Читать книгу The Greek's Virgin Temptation - Susan Stephens, Susan Stephens - Страница 14

WITH HIS SUSPICIONS about Kimmie’s motives temporarily laid to rest, attraction fired between them. She’d convinced him she had no idea who he was at first, and he needed no convincing that she was less than impressed by the trappings of wealth. This had been demonstrated by her casual dismissal of one of the finest superyachts in the world as a ‘floating office block’. She amused him, aroused him and she interested him. He wanted to know more.

With no way to contact his people on board the Spirit of Kaimos, his security team was far more likely to send out a search party than Kimmie’s friends, so he had to return to his house on the cliff to bring the team up to date. Then he’d drive Kimmie back to the guesthouse.

Waiting until she’d reassured her friends, he said goodbye to them, and he and Kimmie turned to head up the cliff.

‘I want to paint you,’ she said, surprising him, and not for the first time that day.

‘Really?’ he queried as they began the climb.

‘Well, you know I’m an artist.’

‘You did mention it.’

‘The walk will give me chance to think about where I’d you’d like to sit. For preparatory sketches,’ she explained.

‘You decide that?’

‘It doesn’t have to be a battle of wills,’ she joked. ‘We can decide together.’

‘How about here, staring out to sea?’

‘Maybe...’ She slanted him a smile.

‘You’ve got my interest,’ he prompted. She had a lot more than that. He’d never felt such a need to keep a woman close, so he could get to know her, really know her.

‘And you’ve certainly got mine,’ she said. ‘You’ll make a great subject.’

‘With my manly physique and handsome face?’

‘No,’ she said, frowning, as she studied him closely. ‘With those shadows you hide so well behind your eyes. Now, if I could capture them—’

‘Come on,’ he said brusquely, resenting her perceptive appraisal of him, ‘or we won’t make it to the top before sunset.’

* * *

Kris’s expression had hardened. So it was all right for him to ask her questions. Interrogation of interesting prospects was his default setting, she guessed, but when it came to probing questions about his own life, he clammed up.

‘Lead on,’ she said lightly, ‘and just this once I’ll follow you.’

As Kris registered her comment with a grunt, she thought this was a crazy end to a crazy day, with no straightforward answers to the questions banging in her head. Why was he spending this time with her? Why would a man like Kristof Kaimos waste the best part of a day on a jilted bride?

Quite out of breath, she rested her hands on her knees as they reached the top of the cliff. When she finally straightened up, she exclaimed, ‘Wow! What an amazing house.’

‘You’d like to paint it?’

‘Maybe,’ she said again with a smile.

‘I’m glad you approve.’

‘I do approve. It’s fabulous.’

‘Thank you.’

They were outside some incredible gates, looking through. The property beyond was definitely exclusive.

‘Does it make a difference now you know who I am?’ he said as she stared like a child on a day out in London.

‘Well, yes, of course it does,’ Kimmie admitted.

Suspicion blazed in his eyes. ‘Why?’

‘It goes back to wanting to paint you,’ she explained. ‘You’re not as straightforward as my other sitters.’

‘And why is that?’ Kris demanded, doubly suspicious.

‘Because a painting of Kristof Kaimos would be worth a fortune on the open market, so that changes things quite a lot. A sketch of a local guy I met on a beach in Greece would be a lovely memento, and might feature in an exhibition one day, but even a preparatory sketch of the great Kristof Kaimos would be worth a lot of money. I can’t just go ahead and do one, then show it and sell it, because that would be taking advantage of you.’

‘You’d care that much?’

‘Don’t you think I have any scruples?’

Unconcerned that she was affronted by his comment, Kris shrugged. ‘What if I gave you permission?’

‘Would you do that?’

She couldn’t believe it. A world of possibilities flashed through her head. It would be dishonest not to admit that a commission from Kristof Kaimos would be an enormous boost for her career.

‘Earlier you said you had a project to get off the ground,’ he said as he used fingerprint recognition to open the gate. ‘Would this help you to do that?’

‘Of course it would,’ Kimmie admitted. Hope and excitement soared as she explained, ‘It’s been a dream of mine for years, to set up a scholarship to help young artists get a start—maybe go to college or take extra lessons, so they get the chance to show the world their artwork. If you do allow me to paint you, the proceeds of that sale would really get things moving.’ She paused and frowned.

‘What’s wrong now?’ he pressed.

She shook her head. ‘I’d still feel as if I was exploiting you.’

‘Not if I agree to be exploited,’ he said as the pedestrian gate swung open to admit them. ‘Which I do,’ he confirmed to her amazement, adding, ‘I might even buy the painting for my uncle. He’d love that.’

‘Your uncle?’ Kimmie’s mind raced to plug the gaps in her scant knowledge of Kristof Kaimos. ‘The uncle that wants you to get married?’

‘That’s just gossip,’ he scoffed. ‘After you,’ he said, inviting her into the grounds.

‘I didn’t mean to offend you.’

‘You didn’t. It’s just that I have one uncle, and he’s very special. I consider him to be my father. He brought me up. You could say he saved me.’

So that was where the shadows came from. She didn’t prompt. She didn’t dare. She didn’t want a return to the rigidly aloof Kris, who shut her out so effectively.

They had started to walk up a beautifully groomed path between formal gardens, lovingly tended and vibrant with banks of colourful flowers. It was the perfect setting for relaxation and easy conversation, but Kimmie had a feeling that Kris felt he’d said too much, and the rest of the walk would be conducted in silence if she didn’t say something.

‘What happened to your parents?’ she asked. There was no point dressing it up. There was a trauma to be uncovered and understood, if she had a hope of putting any depth into a painting of the man.

Was painting Kris the only reason she wanted to know more about him?

‘If you don’t want to tell me—’

‘No, I do,’ he said a little curtly, perhaps in the hope of shutting her up. ‘My parents loved partying, and one day they partied so hard they forgot they had a child. My uncle rescued me from the streets of Athens, where I was found wandering. There’s only me and Theo left now.’

There wasn’t much she could say to that. It was so much worse than she’d imagined. No wonder Kris withdrew behind his barricades. He must have been doing that since he was a child. She hadn’t anticipated uncovering such a wretched similarity between them. The few newspaper reports she could recall had mentioned Kristof Kaimos’s unparalleled drive and his almost fiendish dedication to his business. Now she knew why he felt so strongly about showing his gratitude to an uncle who meant so much to him. Kris would probably spend the rest of his life doing so. She could really empathise because, like Kris, since childhood Kimmie had determined she would never be a victim again.

It wasn’t really possible to uncover all the onion layers of a person on first meeting them, she reflected as they approached the entrance to Kris’s house. There was just chemistry, or animal instinct, that drew one person to another, but maybe there was such a thing as fate, and maybe fate had a reason for throwing them together, although—and she had no illusion about the likelihood of Kris even considering this—she had no intention of becoming his convenient bride, any more than Kris would leap across the gulf dividing them to get down on one knee.

And weren’t these crazy thoughts on the day she’d been jilted at the altar? Time to get real, Kimmie concluded, as Kris strode past the house, quickening his step so she had to almost run to keep up with him. Perhaps he couldn’t wait to get rid of her now. He obviously regretted sharing as much as he had. He would think it a sign of weakness to show off his scars. Just as Kimmie felt hers had never really healed, Kris didn’t like to admit to the same.

‘I love your house,’ she said, hoping to ease the tension that had grown between them. She wasn’t completely naïve, and had expected a billionaire’s roost to be off-the-scale fabulous, but this was something else. The sheer size and splendour of the building, enhanced by various add-ons like a line of tennis courts and a swish pavilion. There was the competition-sized pool and, of course, the indispensable helipad. All of it made the gulf between them even more unbridgeable. Painter and subject didn’t require parity between them, she reminded herself; all that was required was a steady hand and, in the case of painting Kristof Kaimos, an even steadier nerve.

‘Painting your estate could be my life’s work,’ she said carelessly as thoughts of holding a paintbrush in her hand again took hold.

‘It’s always lovely here at sunset,’ Kris observed with what was almost a dismissive gesture as he strode on.

He was missing so much, Kimmie thought, longing to make Kris linger so he could see things as she did with her artist’s eyes. Everything was subtly lit so the gardens glowed lush green, while glittering water features competed with ancient statuary. Beyond these, seemingly endless miles of ocean stretched to unseen horizons. What a place to make the imagination fly. It was glorious.

She turned to look at Kris, who’d stopped walking to wait for her, and wondered what she was doing here with this man. A more relevant question might be—what was Kris doing here with her? What did he want with her? If he wanted the obvious he could have made his move on the beach, but he’d behaved like a gentleman. Because he knew her emotions were churning, she reasoned, and Kris was too big a man to take advantage of a woman in distress.

‘What?’ he prompted, seeing she was distracted.

‘Oh, a helipad,’ she said as if she’d never seen such a thing before. Let him think her naïve and unworldly. Better that than he read some of her thoughts.

‘And over there,’ he said with humour in his voice, pointing, ‘is a runway for my private jet.’

‘Only one?’ she queried, tongue in cheek.

Kris’s lips twitched and he almost smiled, but she had to be careful. She liked him a lot. Too much, maybe, and that was dangerous for her bruised and battered heart.

‘Do you play?’ he asked as they passed the tennis courts.

‘I like to lob a few balls back into court,’ she admitted dryly, but when he smiled she told the truth. ‘My hand–eye coordination is lousy.’

‘I’m surprised,’ he said. ‘You being an artist...’

‘I don’t like running.’

‘Away from anything,’ he guessed. ‘How about swimming? That would cool you down.’

If only it was that easy. Her temperature rose just looking at Kris.

‘You could stay over,’ he offered. ‘Guest accommodation,’ he said before her heart could start pounding with alarm.

‘That’s a kind offer, but no, thank you. I’d better get back.’

‘Yes,’ he agreed, ‘you’d better.’

She couldn’t read anything into the tone of his voice and, even if she had, she would probably be guilty of overreacting. Her emotional foundations were still rocking, and her decision-making processes were shot to hell. But why ask her to stay over? Was Kris just curious about her, as she was about him, or did he want to take a closer look at her like a scientist with an interesting project in mind? With his uncle’s interesting project in mind, she amended. Or was that reading too much into this?