Page 101 of Love Among the Ruins
Her phone buzzed straightaway.
Dominic: Do I miss you? Impossible not to.
Her heart leapt. She swallowed. Something ignited in her belly, stirred her senses.
Stefanos moved towards her with one side of the blanket in his hands, and together they folded it in two and two again.
“How about we try eating out tomorrow, the four of us?” She searched around for her slippers and heard her phone buzz again. She found one, and then the other, buried under some sand which she shook off, flapping her sandal in the air.
“You lied.” Stefanos had grabbed her phone and held it out for her. He wouldn’t have been able to get into it without a PIN code, but the heading of Dominic’s message flashed up for a few seconds right along with his name.
Eleni snatched her phone. She opened her mouth to say something, but closed it again. There was no point in telling a white lie to hide an existing one.
“Does he talk to you like that all the time?” The hard edge to Stefanos’s voice cautioned her to watch her reply.
“Who?”
“I’m not stupid, Leni. Dominic Steele, who do you think?”
There was nothing she could say.
“You’re flirting, the pair of you?”
“No!”
“You have something to tell me, Leni?” If looks could kill, she’d be as dead as the starfish she could see behind his shoulder.
“No.” It was true. There was nothing romantic between her and Dominic.Nothing.Nothing had happened. It might have come close to happening … unless that time in his office was all in her head.
She wasn’t even sure. Too many painkillers had muddled her mind. “We’re not flirting.” She backed away, holding the blanket for security.
“Does he usually talk to you like that?”
“He’s only asking when I’m coming back, Stefanos. Why are you getting so worked up?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because I’m trying to work out why you lied and said it was Miranda?”
She sighed loudly, then stopped to face him. “I knew you would give me a hard time about it.”
“Obviously, you knew there was something for me to give you a hard time about.”
“Wait, what?”
“I worry about you, Leni. I’ve seen guys make a move on you.”
“Dominic would never do anything like that. He’s a gentleman.”
“I’m not talking about him making a sleazy move. He’s too refined to do anything that vulgar. I’m talking about him falling for you.”
“That’s not going to happen!” This was Dominic Steele. He wasn’t about to fall for someone like her, no matter how many tricks her mind played on her to make her believe otherwise.
Stefanos shook his head, but she waved her hand, dismissing any crazy ideas he had. “Nothing is going on. It’s just a message.”
“Some message,” Stefanos grumbled, and then became unusually quiet as they headed back. The last thing he said to her before she went into her house was to be careful. He told her he didn’t want to see her get hurt.
She’d laughed it off, pretended he was being silly and that she didn’t know what he was talking about. But once inside her home, and without Stefano’s scrutinizing gaze, she was confused.
She read the message again and couldn’t believe her eyes, or ignore the furious beating of her heart.
