A Greek Escape - By Elizabeth Power Page 0,50

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.

CHAPTER NINE

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