Page 34 of Virgin's Night with the Greek

‘Because I,’ he said, picking up the tray and heading out onto the patio while vaguely wondering why he wasn’t more bothered about both handing over the company keys to Zander and the upheaval to his life Willow was causing, ‘need a holiday.’

It took Willow the whole of breakfast to get over her shock at Leo’s holiday announcement. She felt the hit of caffeine as it entered her bloodstream—impossible not to with the way he made coffee—but she barely tasted the deliciously buttery and flaky croissant or the soft creamy yogurt sweetened with lightly fragranced honey.

All she could think was, couldshehave been behind his decision to take a break? Had her feminine wiles really worked their magic? Could their conversation over lunch yesterday have somehow made him reassess his relationship with responsibility and his siblings?

Whether they had or not, and realistically she knew thatnotwas far more likely, it was ridiculous how pleased she was with this latest development in their affair. She didn’t know why. It changed nothing. It proved nothing. Yet her heart was flipping about in her chest and she could hardly contain the smile that kept threatening to spread across her face, which was a concern because she didn’t like to think what any of it might mean.

She had to be careful, she told herself sternly as Leo refilled her cup with rocket fuel. She mustn’t make the mistake of thinking that what they were doing was anything other than temporary. Longer term with Leo was out of the question. Even if she could change her conflicting feelings about commitment and love—which seemed impossible when they ran so deep—sex aside, she was about as far removed from his usual type as it was possible to be. Lowering her guard and falling for him would be a one-way ticket to disappointment and despair. She had to live in, and make the most of, the present.

‘What would you like to do today?’ he asked, once again apparently able to read her mind.

Her body wanted to go back to bed with him because amazingly, despite all their efforts to assuage it, desire still burned within her, as hot as ever. But her head was thinking that perhaps it would help to get out of the house. The last few days, although glorious, had been nothing if not intense. It was little wonder she’d lost her sense of perspective. A return to the outside world might give her the dose of reality she needed to stay on track. Besides, with all the drawings of him she’d been producing, she needed to pick up a new sketchbook.

‘Seeing as we’re on holiday,’ she said, confident that a change of scenery was all she required to keep her feet on the ground, ‘and I haven’t been abroad in a decade, I’d like to see the island.’

That afternoon, as he watched Willow pick her way around the limestone ruins of a settlement that dated back to the eleventh century B.C., Leo reflected that her proposal to explore had been an excellent one. The only reason he hadn’t suggested it himself was because for the first time in years he hadn’t been thinking with his brain.

In the absence of sex he’d been able to focus more efficiently on his plan to get the answers to the questions about her he had. Among myriad other tiny but oddly fascinating details he’d gleaned en route to the archaeological site of Ancient Thera via a coastal road that required the careful navigation of twenty-two hairpin bends, he’d discovered that she streaked her hair for no other reason than because she liked the colours. She’d bought the tiny diamond nose stud to celebrate her first sale and the earrings because, why not? And she lived and worked in London in a top floor light-filled studio that she’d bought with the money she’d inherited from her mother.

For an hour now they’d been wandering around the deserted remains of temples and houses with mosaic floors. The millennia-old graffiti were fascinating. The sea views were spectacular. His phone hadn’t rung once, a novelty about which he wasn’t sure he felt pleased or twitchy.

‘I wish I’d brought my pastels with me,’ said Willow, shading her eyes against the sun as she stood like a queen on a rock that was far too high and close to the edge of the cliff for his liking and gazed around at the rugged scenery from beneath her floppy-brimmed hat. ‘The depth and intensity of the colours here could make even the most committed portraitist switch to landscapes.’

‘Let me help you down.’

She took the hand he extended and beamed him a smile that was brighter than the sun, which, this being Greece in July, was saying something. ‘Thank you.’

‘How did you become an artist?’ he asked, assuring himself that the intense relief he experienced at having removed her from potential harm was perfectly normal.

‘I didn’t have much of a choice. It’s the only thing I can do. I left school with just one A level. In art.’

‘Why was that?’

‘Because of my condition, I missed a lot of classes. The exam timetable was not my friend.’

‘Did no one ever notice?’

‘My school had two thousand students,’ she said dryly, as they retraced their steps down the path that led back to the ruined city and away from lethal four-hundred-metre drops. ‘There were three hundred in my year. There wasn’t a lot of one-on-one attention. Lots of people slipped through the cracks for a variety of reasons and I was simply one of them.’

Leo tried to imagine such a situation occurring at the top boarding school in England he’d attended from the ages of eight to eighteen and failed. ‘Your father?’

‘Grief-stricken. But it was fine,’ she said with a quick, dismissive wave of her hand that made him wonder if it really had been. ‘I was never going to be able to hold down a conventional job with the amount of sick leave I’d have to take, so I didn’t need any qualifications anyway.’

‘Did you go to art college?’

‘No. I’ve done courses but I’m mostly self-taught. I built up a collection of work—while moonlighting as a waitress—and then basically blagged my way into exhibitions.’

‘You’re tenacious.’

‘I’ve had to be,’ she said with a wry twist of her mouth. ‘I wasn’t always successful, but luckily, people seem to like what I do. More to the point,Ilike what I do. My work is versatile and varied and fits in with other things and I love it. Not many people can claim that.’

‘That’s true.’

‘Can you?’ she said, darting him a quick, unsettlingly probing look as the remnants of the amphitheatre hove into view. ‘Do you enjoy your job, Leo?’

Not particularlywas the answer that broke free of its confines and clamoured to be heard. But he ignored it the way he did every time resentment at his fate reared its ugly, shameful head. There had never been any point in wondering what might have happened if he’d simply refused to leave university mid-course, turned his back on everything he’d been groomed for and pursued his dream of winning the America’s Cup. He was CEO of one of the world’s largest, most successful privately owned corporations. He had wealth and power. He had no right to envy others for being able to choose their own path. Envy was destructive and it was ridiculous to regret something that had never really been a possibility in the first place.

‘I’m extremely good at it,’ he said, oddly unable to lie to her outright when usually the words came smoothly.

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