Page 21 of Hot Greek Summer

Winnie slammed her door and gazed around the deserted hillside.

He didn’t explain, just headed towards a dusty track leading up through the pine trees. ‘This way. It’s not far.’

Following the familiar route, he turned back after a few minutes. ‘Watch your footing here, the grit can be a bit loose underfoot.’

On cue, Winnie’s foot slid sideways, and he held out his hand to steady her.

‘OK?’ he said, holding on to her fingers.

‘Think so.’ She half laughed, gripping him.

‘We’re nearly at the top,’ he said, keeping hold of her hand to help her take the last few steepest strides. He resolutely ignored the warmth of her fingers, and the way the exertion made her breasts rise and fall beneath her pink T-shirt. Jesus, did they not make it in her size? It looked as if it had been designed for a twelve-year-old and inadvertently found itself wrapped around the curves and hollows of a fully formed woman.

They reached the summit with a final tug, and he gave her a few seconds to get her breath back and appreciate why the hike was worth the effort.

‘Wow,’ she murmured, her hands on her hips as she looked down.

‘This is the highest point of the island,’ he explained, leading her across to a bench that had been placed there to take advantage of the stunning views. They’d crested the hill into a clearing, and from there there was a direct, panoramic view down across the island and the Mediterranean. Skelidos lay before them, a patchwork of fields and forests snaked through with twisting roads, a smattering of houses closer to the coast, jewel-green vegetation against impossibly periwinkle skies and vivid turquoise waters.

‘If it were a postcard, you wouldn’t believe it wasn’t photoshopped,’ Winnie said, lifting her sunglasses onto her head as she perched gratefully beside him on the driftwood bench.

‘I know. I could never tire of it.’

It wasn’t a lie. Skelidos represented far more than just home to Jesse. The place had literally saved his life ten times over back in the early days when he couldn’t have cared less if he lived or died. But Winnie didn’t need to know that.

‘Does it ever get lonely?’ she said, turning her blue eyes to his. ‘In the winter?’

‘I guess that depends on what you look for in life,’ he said. ‘It’s hardly busy anyway, so we feel the absence of the tourists far less than the bigger islands.’

She nodded, her gaze back on that spectacular view.

‘Was it an impulse buy? The villa?’ He watched her profile as she considered his question, saw the fleeting conflicting emotions pass across her face.

‘In a way,’ she sighed. ‘It just … it just felt like a good time to be somewhere else.’

He identified with that more that she knew. ‘Because of your divorce from Needledick?’

She laughed softly and shook her head. ‘Rory. His name is Rory.’

There was a vulnerability behind her voice when she said her ex-husband’s name that grated on him.

‘Why do you do that?’

She looked at him, surprised. ‘Do what?’

‘Sigh his name with a reverence it doesn’t deserve. It sounds to me as if Needledick suits him a whole lot more.’

Her mouth twisted to the side as she scuffed the toe of her sneaker in the dusty earth beneath the bench. ‘He asked me out on my fifteenth birthday. He was my first love.’ She picked at a loose splinter of wood on the bench. ‘My only one.’

‘Christ, you’re not telling me that he’s the only man you’ve ever kissed in your entire life? How old are you?’

Her chin came up, defensive. ‘Thirty-four. And yes, he is the only man I’ve ever kissed, if you must know.’

Thank God she was over thirty. ‘Well, thank fuck he nobbed off in that case.’

‘What?’ She stared at him, almost gasping in shock. If she’d been expecting sympathy, she was looking at the wrong man.

‘Come on, Legs. No one should go through life having only ever kissed one other person. It’s not natural.’

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