A Greek Escape

chapterEIGHT

‘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.

She’d wasted no time in leaving the island after driving back to Philomena’s that last morning, having discovered that there was a ferry leaving that day.

‘Leon…he good man,’ Philomena, having guessed what had happened, had tried to tell her gently. He could act stupidly sometimes. Like most men! At least that was what the woman had seemed to be saying with her gestures and a world-weary rolling of her eyes.

Well, he hadn’t shown any evidence of his virtuous qualities with her! Kayla seethed, still hurting from the way he had deceived her, even though it was more than six weeks on. She tried not to think about how he had rescued her that night in the storm and helped her with the clean-up operation the following day. Nor did she want to think about the affection he’d shown towards Philomena. Remembering just filled her with longing, and with such an aching regret that things couldn’t have been different that at times it almost took her breath away. He was a rat when all was said and done. She didn’t need him or want him! And she certainly never intended to be so taken in by anyone again! So why did she spend every waking moment trying not to think about him? Why did the thought of never seeing him again leave her feeling so down and depressed?

Fortunately the buzz around the office kept any further disturbing introspection at bay, since one of Havens’ senior management team was coming in to meet with Josh and Lorna the following day.

‘They’ve already been through our history and our previous trading figures, and now I think they just want to give us the once-over,’ Lorna remarked anxiously. Her mid-length bobbed hair was coming out of the clips she had tried to fasten it with as she despaired of her devoted but untidy husband’s muddle of an office. Like Kayla, she was blonde and petite—apart from her burgeoning middle—which was why they had often been taken for sisters, Kayla reflected fondly, knowing she couldn’t have cared more for Lorna if she had been her sibling.

Consequently, having worked late to help tidy up Josh’s office and prepare the conference room for what they hoped would be the final meeting, Kayla was getting ready to go home when the telephone rang in her office.

‘Hello, Kayla.’

She almost froze, recognising Leonidas Vassalio’s deeply accented voice at the other end of the line.

‘How did you find me?’ Stupid question. A man with his money and influence would have ways and means, she realised, her pulses leaping. Or had she told him where she worked? She couldn’t even think clearly enough to remember.

‘How have you been?’

She didn’t answer but, aware that Josh and Lorna were still around somewhere in the building, moved over and closed the door. She’d been too hurt and ashamed of herself even to tell them that she had met someone in Greece, and she didn’t want them finding out about it now.

‘What do you want?’

‘I’d like to see you.’

‘Why?’ she asked, breathless from the dark and sick responses suddenly surging through her.

‘I would have thought that was obvious after the way you ran out on me that day,’ he remarked dryly. ‘So suddenly. Without a word.’

‘What did you expect me to do?’ she asked pithily, in spite of the way her heart was thudding. ‘Stick around so you could make an even bigger fool of me?’

‘It was never my intention to make a fool of you.’ His voice had dropped a semi-tone to become almost caressing, reminding her of how treacherously it had excited her when she’d been deceived into believing he was someone else.

‘No?’ It came out sounding more wounded than she’d intended. ‘I’d like to know what you’d have done if you’d really been trying.’

‘Yes, well…’

His words tailed away on a heavily drawn breath while Kayla pictured him, wherever he was, his hair wild and untamed, looking as casual as he sounded in his automatic assumption that she would even consider seeing him again.

‘I know you’re still angry….’

‘Whatever gave you that idea?’ It came out on a shrill little laugh.

‘Have dinner with me,’ he suggested, amazing Kayla with his unerring confidence.

Even so, her heart leaped traitorously in response.

‘Why?’

In the moment’s silence that followed she imagined a masculine eyebrow tweaking at her challenging response.

With more composure than she was managing to retain, he answered, ‘Because we have things to discuss.’

‘Oh, really? Like what?’ She could hear Lorna and Josh still working in the conference room above—moving chairs, closing windows for the night—as she pushed her loose hair behind an ear with a shaky hand. ‘Like why you made a complete idiot out of me in Greece? Like why you pretended to be somebody you weren’t when I was in trouble and needed help? And why you kept pretending even when I was taken in by you and offered you suggestions of what you could do with your life to improve your lot? Or is it the other thing you want to apologise for? For having sex with me when you were lying through your teeth and thinking I’d simply forgive you if I found out? Because you’re the idiot if you think I’d go anywhere and discuss anything with you after what you did.’

‘And that’s all you have to say?’ His voice was toneless now, devoid of any emotion.

‘Why? Do you really want to hear some more?’ She could feel the bite of tears behind her eyes but she willed them back. She couldn’t cry. Couldn’t let him hear how brutally he had hurt her and make an even bigger fool of herself into the bargain. ‘Because there’s a whole barrelful where that came from!’ Resentment defended her from the pain he had inflicted upon her, the hurt to her pride, her trust and her emotions.

‘I think I get the message,’ he rasped under his breath. ‘As the saying goes, see you around.’

He had rung off before she could even regain her wits.

Kayla was at the office early the following morning, to prepare the conference room for the important meeting. She had slept very little for thinking about Leonidas, but she hid her tiredness behind a bright façade as she put out pens and paper, tumblers and a jug of water, arranged fresh flowers for the centre of the long table and generally helped Lorna to stay calm.

Her friend was flitting around in a state of anxious excitement. Worried for her, Kayla insisted that she sat down and took a few deep breaths before the man from Havens arrived.

‘Supposing after all this they don’t think we’re solid enough and change their mind about giving us their business?’ Lorna said worriedly. ‘Or they think we don’t have enough expertise and decide to go with a company that’s bigger and better?’

‘Bigger, maybe—but not better,’ Kayla assured her, meaning it. ‘Anyway, you said yourself the contract’s as good as in the bag. This meeting’s only a formality, so stop worrying,’ she advised gently. But secretly she was concerned.

Lorna was nearly six months pregnant now, and Kayla knew how much this coming baby meant to her and Josh. Lorna had to stay free from stress if this pregnancy wasn’t to end in the same traumatic way as her previous two pregnancies had, and getting overwrought about anything was bad news.

Havens had said that they might require some extra financial information, and Kayla was pleased, therefore, that as their bookkeeper she had been asked to attend the meeting. It would help take the pressure off Lorna.

‘You’ll also serve as our charm offensive,’ Josh had joked.

Consequently, when he rang down to her office at ten o’clock sharp and asked her to join them, Kayla slipped her charcoal-grey tailored suit jacket on over her sleeveless blue blouse and, checking the French pleat she’d carefully styled her hair in that morning, took the lift to the first floor, prepared to charm the Havens man for all she was worth.

‘Come in, Kayla.’ A quiet-voiced Josh—mousy beard neatly trimmed and looking unusually smart today in a jacket and tie—was standing at the top of the table. Lorna was sitting on his right. But it was the man who had been sitting opposite her and was now getting to his feet that made Kayla feel she’d suddenly been gripped by some hideous hallucination. Until Josh said, ‘Kayla, this is Mr Vassalio. Mr Vassalio, this is our invaluable bookkeeper, Kayla Young.’

She wasn’t sure how she managed to walk around the table to take the hand Leonidas was holding out to her. She felt stiff-backed and winded, and in the four-inch heels she hadn’t given a second thought to wearing that morning, suddenly in danger of over-balancing.

‘Miss Young.’

She didn’t know what automatic response gave her the emotional strength to take his hand in the outward appearance of a formal handshake, or whether he could feel the way her fingers were trembling as he held them in his warm palm a fraction of a second too long.

‘Mr Vassalio.’ It came out as a croak from between lips that felt as dry as kindling, while flames seemed to be leaping through her blood—not just from the shock of his being there, but from his devastating appearance too.

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.

She was glad when the meeting was over, the terms of the contract finalised, and he was preparing to leave. Being polite and courteous for Josh and Lorna’s sakes was beginning to tell on her nerves.

At least he would go now, she thought. And hopefully after today, after he gave Havens the go-ahead to start the process for the contract rolling, she would never have to see him again. She didn’t know why that prospect failed to satisfy her as it should. In fact it left her surprisingly down-spirited.

She just wanted to get back to her office. Get stuck into spreadsheets and invoices and try to forget that Leonidas Vassalio had ever existed.

He was talking to Lorna about the baby, asking her when it was due. Seeing she was no longer needed, Kayla seized the opportunity to excuse herself, and was heading for the door when she heard deep Greek tones request, ‘Could I presume upon you, Josh, to spare your Miss Young for a little while longer? There are one or two things I need to run through with her, if she’ll be good enough to walk with me back to my car.’

Go to hell! Kayla wanted to toss back as she pivoted round. But of course she had to be on her best behaviour for her friends’ sake. There was no way she was going to let them down.

‘Take all the time you need,’ she heard Josh saying amiably, unaware of the conflict going on inside her.

Leonidas was holding the door wide for her, his arm outstretched so that she had to duck underneath it, and her startling response to his raw and overpowering masculinity made her voice falter even as she sniped in a hostile whisper, ‘Does everybody always jump over themselves to please you?’ She was breathing shallowly, trying to shrug off her involuntary reaction to him, how the heady, tantalising scent of him affected her.

‘Not everybody.’ Amusement laced his tones, but there was something about the look he gave her which excited her even as she rebelled against the way it seemed to promise, but you will.

‘Why didn’t you tell me yesterday?’ she remonstrated as soon as they were in the corridor of the modern office unit, keeping her attention on a large potted fern that was benefiting from the light from the wide windows.

‘Tell you what?’

As if he didn’t know!

‘That you were coming here today.’ She was acutely aware of him walking beside her.

‘You didn’t give me the chance.’

‘Really?’ Her head swivelled round from the view across the landscaped business park. ‘I don’t seem to recall you trying to bring it into the conversation.’

‘For what other reason were you imagining I wanted to take you to dinner?’

Colour burned her cheeks at the hard edge to his voice. He was an executive now, Kendon Interiors’ biggest client—or would be when that contract was signed—and with that remark he was reminding her of it in no uncertain terms.

‘Then you should have made your motives more obvious.’

‘Like you’re doing now, in bringing me along here instead of using the lift?’

‘I always prefer to use the stairs.’

‘As you did on your way up?’

Of course, Kayla thought, realising that she had walked right into that one. She should have known that his keen brain would have been attuned to every sound that had heralded her approach. He would have heard the ping of the lift and the door gliding open only seconds before she had come into the room.

‘What’s wrong, Miss Young?’ His deliberate use of her surname seemed mockingly incongruous with the electricity that was crackling between them. Even the light click of her heels against the comparatively sturdy tap of his over the polished floor seemed to stress the glaring differences in their sexualities. ‘Don’t you want to chance the two of us being alone together in a lift?’

Kayla’s heart seemed to stop when he opened the glass fire door onto the next level and her jacket brushed his sleeve as he let her through.

‘Why are you flattering yourself that I’d let that bother me?’

‘Because if you could read my mind, Miss Young, you’d know that I have the strongest urge right now to rip that prim little suit off your body, followed by your blouse and then your—’

‘Do you mind?’ Her heels clicked more agitatedly at all he was suggesting as they came down onto the ground floor. From behind her desk the young receptionist smiled at them as they passed, her eyes feasting appreciatively on Leonidas.

‘Modesty, Miss Young?’ Though his mouth was twitching at the corners, he kept his eyes on the external glass doors, which slid open to admit them into the morning sunshine. ‘I hadn’t noticed any of that when you were bouncing up and down on my bed.’

‘Stop it!’

‘Why? Can you dismiss it that easily?’ he tossed at her, sounding more impatient now. ‘Because I can’t. Or are you saying you’ve forgotten just how much pleasure we gave each other?’

‘I thought there was something you particularly wanted to discuss with me?’ she parried huskily as her memory banks seemed to burst with erotic images of their time together before she’d found out who he was, that he had lied. ‘If there isn’t, then I’ll get back to my office. I do have things to do, you know.’

‘So do I.’ His words came out on a harsh whisper.

They had reached his car: a sleek dark monster of a thing that put every other vehicle in the car park into the shade. This statement of his wealth and importance was something Kayla should have expected. Nevertheless, it still managed to knock her metaphorically sideways.

Stupidly, when he had phoned her last night, she had half envisaged him calling from his truck. But the truck belonged to Leon. Leon the drifter, who chopped logs and caught his own lunch and made sketches of her on a whim like some carefree, exciting bohemian. Or pretended to, she remembered, hurting. But this piece of expensive machinery belonged to Leonidas, Chief Executive of the Vassalio Group. International tycoon. The grandest player in the company man’s arena.

‘You look pale,’ he commented in a surprisingly soft voice, his eyes tugging over features she knew looked sallow beneath her tan, taking in the dark smudges under her eyes. ‘And thinner. Have you been overworking?’

‘Not particularly,’ she answered, and felt his dark scrutiny reawakening every aching hormone in her body. I’ve just been lying awake at night, wondering how I’m ever going to forget you!

His gaze had dropped to her middle and a cleft appeared between his eyes. ‘You aren’t…?’ His meaning was obvious.

‘Pregnant?’ Kayla quipped curtly.

A furore of emotions seemed to cross his strong features and for one crazy moment she wished she could tell him that she was. Not because she wanted his baby. Or did she? The thought came like a bolt out of the blue. Surely she couldn’t…?

She pushed the notion aside, refusing even to go there.

No. She would have just liked to see him rocked off his axis. Taken down a few degrees from his arrogant assumption that he could come here and—what? Take up from where they had left off? But she couldn’t lie, couldn’t deceive or hurt anyone the way he had deceived and hurt her.

‘No, I’m not. Foolish though you might have thought me, I wasn’t that foolish. Or mercenary,’ she tagged on after a moment, thinking of the adverse publicity he had been subjected to by the famous Esmeralda. And to what end? To try and hang on to a man she couldn’t bear to let go?

Was that relief in those spectacular eyes of his? She couldn’t be sure. Nor could she understand why she felt such a bone-deep emptiness inside as she watched him open the passenger door of the car with one inconsequential movement of the remote control mechanism.

‘Get in,’ he commanded softly.

‘No.’ She was trembling from his nearness and everything his determination implied. But he was standing between her and the door he had just opened, and with the car in the next bay effectively blocking her route she couldn’t escape without causing a scene.

‘I said get in,’ he rasped. ‘Or, so help me, I’ll start ripping off those clothes of yours here and now and make love to you in front of this whole blasted building! So what is it to be, Miss Young?’

She wanted to call his bluff. To resist getting into his car and falling victim to her own weakness for him, which would leave her hating herself for letting him use her as Craig had used her, for continuing to let him take her for a fool. She had a worrying suspicion, though, that if she did he would be quite capable of carrying out his threat. And so, reluctantly, with her heart beating wildly, she complied.