A Greek Escape - By Elizabeth Power Page 0,1

to last her a lifetime! It could only have been because he had an interesting face; that was all. Apart from that she wouldn’t have looked twice at him if he had rowed across that water accompanied by a fanfare. She had learned the hard way that men were just lying, cheating opportunists—

‘Oooh!’

Tripping over a stone, she struggled to keep herself upright, hearing her pursuer’s footsteps bearing down on her.

Too late, though. She came a cropper on the hard and dusty path and lay there for a few moments, winded and despairing, but surprisingly unharmed.

She heard the pound of his footsteps and suddenly he was there, standing above her. He was breathing hard, and his tone was rough as he tossed some words at her in his own language.

Utterly awestruck by the speed at which he must have run to have caught up with her, Kayla raised herself up on her elbows, her hair falling like pale rivers of silk over her shoulders.

Having little more than a few words of Greek to get by with, she quavered, ‘I don’t understand you.’ Like him, she was breathless, and shaken by his anger as much as her fall.

He said something else that she couldn’t comprehend, while a firm hand on her shoulder—bare save for the white strap of her sun top—pulled her round to face him.

Up close, his features were even more arresting than she’d first imagined. His cheekbones were high and well-defined under dark olive skin. Thick ebony lashes framed eyes that were as black as jet, and his brooding mouth was wide and firm.

‘Are you hurt?’ His question, delivered roughly in English this time, surprised her, as did that small element of concern.

‘No. No thanks to you,’ she accused, sitting upright and brushing dust off her shorts, trying to appear less intimidated than she was feeling.

‘Then I will ask you again. What do you think you were doing?’

‘I was taking photographs.’

‘Of me?’

Kayla swallowed, fixing him with wary blue eyes. ‘No, of a bird. I snapped you by accident.’

‘Accident?’ From the way one very masculine eyebrow lifted it was clear that he didn’t believe her. His hostile gaze raked over her the pale oval of her face. ‘What is this…accident?’ he emphasised pointedly.

His anger hadn’t cooled. Kayla could feel it bubbling just beneath the surface. Despite that, though, his voice had a deep, rich resonance, and although his English was heavily accented his command of her language was obvious as he demanded, ‘Exactly how many did you take?’

‘Only the one,’ she admitted, her breathing still laboured from that chase up the hillside. ‘I told you. It was an accident.’

‘Well, as far as I’m concerned, young woman, it was one accident too many. Exactly who are you? And what are you doing here?’

‘Nothing. I mean, I’m on holiday—that’s all.’

‘And does the normal course of your holiday usually include sticking your nose into other people’s business? Spying on people?’

‘I wasn’t spying on you!’ From the way those accusing ebony eyes were studying her, and from the suspicion in his voice, Kayla began to experience real fear. Perhaps he was on the run! Wanted by the police! That would go some way to explaining his anger over being photographed. ‘My camera…?’ Trying to hide her misgivings, she glanced anxiously around and spotted the expensive piece of equipment lying in the scrub nearby.

Stretching out in a bid to reach it, she was dismayed when the man leaped forward, snatching it up before she could.

‘Don’t damage it!’

He looked angry enough, she thought. But her camera was something she treasured. A gift to herself to replace her old one after she had discovered Craig was having an affair. Some women comfort-ate. She went out with her camera and snapped anything and everything as a form of therapy, and over the past three months she had needed all the therapy she could get!

‘Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t?’

Because it was expensive! she wanted to fling back. And because it’s got every photograph I’ve taken since I got here yesterday. But that would probably only make him more inclined to wreck it, if his mood was anything to go by.

‘Perhaps I should simply keep it,’ he contemplated aloud, his gaze sweeping over her still pale shoulders and modest breasts with unashamed insolence.

‘If it makes you happy,’ she snapped, needled by the way he was looking at her. But there was something about that gaze moving over her exposed flesh that produced a rush of heat along with