In A Greek Escape by Elizabeth Power Leonidas Vassalio just wants to spend some time away from London – in anonymity on the Greek Island upon which he was raised. When he spies the blonde woman snapping his picture he cannot believe the paparazzi managed to follow him. She takes off running, and his chase begins.
Kayla is in Greece recuperating from her disastrous engagement. Well, it was fine until she learned her boyfriend wasn’t only cheating on her, he’d gotten the other woman pregnant. Kayla breaks things off and tries to bounce back, but the jerk keeps their wedding plans – down to the guests – and marries the woman.
Kayla retreats to a Mediterranean paradise to lick her wounds, get away from her mother, and maybe enjoy her hobby of taking photographs. She’s taking in some landscapes when she trains her lens on a gorgeous man. She can’t seem to tear her eyes away from him, and just as he sees her, she reflexively snaps a picture. The look on his face causes her to flee, and she starts her escape.
After a violent storm wrecks the vacation house she was borrowing, Leon (as he is known to her) gallops in on his white horse to save her. Oddly enough, she doesn’t want saving. She does, however, realize that with her temporary residence in tatters, she’ll need a place to stay. He compromises and places her in the home of the only ‘family’ he has. The midwife that birthed him and became like a grandmother to him. Even though she barely speaks English, Kayla and she form a bond, and to his chagrin, get along swimmingly.
He admits Kayla isn’t the scheming woman he assumes her to be, which means he can admit his attraction to her. However, she still thinks he’s just a vagabond builder, and not the billionaire from the headlines back home. As they become closer, he learns that her trust issues stem from the two relationships that shaped her – her parents and the man who betrayed her. Both of them workaholic businessmen who treated the women that loved them like second class citizens. And until recently, that was also Leonidas’ public image.
The wounds of betrayal were no longer so raw but the scars remained, and in defiance of them Kayla brought the SLR’s viewfinder to eye level again. Only her clamped jaw revealed the tension in her as, silently now, she appraised the beauty around her.
Misty blue mountains. Translucently clear water. Surprisingly hunky Greek…
She’d been following a line inland, coming across the deserted beach, but now Kayla brought her viewfinder back to the shoreline in a swift doubletake.
Bringing her camera down, she could see him clearly without the aid of the zoom lens, and she found herself homing in on him with her naked eyes.
Black wavy hair—which would have been way past his collar had he been wearing one—fell wildly against the hard bronze of his neck. In a black T-shirt and pale blue jeans he was pulling fishing tackle from the wooden boat he had recently beached, and from the contoured muscles of his arms, and the way the dark cotton strained across his wide muscular chest, Kayla instantly marked him as a man who worked with his hands. A battered old truck was parked close to her rock, on the road just above the beach, and as the man started walking towards it—towards her—Kayla couldn’t take her eyes off him.
For some reason she couldn’t quite fathom she lifted her camera to zoom in on him again, and felt an absurd and reckless excitement in her secret survey. A few days’ growth of stubble gave a striking cast to an already strong jaw, mirroring the strength in his rugged features. They were the features of a man toughened by life—a man who looked as fit as he was hard. A man not much more than thirty, who would probably demand his own way and get it—because there was determination in that face, Kayla recognised, as well as pride and arrogance in the way he carried himself, in the straight, purposeful stride of those long legs.
A man one definitely wouldn’t want to mess with, she decided, with a curious little tingle down her spine.
“A Greek Escape” was entertaining, but the entire book’s foundation was laid upon misunderstandings. I prefer a little less of that and a little more background info. There were a few poignant parts, and some storylines that probably could’ve been discarded for deeper character development – overall it was a good read.
Book Info
Publication Date: May 21, 2013 | Series: Harlequin Presents (Book 3150)Hounded from the city by the press and an entourage of gold diggers, Leonidas Vassalio can’t believe he’s sharing his sanctuary with the one woman who doesn’t know who he is! And he’ll take full advantage of it.
Enjoying peeling back the layers of this complicated woman, Leonidas realizes she’s dismantling his armor. He must stop this before she discovers his lie, but can he…?