A Greek Escape Read Online Free PDF Page B

she always carried on her keyring.
    Debris was everywhere as she moved cautiously under the fallen tree-trunk. Twisted branches, leaves, twigs and piecesof broken masonry and plaster scrunched underfoot as she picked her way carefully downstairs.
    It was as if the whole outdoors had broken in, she thought with a startled cry as another flash of lightning streaked across the sky. The crash that followed it seemed to rock the villa, causing her to panic at the torrent of rain that was coming in on the raging wind.
    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, powerfularms, 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, seenwhat 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