Page 93 of Hot Greek Summer

‘It’s dynamite stuff. The minute I tasted it I knew I could sell it. If I could bring this back to the mainland I’d be able to recreate it, and everyone would forget about those newspaper spreads because all they’d be able to print about me would be about this remarkable gin, discovered by chance on an even more remarkable island. It had the potential to be huge. Gin is the new black, Stella, you know that, and with a backstory like that? You couldn’t make up anything better if you tried, could you?’

All of the uncharitable thoughts she’d ever had about this man had been true. He’d been using her to get information on their gin, and at some point he’d been in the cellar and spotted the recipe.God. Her cheeks flushed at the memory of being in the cellar with him. What a fool she was to have imagined he’d been there for her. He’d been looking for that damn recipe all along. He probably took the recipe shot while they were banging away and she was too delirious to notice.

And the worst of it was that she could well understand his drive, because she was a similar animal. She knew what it felt like to be on top in the boardroom, and she knew how shameful it was to be clinging to the edge of that table by your ragged fingernails.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose you could have invented a better story.’ She was refusing to look at him.

‘Oh, but I can,’ he breathed. ‘I can invent one where I’m sitting in the boardroom with the other stuffed shirts about to hit them with my brilliance, and I realise in the nick of time that I’m about to make the most colossal mistake of my damn life, so I get up and walk out of that office, out of the building and out of my job. And then I drive the truck containing the only stock of arbutus plants in mainland Greece out of the car park without revealing them to everyone as if I’m the gin fucking magician, and I don’t stop until I reach the port several hours later.’

Stella wasn’t sure if her heart was even still beating. ‘What happens next?’ she whispered.

‘I’d make the ferry by the skin of my teeth, of course, and I’d take the plants where they should have been all along, and then I’d go inside and make wild passionate sex with the woman I love, because she’s kind and wise enough to accept me back despite all of my faults and my vanities. She’d accept me exactly as I am, because the man I am with her is the man I want to be.’

‘Make wild sex, huh?’ she said, half laughing and half tearful, aware that the mostly English package-tour holidaymakers around her had stopped what they were doing to listen in, rapt.

‘Except I was too late,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘She’d gone, and all of my plans would come to nothing because she’d already given up on me.’

Next to them, a woman groaned. Stella couldn’t blame her; it wasn’t the way fairytales were supposed to end.

‘What happens in the end?’ she said, looking into his soulful, coal-dark eyes and finding all of her own fears and hopes reflected right back.

‘Well, he dashes to the airport and catches her just in the nick of time, and then he falls on his knees and begs her to come home with him, because he doesn’t think his heart can stand even one more sunrise without her lying next to him.’

‘Oh my God,’ someone sitting nearby muttered. ‘If you don’t want him, I’ll have him.’ Murmurs of assent came from around the departure lounge.

‘This isn’t some soppy movie,’ Stella said, desperate to overcome her fears and believe him. ‘This is real life.’

‘I know, my love,’ he said. ‘I know. There aren’t any guarantees here after the credits roll, Stella. I can only stand here and give you my guarantee, my love, and hope that you think I’m worth the risk.’ For emphasis, he looked at his phone and then smashed it a few times against the table until it was well and truly out of service.

‘Do it, Stella!’ someone shouted. Actuallyshouted.

She was going to do it. Of course she was. She’d mentally ripped up her plane ticket the moment his warm hands landed on her kneecaps. Angelo stood up, and when he held out his hand she took it and let him pull her up.

‘Kiss! Kiss!’ two over-excited little girls screamed, and then Angelo swept her clean off her feet and did exactly that, so much so that the little girls’ mothers had to cover their daughters’ eyes as the lounge erupted into spontaneous, rowdy applause.

‘This is crazy,’ Stella laughed, a little bit embarrassed and a whole lot in love.

‘Come home and have wild sex with me?’ he murmured against her ear, making her shiver.

They broke off when a pensioner in a floral dress and sensible sandals approached them and touched Stella on the shoulder.

‘Excuse me, dear,’ she said, and the whole lounge strained to hear what she was going to say. ‘Have you ever seenAn Officer and a Gentleman?’

Stella nodded, as did most of the other women in the lounge. Who hadn’t given a small slice of their hearts to Richard Gere at one point or another?

‘I don’t have an officer’s hat, but you’re welcome to my husband’s sun visor. It’s barely worn, and the forecast in England is for rain.’

The woman reached up and placed a bright orange plastic ‘Skelidos Forever’ hat on Stella’s head, and Angelo took his cue perfectly to swing her up in his arms and stride across the lounge with her to the exit doors.

‘Your shoulder,’ she laughed, trying to load her weight onto his uninjured side.

‘Is better now. Everything is better now.’

As the doors slid open, a hen party stood on their metal chairs clapping and tunelessly trying to sing ‘Love lifts us up where we belong’, as the bride-to-be hitched up her fake wedding dress and yelled ‘Way to go, Stella! Way to go!’

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Four mornings later, Winnie stepped out onto her balcony and found Frankie doing the same in the next room along, except that her clothes suggested she’d already been out on the beach for yoga practice, and the cup of coffee in her hands smelled appealing.

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