TWO
THE THREE-MILE drive to the main village to get provisions had seemed like an easy enough mission, particularly when last night’s storm had caused a power cut and made her fridge stop working.
Unless the thing had broken before then, Kayla thought exasperated, having come downstairs this morning to a cabinet of decidedly warm and smelly food.
But the polished voice of the car’s satellite navigation system had let her down badly when it had guided her along this track. And now, having parked the car in order to consult the map and try and work out where she was, the little hatchback that her friends kept here for whenever they visited the island refused to start.
She tried again, her teeth clenched with tension.
‘Come on,’ she appealed desperately to the engine. ‘Please.’
It was no good, she realised, slumping back on her seat. It had well and truly packed up.
Lorna had given her the name of someone she could call in an emergency who spoke relatively good English, Kayla remembered, fishing in the glove compartment for the man’s number. But when she took her cell phone out of her bag she discovered that she didn’t 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
