‘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?
‘It must take an army of staff to run a place like this,’ she commented, in an attempt to distract them both as they headed around the back of the house. ‘You must be heavily outnumbered.’
He stopped dead and turned to stare at her. ‘You have an interesting take on almost everything, Ms Lancaster.’
Kimmie shrugged. ‘From my perspective it’s an obvious comment. I have one room with a bathroom attached...and no staff,’ she added, pulling a comic face.
Kris almost smiled again. ‘Do you envy me?’
‘Envy you?’ Kimmie exclaimed. ‘Certainly not. I feel sorry for you, actually. I don’t know how anyone who could make a house this size a home.’
‘A home?’ Kris queried, frowning.
‘Yeah, you know, one of those things people live in and love, and make cosy and comfortable.’ Didn’t everyone need somewhere like that to hunker down in when they were off-duty? Kimmie’s tiny home fitted the bill. It might not be grand like this, and it might only be rented rather than owned by her, but it was somewhere to snuggle up in and feel safe. ‘Don’t you ever get lonely here?’
‘Lonely? Why would I be lonely?’ Kris queried with surprise.
‘I imagine that army of staff has better things to do than mix with you in their downtime, and contact with people is important...isn’t it? It is to me. I work on my own, so I love to meet people.’
‘I have all the contact I need with humanity in my working life,’ Kris assured her coolly. He sounded slightly irritated and she guessed no one had ever questioned whether the material things his success had supplied him with had also brought him the one thing that really mattered, which was contentment.
‘Why would I need a cosy home, as you put it?’ he queried. ‘If I want something smaller I’ll stay in a hotel.’
He just didn’t get it. With property across the world, how could he? What she meant was—where was his anchor? Where was the place Kris called home? This vast residence was more like a luxury resort than a permanent roost.
‘What happens when you get married?’ she asked, and immediately regretted the question. But she pressed on. ‘How on earth will you make this place inviting for a wife?’
Kris’s chin jerked up as if she’d said something outlandish. Well, she had. She’d mentioned the M word, and shouldn’t she, of all people, steer clear of that?
‘That will be my wife’s job, surely?’ he said coolly.
‘No equality here, then?’
Kris was not in the mood for any more teasing, and she had just ruined the evening with her big mouth. ‘I just thought you might take an interest...’
‘I do take an interest,’ Kris assured her. ‘I have an army of designers working on the house. Perhaps you’d like to see the artist’s studio?’
Touché. ‘The what?’
‘The artist’s studio,’ he repeated.
She had to remind herself that a house this size could have pretty much anything: concert hall, artist’s studio, theatre in the garden, football pitch, concert arena, and she had to stop jumping to conclusions and give Kris a break.
‘Almost as if it were meant to be,’ Kris added, paying her back, she was sure, as he slid her a hot sideways look. ‘My house isn’t so vast and boring now, is it?’
‘I’m impressed,’ she admitted.
‘In fact, this house used to belong to a very successful artist,’ he explained.
Kimmie gasped at the name.
‘There’s quite a community of artists on Kaimos,’ Kris revealed. ‘Something to do with the light, I’m told.’
The more she learned about Kristof Kaimos, the more she wanted to know about him—about the real man, not the man the press reported on; he as a hollow shell, a billionaire like so many others, while Kris was unique and so, so intriguing. Filling her mind with images was all part of the artist’s job. If she could learn what lay beneath the carapace of Kristof Kaimos, wildly successful billionaire, she could add texture to the strong lines of his face and flesh to his character. Understanding how he lived and why he lived a certain way was all part of that.
As they approached the line of garages housing countless high-value vehicles, she noticed for the first time that the sun was fading and had turned the stonework a pleasing shade of dusky chalk pink.
‘Have I been out that long?’ she exclaimed on an incredulous sigh. Suddenly she felt bone-weary. It had been the longest and most turbulent of days.
‘Time for bed,’ Kris prescribed as she smothered a yawn.