeling that he was mocking her values and finding them wanting.

‘You’d be surprised. But just for argument’s sake, what do you see me doing?’ How would you have me realise this ambition?’

‘You’re good with cars,’ Kayla remarked, ignoring the mockery infiltrating his question. ‘You could be a mechanic. You could even start your own business. With the prices they charge for servicing and repairs these days you could make a comfortable living.’

‘If I were a mechanic I wouldn’t be able to take time off to come to places like this for weeks at a time.’ His mouth compressed in exasperating dismissal. ‘And I certainly wouldn’t have met you.’

It was there in his eyes—raw, pure hunger. The same hunger that had been eating away at her ever since they had met and which now was taking every ounce of her will-power not to acknowledge.

‘You could save enough to be able to buy your own garage,’ she went on in a huskier voice. ‘Put a manager in. Then you could take time off once in a while.’

‘You think it’s that simple? A steady job? A mortgage on a business and—hey! You’re rich! That isn’t how it works, Kayla.’

‘How do you know if you don’t try? Anyway, it was only a suggestion,’ she reminded him, noticing how snugly his T-shirt moulded itself to the contours of his chest, the way his whole body seemed to pulse with unimpeded virility. ‘You have to have drive and determination too.’

He laughed. ‘And in that you think I’m sadly lacking?’

‘You said that, not me,’ she reminded him sombrely. ‘I was only trying to help.’

‘For which I’m very grateful,’ he said, with that familiar mocking curl to his lips. ‘But that sort of help I’m really able to do without.’

‘Suit yourself,’ she uttered, moving away from the ruin and gasping at the speed with which he leaped up and joined her as she came onto a plain of shorter grasses, interspersed with tall ferns and flowering shrubs.

‘And now you’re looking and feeling thoroughly chastened,’ he remarked laughingly, catching her hand in his while his fervid gaze played with dark intensity over her small fine features, coming to rest on the pouting fullness of her mouth.

‘You’re very perceptive,’ she breathed, hardly able to speak because of the wild responses leaping through her from his dangerous and electrifying nearness. ‘And for a man without ambition you certainly believe in getting what you want.’

‘You’d better believe it,’ he asserted softly.

Even in a whisper his voice conveyed a determination of purpose that none of the self-important types she had known had ever possessed, and it sent little skeins of excitement unravelling through Kayla’s insides.

‘As for my lack of ambition… As I said, you’d be surprised. But what might not surprise you right now is to know that my most burning ambition is to feel you lying beneath me and to taste those sweet lips again, agape mou. To make love to you slowly and thoroughly until you’re crying out for my length inside you. And I think at this moment you want the same thing—regardless of how unfulfilled or goalless you think I am.’

She wanted to protest but it would have been pointless, Kayla realised. She was already melting the moment his mouth came down over hers. She responded to it hungrily—greedily—her arms going around his neck, pulling him down to her as if she could never have enough.

Their kissing was hot and impassioned—a passion demanding only to be fed as, mouths fused, they sank together onto the sun-warmed grass. And Leonidas did as he’d wanted to do since he had arrived at Philomena’s house that morning: tugged firmly on the ties of Kayla’s blouse.

He gave a sigh of satisfaction when it fell open, revealing the pale lace and satin of her bra.

Slipping a finger inside, he revelled in the warmth of her soft skin before he pulled down the lace, releasing one modest-sized breast from its restraining cup.

Small, he measured, moulding the soft pale mound to his work-roughened palm, yet perfectly in proportion to the rest of her and more than satisfyingly sensitive, he realised as he caressed the pale pink areola into burgeoning arousal.

She moaned softly from the excitement of what he was doing to her. She arched her back, aching for his mouth over the swollen nipple, and almost hit the roof when he suddenly dipped his head and granted her wish.

There was no one and nothing around them. Nothing except the wash of the waves on the beach below them and the wind that was teasing her hair into the finest strands of spun gold, inviting him to touch it, caress it, lose himself in the perfume that was all woman, all her own.

His lips were burning kisses over her breasts, her throat, the tender line of her jaw, finding and capturing her mouth again with the dominant pressure of his.

‘Leon…’

She breathed his name into his mouth, saying it as no one had said it in a long, long time. No one called him Leon these days. Only Philomena…

Far away from this idyll, back in London, in Athens and on the corporate world stage, he was known only as Leonidas. Leonidas Vassalio. Hard-headed businessman. Decisive. Practical. Ruthless…

The reminder almost dragged him back to his senses, but not quite.

Her hands had ripped open his shirt, and he gave a deep guttural groan at their caressing warmth over his bared chest, but they were travelling downwards—down and down—in a quest to drive him wild, break his control.

He sucked in his breath, every nerve flexing like tautened wire, until finally, when she touched that most intimate part of him, even through his clothes, he was lost.

He wanted to stop this madness. Come clean about who he was. Because how could he justifiably do this with her if he didn’t?

But as if sensing his reticent moment she was begging him not to stop, and her whimpers of need were all it took to bring about his final undoing.

If he told her who he was now he would be inviting her anger, and he couldn’t face that, he realised in meagre justification. Couldn’t ruin the mood and her artless belief in him no matter how much he knew he should.

It took little effort to remove her shorts, with her lace-edged briefs following them to where he’d cast them aside.

She was beautiful. A natural blonde, he noted with a soft smile of satisfaction as her legs parted before him and she lifted her body in a sobbing invitation for him to claim his prize.

It would be so easy, Leonidas thought, to remove his own clothes and take all that she was offering, assuage the fire that was burning in his groin. Just one thrust could take him to paradise…

He was hotter and harder than he had ever been in his life just from thinking about such damning pleasure, but through the torment of his stimulating thoughts a shred of sanity—of principle—remained.

He couldn’t do it. Couldn’t abuse her trust like that. Not while he still felt it necessary to deceive her. And yet she was slick with wanting, sobbing her need and her craving for release from this passion he had aroused.

She was lying with her face turned to one side and her arms above her head in a gesture of pure surrender. An angel, he thought, inviting him to share heaven with her. Or Eve, tempting him among the grasses of her sensuous Eden.

With torturous restraint he dipped his head and pressed his lips to the heated satin of her pulsing ribcage, his mouth moving with calculated precision over her slender waist to the flat plane of her abdomen and beyond. Very gently he parted her legs wider and slipped his arms beneath her splayed thighs.

Feeling his mouth against that most intimate part of her drew a shuddering gasp from Kayla. That dark hair brushing the sensitive flesh of her inner thigh was a stimulation she couldn’t even have imagined.

It was the most erotic experience of her life. She had been intimate with a man before, but it had never felt like this. This abandoning of herself so completely to a pleasure that promised to drive her wild.

He knew just how to tease and titillate, just where and how to touch, employing his lips and the heat of his tongue to start a fire building in her as he tasted the honeyed sweetness of her body.

She thought she would die from the pleasure of it, and her body tautened in breathless expectation as flames of sensation licked along her nerve-endings and produced a burning tingle along her thighs.

Her juices flowed from her body, mingling with the moistness of his, anointing his roughened jaw with everything she was—until the mind-blowing sensation proved too much and she cried out as the fire consumed her in an orgasm of pulsating, interminable throbs.

Her sensitivity increased until she couldn’t take any more pleasure, and she clamped her thighs around him, trapping him there, holding him to her in a sobbing ecstatic agony of release until the last embers of the fire he had ignited finally died away.

After a while, Kayla looked up at him where he lay beside her, propped up on an elbow. ‘Why didn’t you…?’ Crazily, even after the intimacy they had shared she was too embarrassed to say it.

‘Why didn’t I what?’ Leonidas leaned across her, tracing the curve of her cheek before picking a small windblown flower out of her hair. ‘Take what I wanted?’ he supplied, helping her.

She nodded, closing her eyes against the exquisite tenderness of his touch.

‘Because I don’t think you’re a girl who indulges in casual sex, and you wouldn’t have thanked me for it tomorrow.’

‘Because you think I’m on the rebound?’ Suddenly self-conscious of her nakedness, when he hadn’t even undressed beyond his gaping shirt, she sat up to retrieve her clothes. ‘I’m not—I promise you,’ she said resolutely, wriggling into her panties.

She was well and truly over Craig now. But perhaps there were other reasons for Leon not taking their lovemaking the whole way. Perhaps he was remaining faithful to someone, she thought uneasily. Someone who moved him to anger and roused his passions in a way she might never be able to do…

‘Did you bring her here?’ She couldn’t look at him as she started fastening her blouse.

‘Who?’

‘The woman you won’t talk about?’ she said grievously.

He laughed—a deep, warm sound on the scented air, mingling with the drone of insects and the mellifluous birdsong. ‘You really are a very imaginative little lady.’

‘Not as imaginative as you, with your island mansion and your racehorses,’ she accused, kneeling up to tug her shorts on.

‘Uh-uh,’ he denied. ‘The racehorses were your idea,’ he reminded her with a hint of humour in his eyes, although the slashes of colour across his cheeks were evidence of the passion that still rode him. ‘And now I really think it’s time that we started back.’

‘I’m being serious,’ she stressed, wishing he wouldn’t continue to evade the issue, wondering if he was only doing it because there really was someone else.

‘So am I,’ he breathed heavily, getting up and pulling her with him, and this time his determination brooked no resistance.