LITMIR.BIZ

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cove.

      * * *

      Striding down through the scrub, Leonidas came to where the beach opened out before him and stopped dead in his tracks.

      Kayla was wading, shin-deep, in the translucent blue water, moving shorewards. She was looking down into the water and hadn’t spotted him yet.

      He would have considered the fine white cotton dress she was wearing with its sheer long sleeves and modest yoke demure in any other circumstances, because it made her look almost angelic with her loose blonde hair moving in the breeze. But she had evidently—perhaps unintentionally—allowed the sea to lap too high to preserve her modesty, for now the garment clung wetly to her body, so that the gold of her skin and her small naked breasts were clearly visible beneath.

      As she waded forward the sun struck gold from her hair, illuminating the lustrous gold of lashes that lay against her cheeks as her interest never wavered from the water.

      Transfixed by her beauty, he noticed the grace of her movements, the way her progress changed the light, making her breasts appear indistinct one moment and then tantalisingly defined the next. A virginal siren, tantalising enough to set his masculine hormones ablaze as his gaze swept the length of her tunic, which only reached the tops of her slender thighs.

      She looked up—and when she saw him she put her hand to her mouth in shock. Then her bare feet were running lightly over the shingle towards the white floppy hat he had only just noticed lying discarded nearby.

      ‘I didn’t see you,’ she called out, snatching up the hat that had been covering her ever-present camera and the rest of her things lying there on the shingle.

      ‘Evidently not.’ He couldn’t contain the slow smile that played across his mouth as he noted the purposeful way she covered her wet top with the hat, her own smile feigning nonchalance, as though she didn’t care.

      ‘Have you been standing there long?’

      Not nearly long enough, Leonidas thought, struggling to keep control of his unleashed hormones and the effect she was having on him. He was glad he hadn’t simply worn bathing shorts, as he’d been tempted to do, and instead had donned linen trousers with a loose, casual shirt.

      She had probably had enough of men lusting after her for their own primeval satisfaction—including that fiancé of hers—without having to endure the same kind of treatment from him.

      ‘You shouldn’t go bathing like that without a chaperone,’ he chided softly, the dark lenses of his sunglasses revealing nothing of his thoughts.

      ‘I didn’t mean to.’ Beneath the pale swathe of her hair a modestly clad shoulder lifted almost imperceptibly. ‘The sea was beckoning me while I was paddling and I just got carried away.’

      ‘It has a way of doing that, and before you know it—’ He made a gesture with his hand like a fish taking a dive. ‘It’s nature drawing us back to itself.’

      He saw her golden head tilt and was struck by the vivid clarity of those cornflower-blue eyes as she surveyed him. ‘What a beautiful thing to say.’

      Leonidas laughed. ‘Was it?’ He found himself swallowing and his throat felt dry. He had been accused of expressing himself in many ways in his time, he recalled, but beautifully had never been one of them.

      She had turned round to gather her things and was starting to pull on white cropped leggings.

      ‘How are you getting on with Philomena?’ he asked.

      Thrusting her feet into flip-flops, Kayla retrieved the hat she had momentarily discarded and turned back to face him, keeping its wide brim strategically in place across her breasts.

      ‘She’s great.’ Her face lit up with genuine warmth. ‘She reminds me of my gran.’

      ‘That’s good.’ He knew he was looking self-satisfied as he flipped open the notebook he’d taken out of the back pocket of his trousers. ‘And what does your grandmother think of your being here alone?’ He was in danger of sounding distracted, but it was vital he got something down. Something he’d forget if he didn’t consign it to paper this very instant. ‘Isn’t she afraid you’ll fall prey to some licentious stranger?’

      ‘No.’ Picking up her camera and sunglasses, which she slid onto her head, Kayla pushed a swathe of golden silk back off her shoulder with the aid of the sunscreen bottle she was holding. ‘She died. A few months ago.’

      The sadness in her voice required nothing less than Leonidas’s full attention. ‘I’m sorry.’

      ‘Yes. So am I,’ Kayla responded, reaffirming his suspicion that she had cared a great deal for her elderly relative.

      ‘You were close?’ He didn’t even need to ask.

      She nodded. ‘Mum and I never really were. And after Dad left he was never the loving father type whenever I got to see him, so we just drifted apart over the years. But Gran—Mum’s mum—she filled the void in every way she could.’

      She was looking over her shoulder out to sea but Leonidas knew that she wasn’t seeing the white-crested waves and the indigo blue water. She was hiding emotion—nothing more—because she was embarrassed by it.

      ‘So you lost your fiancé on top of losing a grandmother?’ he commented, with a depth of feeling he wasn’t used to. ‘That’s rough.’

      She shrugged. ‘At least I had Lorna,’ she told him with a ruminative smile. ‘On both counts she was there for me. She helped me through.’

      ‘Tell me about her,’ he said somewhat distractedly Kayla thought as she started walking casually a step or two ahead of him, because he was busy scribbling in a notebook.

      But she told him anyway, about the friend she had known from her first day at school who had come to mean as much as a sister to her. About the interior design work that Lorna and her husband were involved in, and how brilliant they were at what they did, but how, with the state of the market and then losing their biggest customer, things had become extremely difficult for them recently. She even went on to tell him how she might find herself looking for another job if things didn’t improve.

      He wasn’t really listening, she decided, relieved, feeling that she had gabbled on too much.

      ‘What are you writing?’ She stopped on the shingle, turning to him with her chin almost resting on the hat she was still clutching to her beneath her folded arms.

      ‘Just jotting down a few things I don’t want to forget.’ He had snapped the notebook closed and was stuffing it into his back pocket.

      ‘You were sketching.’ Suddenly it dawned. ‘You were sketching me.’

      ‘Leave it, Kayla.’ His words were laced with a warning not to pursue it.

      ‘You were sketching me. Oh, no!’ Kayla hid her face in the wide brim of her hat. How could he? With the ends of her hair all lank and dripping, and she wasn’t even wearing any mascara, let alone a bra! ‘I look like a drowned and lashless rat!’

      ‘You look like an angel,’ Leonidas told her, voicing his earlier thoughts.

      ‘You can’t be serious!’ Kayla protested, bringing her head up, clinging to her crushed hat as her only defence against those shaded yet all-seeing eyes.

      ‘I never joke about beauty. Particularly the beauty of a woman,’ he said, in a voice that seemed to trickle with pure honey.

      And you would have known scores of those! Known just what to say to make them feel like you’re making me feel now, Kayla thought hectically. Weak-kneed and breathless and wanting so much to believe that all he was saying was true!

      She pulled a face, and in spite of everything managed to say with a tremulous little laugh, ‘Does that line usually work?’

      The firm masculine mouth compressed, and she couldn’t seem to drag her gaze from it as he prompted, ‘Does

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