A Greek Escape

chapterNINE

AS LEONIDAS GOT in and started the car Kayla’s nerves were stretched to breaking point.

Where was he taking her? As he put the car in motion she was so dangerously drawn to his dark magnetic presence that she didn’t know how she would respond if he intended to do all he had threatened.

There were trees and bushes throughout the business park, separating units identical to the one that Kendon Interiors occupied. Kayla shot an anxiously challenging look at Leonidas as he brought the car around the trees to the last unit, which was still unoccupied, and cut the engine, leaving her tense and rigid at their screaming privacy.

‘Tell me this is just some bizarre coincidence,’ she implored him, her voice shaking. ‘Your coming here today.’

‘If you’re asking if your friends approached my company with their business, then I’d like to say yes. But as it was my not being entirely honest with you that created a situation where I’ve had to virtually kidnap you to get you to talk to me, then I have to tell you that we brought our business to them. When you unintentionally made me aware of what Kendon Interiors were about it interested me, and I wanted to find out more. The company whose custom they lost because of the economic downturn are an old established company and well-known to me, and I knew they wouldn’t have been dealing with your friends’ business if what they had to offer wasn’t a cut above the average in their field. Havens needed a new design company, and having had Kendon Interiors vetted over the past few weeks I liked what I saw and recommended them to my directors at Havens.’

‘And you knew I’d still be working for them, of course?’

‘With what amounted to a virtual rescue package in the shape of a potential and very valuable client on the table, your redundancy seemed pretty unlikely,’ he drawled.

So he had been listening to her that day on that beach when he’d seemed preoccupied with what he had been scribbling in his notebook—and had acted on it! Nothing would escape this man.

‘So you used what I told you about Josh and Lorna’s difficulties and deliberately set out to get them on your books just so you could get to me? That’s stalking!’ she accused heatedly.

‘I prefer to call it a good corporate move,’ he corrected. ‘And while you drove me nearly insane in the bedroom, Kayla, I think you should be aware right here and now that I never let passion of any kind rule my head. Do you really think I’d let a company of mine waste money on a product they didn’t need? A product that wasn’t going to be of enormous benefit to me financially? I’m a businessman, Kayla, first and foremost. And while I can’t deny that advising Havens to use Kendon Interiors’ skill and expertise does generate some secondary benefits, my corporate interests are what concern me over and above anything else.’

‘If by “secondary benefits” you mean getting me back into bed, forget it!’ Kayla retorted, with her pulses racing.

‘I was referring to the benefits to Kendon Interiors,’ he returned phlegmatically.

Why did she have to open her mouth and put her foot in it again?

Abashed, Kayla sank back against the cushioning black leather with her eyes pressed closed, her hair a pale contrast against the headrest.

‘You never cease trying to make me feel uncomfortable, do you?’ she expressed in a censuring whisper.

‘Quite unintentionally, believe me,’ he answered, almost as softly. ‘I think it’s this unnatural denial by you of everything there is between us that is responsible for it.’

‘There’s nothing between us,’ she refuted, knowing that in doing so she was guilty of doing exactly what he was accusing her of. Everything that was feminine in her was craving those strong arms around her again.

‘No?’ he queried, with such a wealth of meaning that her eyes flew open in guarded challenge.

He was looking at her without restraint, his eyes glittering with dark desire as they touched on the fullness of her trembling mouth. She felt her breathing grow shallow, felt an excruciating need at the very core of her as his heated gaze slid down to the silvery blue of her blouse, and her breasts rose and fell sharply in traitorous betrayal of her emotions.

‘Leonidas…’

It was the first time she had spoken his full name without penetrating sarcasm. It was a breakthrough, he thought, even if she did sound like an accused prisoner who had just realised that any further denial of her crime was useless. Or perhaps she couldn’t fight this thing that was making her so tense and cagey, that was driving him almost insane with the need to have her.

Scarcely daring to trust himself, he trailed a finger lightly along the silky texture of her jaw and heard her breath shudder brokenly through her lungs.

‘Is that a plea?’ he enquired huskily, feeling the ache in his body intensify in throbbing response.

No, it isn’t! Kayla wanted to cry out in protest—except that the feelings he was arousing were preventing her from saying a thing.

‘What do you want?’ she asked falteringly at length, not daring to look at him. If she did then she’d be lost, she realised, despairing at herself. And she couldn’t lose herself to him again—not after the last time. Not after the way he had treated her.

‘I want us to finish what we started,’ he said, amazing her with his arrogance and yet making her go weak in spite of everything. But at least he wasn’t touching her any more.

‘Why? Did you fall madly in love with me in Greece and realise you can’t live without me?’ she suggested with bitter poignancy.

There was a far too lengthy pause before he answered.

‘Only fools and adolescents fall madly in love,’ he responded dismissively, and his cynicism was stinging even though it was no less than she would have expected from him. ‘But I have to admit to having acted entirely out of character with you. You think you know me, but you don’t, and I intend to show you exactly who Leonidas Vassalio is.’

‘And how do you propose to do that?’

‘By asking you to stay with me under my roof for a few weeks. In fact I’m insisting upon it.’

‘Insisting?’ He sounded so sure of himself, as though he wouldn’t take no for an answer, that Kayla viewed him with a guarded question in her eyes. ‘You’re joking, surely?’

‘On the contrary,’ he said. ‘I’ve never been more serious in my life. I think it would be a good idea if you move in tomorrow.’

‘And if I don’t?’ It was a breathless little challenge, and one that he didn’t take up immediately.

He didn’t know why it was so imperative to keep this girl in his life—only that he had to. And if bending her to his will was the only way to do it, then so be it, he determined grimly.

‘It would be a pity,’ he expressed now. ‘Especially as Josh and Lorna imagined we were all getting on so well. But starting a partnership of any kind without total harmony all round doesn’t augur very well for future business.’

What was he saying? She wasn’t sure, but she had a very good idea.

Though he wasn’t actually telling her to her face, she felt sure that he would use Josh and Lorna’s difficulties as a lever. The contract wasn’t signed yet, and he could use his influence on Havens to get them to withdraw from supplying Kendon Interiors with their greatly anticipated custom. And if that happened…

Mortified, she breathed, ‘You’d rescind that contract and see a business go down the drain if I don’t do exactly what you’re asking?’ For what other reason would he have so miraculously sought Josh and Lorna out—regardless of what he’d said—if it wasn’t to use their company’s problems to his advantage?

His eyes, as she finished speaking, were darkly reflective, giving nothing away.

‘Well, since you seem to know me so well…’

He didn’t finish. He didn’t have to, Kayla thought bitterly, staring with hurt, disbelieving eyes across a patch of manicured lawn to the vacant unit in front of which they were parked. A ‘TO LET’ sign was pinned to its rendered fascia. The place looked dark. Empty. Soulless.

Like he was, she thought achingly, and knew she had fallen in love with him back there on that island. In love with a man she hadn’t even known…

A bell rang in her mind, reminding her of something he had said that last day after they had made love, but she pushed the memory aside. She didn’t need anything that threatened to topple the barrier she had been forced to erect against him. Yet when he caught her chin between his thumb and forefinger and turned her head to look at him just the touch of that broad thumb sliding sensuously across her mouth almost broke her trembling resolve.

‘Open your eyes,’ he commanded softly.

When she did she saw something in his face that for a moment seemed to mirror her anguish—some emotion that burned with a dark and almost painful intensity. But then it was gone, like the extinguishing of a light, and his features seemed only to harden as he leaned forward, tilting her chin higher until there was just a hair’s breadth between his mouth and hers.

His scent and his nearness were killing her. She wanted…

Oh, dear heaven! She wanted him! Even knowing what he was like. Even after the way he had deceived her! All she could think about was being naked in his arms and making love with him until…

She pressed her eyes closed to try and blot him out. A traitorous sensual tension gripped her. His breath was warm against her mouth, and the heady spice of his shaven jaw was acting like a powerful drug, stripping her of her will and her power to resist, until without even being aware of it she was leaning into him, her lips parting involuntarily to receive his kiss.

‘No.’ In an instant he was pulling back. ‘Now isn’t the time—and this certainly isn’t the place.’ His breathing came raggedly through his lungs. ‘There will be ample opportunity in the future, I promise you. But in the meantime, if you’re going to get to know me, hrisi mou, somehow I don’t think we’re going to achieve it like this.’

The sensual snub left her bruised and angry with herself—for feeling such bitter disappointment as well as for allowing him to see how much she still wanted him physically. It just showed him, once again, how he had the power to humiliate her just by turning her into a yearning, quivering wreck.

‘I don’t need to get to know you, Leonidas Vassalio. I know exactly what you are. You’re playing games with me for your own amusement! And you’re using my friends to exploit the situation, no matter how you might try to dress it up! All right. I’ll go along with your little game.’

If she didn’t, and Havens withdrew their offer, Kendon Interiors would be plunged straight back into the difficulties they’d been facing before. And if that happened, if Lorna was subjected to more stress during her pregnancy… Kayla shivered, unable to bear thinking that the safety of a baby’s little life might easily be in her own hands.

‘I’ll move in with you,’ she conceded, in a voice clogged with emotion, ‘but I’m not sleeping with you, if that’s what you’re imagining. I’m only doing it for Josh and Lorna’s sake, so don’t you ever forget that—and don’t imagine for one moment that I’m going to enjoy it.’

‘I wouldn’t be so presumptuous,’ he assured her with mockery in his eyes. ‘And now I’m going to take you back. Your firm has a proposed contract to fulfil…’

The sudden seriousness of his tone served to remind her of exactly what he was—a typical high-flying executive, ruthless and manipulative, like all the rest she’d known.

‘And they’re not going to fulfil it if one of their principal staff is out testing her luck by antagonising their biggest client.’

Of course. He had the upper hand and he knew it, Kayla thought, shooting back nevertheless, ‘Is that a threat?’

‘Why not go the whole hog and call it blackmail?’ he suggested smoothly. ‘I’m sure you’d prefer to.’ When she didn’t answer, ‘Tomorrow,’ he reminded her, as he brought his powerful car around to the front entrance of Kendon Interiors. ‘I’ll pick you up at eight.’

The pool threw back reflections of the dazzling white mansion. A modern house, built to Georgian design, Leonidas’s principal UK home was a breathtaking showcase of large airy rooms, all exquisitely furnished, combining modern with Regency and luxury with unfaltering good taste. A rich man’s castle, presided over by a resident staff who catered for this king of enterprise with unstinting respect and affability, as if he was more to them than just the man who paid their wages.

Now, lying beside the luxurious pool in equally luxurious grounds before it was time to get ready for the company dinner to which he was taking her tonight, Kayla was forced to accept, from what she’d observed over her first couple of days in his spectacular house, that the respect shown between Leonidas Vassalio and his staff was entirely mutual.

‘Are you ready?’ he asked two hours later, as she emerged from the suite of rooms he had assigned to her. It comprised a bedroom with floor-to-ceiling wardrobes, a four-poster bed and a carpet thick enough to drown in, a separate dressing room and a bathroom with a huge sunken tub within a setting of honeyed marble.

‘I don’t know,’ Kayla responded, trying hard not to reveal how just the sight of him standing there at the top of the stairs in a dark evening suit and exquisitely fine shirt was making her blood sing with need. ‘I’m your puppet. You tell me.’

He moved towards her like a dark panther, his equally dark eyes taking in every detail of her appearance.

She was wearing a strapless dress with a pale blue bodice that ran into a darker blue, the colour continuing down into purple and then burgundy as it swirled around her ankles. Silver high-heeled sandals gave him a glimpse of burgundy-tipped toes.

She’d twisted her hair up into a knot, leaving a few tendrils to fall softly around her face. Her only concession to cosmetics was a smudge of smoky-blue shading on her eyelids and a burgundy gloss enhancing her lips. Her long lustrous lashes, he was pleased to notice, she’d left naturally gold. Delicate spirals of silver hung from the lobes of her ears, matching the delicately twisted necklace that lay against her softly-tanned skin.

‘You look beautiful.’ For a moment it was all Leonidas could say. ‘And you’re not my puppet,’ he countered when he had found his voice again. ‘You’re an independent-minded if not stubborn young woman whom I’m delighted to be accompanying tonight. If I’d wanted a puppet I wouldn’t have had to travel too far to find myself a dozen of those.’

No, because every woman he knew would probably leap at the chance to do his bidding, Kayla thought. Whereas she was a woman who had walked away from him—said no to him when it had mattered—and that surely had to prove too much of a challenge for a man like Leonidas.

‘Then you should have found yourself a dozen, shouldn’t you?’ she said, smiling brightly for the benefit of a manservant who was passing as they started down the magnificent staircase.

‘Perhaps I should have,’ he agreed, sounding mildly amused.

From the magnificent staircase to his magnificent car, to dinner in the ballroom of an equally magnificent hotel, Kayla was entranced but at the same time overwhelmed by the world he moved in. It was poles apart from that of the man he had purported to be—a man who had ‘opted out’, driven a wreck of a truck and bedded down in the run-down environs of a Greek farmhouse.

Here she saw a man at the very pinnacle of his prosperity. A man who lived and travelled in style and circulated with some of the most influential names in society. A man eloquent enough to hold an audience of over three hundred captive as he delivered an after-dinner talk on human complacency towards the state of the planet, leaving his peers congratulating him after a standing ovation that left him remarkably unfazed.

‘You were brilliant,’ Kayla remarked, unable to resist saying it as the tables were being cleared and couples were beginning to wander onto the dance floor to enjoy the middle-of-the-road music provided by a professional live band. She hadn’t had a chance to speak to him since before he’d given the talk, and he’d been surrounded by many guests wanting to speak to him ever since.

‘I was just stating fact and emphasising the responsibility that we as professional bodies should engage for the sake of our children and our children’s children. We’re only custodians of this earth. We don’t own it,’ he said. ‘But am I to assume that I’ve hit on one topic that you’re not going to flay me over tonight?’

With a change of tone he had wiped away her attempt to strike an equal balance with him if only for a few hours. Retaliation was futile, she decided. And anyway a smiling brunette, very glamorous and sophisticated, came up to him at that moment to thank him effusively, ogling him with such a blatant come-on in her sultry green eyes that there was no room for doubt as to exactly what she wanted from him.

‘He’s so eloquent!’ she enthused to Kayla, daring to touch red-tipped fingers to his dark sleeve. ‘He made my flesh go all goosebumpy just listening to him!’

‘Really?’ Kayla responded, trying to look impressed. ‘Well, if that makes you goosebumpy then you should take a look at his sketches!’ She felt the bunch of muscle in his powerful arm as she slipped hers through it in a gesture of pure possession. ‘Of course he’s very modest about them, but I’m sure he’d show them to you if you asked him nicely.’

Smiling uncertainly, the woman uttered something that Kayla didn’t catch and, realising she was intruding, moved hastily away.

‘I know you’ve got your grievances,’ Leonidas rasped, as soon as his admirer was out of earshot, ‘but do you have to air them in public? And what was that display of play-acting all about?’ he queried, locking her arm against the sensuous fabric of his jacket as she would have pulled it away.

‘I thought I was supposed to act as though I was enjoying being with you?’ she murmured, with a bright smile for anyone who might be watching them.

He made a disapproving sound down his nostrils. ‘You’re behaving like every woman I went to Greece to get away from.’

Which was why he had been so careful not to tell you who he was, her inner little voice piped up to remind her. But she didn’t want reminding, and silenced the voice with the flash of another smile and a clipped, ‘How do you want me to behave?’

‘As Kayla Young. Guileless. Easy to like. And infernally inquisitive.’

‘A fool,’ she tagged on, all falseness gone. She was only aware then that he was leading her onto the dance floor. ‘Guileless. Easy to like. And an infernally inquisitive, easy-to-fool fool!’

‘How can I forget it?’ he murmured, slipping those strong arms around her. ‘You aren’t prepared to let me.’

‘Any more than I’m prepared to let you forget that I’m here under protest.’

‘No, you aren’t,’ he purred silkily, drawing her close, sending Kayla’s senses reeling in shaming response. ‘I don’t think “protest” can in any way account for the way we’re both feeling now.’

This close to him she could feel every steel-hard muscle of his body—in the whipcord strength of his back and shoulders, in his hard hips and powerful thighs, and in the stirring evidence of his arousal. It made her want to press herself against him, and it took every shred of will-power she possessed not to do it.

‘You aren’t feeling anything. Just a bruised ego and severely dented pride because you can’t bear a woman ever saying no to you.’

He laughed very softly, and with his cheek against hers whispered in her ear, ‘Not a woman whom I know wants me as much as I want her—no.’

Even his breath was a turn-on against her treacherously pulsing flesh, without the stimulus of his stunning appearance and the way he’d had everyone there tonight eating out of his hand. It made her wish that they didn’t have the baggage of the past hanging over them and that she was somewhere else, alone with him, not moving like this under an exquisite chandelier, with three hundred other people in the room.

‘In fact, do you want to know what I think you are thinking now?’

The lights spun gold from Kayla’s hair as she lifted her head in challenge. ‘No,’ she dismissed with a saccharine-sweet smile. ‘But no doubt you’re going to tell me anyway.’

‘Well, let’s see if I’m right,’ he suggested. He was looking down at her and emulating her smile in a way that to anyone watching would have marked them undoubtedly as lovers—hungry for each other, wanting only the privacy of their bedroom. ‘I think that right now you would prefer to be back at the house and for me to be slowly undressing you with some soft music playing. And I think you’d like me to remain clothed while I carry you naked up to my bed. There’s nothing like the sensuality of cloth to add zest to lovemaking, is there, Kayla? Particularly when the man wearing it doesn’t give a fig for how you might abuse it, just so long as he can gratify your desires and make you sob with pleasure.’

It was so close to what she had been thinking that Kayla could scarcely breathe. She could feel her cheeks burning from the shaming imagery. ‘You’re just indulging in your own uninhibited fantasies.’ she croaked, her throat as arid as a Grecian hillside, and she felt those dark masculine eyes appraising the results of what his mind-blowing words had produced.

‘Am I?’ he challenged softly, with a knowing smile.

She wasn’t even aware that the music had stopped until his arms fell away from her, and then she could see one of the older male guests to whom she’d been introduced earlier beckoning him from the bar.

‘I’ll be a few minutes,’ Leonidas apologised, and left her to flee to the mercifully deserted sanctuary of the powder room.

A flushed-faced, bright-eyed creature stared back at her from the mirror above the luxuriously equipped basins. She felt as though she had just been aroused to fever-pitch only to be left abandoned and wanting. Wanting him, she acknowledged painfully, wondering how she still could.

How could she stay under his roof when every time he touched her it was like dropping a firework into a powder keg? When her common sense went up in smoke just at a look from him, even without the X-rated things he’d been saying to her just now?

And yet he hadn’t attempted to touch her intimately since he’d brought her to his house—had merely treated her with a detached respect that had kept her awake over the past two nights wondering why he hadn’t. Had he finally accepted that he had treated her unfairly and was now doing his best to make it up to her? Or was his plan to wear her down with the sort of earth-shattering sensuality he’d used just now until she was begging for him to make love to her?

She hadn’t met a company man yet whose motives weren’t entirely self-centred, so why should Leonidas Vassalio be any different? She rebuked herself for her moment of weakness in even daring to hope that he might be. Wasn’t he using the plight of two people she cared about purely to satisfy his own selfish demands? And he’d already lived up to the type of man he really was in the way he had lied to her in Greece.

Even so, it was with a sick and building excitement that a little later she sat in the shadowy intimacy of his car, acutely aware of him sitting there beside her, changing gear with an immaculately cuffed wrist as he took a bend, driving them home, his jacket discarded in the back…

Only the hall light was burning on a dimmer switch as they came through the electronically operated gates and he admitted them into his magnificent house. Having watched the way he’d used his security card to open the impressively carved door, Kayla couldn’t help comparing this man, with his millions and his discreet surveillance staff and his stringently guarded home, with the one who had slept with his doors unlocked—open to the world—alone on a lonely Greek hillside.

‘Thanks. I think I’ll go straight up,’ she murmured, breathless with anticipation. She wasn’t sure how she was managing to drag herself away from him as she started towards the wide sweeping stairs.

‘Kayla…’

His soft command stopped her in her tracks, her heart beating a frenzied tattoo. If he touched her…

Dear heaven! She wanted him to touch her! To take the decision away from her, carry her up these stairs and drive her wild in the sumptuous luxury of his bed!

She turned round, her legs threatening to buckle under her. ‘What?’

‘You dropped your wrap,’ he said, in a voice that was screamingly intimate.

Even the purposefulness of his tread on the pale marble was a sensuality that made her tense and yearning body throb.

Very softly he moved over and placed the blue and silver sequinned stole which she hadn’t even realised had slipped off lightly over her bare shoulders. Then, with heart-stopping gentleness, he turned her round to face him.

He had retrieved his jacket since stepping out of the car, and the dark cloth now spanning his shoulders was a sensuality she wanted to touch.

It was a replay of all he had tormented her with earlier, and she caught her breath, held in thrall by the scent and warmth and power of him as he stooped and pressed his lips against her forehead.

‘You look tired,’ he remarked, gazing down with some dark, unfathomable emotion at the naked hunger in her eyes. ‘Get some rest,’ he advised softly, leaving her excruciatingly lost and aching for him. ‘We’ve got another busy day tomorrow.’