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