A Greek Escape - By Elizabeth Power Page 0,66

yard, and the sound only seemed to emphasise its screaming loneliness.

Her heart heavy with grief, Kayla got into the car, fighting back the emotion she could barely contain. But she knew she had to, because if she let it out for just a moment then she’d be swamped by it, she thought. By memories that were so much a part of this place. And Leonidas…

Her cell phone was sticking out of the bag she’d tossed onto the passenger seat, jolting her into remembering that she was supposed to try and contact him again.

Did he know? About Philomena? And then she realised that of course he would know. He would be heartbroken, she thought. In which case how could she ring him and ask him about something so trivial as a contract? She couldn’t. Anyway, his office had told her that he hadn’t come to Athens. And yet his London office had stated categorically that he had…

Of course!

Her gaze lifted swiftly to the hillside and the invisible ribbon of road that wound up above Lorna’s villa. He would have been told about Philomena and he would have come here to be with her family. Because she was his family. Or the only person worth calling ‘family’ that Leonidas Vassalio had. In which case he would be here! Not in Athens! Here! At the farmhouse! Where else would he stay?

She didn’t know if the little hatchback would stand up to the punishing drive as she tore out of the lane and took the zig-zagging road up to the familiar dirt track. She only knew she had to see him. She prayed to heaven that he would be there, and that he wouldn’t send her away.

The farmhouse looked the same as she swung into the paved yard. Pale stone walls. Green peeling shutters. Its rickety terracotta roof seeming to grow out of the hillside rising sharply above it. The truck was still there too, looking as dusty and as sorry for itself as it ever had.

No one answered when she knocked at the flaking door.

Coming around the back, she noticed how baked everything looked from the hot, Ionian summer, remembering with a sharp shaft of pain how she had sat there on the terrace under that vine-covered canopy, enjoying the fish Leonidas had cooked for her the first time she had come here.

Again, there was no response to her knock, and after several attempts to make him hear she tried the doors. They were locked, just as Philomena’s had been.

Everything was the same, but nothing was, she thought achingly, peering through one of the half-open shutters. Supposing he had gone? Supposing he hadn’t been here at all? She couldn’t bear it if he wasn’t. She didn’t think she’d ever find the courage to face him again.

She could see papers lying all over the kitchen table, just as there had been on that dreadful morning when she’d seduced him so shamelessly before discovering who he really was. And there was his pinboard with his plans on, propped up against the easel.

So he was immersing himself in work. Was that how he was dealing with his grief? Carrying on regardless with that formidable strength of character? That indomitable will that was such an integral part of the man she had so desperately fallen in love with?

A sound like a twig snapping behind her had her whirling round, her pulses missing a beat and then leaping into overdrive when she saw him striding up through the overgrown garden.

‘What are you doing here?’ He spoke in such a low whisper that she couldn’t tell whether he welcomed seeing her, but his eyes were penetrating and his features were scored with shock.

‘I came to check the villa. For the builder. I mean for Lorna.’ She was waffling, but she couldn’t help it. Just the sight of him, in a loose-fitting, long-sleeved white shirt tucked into black denim jeans seemed to be turning her insides to mush.

He looked like the old Leon, with his chest half-bared and that thickening shadow around his mouth and chin. But his hair—only slightly longer than when she had seen him last—was still immaculately groomed, and with that air of power that Kayla could never detach from him now he was still very much Leonidas—the billionaire. He looked leaner, though, she decided, and his eyes were heavy, and she remembered in that moment that he was in mourning.

‘I—I heard about Philomena.’ She made a helpless little gesture. ‘Just now. I went down there. I’m