Page 77 of Hot Greek Summer

‘OK?’ Winnie leaned his way a little as she whispered, and he nodded and had to look away from the softness in her eyes because she was downright bloody dangerous. Not kissing her was turning into an endurance test. Her lips parted slightly, and the moonlight painted silver streaks in her hair. It wasn’t just his arms that were yearning. It was every last fibre of his being.

‘Is there any pizza left?’ he asked, edging away from her then hating the flicker of confusion in her eyes she wasn’t quick enough to hide. He didn’t want pizza, he wanted Winnie.

She handed him the bag and sat back again to face the screen, her eyes and attention seemingly nailed on the movie.Message received and understood, her rigid shoulders said.Why bring me here to this most romantic of settings and then make me feel a fool?her determinedly neutral profile said.

Because the only way I can keep my hands off you is to spend time with you in public places,he sent back telepathically,and because the only other option is to not spend time with you at all, and I’m too selfish a man to do that.

Would it have been better to say those things aloud? If Winnie could see inside his black heart, would she understand him better? Or would she run a mile? If she had any sense she’d run until her legs gave out. He just had to hope that his decision to go for a slow, tactful withdrawal of physical contact would leave them with the bare bones of a friendship to salvage.

Up on screen, the movie reached its big climax, the lift that evenhe’dseen despite avoiding the movie for his entire adult life. He risked a look at Winnie when Patrick Swayze uttered his immortal line about no one putting Baby in a corner, and couldn’t help but notice that Winnie had put herself as far away from him in her seat as she could. Shit. He closed his eyes, hating himself for the crap way he’d handled this tonight. He’d put Winnie in the corner.

‘Winnie, I –’

‘Shall we go, beat the rush?’ she said, over-bright as she gathered up their rubbish from the floor of the car into one bag and screwed it up.

He studied her face, her fiercedon’t bothereyes, and started the engine with a resigned sigh.

Jesse pulled the car into the gates behind Villa Valentina and turned off the engine.

‘Thanks for taking me.’ Winnie shot him a stiff smile. ‘I enjoyed it.’ She threw her door wide and climbed out, leaving no time for conversation and saving them from the awkwardness of kissing or not kissing.

‘You’re welcome. I enjoyed it too,’ he said, closing his door and handing the keys back as he joined her behind the car.

Her expression couldn’t have been more sceptical. ‘Did you?’

Around them, soft night-time sounds offset the silence that hung in the air after her question, crickets and the occasional rustle of movement in the undergrowth.

He shrugged. ‘It’s not a bad movie. Bit clichéd, maybe.’

‘Is that right.’

Jesse wished he could shut the hell up, because everything that came out of his mouth was making the situation more and more awkward. ‘Shy girl discovers her inner woman over the course of a summer spent with a guy from the wrong side of the tracks. It’s a well-worn plot.’

She leant back against the boot. ‘I guess it is,’ she said. Only the fast drum of her fingertips against the chrome trim of the car gave away her annoyance. ‘Perhaps we should have seen a good horror film instead. Maybe one where the shy heroine discovers her inner woman in the arms of the guy from the wrong side of the tracks, but then she loses it and kills him with a kitchen knife because he’s always blowing hot and cold. That sort of thing.’

‘Grisly,’ he said, yet actually he preferred her being pissed at him than hurt. He could work with that.

‘I’ll go,’ he said quietly. ‘Before you invite me in for coffee as a ruse to murder me.’

‘I wasn’t planning to invite you in.’

‘The jury’s still out on whether you’d like to murder me though, right?’

She didn’t answer and she didn’t move, just watched him steadily with those cool, assessing blue eyes. He needed to leave. Her cowgirl look was a confusing crossover of wholesome and sexy, and a good ninety per cent of his brain wanted to haul her up onto the boot of the car and feel her lock those damn boots around his waist. Once in his head, it was an image he couldn’t shake, so he nodded goodnight, pushing a hand through his hair as he took a few steps back.

‘Goodnight, Winnie,’ he said, swallowing.

‘Is that it?’ she said, crossing her ankles, jutting her chin. ‘Not even a kiss on the cheek?’

He willed himself not to look down at her long legs, even though the movement made him ache to, and that angle of her chin broke his heart because it told him that he’d hurt her feelings and she was covering it with bravado. In the movie, Baby had said something about being scared of just about everything, but most of all being scared of walking away from Patrick Swayze and never feeling the same way as she felt about him ever again.

Turning away from Winnie, Jesse walked down the lane towards home, mixed up and angry and frustrated. He’d loved his wife, and he’d spent the last ten years determined to never feel the same way about anyone else.

He’d been deliberately cool with Winnie this evening because she’d found her way under his skin, and despite his promise to himself to turn down the heat on their relationship to friendship, all he’d succeeded in doing was making her feel rejected.

Back at his house, he paced the kitchen, prowled the rooms of the house and knocked back a good measure of brandy before heading out to his studio to pound some clay. Except work turned out to be impossible too, so in the end he threw his tools down, slammed out of the studio and headed back down the lane.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

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