boiled down to guilt, he decided shamefully. Guilt because he wasn’t telling her the truth.
But the truth was that he had come here to be alone. Not to indulge in any social or sexual entanglements with a girl who could carry him along with her ridiculous yet infectious sense of make-believe. Well, make-believe to her, at any rate. Because he could afford that island, had it been for sale—and a dozen like it, did she but know it. But it seemed like a lifetime since he had indulged in that childish game, and he had found it oddly refreshing.
In the world he moved in there was no room for fantasising or dreaming. Only for cold hard facts and figures. Securing deals. That was living the dream. Or so he had thought.
Until now, though, he hadn’t begun to realise how deeply and for how long his dreams had been buried. Firstly by his father, and then more recently beneath the weight of his own responsibilities. He had been so busy making money—reaping the benefits of all he had worked for during the past decade or more—that he hadn’t taken the time even to question where those dreams had gone. And now this little nobody had come along, making him question his values. He was annoyed with himself for allowing her to get under his skin to such a degree. But that didn’t change the fact that he wanted her more than he had wanted any woman in a long time—much less one who would have been in her own marriage bed right now if things had worked out as they should have.
A hard possessiveness kicked in as he imagined her naked with the faceless, double-crossing character who had betrayed her—he could only temper his indignation at the thought of the two of them together by imagining himself in Kayla’s bed. And that brought other problems as his body hardened in response to imagining her sobs of pure pleasure directed at him and him alone as he made himself master of her body.
But things couldn’t go on as they were. He was either going to have to come clean at some stage, he decided grimly, or end their relationship before it went any further. Neither prospect filled him with any pleasure.
He knew exactly what she thought about company men, and after the experience she had had with that lowest of the low fiancé of hers—not to mention her father—she’d be blameless for thinking he was no better. Yet staying away from her wasn’t an option he welcomed either. He was just relieved that his secretary had e-mailed him with some plans that needed his urgent attention, so that for today at least he didn’t have to think about how he could come clean with Kayla. However he chose to tell her, he knew she wasn’t going to welcome finding out...
* * *
When Leon didn’t put in an appearance that day, and didn’t come down the next morning, Kayla jumped at Philomena’s suggestion that she drive up to the farmhouse with some bread Philomena had just baked.
She’d scarcely given a thought to her ex since Leon had taken her over to that island, she realised, noticing how it seemed to shimmer in the morning sun. She couldn’t help marvelling at the difference between the two men and wondering what she had ever seen in Craig.
Had her love for him been so shallow that the first man who came along could make her forget him and the hurt he had caused her so completely? But then Leon wasn’t just any man, she reminded herself, with a sudden tightening of her breasts and that familiar stirring of heat at the very heart of her femininity. He made her feel like no other man had ever made her feel.
A throbbing excitement leaped along her veins at the memory of their afternoon on that islet, when he had driven her crazy for him, playing with her like a love-toy, winding her up only to let her run wild with delirious sensation as he had taken her to heights her mental and physical being had never scaled before.
She had wanted him so much! And it had been patently obvious that he wanted her. So why hadn’t he taken their lovemaking to its ultimate conclusion? Was it because there was someone else? But he had called her imaginative when she had broached the subject with him, so perhaps it was simply that he didn’t think she was ready to embark on a relationship with him—in which case, she decided with a delicious little shiver, it was up to her to show him that she was.
When she arrived at the farmhouse her heart gave a little leap when she saw the truck parked outside.
So he was in! She wondered if she was being too presumptuous in coming. Supposing he didn’t want to see her? Or she’d disappointed him in some way?
Feeling queasy in the stomach just from entertaining that possibility, she tripped lightly round to the glass-paned peeling doors at the back of the house. One creaked open at her less than confident knock.
When she called out there was no reply, and so gingerly she moved inside, still calling his name. He wasn’t in the sitting room, and nor did he emerge from the kitchen when she moved enquiringly towards it.
Perhaps he’d gone for a walk, she mused, standing there in the hall, wondering what to do.
About to take a look outside, she heard a sudden thud on the boarded floor above. She dumped her carrier bag with the bread she’d brought on an old pine chest just inside the door.
‘Leon?’ she called out, and when there was still no response, unthinkingly she raced up the stairs.
His bedroom was in shadow, with semi-closed shutters, but a quick glance towards the bed revealed him lying there on his back, still drugged from sleep, groping blindly for something on the floor on the other side of the bed.
Kayla moved over and, picking up a chunky little clock, replaced it on the cabinet beside the bedside lamp.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked, knowing what an early bird he usually was. It was already after ten and she’d obviously woken him, she realised, guessing he’d reached for the clock and knocked it over when he’d heard her calling him.
‘I must have crashed out,’ he mumbled, drawing an arm across his forehead. His eyes were heavy with sleep and his hair was dishevelled and, like his unshaven jaw, satanically dark. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I brought you some bread. I thought you were out, but the door was open,’ Kayla responded with a nervous gesture of her hand. She was aware that she was gabbling, but it was difficult to do anything else when faced with the sight of his bronzed body, naked save for the fine sheet that barely covered his hips and certainly left nothing to the imagination. ‘Aren’t you pleased to see me?’
‘What do you think?’ he drawled, in a voice thickened by sleep and by the involuntary response of his anatomy.
Heated colour touched Kayla’s cheeks and yet she couldn’t keep her gaze from straying to his potent virility. Driven by something more powerful than her own reasoning, she dropped down onto the bed.
‘I think you must be overjoyed,’ she whispered, touching kisses to the warm, undulating muscles of his chest, using the pale, sensuous fountain of her hair to caress him as her lips moved over the tautened flesh of his tight lean waist and her hands dealt tremblingly with the sheet.
He let out a deep shuddering gasp of anticipation. ‘Why did you come?’ he asked heavily.
‘I just thought that one good turn deserved another,’ Kayla whispered, feathering kisses over his tightly muscled abdomen. She didn’t know where she was finding the courage to seduce him like this. She only knew by instinct alone that he was a man who liked his women confident and worldly, not wimpish and nursing the old wounds of a previous relationship.
‘Close your eyes,’ she ordered softly, getting up.
Leonidas’s
