A Greek Escape. Elizabeth Power
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have a signal.
Despairingly tossing the phone onto the passenger seat, she looked around at a Grecian panorama of sea and mountains and, closer to hand, pine woods and stony slopes leading down to this track.
Beyond the open windows of the car the chirruping of crickets in the scrub and the lonely tugging of the wind only seemed to emphasise her isolation. She didn’t have a clue where she was.
Glancing back over her shoulder, she recognised way below the group of rocks that ran seaward from the beach where she had seen that surly local yesterday, and that smaller island in the distance, clear as a bell today beneath the canopy of a rain-washed vividly azure sky.
With the sun beating relentlessly down upon her, with an unusable phone and only a broken-down car for company, Kayla glanced wistfully towards what looked like a deserted farmhouse, with a roof that had seen better days peeping above the trees at the end of the track.
Fat chance she had of making a call from there!
Or did she?
Sticking her head out of the window and inhaling deeply, she caught the distinct smell of woodsmoke drifting towards her on the scented air.
With her spirits soaring, she leaped out of the car, grabbed her precious camera and set off at a pace, her zipped-back sandals kicking up dust along the sun-baked track.
It was the truck she recognised as she came, breathless, into a paved area at the front of the house. A familiar yellow truck that had her stopping in her tracks even before she recognised its owner.
Wild black hair. Wild eyes. Wild expression.
Oh, no!
Coming from around the side of the house, the surly Greek was looking as annoyed as he looked untamed.
And justifiably so, Kayla decided, swallowing. She had invaded his territory again—unintentionally though it was—and she would have run like the wind if she had realised it a second sooner. As it was, she was riveted to the spot by the sheer dynamism of the man.
In blue denim cut-offs and nothing else but a dark tan leather waistcoat, exposing his chest and muscular arms, he exuded strength and raw, virile masculinity.
‘I thought I told you to stay away from me,’ he called out angrily to her, his long, purposeful strides closing the distance between them. ‘What do you want?’ As if he didn’t know! Leonidas thought, his scowling gaze dropping to the camera clutched tightly against her ribcage. ‘Didn’t you get enough photographs yesterday?’
He looked bigger and distinctly more threatening than he had the previous day, Kayla decided, unnerved. If that were possible!
‘I…I just want to use your phone,’ she informed him, ignoring his accusation and annoyed with herself for sounding so defensive, for allowing him to intimidate her in such a way.
‘My phone?’
She could feel her body tingling beneath the penetrative heat of his gaze. Her T-shirt and shorts felt much too inadequate beside such potent masculinity.
‘You do have one?’ she asked pointedly, trying not to let his unfriendliness get to her. From the way he’d queried her request she might have been asking him to give her a mortgage on Crete! ‘My car…’ She hated having to tell him as she sent a glance back over her shoulder. ‘It’s broken down.’
He peered in the direction she’d indicated. But of course he couldn’t see it, she realised, because it was way down the track, hidden by trees and scrub. And all she could focus on right then was the undulating muscles of his smooth and powerful chest, which was glistening bronze—slick with sweat.
‘Really? And what seems to be the trouble?’ he enquired with the sceptical lifting of an eyebrow. He looked at her with such disturbing intensity that Kayla felt as if her strength was being sapped right out of her.
Beneath the thick sweep of his lashes his eyes were amazingly dark, she noticed reluctantly. His nose was proud, his cheekbones high and hard, his mouth firm and well-defined above the dark, virile shadow around his jaw. As for his body…
She wanted to look at him and keep looking at him. All of him, she realised, shocked. She was even more shocked to realise that she had never been so aware of a man’s sensuality before. Not even Craig’s. But he had asked her a question, and all she was doing was standing here wondering how spectacular he would look naked.
Trying to keep her eyes off that very masculine chest, she uttered with deliberate vagueness, ‘It won’t go.’
That glorious chest lifted as he inhaled deeply. ‘Won’t move or won’t start?’ he demanded to know.
Entertaining a half-crazed desire to needle him, Kayla answered with mock innocence, ‘It’s the same thing, isn’t it?’
Now, as those glinting dark eyes pierced the rebellious depths of hers, she realised that this man would know when he was being taken for a fool, and warned herself against the inadvisability of antagonising him.
‘Does the engine fire when you turn the ignition key?’ he asked, his sweat-slicked chest lifting again with rising impatience.
‘No. Nothing happens at all,’ she told him, frankly this time. ‘So if you could just let me use your phone—if you have a signal—or if you don’t…if you have a landline…’ A dubious glance up at the house had her wondering if it had fallen into the state it was in long before telephones had been invented.
‘It’s Sunday,’ he reminded her succinctly. ‘Who are you going to call?’
She shrugged. ‘The nearest garage?’ she suggested flippantly, hoping the man whose name she had been given for emergencies would be at home. In fact Lorna had said to call her if she needed any help or advice, and right now Kayla felt she’d get more help from her friend back in England than the capable-looking hunk standing just a metre away.
Suddenly, without another word, he was walking past her.
‘Show me,’ he said over his leather-clad shoulder, much to her surprise.
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…