‘Is this rosemary?’ Frankie asked, plucking a herb from her glass and sniffing it.
Ajax preened. ‘I grow it myself in the garden at the back of the villa.’
Frankie dunked it back into her cocktail, using it to swirl the ice cubes. All three women looked up as the guy they’d spotted earlier with Ajax wandered over and placed a platter of glistening halved figs scattered with walnuts down on their table.
‘Oh. My. God.’ Winnie groaned. ‘How good does that look? They’re the fattest figs I’ve ever seen in my life.’
‘Best in the world. I grow them myself in the garden behind the villa.’
‘I’m sensing a theme,’ Stella murmured, then took a sip of her drink and gasped. ‘Bloody hell! That’s amazing. You have to tell me how to make this before I leave.’
Ajax ignored the request, choosing instead to make introductions.
‘Ladies, this is my husband, Nikolas.’
Nikolas stuck out his hand. ‘Nik, please.’
‘Well, thank you, Nik, for this. It looks wonderful,’ Winnie said, nodding towards the plate. ‘I’m Winnie.’
The others jumped up in turn and shook his hand, and he just nodded politely and excused himself.
‘He likes actions, not words,’ Ajax sighed, watching his lover wistfully until he’d disappeared back into the villa.
‘My kind of man,’ Stella laughed, making Ajax scowl theatrically.
‘What is it that you English like to say?’ he said. ‘Not on your nelly.’
He winked and blew them a kiss before threading his way through the tables in the direction of his husband.
‘Happy couples make me want to vom right now,’ Winnie said, taking a good gulp of her drink and then almost choking on the rosemary stem.
Stella grabbed for the glass. ‘Christ, Winnie, it’s too good to splutter all over the floor!’
Frankie lifted her drink so that the sunlight shone through the liquid, bouncing pink crystal shimmers all around them.
‘Everything about this place is special,’ she said. ‘The villa, Ajax, the cocktails, that view … it’s all blissful.’
Winnie had recovered sufficiently to raise her glass and toast the others.
‘To forty-eight hours of secret recipe cocktails and uninterrupted bliss.’
Stella clinked her glass against Winnie’s. ‘I’ll drink to that. And to friendship.’
Frankie nodded solemnly and touched her glass to the others. ‘To us.’
Ajax watched the three women carefully from an upstairs window of the villa, observing the way they laughed together, how they toasted each other, that they were relaxed in each other’s company.
Maybe.
With enough of his secret cocktails and a fractured kaleidoscope of sun-gilded images laid out to seduce them, just maybe.
CHAPTER ONE
‘How the shagging hell did this happen?’
Stella looked from Winnie to Frankie clustered around the breakfast bar in her screamingly cool loft apartment. They’d barely sobered up from landing back in England a few hours ago, and reality was sinking in fast. It wasn’t just their hearts that had come home lighter from Skelidos. Their bank accounts were significantly lighter too.
Winnie’s half of the profits from the sale of her beloved house, the one she’d imagined her babies would grow up in.