A Greek Escape

She virtually had to run to keep up with him.

When they reached the car he held out a hand for the key and Kayla dropped it onto his tanned palm, noticing the cool economy with which he moved as he opened the driver’s door and leaned inside to start the ignition.

It fired first time.

‘I don’t understand…’ She turned from the traitorous little vehicle to face the man who had now straightened and was standing there looking tall and imposing and so self-satisfied that she could have kicked him—or the car. Or both! ‘I tried and tried,’ she stressed, with all the conviction she could muster, because scepticism was stamped on every plane and angle of his hard, handsome face.

He reached into the car again, switched off the engine and, dangling the key in front of her, said in his heavily accented voice, ‘Perhaps you would care to try again?’

She jumped into the car, keeping her defiant gaze level with his, almost willing the little hatchback to refuse to start for her. Because how on earth was he going to believe her if it did?

It did.

She flopped back against the headrest, her eyes closing with a mixture of relief and rising frustration.

‘There, you see. It’s simple when you know how.’

There was no mistaking the cool derision that drifted down to her through the open door, and suddenly Kayla’s control snapped.

‘It wouldn’t start! I couldn’t make it! And if you think I made it all up for some warped reason, just to come here and annoy you, then, believe me, I’ve got far more important things to do with my time! My phone won’t work! My sat-nav’s up the creek! And Lorna’s fridge has broken down and ruined all the food I bought. And all you can do is stand there and accuse me of lying! Well, I can assure you, Mr… Mr…’

‘Leon.’

She looked up at him askance, her blue eyes glistening with angry tears. ‘What?’

‘My name is Leon,’ he repeated. ‘And who is this Lorna you mention? Your travelling companion?’

‘No. I’m here on my own,’ Kayla blurted out without even thinking. A totally frustrating morning had finally taken its toll. ‘Lorna owns the villa where I’m staying.’ Lorna who—with her husband Josh—had miraculously come to her rescue by offering her a post in their interior design company after Kayla had found it too distressing to stay on at her old job.

‘And you say the fridge has broken down?’

‘Big-time!’ What was he going to do? Drive down and check that she wasn’t lying about that as well?

‘Have you eaten?’

‘What?’

His hand came to rest on the roof of the car as he stooped to address her through the open door. ‘I know I’m Greek and you’re English, but you seem to be having great difficulty in understanding me. I said, have you eaten?’

‘No.’

‘Then drive up to the house,’ he instructed. ‘I’ll be along directly.’

What? Kayla nearly said it again, only just stopping herself in time.

He was offering her hospitality? Surely not, she thought, amazed. He was hard, unfriendly, and a perfect stranger to boot.

Well, not perfect, she decided grudgingly. Only in appearance, she found herself silently admitting. Whatever else he was, he was lethally attractive. But some masochistic and warped urge to know more about him—along with the thought of all that festering food she was going to have to throw away—motivated her, against her better judgement, into doing what he had suggested.

He had almost reached the paved yard by the time Kayla put her camera in the boot, out of the sun, having decided it was for the best since it seemed to offend him so much. Involuntarily, her gaze was drawn to his approach.

Unconsciously her eyes savoured the whole sensational length and breadth of him, from those wide shoulders and muscular arms to that glistening bronze chest and tightly muscled waist, right down to his narrow denim-clad hips. Very masculine legs ended in a pair of leather sandals, dusty from his trek along the track.

There was a humourless curl to his mouth, she noticed as he drew nearer, as though he were fully aware of her reluctant interest in him.

‘Around the back,’ he advised with a toss of his chin, and waited for her to go ahead of him.

That small act of courtesy seemed oddly at variance with his manners on the whole, she decided, preceding him around the side of the rambling old farmhouse.

Don’t talk to any strange men. Never take sweets from a stranger.

Wondering what she was doing, ignoring all those clichéd warnings, Kayla realised her mother would have a fit if she could see her now.

‘So…are you going to tell me something about yourself?’ Leon whoever-he-was enquired deeply from just behind her.

‘Like what?’ she responded, still walking on ahead.

‘Your name would be a good start,’ he suggested incisively.

They had come around to the rear of the house, where weed-strewn shady terraces gave onto an equally overgrown garden.

‘It’s Kayla,’ she told him, following his example and deciding that last names were superfluous.

‘Kayla?’

Despite his overall unfriendliness, the way he repeated her name was like the warm Ionian wind that blew up from the sea, rippling through the tufted grass on the arid hills. An unexpected little sensation quivered through her. Or was it the sun that seemed to be burning her cheeks? The warm breeze that was lifting the almost imperceptibly fine hairs on her arms?

‘Come.’ He gestured to a rustic bench under a canopy of vines. Nearby were some smouldering logs within a purpose-built circle of bricks. Resting on a stone beside it was a grid containing several small plump, freshly prepared fish, their scales gleaming silver in the late morning sun.

‘Did you catch those yourself?’ She’d noticed a rod and fishing tackle in the back of his truck, and wondered if he went out every day to fish from the boat she’d seen him unloading the previous day.

‘Yes, about an hour ago.’ He was squatting down, repositioning a log on the fire. ‘What’s wrong?’ he enquired, looking up at her when she still stood there, saying nothing. ‘Are you vegetarian?’

She had been silently marvelling at how only this morning those fish had been in the sea—how he had already been down there, brought them back and prepared them for his lunch—but there was no way she was going to tell him that.

‘No,’ she replied, watching him place the grid on the bricks over the glimmering logs.

‘Then sit down,’ he commanded, before he turned and strode back into the house.

Left alone, Kayla took a few moments to study its sadly neglected exterior. With its ramshackle appearance, and the odd wild creeper growing out of its walls, it seemed almost to have become part of the hillside that rose steeply above it on one side. She wondered if it might just be a place he had found where it was convenient for him to shack up, and then looked quickly away as he emerged from inside with plates and cutlery and several different kinds of bread in a hand-painted bowl.

‘Do I take it that you don’t want any?’ he called out, noticing that she was still standing where he had left her.

The fish were starting to cook, skins bubbling, their aroma drifting up to her with the woodsmoke, tantalising and sweet.

‘No,’ she refuted quickly, sitting down on the bench, and earned herself the twitch of a smile from that mocking, masculine mouth as he set the plates and cutlery down on a small, intricately wrought iron table that looked as though it had seen every winter for decades. ‘So, why are you asking me to lunch if you want to be left alone?’

‘Good question,’ he responded without looking at her. He was using a fish slice to turn their lunch. Spitting oil splashed onto the glowing logs, making them sizzle. ‘Perhaps it’s the best way of keeping an eye on you,’ he said when he had finished.