A Greek Escape (12 page)

But was this just a bizarre coincidence? Or had he specifically arranged for Havens to take advantage of Josh and Lorna’s expertise, armed with the knowledge that she, Kayla, worked at Kendon Interiors? Had he known when he’d telephoned her last night that he’d be coming here today? If so, why hadn’t he said so? Or had his intention been to give her the shock of her life? To get his own back for refusing to have dinner with him? Because if it had, he had succeeded. And how!

She couldn’t stop her eyes from straying to him as he began talking business with Josh and Lorna. She couldn’t help noticing how richly his hair gleamed in the light of the window behind him. Nor could she keep her ears from tuning in to the resonant tones of his voice, any more than she could stop the subtle spice of his aftershave lotion acting on her nostrils like some exotic aphrodisiac.

His hands were a magnet for her guarded yet brooding gaze—long, tapered hands that had made her cry out with their tender and manipulative skill. The dark silky hairs that peeped out from under an immaculate shirt cuff were an all too painful reminder of his dark and dangerous virility.

He had been stupendous before. Now he was no less than sensational! A man who would turn heads with his dynamism and that air of unspoken authority. A man who was wealthy
and ruthless and powerful. She’d known that before she’d left the island. But this man she didn’t know at all.

Seeing him in full corporate action, power-dressed and dominating everyone else in the room, she couldn’t believe that this was the man she had taken the initiative with and pleasured so uninhibitedly that last morning, and it left her feeling as mortified as if she had tied him up first and chained him to the bed.

Except that this man could never be chained or dominated…

Heat suffusing her body, she looked up and met his eyes just as he was finishing saying something to Josh about the FT Index. From the smouldering burn of his gaze as it dropped to her fine blouse she knew he had guessed what she was remembering, and from the discreet curve of his mouth she knew, with shaming certainty, that he was remembering it too.

She was glad when the meeting was over, the terms of the contract finalised, and he was preparing to leave. Being polite and courteous for Josh and Lorna’s sakes was beginning to tell on her nerves.

At least he would go now, she thought. And hopefully after today, after he gave Havens the go-ahead to start the process for the contract rolling, she would never have to see him again. She didn’t know why that prospect failed to satisfy her as it should. In fact it left her surprisingly down-spirited.

She just wanted to get back to her office. Get stuck into spreadsheets and invoices and try to forget that Leonidas Vassalio had ever existed.

He was talking to Lorna about the baby, asking her when it was due. Seeing she was no longer needed, Kayla seized the opportunity to excuse herself, and was heading for the door when she heard deep Greek tones request, ‘Could I presume upon you, Josh, to spare your Miss Young for a little while
longer? There are one or two things I need to run through with her, if she’ll be good enough to walk with me back to my car.’

Go to hell!
Kayla wanted to toss back as she pivoted round. But of course she had to be on her best behaviour for her friends’ sake. There was no way she was going to let them down.

‘Take all the time you need,’ she heard Josh saying amiably, unaware of the conflict going on inside her.

Leonidas was holding the door wide for her, his arm outstretched so that she had to duck underneath it, and her startling response to his raw and overpowering masculinity made her voice falter even as she sniped in a hostile whisper, ‘Does everybody
always
jump over themselves to please you?’ She was breathing shallowly, trying to shrug off her involuntary reaction to him, how the heady, tantalising scent of him affected her.

‘Not everybody.’ Amusement laced his tones, but there was something about the look he gave her which excited her even as she rebelled against the way it seemed to promise,
but you will
.

‘Why didn’t you tell me yesterday?’ she remonstrated as soon as they were in the corridor of the modern office unit, keeping her attention on a large potted fern that was benefiting from the light from the wide windows.

‘Tell you what?’

As if he didn’t know!

‘That you were coming here today.’ She was acutely aware of him walking beside her.

‘You didn’t give me the chance.’

‘Really?’ Her head swivelled round from the view across the landscaped business park. ‘I don’t seem to recall you trying to bring it into the conversation.’

‘For what other reason were you imagining I wanted to take you to dinner?’

Colour burned her cheeks at the hard edge to his voice. He was an executive now, Kendon Interiors’ biggest client—or would be when that contract was signed—and with that remark he was reminding her of it in no uncertain terms.

‘Then you should have made your motives more obvious.’

‘Like you’re doing now, in bringing me along here instead of using the lift?’

‘I always prefer to use the stairs.’

‘As you did on your way up?’

Of course, Kayla thought, realising that she had walked right into that one. She should have known that his keen brain would have been attuned to every sound that had heralded her approach. He would have heard the ping of the lift and the door gliding open only seconds before she had come into the room.

‘What’s wrong, Miss Young?’ His deliberate use of her surname seemed mockingly incongruous with the electricity that was crackling between them. Even the light click of her heels against the comparatively sturdy tap of his over the polished floor seemed to stress the glaring differences in their sexualities. ‘Don’t you want to chance the two of us being alone together in a lift?’

Kayla’s heart seemed to stop when he opened the glass fire door onto the next level and her jacket brushed his sleeve as he let her through.

‘Why are you flattering yourself that I’d let that bother me?’

‘Because if you could read my mind, Miss Young, you’d know that I have the strongest urge right now to rip that prim little suit off your body, followed by your blouse and then your—’

‘Do you mind?’ Her heels clicked more agitatedly at all he was suggesting as they came down onto the ground floor. From behind her desk the young receptionist smiled at them as they passed, her eyes feasting appreciatively on Leonidas.

‘Modesty, Miss Young?’ Though his mouth was twitching
at the corners, he kept his eyes on the external glass doors, which slid open to admit them into the morning sunshine. ‘I hadn’t noticed any of that when you were bouncing up and down on my bed.’

‘Stop it!’

‘Why? Can you dismiss it that easily?’ he tossed at her, sounding more impatient now. ‘Because I can’t. Or are you saying you’ve forgotten just how much pleasure we gave each other?’

‘I thought there was something you particularly wanted to discuss with me?’ she parried huskily as her memory banks seemed to burst with erotic images of their time together before she’d found out who he was, that he had lied. ‘If there isn’t, then I’ll get back to my office. I do have things to do, you know.’

‘So do I.’ His words came out on a harsh whisper.

They had reached his car: a sleek dark monster of a thing that put every other vehicle in the car park into the shade. This statement of his wealth and importance was something Kayla should have expected. Nevertheless, it still managed to knock her 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.

A
S
L
EONIDAS 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.’