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And then she heard another sound, like a loud hammering on the external door to the villa, and mercifully a voice, its deep tone muffled, yet still breaking through to her through the tearing gale and the rain.
‘Kayla! Kayla? Answer me! Are you in there? Kayla! Are you all right?’
The banging persisted until she thought the door was caving in.
Reaching it and tugging it open, she almost cried with relief when she saw the formidable figure of Leon standing there, his fists clenched as though to knock the door down if it wasn’t opened. Rain was running down his face and his strong bronzed throat in rivulets.
It took all her will-power not to sink against him as he caught her arm and shouted something urgently in his own language.
‘Get out of here! Quickly!’ he ordered, reverting to English. ‘There’s been a landslide further up the mountain. This house might not be safe to stay in.’ And as she hesitated, casting an anxious glance at her belongings, ‘We’ll come back for your things in the morning!’ he shouted above the wind and the lashing rain. ‘You’re coming with me!’
Petrified, rooted to the spot by the sound of splitting timber somewhere close by on the riven hillside, Kayla felt herself suddenly being whipped off her feet. She was only pacified by the realisation that she was in a pair of strong, powerful arms, being held against Leon’s sodden warmth as he ran with her to the waiting truck.
He had left the vehicle’s lights on, and after he had set her quickly down on the passenger seat Kayla saw him race around the bonnet with his head bent against the storm, his purposeful physique only just discernible through the rain-washed windscreen.
He opened the driver’s door, his long hair dripping, and as he climbed into the cab beside her and slammed the door against the wind she noticed that his shirt, which was unbuttoned and hanging loose, like his jeans, was soaked through and clinging to his powerful torso.
‘Thank you! Oh, thank you!’ Dropping her head into her hands as the truck started rumbling away, Kayla couldn’t think of anything else to say. ‘I didn’t know what was happening!’ she blurted out when she had recovered herself enough to sit up straight and turn towards him. ‘I woke up and thought the world was coming to an end!’
‘It would have been for you,’ Leonidas stated with grim truthfulness, ‘if that tree had fallen on you.’
But it hadn’t, she thought gratefully. Nor was she now exposed to the damage it had caused. Thanks to him, she realised, and wondered how she would have coped if he hadn’t been passing right at that moment.
‘What happened?’ she queried, baffled, as she began to gather her wits about her. ‘Did you just happen to come by?’
‘Something like that,’ he intoned, without taking his attention from the zig-zagging mountain road. The truck’s wiper blades were barely able to cope even at double-speed with the torrential rain.
At half-past one in the morning?
For the first time noticing the clock on the dashboard, Kayla realised exactly what the time was. Had he been out late, seen what had happened as he had driven past? Or had he been in bed? Had he heard the landslide and driven down especially?
Of course not, she thought, dismissing that last possible scenario. No man she knew of would be so gallant as to risk his own safety for a girl he didn’t even know let alone like. And it was patently obvious from her two previous meetings with him that he clearly didn’t like her. Or any of her sex, if it came to that!
‘Why are you doing this if you think I’m someone who’s out to make trouble for you?’ she enquired pointedly, her hair falling, damp and dishevelled, around her shoulders.
‘What would you have preferred me to do?’ Every ounce of his concentration was still riveted on the windscreen. ‘Leave you there to swim? Or worse?’
Kayla shuddered as she interpreted what ‘worse’ might easily have meant.
‘Is it always like this on these islands?’ she queried worriedly, staring out at the truck’s powerful headlights cutting through the sheets of rain.
‘If you come here in the spring it’s a chance you take,’ he returned succinctly.
Which she had, Kayla thought, deciding that he probably thought her stupid on top of everything else.
‘What’s likely to happen to the villa?’ she asked anxiously, watching the gleaming water cascading off the hills and filling every crack and crevice on the rugged road. ‘That tree came right through onto the landing.’
‘We’ll go down and inspect the damage in the morning.’
‘But the furniture and furnishings. And my things,’ she remembered as an afterthought. ‘Everything’s going to get wet.’
‘Only to be expected,’ he answered prosaically, changing gear to take a particularly sharp bend. ‘With a hole in the roof.’
A hysterical little laugh bubbled up inside of her. Nerves, she decided. And shock. Because there was certainly nothing funny about the havoc this storm had wreaked upon the little Grecian retreat her friends had worked so hard for.
‘What am I going to say to Lorna?’ She was worrying about how she was going to break the news to her, thinking aloud. ‘She and Josh have got enough problems as it is.’ And then it dawned on her. ‘Oh, heavens!’ she breathed, still shaking inside from her ordeal. ‘Where on earth am I going to stay? Tonight? Tomorrow? At all?’
‘Well, tonight you’re going to stay with me,’ he told her in a tone that was settled, decisive. ‘And tomorrow, when you’ve telephoned your friend to let her know what has happened, we’ll think of something else.’
We, he’d said, as though they were in this thing together. Which they weren’t, Kayla thought. Yet strangely she gleaned some comfort from it—along with a contradictory feeling of being indebted to him, too.
‘Like what?’ She didn’t know where to begin, or even if the island had any other suitable or affordable accommodation. Lorna had offered to let her stay in the villa rent-free, and although Kayla had insisted on paying her, it was still only a nominal amount. The alternative was that she could fly home...
‘There are three hotels on this side of the island. One of them—the largest—is closed for refurbishment,’ Leon was telling her, ‘but I’m sure as it’s out of season one of the other two will be able to accommodate you.’
‘I can’t stay with you tonight,’ she informed him. ‘It’s such an imposition, for one thing.’ She didn’t even know him! And from what she had seen of him over the past couple of days neither did she want to. ‘You said yourself you wanted to be left alone.’
‘Which you’ve failed to acknowledge since the day you arrived,’ he told her dryly. ‘So why break with tradition?’
‘I’m sorry.’ Now she felt even worse. ‘You don’t have to do this. I’m only making a nuisance of myself...’
‘What would you prefer me to do?’ he asked. ‘Put you out into the storm?’ He laughed when he saw the anxiety creasing her forehead. ‘Relax,’ he advised. ‘You’re coming back with me. So, no more arguments to the contrary—and definitely no more apologies. Understood?’
Uneasily, Kayla nodded.
‘I didn’t hear you,’ he stated over the rumble of the engine and the jaunty rhythm of the wiper blades trying to keep pace with the interminable rain.
‘Understood!’ she shouted back, and kept her gaze on the windscreen and her hands in her lap until he brought them safely off the road and onto the paved area of the old farmhouse.
The part of the house he led her into was remarkably clean and tidy. It was surprisingly well-furnished too, even though most of the furniture looked worn and in need