There was something very peaceful about the estate and the people surrounding it.
She smiled now about how worried she had been about being confined in a house with him. About seeing Stavros wherever she turned. Not only did the house boast seven bedrooms and attached baths, but Stavros, when he returned from Katrakis Textiles, she realized, worked in the estate.
Although if he had looked smolderingly arrogant in his suit, he looked painfully handsome in light blue jeans and a white polo shirt.
The sounds of the helicopter blades had jolted her from her bed the first morning. Still in her cotton shorts and sleeveless T-shirt, she had run to the attached balcony, spurred on by what, she still didn’t know.
Dressed in a white dress shirt that draped lovingly over his broad frame and plain khaki trousers that looked way too sexy, he had been about to step in.
Except he had turned and looked at her, the breeze ruffling his hair.
Her heart thudding, her mouth dry, Leah had broken his gaze and gone back in.
Now returning from the beach, she waved at workers heading home to the small village from the vineyard, which she had been surprised to learn was operational. Several guesthouses were dotted across the grounds in addition to a horse farm.
When she had laughingly asked Stavros which one Dmitiri preferred when he visited, she had gotten a black look in response.
It was as she passed a couple, probably in their fifties, that she remembered another little tidbit. Stavros and Calista had been from a little village that surrounded Stavros’s estate. His grandparents, she knew, still lived there. Even though their grandson was a household name in all of Greece.
Feeling nauseous at the thought of how brazenly she had threatened to go to the media and how his face had blazed in contempt, she pulled in a long breath and broke into a run.
From the moment he had showed her around the estate, she had loved running through the trails cleared through lush acreage. In just the past week, she had found a trail that touched the horse farm and rounded through the orchard.
She turned the winding bend around it and came to a skidding halt near the glittering pool that was by the house.
The evening sun kissing the bridge of his nose and his cheekbones, Stavros was sitting at the poolside table.
A tall jug of the customary lemonade that she requested every day and a selection of fruits and assorted cheeses were on the glass-topped table between the two loungers.
His head was thrown back against it, and his eyes were closed. Her breathing still raspy, Leah stilled. Her gaze lingering on the corded column of his throat, the planes of his sculpted face, at the way his long lashes almost kissed those sharp cheekbones...
It was something to see the man in repose like that, to study him without his contemptuous gaze peeling layers off her. And the way her breath hitched and her gut folded, the frenzied clamoring of her heartbeat to the very sight of him, it was telling.
For the past week, she had seen the stamp of the man in the thriving estate.
In the tired but happy workers on the vineyard, in the affluent praise the villagers bestowed on him, in the way some of the women’s eyes had widened when they had realized who she was, the reverence in their tone when they addressed her as Thespinis Sporades...
The responsibility of bearing that name, the reality of being the woman Stavros would respect and know and want...it sent shivers down her spine.
The usual white dress shirt he wore was unbuttoned, showing dark olive skin. His cuffs, folded back, displayed his muscled forearms, to the veins extending from his wrist and down... The sight of those powerful thighs, encased in tight blue jeans, made her remember how hard and corded they had been against her own...made her wonder how they would cradle her if she...
Heat, that had nothing to do with her running, pooled under her skin. The stretchy fabric of her Lycra top rasped against her nipples, the soft hem of her shorts rubbing against her inner thighs...
She was breathing like she had run another few laps, her skin so overheated that dunking into the pool was so inviting. Just as she found her willpower and took a step, she heard her name.
Turning slowly, she saw his fingers laced against his chest, faint color bleeding into those cheekbones.
His eyes were still closed when he said, “Did you have a good week, Leah?”