LITMIR.BIZ

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      ‘I can’t argue with that,’ Leonidas conceded. ‘But I don’t suppose it would make any difference to tell you that you don’t fall into their category.’

      ‘You mean because none of the others have been such a push-over as I’ve been?’ Near to tears, it came out almost on a sob, but there was no way in a million years that she was going to let him see that. Forcing aggression into her voice, she uttered, ‘A builder. Hah! You must have been laughing up your exclusive designer sleeve!’

      Ignoring that last remark, he said, ‘That was your interpretation when I said I was in construction—which, as you can see...’ he gestured to the plans on the easel, the others on the table ‘...I am.’

      ‘And you let me think it! That’s worse than lying! That’s...’

      ‘Kayla, stop it!’ He made a calming gesture with his hands. ‘I can understand how you must feel.’

      ‘Can you?’ Her eyes were dark and tortured, and her mouth was twisted in wounded accusation. No wonder he’d got nasty about her taking photographs of him in the beginning!

      ‘I’ve said I’m sorry, haven’t I?’

      ‘And you think that makes it all right? An apology from the great Leonidas Vassalio!’ Her bitter little laugh made him visibly wince.

      ‘No, it doesn’t make it all right.’ Beneath the robe his tanned chest fell in hopeless frustration. He hadn’t intended it to sound as dismissive as it had come out. ‘I was constantly aware that I was going to have to tell you sooner or later.’

      ‘Oh, really?’ Kayla shot him a look of pure incredulity. ‘Like when, exactly? After we’d had sex again?’

      ‘Kayla, stop it!’ He was moving towards her, but she backed away.

      ‘So how did you imagine I’d respond?’ She’d come up against a chair, the one where she’d sat that morning after he’d rescued her from the villa, but she didn’t want to think about that now. ‘By being grateful to you?’

      ‘Which is exactly why I’ve never said anything,’ Leonidas admitted raggedly.

      ‘Because it would have spoilt your fun!’

      ‘Because I didn’t want to hurt you.’

      ‘Oh, you wouldn’t have hurt me, Leon!’ Hadn’t she been hardened by Craig? And before that her father? she reflected bitterly, before tagging on with painful cynicism, ‘I’m sorry. Is it Leon? Or should that be Leonidas now?’

      The emphatic distaste she placed on the name everyone knew him by made him flinch. But he couldn’t blame her, he thought. He had misled her, and then been stupid enough to imagine he might be let off lightly when he came clean and admitted it. But she had been hurt too deeply before and he should have known better, he realised. It was crass of him to have thought she would be anything but angry and bitter, especially after finding out in the way she had.

      ‘You wouldn’t have hurt me, Leonidas,’ she reiterated, in an attempt to ease the pain of another betrayal—and by a man she had believed was different from men like Craig and her father and all the others. A construction worker who’d come here to fish and sketch and live rough for a while because he valued his solitude and his privacy. Except all the time she’d been naïve enough to imagine he’d been sketching he’d been controlling his multi-billion-pound empire! ‘I just wouldn’t have touched you with a bargepole.’

      But she had, she thought bitterly, remembering just how eagerly she had touched him—with her mouth and her hands and her whole reckless and stupidly trusting body. Tears stung her eyes as she thanked her lucky stars that she hadn’t quite succeeded in giving him her heart as well.

      ‘Kayla...’ He made another move towards her, but she backed away again, knocking the chair into the table this time and pushing some of his papers askew. ‘I’m still the same person I was when you were driving me wild for you upstairs.’

      ‘No, you’re not! You’re as bad as every other company man—’ she breathed it with venom ‘—I’ve ever met. Only worse. Because you’ve arrived! And to think I was trying to suggest things you could do to make life better for yourself!’ She couldn’t believe she could have been so stupid. Such an unbelievable fool!

      ‘Which I found very endearing,’ he added earnestly.

      ‘Don’t touch me!’ She made a small panicked sound as he took another step towards her, the thought of what his lips and hands could do to her exciting her in a way that made her feel sick with herself. ‘You know exactly what I think about men like you!’

      ‘Then we’ve both been misguided,’ he concluded, his shoulders drooping, suddenly seeming to give up trying to placate her. ‘You for taking everything at face value, and I for imagining I could get away with letting you. I just wanted to believe that for a while at least my name and my money weren’t the most important things about me.’

      There was something in his voice that had her silently querying the inscrutable emotion in that strong, rugged face. ‘Is that supposed to make me feel bad?’ she challenged. ‘Because it doesn’t.’

      ‘No. I’ve already told you,’ he persisted. ‘It wasn’t my intention to hurt you, or to let things go as far as they did.’

      ‘And what about Philomena?’ Her gaze had fallen to the bag with the loaf the woman had lovingly baked for him. ‘Does she know?’ she threw at him, hurting, remembering how eagerly she had driven up here to see him, with nothing but making him want her on her mind. ‘Does she know what a fool you’ve been taking me for? Or didn’t you risk telling her?’

      Thick black lashes came down over his incredibly dark eyes. ‘I’ve never taken you for a fool,’ he stated, exhaling deeply. ‘As for Philomena...she knows I had my reasons.’

      ‘And she went along with them?’ She couldn’t believe that of the gentle yet down-to-earth Philomena.

      ‘What do you think?’ he said.

      She remembered the argument that had ensued the day he’d first taken her down to the cottage, the remonstrations by Philomena since, which seemed to leave him no more than mildly amused.

      ‘You’re despicable,’ she breathed, as a fragment of memory tugged at her consciousness in relation to something he had said about having had a trying year.

      Unscrupulous. Ruthless. Riding roughshod over people. Those were words she had heard in connection with the name Leonidas Vassalio. And then she remembered. It was that stunning American model turned actress—Esmeralda Leigh. She’d publicly named him as having fathered her child. It was she who had called him unscrupulous, when he had challenged the proof of his paternity—though there had been no close-up photograph of him in the article Kayla remembered reading. Just a long shot of him leaving his office, looking rather different from how he looked now, which had been inset in a full-colour spread of Esmeralda lounging in the drawing room of her exquisitely and expensively furnished Mayfair home.

      ‘Esmeralda was right. You are unscrupulous!’

      ‘And if you had read the outcome of that fiasco you would have the sense to realise that anything the woman says is fabricated. Her claims were proven to be totally untrue.’

      ‘Well, she wasn’t the only one who was good at lying, was she?’ Kayla reminded him grievously, realising now what he’d meant that day when he’d referred to a petition being slapped on him. ‘Was it because of her that you decided to get your own back when you met me? Were you afraid if I knew who you were I might try and get pregnant so I could use you as a ticket to an easy life? Well, stuff your money! And stuff you! Not everyone puts as much value on money as on truth and integrity! I might not be in your league when it comes to material wealth, but at least I can hold my head up and know that what you see is what you get. That everything about me is real. You wouldn’t understand that if it was scrawled all over one of your concrete eyesores, and as far as I’m

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