Джеки Браун – Greek Bachelors: Tempted To A Fling: A Greek Escape / Greek for Beginners / My Sexy Greek Summer (страница 23)
‘Which I found very endearing,’ he added earnestly.
‘Don’t touch me!’ She made a small panicked sound as he took another step towards her, the thought of what his lips and hands could do to her exciting her in a way that made her feel sick with herself. ‘You know exactly what I think about men like you!’
‘Then we’ve both been misguided,’ he concluded, his shoulders drooping, suddenly seeming to give up trying to placate her. ‘You for taking everything at face value, and I for imagining I could get away with letting you. I just wanted to believe that for a while at least my name and my money weren’t the most important things about me.’
There was something in his voice that had her silently querying the inscrutable emotion in that strong, rugged face. ‘Is that supposed to make me feel bad?’ she challenged. ‘Because it doesn’t.’
‘No. I’ve already told you,’ he persisted. ‘It wasn’t my intention to hurt you, or to let things go as far as they did.’
‘And what about Philomena?’ Her gaze had fallen to the bag with the loaf the woman had lovingly baked for him. ‘Does she know?’ she threw at him, hurting, remembering how eagerly she had driven up here to see him, with nothing but making him want her on her mind. ‘Does she know what a fool you’ve been taking me for? Or didn’t you risk telling her?’
Thick black lashes came down over his incredibly dark eyes. ‘I’ve never taken you for a fool,’ he stated, exhaling deeply. ‘As for Philomena...she knows I had my reasons.’
‘And she went along with them?’ She couldn’t believe that of the gentle yet down-to-earth Philomena.
‘What do you think?’ he said.
She remembered the argument that had ensued the day he’d first taken her down to the cottage, the remonstrations by Philomena since, which seemed to leave him no more than mildly amused.
‘You’re despicable,’ she breathed, as a fragment of memory tugged at her consciousness in relation to something he had said about having had a trying year.
Unscrupulous. Ruthless. Riding roughshod over people. Those were words she had heard in connection with the name Leonidas Vassalio. And then she remembered. It was that stunning American model turned actress—Esmeralda Leigh. She’d publicly named him as having fathered her child. It was she who had called him unscrupulous, when he had challenged the proof of his paternity—though there had been no close-up photograph of him in the article Kayla remembered reading. Just a long shot of him leaving his office, looking rather different from how he looked now, which had been inset in a full-colour spread of Esmeralda lounging in the drawing room of her exquisitely and expensively furnished Mayfair home.
‘Esmeralda was right. You are unscrupulous!’
‘And if you had read the outcome of that fiasco you would have the sense to realise that anything the woman says is fabricated. Her claims were proven to be totally untrue.’
‘Well, she wasn’t the only one who was good at lying, was she?’ Kayla reminded him grievously, realising now what he’d meant that day when he’d referred to a petition being slapped on him. ‘Was it because of her that you decided to get your own back when you met me? Were you afraid if I knew who you were I might try and get pregnant so I could use you as a ticket to an easy life? Well, stuff your money! And stuff you! Not everyone puts as much value on money as on truth and integrity! I might not be in your league when it comes to material wealth, but at least I can hold my head up and know that what you see is what you get. That everything about me is real. You wouldn’t understand that if it was scrawled all over one of your concrete eyesores, and as far as I’m concerned, Mr Vassalio, I never want to see you again!’
‘I HAD HOPED your time in Greece would make you feel better,’ remarked Yasmin Young, an abrupt and artificially blonde forty-five-year-old to Kayla, who had just come downstairs and declined her mother’s offer to cook her breakfast. ‘But ever since you’ve been back you haven’t eaten properly. You’re too thin. And you’ve been going around like someone who’s lost a shilling and found sixpence. I was right when I said you were unwise, cutting your holiday short like that. I’ve told you before,’ she reiterated, going over what seemed to Kayla like a mantra from her mother these days. ‘He isn’t worth wasting any more time over, you know. None of them are.’
She was talking about Craig. Kayla hadn’t told her mother anything about meeting anyone while she had been away. But the maternal advice applied equally to how she was feeling about Leonidas—and had been ever since she’d returned to the UK on that wet and windy mid-May morning, hurting and feeling so gullible and betrayed. And all because she had been stupid enough to get herself emotionally involved with a man right out of the same mould as Craig, her father and all the others. Because she had, Kayla thought, berating herself—even if she had only realised it when it was too late.
‘I know,’ she responded now, even managing to feign a smile as she poured herself a hasty cup of coffee. She shook her head at her mother’s concerned suggestion that she should at least try and eat some toast.
‘I’d better go or I’ll be late,’ she said, rushing out of the door without bothering to finish her coffee.
At least she wasn’t out of work and dependent upon her mother to help support her, she thought in an attempt to brighten herself up as she sat in heavy traffic on her way to work. At least she still had a job. And it promised to be a potentially permanent one if Josh and Lorna managed to land the huge contract they had been hoping to secure for the past few weeks.
It would be the break they needed and they were both beside themselves with excitement—particularly as their potential client was Havens Exclusive, a company that provided luxury homes and apartments for the higher end of the market. Kayla was keeping her fingers crossed for them both.
Without her having to worry about things like whether Kendon Interiors would still be trading this time next year, Lorna might have a chance with her pregnancy this time, she thought, hoping fervently that her friend would be able to carry this baby to full term. And being busy again could only be good for her too, Kayla decided, because apart from the satisfaction of being able to stay in a job she enjoyed, it helped keep her mind off Leonidas.
She hadn’t heard from him since that morning she had stormed out of the farmhouse. Not that she’d wanted to, or even imagined that she would. He didn’t know where to find her, for a start.
She’d wasted no time in leaving the island after driving back to Philomena’s that last morning, having discovered that there was a ferry leaving that day.
‘Leon...he good man,’ Philomena, having guessed what had happened, had tried to tell her gently. He could act stupidly sometimes. Like most men! At least that was what the woman had seemed to be saying with her gestures and a world-weary rolling of her eyes.
Well, he hadn’t shown any evidence of his virtuous qualities with her! Kayla seethed, still hurting from the way he had deceived her, even though it was more than six weeks on. She tried not to think about how he had rescued her that night in the storm and helped her with the clean-up operation the following day. Nor did she want to think about the affection he’d shown towards Philomena. Remembering just filled her with longing, and with such an aching regret that things couldn’t have been different that at times it almost took her breath away. He was a rat when all was said and done. She didn’t need him or want him! And she certainly never intended to be so taken in by anyone again! So why did she spend every waking moment trying not to think about him? Why did the thought of never seeing him again leave her feeling so down and depressed?
Fortunately the buzz around the office kept any further disturbing introspection at bay, since one of Havens’ senior management team was coming in to meet with Josh and Lorna the following day.
‘They’ve already been through our history and our previous trading figures, and now I think they just want to give us the once-over,’ Lorna remarked anxiously. Her mid-length bobbed hair was coming out of the clips she had tried to fasten it with as she despaired of her devoted but untidy husband’s muddle of an office. Like Kayla, she was blonde and petite—apart from her burgeoning middle—which was why they had often been taken for sisters, Kayla reflected fondly, knowing she couldn’t have cared more for Lorna if she had been her sibling.
Consequently, having worked late to help tidy up Josh’s office and prepare the conference room for what they hoped would be the final meeting, Kayla was getting ready to go home when the telephone rang in her office.
‘Hello, Kayla.’
She almost froze, recognising Leonidas Vassalio’s deeply accented voice at the other end of the line.
‘How did you find me?’ Stupid question. A man with his money and influence would have ways and means, she realised, her pulses leaping. Or had she told him where she worked? She couldn’t even think clearly enough to remember.