A Greek Escape - By Elizabeth Power Page 0,29

probably couldn’t afford anything better, she thought. Not like Craig, with his company Jaguar and his inflated expense account. This man would have no such perks. ‘I didn’t mean to laugh about it—honest.’

‘Didn’t you?’ He had emptied his glass with one final long draught. Setting it aside, he came to where Kayla stood with her hand resting on the top of the radiator grid, as though in apology to the vehicle itself. ‘I suppose you measure a man’s status by the type of car he drives, huh?’

‘No.’

‘What would you prefer? A Porsche? Or a Mercedes?’ he asked roughly.

‘Well, both would be nice…’ Her voice tailed off when she noticed how forbidding he looked, and she realised that she wasn’t just imagining that hardening in his voice. ‘I wasn’t making fun of you. Not really,’ she tagged on, suddenly afraid that he might think less of her if he thought she had been. ‘I suppose I was just getting my own back.’

‘For what?’

‘For embarrassing me earlier. Making me feel awkward. When you said I was being too inquisitive about your private life.’

He laughed very softly then, his strong implacable features suddenly losing some of their austerity. His eyes, however, were disturbingly reflective as they rested on her face.

‘And I thought you were doing it just to prompt some reaction from me,’ he murmured silkily, with no apology for silencing her earlier.

‘Prompt some reaction from you?’ Kayla’s throat contracted with heightening sexual tension. ‘Why would I want to do that?’

‘Because I’m probably one of the only men you’ve met who isn’t instantly falling over himself to respond to your temptingly sexy signals.’

‘I’m not giving off any signals!’ Kayla breathed, mortified. ‘And I’m certainly not trying to get your attention.’

‘Aren’t you?’ Those shrewd eyes tugged over her flushed, indignant features, regarding, assessing and stripping her of her deepest and hottest secrets. ‘You wouldn’t have come out here looking like this…’ an all-encompassing glance took in breasts thrust tantalisingly upwards by the shaping of the cups and skimpy briefs barely skimming her abdomen ‘…if you weren’t.’

Shamefully, she wished she had bothered to retrieve her cover-up before flaunting herself in front of him like this. Because that was what she had been doing, she admitted silently. Flaunting herself.

She wanted to say something to redeem herself. Or simply to run away. Anything but stay there and face him like this.

She wished she had run when he suddenly reached up and cupped her cheek, his broad thumb playing across the softness of her pouting lips.

‘If I made love to you, Kayla,’ he said huskily, ‘it would be a fleeting moment’s pleasure. That’s all. No commitment. No strings. And I don’t think you came here to let some man with his own issues to sort out use you like that. A girl like you needs something more than anything I could offer you. Something more meaningful. Not a brief fling to try and forget the man who cheated on you with a few hours of what I can’t deny would be sensational pleasure.’

He was deadly serious, but even his words were exciting her. Or was it his thumb, tracing the curve of her plump lower lip, forcing her to close her eyes against the reckless desire to taste him? To inhale his musky animal scent mingling with the smell of grease and metal and everything that made this man exciting to her?

‘Who said I want you to make love to me?’ she murmured in pointless protest, her eyes inky beneath lashes still half-lowered against his gaze.

‘You’re inviting it with every denial you utter,’ he breathed hoarsely, his voice overlaid with desire. ‘And you’re not so naïve as not to realise that you’re making me as hard as a rock.’

‘You’re wrong!’ she argued breathlessly, and in the only way she knew of saving face she pulled away from him, almost tripping over her own feet in her flip-flops as she virtually ran back to the house.

Upstairs, away from Philomena’s shrewd eyes, she went into the shower-room and peeled off the bikini that seemed to be sticking to her.

Why on earth was she so attracted to him? she berated herself under the cool jets of the shower, trying to lather away the sensual heat from her body and that elusive scent of him that still clung to her skin where he had briefly touched her.

He had admitted himself that he was a man with issues.

Woman issues! Which was why he had shut her up, coming back from the beach today.

Well,