A Greek Escape

chapterSEVEN

LOOKING BACK, LEONIDAS wasn’t sure how he had managed to stop himself making love to Kayla that afternoon. Heaven knew he had wanted to. A fact not made any easier by the knowledge of how much she had wanted him, too. But there were ethics to be observed, and there was no way that he could have taken all she had been offering when he wasn’t being straight with her. It had all boiled down to guilt, he decided shamefully. Guilt because he wasn’t telling her the truth.

But the truth was that he had come here to be alone. Not to indulge in any social or sexual entanglements with a girl who could carry him along with her ridiculous yet infectious sense of make-believe. Well, make-believe to her, at any rate. Because he could afford that island, had it been for sale—and a dozen like it, did she but know it. But it seemed like a lifetime since he had indulged in that childish game, and he had found it oddly refreshing.

In the world he moved in there was no room for fantasising or dreaming. Only for cold hard facts and figures. Securing deals. That was living the dream. Or so he had thought.

Until now, though, he hadn’t begun to realise how deeply and for how long his dreams had been buried. Firstly by his father, and then more recently beneath the weight of his own responsibilities. He had been so busy making money—reaping the benefits of all he had worked for during the past decade or more—that he hadn’t taken the time even to question where those dreams had gone. And now this little nobody had come along, making him question his values. He was annoyed with himself for allowing her to get under his skin to such a degree. But that didn’t change the fact that he wanted her more than he had wanted any woman in a long time—much less one who would have been in her own marriage bed right now if things had worked out as they should have.

A hard possessiveness kicked in as he imagined her naked with the faceless, double-crossing character who had betrayed her—he could only temper his indignation at the thought of the two of them together by imagining himself in Kayla’s bed. And that brought other problems as his body hardened in response to imagining her sobs of pure pleasure directed at him and him alone as he made himself master of her body.

But things couldn’t go on as they were. He was either going to have to come clean at some stage, he decided grimly, or end their relationship before it went any further. Neither prospect filled him with any pleasure.

He knew exactly what she thought about company men, and after the experience she had had with that lowest of the low fiancé of hers—not to mention her father—she’d be blameless for thinking he was no better. Yet staying away from her wasn’t an option he welcomed either. He was just relieved that his secretary had e-mailed him with some plans that needed his urgent attention, so that for today at least he didn’t have to think about how he could come clean with Kayla. However he chose to tell her, he knew she wasn’t going to welcome finding out…

When Leon didn’t put in an appearance that day, and didn’t come down the next morning, Kayla jumped at Philomena’s suggestion that she drive up to the farmhouse with some bread Philomena had just baked.

She’d scarcely given a thought to her ex since Leon had taken her over to that island, she realised, noticing how it seemed to shimmer in the morning sun. She couldn’t help marvelling at the difference between the two men and wondering what she had ever seen in Craig.

Had her love for him been so shallow that the first man who came along could make her forget him and the hurt he had caused her so completely? But then Leon wasn’t just any man, she reminded herself, with a sudden tightening of her breasts and that familiar stirring of heat at the very heart of her femininity. He made her feel like no other man had ever made her feel.

A throbbing excitement leaped along her veins at the memory of their afternoon on that islet, when he had driven her crazy for him, playing with her like a love-toy, winding her up only to let her run wild with delirious sensation as he had taken her to heights her mental and physical being had never scaled before.

She had wanted him so much! And it had been patently obvious that he wanted her. So why hadn’t he taken their lovemaking to its ultimate conclusion? Was it because there was someone else? But he had called her imaginative when she had broached the subject with him, so perhaps it was simply that he didn’t think she was ready to embark on a relationship with him—in which case, she decided with a delicious little shiver, it was up to her to show him that she was.

When she arrived at the farmhouse her heart gave a little leap when she saw the truck parked outside.

So he was in! She wondered if she was being too presumptuous in coming. Supposing he didn’t want to see her? Or she’d disappointed him in some way?

Feeling queasy in the stomach just from entertaining that possibility, she tripped lightly round to the glass-paned peeling doors at the back of the house. One creaked open at her less than confident knock.

When she called out there was no reply, and so gingerly she moved inside, still calling his name. He wasn’t in the sitting room, and nor did he emerge from the kitchen when she moved enquiringly towards it.

Perhaps he’d gone for a walk, she mused, standing there in the hall, wondering what to do.

About to take a look outside, she heard a sudden thud on the boarded floor above. She dumped her carrier bag with the bread she’d brought on an old pine chest just inside the door.

‘Leon?’ she called out, and when there was still no response, unthinkingly she raced up the stairs.

His bedroom was in shadow, with semi-closed shutters, but a quick glance towards the bed revealed him lying there on his back, still drugged from sleep, groping blindly for something on the floor on the other side of the bed.

Kayla moved over and, picking up a chunky little clock, replaced it on the cabinet beside the bedside lamp.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked, knowing what an early bird he usually was. It was already after ten and she’d obviously woken him, she realised, guessing he’d reached for the clock and knocked it over when he’d heard her calling him.

‘I must have crashed out,’ he mumbled, drawing an arm across his forehead. His eyes were heavy with sleep and his hair was dishevelled and, like his unshaven jaw, satanically dark. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I brought you some bread. I thought you were out, but the door was open,’ Kayla responded with a nervous gesture of her hand. She was aware that she was gabbling, but it was difficult to do anything else when faced with the sight of his bronzed body, naked save for the fine sheet that barely covered his hips and certainly left nothing to the imagination. ‘Aren’t you pleased to see me?’

‘What do you think?’ he drawled, in a voice thickened by sleep and by the involuntary response of his anatomy.

Heated colour touched Kayla’s cheeks and yet she couldn’t keep her gaze from straying to his potent virility. Driven by something more powerful than her own reasoning, she dropped down onto the bed.

‘I think you must be overjoyed,’ she whispered, touching kisses to the warm, undulating muscles of his chest, using the pale, sensuous fountain of her hair to caress him as her lips moved over the tautened flesh of his tight lean waist and her hands dealt tremblingly with the sheet.

He let out a deep shuddering gasp of anticipation. ‘Why did you come?’ he asked heavily.

‘I just thought that one good turn deserved another,’ Kayla whispered, feathering kisses over his tightly muscled abdomen. She didn’t know where she was finding the courage to seduce him like this. She only knew by instinct alone that he was a man who liked his women confident and worldly, not wimpish and nursing the old wounds of a previous relationship.

‘Close your eyes,’ she ordered softly, getting up.

Leonidas’s heart seemed to stop, and then thundered into life when she came back to the bed and straddled him. She was wearing a white top with a little red skirt that swirled about her thighs, and his mind whirled in a vortex of conflicting thoughts as he realised that she had obviously removed what she had been wearing underneath.

‘Kayla. Stop this…’ He wasn’t sure whether he’d spoken the words or whether they were just buzzing feverishly through his brain.

‘Why? Is it too early for you?’ Kayla teased, excitement driving her even as her mind raced with interminable doubts.

Was she carrying things too far? Didn’t he like a woman taking the initiative? He was more down to earth and unfettered by convention than any man she had ever met. He didn’t want a woman who was anything but what he was. Not someone weighed down with emotional baggage; someone who didn’t know her own mind.

Beneath her Leonidas shivered as he felt her sliding down his body, the moist heat of her searing his skin like a molten poultice.

‘Dear—!’ He swallowed the profanity, his breathing laboured, his body on fire. He had to stop this! But as her soft mouth took possession of him his senses spun into chaos.

He had never felt so powerless, and yet at the same time so shamelessly empowered. His body was a temple of pleasure at which this amazing woman was worshipping.

He felt his size increase and harden like burning, quivering steel. His body was taut as a bow, holding back the flaming arrow it needed to release before it consumed him in its raging inferno.

He fought to contain it, the struggle almost overwhelming him. And just when he thought he had won the battle she slid along his length, positioning herself above him to take him into her.

He tried to pull back, but he was powerless to do anything but push against her slick hot wetness, groaning in defeat as he allowed himself the freedom to let her do whatever she would.

Looking down at him, Kayla registered the rapturous agony on his face, that line of pained pleasure between his closed lids. It lent him a vulnerability she hadn’t seen before—one that called to everything in her that was soft and feminine and tender—and yet she felt powerful too. She was in control and glorying in it, dominating the pace and the depth and the rhythm. That was until she heard the guttural masculine groan when he suddenly clamped his hands over her hips and pushed harder and more determinedly into her.

The depth of penetration dragged a small cry of ecstasy from her lips. She felt the explosion of his seed deep within her and started to climax almost instantaneously.

It was the most fulfilling experience of her life.

They were both breathing heavily when she collapsed, wet and gasping, against the warm damp cushion of his chest, and then he was rolling her round so that she was lying pressed close to his side.

‘What was all that about?’ he quizzed, as soon as he could speak again. His breathing was still heavy and laboured.

Kayla wasn’t sure whether there was disapproval in his husky tones. ‘Didn’t you like it?’ she enquired, almost diffidently.

‘Of course I liked it!’ he shot back, his voice incredulous. ‘But right now I’m not sure whether to applaud you for your resourcefulness or to paddle that pretty bare bottom of yours and send you packing back to Philomena’s.’

‘Why?’ An uneasy line pleated Kayla’s brows as she lay facing him with her hair wildly dishevelled. ‘Do Greek men always have to be the dominant partner?’ She was beginning to feel hurt and embarrassed.

‘No. But whoever chooses to be should take responsibility for what they’re doing. Is there any chance that you could be pregnant after that delightful little escapade?’

‘Of course not! I’m not that stupid!’ she snapped, trying to sit up and failing when he kept her anchored to his side. She didn’t feel it was necessary to add that she was taking the pill. She had tried to come off it after her break-up with Craig, but her periods had gone so haywire that her doctor had suggested it might be best for her to keep taking it until her emotions were on a more even keel.

‘So what happens now?’ Leonidas asked, his breath seeming to shiver through his lungs.

‘What do you mean?’ Blue eyes searched the midnight-darkness of his for some sign of tenderness—the tenderness that had been stirred in her by seeing him so vulnerable while she had been making love to him—but there was none.

‘We’ve just become lovers and you don’t even know who I am.’ Something he was going to have to rectify—and as soon as possible, he realised, floundering. It was a feeling that was alien to Leonidas Vassalio.

‘Yes, I do. Or as much as I need to,’ she murmured, feeling his powerful body tense as she applied a trail of butterfly kisses over the slick warmth of his heavily contoured chest.

‘I’m trying to be serious, Kayla.’

‘Why?’ she breathed against the velvety texture of his skin, delighting in the way his breathing was growing more and more ragged from her kisses.

But as her fingers trailed teasingly along the inside of one powerful thigh his hand suddenly clamped down on hers, resisting the temptation to let it wander.

‘Because I don’t believe you’re the type of girl who does this without knowing what sort of man she’s getting herself involved with and without demanding some degree of emotional commitment.’

And he wasn’t offering any. She couldn’t understand why telling herself that caused her spirits to plummet the way they did.

‘I’m not demanding anything,’ she uttered, knowing that the only way to save face was to get the hell out of there. ‘And I’m sorry if I offended you!’

Scrambling out of bed, managing to shrug off the hand that tried to restrain her, she heard his urgent, ‘Kayla! Kayla, come back here!’

She didn’t, though. Her wounded pride propelled her into the adjoining bathroom, her mind focussed only on tidying herself up and getting out.

Stung with regret for upsetting her, momentarily Leonidas flopped back against the pillows. He hadn’t intended her to take what he had said in the way she had. He had been trying to explain, in a roundabout way, what he should have told her long before, but procrastinating had only made an awkward situation far more difficult. After what had just happened he didn’t know how or where to begin. He only knew that he couldn’t let it happen again before he told her the truth—and all he’d managed to do was let her believe she’d offended him…

Offended him! He couldn’t stop a lazy smile from touching his mouth.

She’d blown his mind, he thought, when she’d woken him up from a deep, deep sleep and dragged him straight into a cauldron of sizzling pleasure. He hadn’t had time to catch his breath—let alone think! And he wouldn’t have been caught so off-guard, still in bed, if he hadn’t been up practically all night trying to get round one last hitch with those amended plans…

The plans!

He shot up in bed just as Kayla was emerging from the bathroom.

He’d left all his paperwork spread out over the kitchen table with his laptop—incriminating evidence of who he was! It had been late, and he’d obviously crashed out on the bed after he’d come up here and showered!

‘Kayla, come here!’

The authority in his voice would have stopped a lesser mortal, but she ignored it as she moved around the bed, frowning, tugging at the draping folds of the bedlinen.

‘Are you looking for something?’ he asked, knowing he had to act quickly.

Kayla made a grab for the red briefs he was holding up, which only succeeded in bringing her across the bed and against his disturbingly masculine body as he withheld them, effectively securing what he wanted.

‘You haven’t offended me. You were wonderful,’ he murmured, his warm breath a delicious sensuality against her hairline. ‘Now, come back to bed. I want to talk to you,’ he said, and just as an incentive slipped his hand under the tantalising little skirt and let his fingers play along the outer curve of one taut, silky buttock.

Kayla groaned, weakening beneath his mind-boggling powers of persuasion. She felt vulnerable and incredibly sexy with no panties on, but she despaired at herself too, at how easily and effortlessly he could bend her to his will.

Whatever he had to say, she had the strongest suspicion that she wasn’t going to like it. He didn’t want commitment. Of course he didn’t. And anyway she wasn’t ready for another serious relationship yet. Yet neither was she ready to let him have it all his own way.

Catching him in an unguarded moment, reaching round to adjust the pillows behind them, she managed to wriggle out of his arms and snatch her underwear from his grasp, saying, ‘I can talk better over a cup of coffee,’ as she ran giggling out of the room.

‘Kayla, come here!’

She was in the hall, pulling her panties back on, when he raced down the stairs, still fastening his robe, but darted off again laughingly as soon as she saw him coming.

‘Will you just stand still and let me talk to you?’ he called after her as she grabbed the carrier bag she’d left on the chest and headed for the kitchen. He had to break it to her gently. She’d be angry, it was true, but not as angry as she would be finding it out for herself.

‘Go and sit down,’ he commanded softly when she turned around. He was pointing to the sitting room. ‘I will make the coffee.’

‘Fine,’ she agreed airily, pivoting away again, ‘but I’ll keep you company while you’re doing it.’

‘In the sitting room,’ he breathed, in one last attempt to prevent her from seeing all his papers.

She turned in the kitchen doorway, her chin lifting in playful challenge. ‘And since when did you suddenly start issuing so many orders?’

‘Since I thought you were running out on me without finishing what you started.’ One purposeful stride brought him over to her, his mouth a sensuous curve. But inside he was a heaving mass of turmoil.

He had to keep her out of the kitchen—stop her going in there before he had a chance to explain. He cast a surreptitious glance over her shoulder at the table in the centre of the room, heaving with incriminating evidence. He should have told her before. Should have kept her in bed…

‘Kayla…’

The way he spoke her name never failed to turn Kayla’s bones to jelly.

‘Say it again,’ she murmured huskily.

‘What?’ He looked tense, she thought, and mystified too.

‘The way you say my name.’

‘Kay-lah.’

She groaned her satisfaction and nestled against his chest above the gaping V of his dark satin robe. His skin smelled of the lingering traces of shower gel overlaid with a sensual musk.

‘It should be censored—or at least X-rated,’ she purred, with her tongue coming out in a provocative caress of that bared skin. It felt silky and tasted slightly salty…

Dear heaven!

Leonidas dragged in a breath, at a loss for the words he needed to say. He didn’t know what powers this girl used to bewitch him, but even as he struggled to engage his normally incisive brain his body was responding with an urgent message of its own. It was taking all the mental strength he possessed not to rip down her panties, lay her down right here on the marble floor and enjoy the pleasure of having her beneath him, with himself in the driving seat this time. But he had to get her out of this room!

Swiftly his mouth swooped down over hers in a bid to distract her enough to manoeuvre her back into the hall. But he hadn’t reckoned on how distracting her soft mouth would be to him.

Feeling her warm body against his, he could only respond to it in a kiss that went on and on, until they both came up for air and her head dropped back against his shoulder.

A few moments later, lifting her head, she murmured, ‘What is that?’

Leonidas’s spine pulled into a tight, tense rod. All he had succeeded in doing was turning her round, so that their positions were reversed, and she was now looking at the plans he’d set up on an easel. Allowing her to pull out of his arms, he felt the slaying blow of defeat.

Stepping down into the kitchen and dumping the bread bag on the table, bewildered, Kayla couldn’t take it in. There were papers. Lots of papers. A laptop and a memo pad. And what she had thought were sketches looked like some sort of plan…

‘What is it?’ Her eyes skittered from the easel to the table and then the briefcase standing open on the floor. ‘Is it something you’re working on? Some building work…?’

Leonidas took a step towards her. ‘Kayla, I can explain.’

‘Explain?’ She looked at him with confusion in her questioning blue eyes. ‘Explain what?’

What was he doing with what looked like a whole set of plans for some development scheme? And a big, big development scheme by the look of it, she realised, when her gaze swept back over the table. Something proposed by the Vassalio Group—a big, big developer. She knew that much as her eyes took in the recognisable black and gold logo at the top of the plan she was staring at.

‘I don’t understand…’ Why had his cosy farmhouse kitchen taken on the look of some executive’s pad? Why was he looking so serious?

At that moment his cell phone rang from somewhere, shrilling across the sudden pregnant silence.

He pulled it out of the pocket of his robe, his eyes never leaving hers as he intoned incisively, ‘Vassalio.’ And then the penny dropped.

It was like an unashamed declaration directed specifically at her, Kayla thought, realising she had started to tremble.

Vassalio. Leon. Leonidas Vassalio. She knew the name. Of course she did! She’d heard it often enough in the media, seen the company logo on billboards and advertising for commercial developments, but she’d never taken much notice of it until now.

‘You lied to me,’ she accused in a virtual whisper when he cut the call short, feeling so shocked and betrayed that it was almost painful to breathe. ‘You’ve lied to me ever since I got here!’

‘Misled,’ he corrected as he dropped his phone back into his pocket.

As if it made a difference!

‘Most of it was what you assumed.’

‘Hah! Like I assumed I knew who you were when we were doing what we were doing just now?’

Leonidas Vassalio. The man she had just taken advantage of—and who had let her!

‘How could you do it?’ She was referring to the sex, shame creeping over her, scorching her already flushed cheeks. What a laugh he must have been having—and at her expense!

‘You didn’t give me much choice,’ he reminded her dryly.

‘You could have stopped me any time you wanted to!’

‘Really?’ A sceptical eyebrow arched sharply. ‘You think I’m that superhuman?’ His mouth twisted in hard self-derision. ‘Show me any red-blooded man you think would be capable of resisting being dragged out of sleep by a sex-goddess with no panties on.’

He made her feel cheap, and she wished fervently that she could turn back the clock instead of just standing there, hating herself for feeling the burn of desire stir deep down inside her where she was still moist and slightly tender from their spontaneous and unrestrained coming together.

‘If it makes you feel any better,’ he said, running fingers through his long dishevelled hair, ‘I didn’t intend for things to go as far as they did.’

‘Oh, really?’ she shot back, her features distorted with self-disgust. ‘What a bonus it must have been for you when they did!’

‘It wasn’t like that.’ He sounded defensive, exasperated—angry, almost. ‘Why the hell do you think I didn’t take things to their natural conclusion the other day on that island?’

‘Because it was more fun stringing me along.’

‘That isn’t true.’

‘Isn’t it? And what about just now? You wouldn’t have thought twice about doing it again.’

‘That wasn’t my motive,’ he stated decisively. ‘I was trying to coax you into the sitting room so that I could break it to you gently who I am without it flaring up into the mess we find ourselves in now.’

‘You mean instead of me finding out for myself what a rotten lying cheat you really are?’

‘If that’s what you want to believe,’ he rasped, grim-mouthed. ‘But it was never my intention to deceive you.’

‘Why?’ It was a small cry from somewhere deep down inside of her. ‘Why should I believe anything you say?’

‘All right. I deserve that,’ he accepted with no loss of dignity. He clearly wasn’t a man to grovel or to eat humble pie. ‘Look, I apologise for not telling you before now,’ he continued. ‘But I didn’t know who you were when you first arrived. For all I knew you were a snooping journalist on a mission for a story, and I came here for some privacy. To get away from all the media attention and publicity that’s been dogging me over this past year. I wasn’t going to risk losing all that for a girl I didn’t even know. Apart from which, I found it rather refreshing being with someone who wasn’t playing up to me because of the size of my bank balance.’

‘So you used me!’ Kayla breathed. ‘Just for your own amusement.’

‘That isn’t what I’m saying. But if you want to think that, then there’s nothing I can do to stop you.’

‘You could have trusted me enough to tell me the truth!’

He made a self-deprecating sound down his nostrils. ‘A man in my position can’t afford to trust.’

‘Which just goes to show the type of people you mix with,’ she tossed back, refusing to give any quarter. He had lied to her. Deceived her. And, though it was killing her to acknowledge it, that made him no better than Craig.

‘I can’t argue with that,’ Leonidas conceded. ‘But I don’t suppose it would make any difference to tell you that you don’t fall into their category.’

‘You mean because none of the others have been such a push-over as I’ve been?’ Near to tears, it came out almost on a sob, but there was no way in a million years that she was going to let him see that. Forcing aggression into her voice, she uttered, ‘A builder. Hah! You must have been laughing up your exclusive designer sleeve!’

Ignoring that last remark, he said, ‘That was your interpretation when I said I was in construction—which, as you can see…’ he gestured to the plans on the easel, the others on the table ‘…I am.’

‘And you let me think it! That’s worse than lying! That’s…’

‘Kayla, stop it!’ He made a calming gesture with his hands. ‘I can understand how you must feel.’

‘Can you?’ Her eyes were dark and tortured, and her mouth was twisted in wounded accusation. No wonder he’d got nasty about her taking photographs of him in the beginning!

‘I’ve said I’m sorry, haven’t I?’

‘And you think that makes it all right? An apology from the great Leonidas Vassalio!’ Her bitter little laugh made him visibly wince.

‘No, it doesn’t make it all right.’ Beneath the robe his tanned chest fell in hopeless frustration. He hadn’t intended it to sound as dismissive as it had come out. ‘I was constantly aware that I was going to have to tell you sooner or later.’

‘Oh, really?’ Kayla shot him a look of pure incredulity. ‘Like when, exactly? After we’d had sex again?’

‘Kayla, stop it!’ He was moving towards her, but she backed away.

‘So how did you imagine I’d respond?’ She’d come up against a chair, the one where she’d sat that morning after he’d rescued her from the villa, but she didn’t want to think about that now. ‘By being grateful to you?’

‘Which is exactly why I’ve never said anything,’ Leonidas admitted raggedly.

‘Because it would have spoilt your fun!’

‘Because I didn’t want to hurt you.’

‘Oh, you wouldn’t have hurt me, Leon!’ Hadn’t she been hardened by Craig? And before that her father? she reflected bitterly, before tagging on with painful cynicism, ‘I’m sorry. Is it Leon? Or should that be Leonidas now?’

The emphatic distaste she placed on the name everyone knew him by made him flinch. But he couldn’t blame her, he thought. He had misled her, and then been stupid enough to imagine he might be let off lightly when he came clean and admitted it. But she had been hurt too deeply before and he should have known better, he realised. It was crass of him to have thought she would be anything but angry and bitter, especially after finding out in the way she had.

‘You wouldn’t have hurt me, Leonidas,’ she reiterated, in an attempt to ease the pain of another betrayal—and by a man she had believed was different from men like Craig and her father and all the others. A construction worker who’d come here to fish and sketch and live rough for a while because he valued his solitude and his privacy. Except all the time she’d been naïve enough to imagine he’d been sketching he’d been controlling his multi-billion-pound empire! ‘I just wouldn’t have touched you with a bargepole.’

But she had, she thought bitterly, remembering just how eagerly she had touched him—with her mouth and her hands and her whole reckless and stupidly trusting body. Tears stung her eyes as she thanked her lucky stars that she hadn’t quite succeeded in giving him her heart as well.

‘Kayla…’ He made another move towards her, but she backed away again, knocking the chair into the table this time and pushing some of his papers askew. ‘I’m still the same person I was when you were driving me wild for you upstairs.’

‘No, you’re not! You’re as bad as every other company man—’ she breathed it with venom ‘—I’ve ever met. Only worse. Because you’ve arrived! And to think I was trying to suggest things you could do to make life better for yourself!’ She couldn’t believe she could have been so stupid. Such an unbelievable fool!

‘Which I found very endearing,’ he added earnestly.

‘Don’t touch me!’ She made a small panicked sound as he took another step towards her, the thought of what his lips and hands could do to her exciting her in a way that made her feel sick with herself. ‘You know exactly what I think about men like you!’

‘Then we’ve both been misguided,’ he concluded, his shoulders drooping, suddenly seeming to give up trying to placate her. ‘You for taking everything at face value, and I for imagining I could get away with letting you. I just wanted to believe that for a while at least my name and my money weren’t the most important things about me.’

There was something in his voice that had her silently querying the inscrutable emotion in that strong, rugged face. ‘Is that supposed to make me feel bad?’ she challenged. ‘Because it doesn’t.’

‘No. I’ve already told you,’ he persisted. ‘It wasn’t my intention to hurt you, or to let things go as far as they did.’

‘And what about Philomena?’ Her gaze had fallen to the bag with the loaf the woman had lovingly baked for him. ‘Does she know?’ she threw at him, hurting, remembering how eagerly she had driven up here to see him, with nothing but making him want her on her mind. ‘Does she know what a fool you’ve been taking me for? Or didn’t you risk telling her?’

Thick black lashes came down over his incredibly dark eyes. ‘I’ve never taken you for a fool,’ he stated, exhaling deeply. ‘As for Philomena…she knows I had my reasons.’

‘And she went along with them?’ She couldn’t believe that of the gentle yet down-to-earth Philomena.

‘What do you think?’ he said.

She remembered the argument that had ensued the day he’d first taken her down to the cottage, the remonstrations by Philomena since, which seemed to leave him no more than mildly amused.

‘You’re despicable,’ she breathed, as a fragment of memory tugged at her consciousness in relation to something he had said about having had a trying year.

Unscrupulous. Ruthless. Riding roughshod over people. Those were words she had heard in connection with the name Leonidas Vassalio. And then she remembered. It was that stunning American model turned actress—Esmeralda Leigh. She’d publicly named him as having fathered her child. It was she who had called him unscrupulous, when he had challenged the proof of his paternity—though there had been no close-up photograph of him in the article Kayla remembered reading. Just a long shot of him leaving his office, looking rather different from how he looked now, which had been inset in a full-colour spread of Esmeralda lounging in the drawing room of her exquisitely and expensively furnished Mayfair home.

‘Esmeralda was right. You are unscrupulous!’

‘And if you had read the outcome of that fiasco you would have the sense to realise that anything the woman says is fabricated. Her claims were proven to be totally untrue.’

‘Well, she wasn’t the only one who was good at lying, was she?’ Kayla reminded him grievously, realising now what he’d meant that day when he’d referred to a petition being slapped on him. ‘Was it because of her that you decided to get your own back when you met me? Were you afraid if I knew who you were I might try and get pregnant so I could use you as a ticket to an easy life? Well, stuff your money! And stuff you! Not everyone puts as much value on money as on truth and integrity! I might not be in your league when it comes to material wealth, but at least I can hold my head up and know that what you see is what you get. That everything about me is real. You wouldn’t understand that if it was scrawled all over one of your concrete eyesores, and as far as I’m concerned, Mr Vassalio, I never want to see you again!’