A Greek Escape by Elizabeth Power Page A

pleasure.
    ‘Well…’
    Her sudden hesitancy stopped him in his tracks. Battling to control his raging anatomy, he didn’t turn around, his breath locking in his lungs as he heard her tentative little suggestion behind him.
    ‘If you could just give me a minute…?’
    He swung round then, his desire veiled by his immense powers of self-control. His eyes, as they clashed with hers, were smouldering with a dark intensity and he saw an answering response in the darkening blue of hers that was as hungry as it was guarded.
    Almost cleverly guarded, he thought, but not quite enough. She was as on fire for him as he was for her, he recognised, regardless of any feelings she might still be harbouring over that louse who had let her down.
    Kayla, as she stood there, captured by the powerful hold of his gaze, felt a skein of excitement unravelling inside her and knew that a watershed had been reached. That with one look and one inconsequential unfinished sentence a silent understanding had somehow passed between them. She had crossed a bridge that was already burning behind her and she knew there could be no turning back.
    ‘No rowing boat today?’ Kayla remarked, surprised when, after driving them to a beach further along the coast, Leon guided her towards a small motor boat moored alongside awooden jetty. ‘I didn’t think you’d be seen dead in anything less than fifty years old!’ she said laughingly.
    ‘Didn’t you?’ he drawled, with a challenging and deliciously sensual gleam in his eyes as he handed her into the boat. ‘Contrary to your thinking,
hrisi mou
, I can…’ he hesitated, thinking of the words ‘…come good when circumstances demand.’
    ‘And
do
circumstances demand?’ she enquired airily, in spite of her pulse, which was racing from his nearness and his softly spoken endearment.
    ‘Oh, yes,’ he breathed with barely veiled meaning. ‘I think they do.’
    It was a day of delight and surprises.
    With effortless dexterity Leonidas steered the boat through the sparkling blue water, following the rocky coast of his own island to begin with, and pointing out coves and deserted beaches only accessible from the sea.
    Having a field-day with her camera, Kayla lapped up the magic of her surroundings whilst using every opportunity to grab secretive and not so secretive shots of this dynamic man she was with: at the wheel, in profile, with his brow furrowed in concentration, or turning to talk to her with that sexy, sidelong pull of his mouth that never failed to do funny things to her stomach. She captured him looking out over the dark body of water they were cutting through, his T-shirt pulled taut across his broad muscular back, his black hair as windswept as hers from the exhilarating speed at which they were travelling.
    She’d need to remember, she realised almost desperately, wondering why it was so important to her to capture everything about this holiday. This island. These precious few hours. This man.
    Suddenly aware, he glanced over his shoulder and, easing back on the throttle, said challengingly, ‘Don’t you thinkyou’ve taken enough?’ She was about to make some quip about it being her ‘fix’, but he cut across her before she could with, ‘What are you going to do? Put them on the internet?’
    With a questioning look at him, not sure how to take what he’d said, she pretended to be considering it, and with a half-tantalising, half-nervous little giggle, answered, ‘I might.’
    ‘You do that and our association ends right now.’ His contesting tone and manner caused her to flinch.
    ‘If you’re that concerned, then keep it,’ she invited, holding the camera out to him. She hadn’t forgotten what a private person he was. ‘I promise I’m not going to publish them on the web, but take it if you don’t trust me not to.’
    For a moment her candour made Leonidas hold back. How could he demand or even expect integrity from her when he wasn’t being straight