Chapter Five #2
‘Yes, but …’ She trailed off, blushing a litle. There really wasn’t much she could say to that.
‘I’ll be back in half an hour or so. I’ll come and find you.’
Winnie nodded and scarpered out of his car, muttering thanks as she slammed the door, pulling her skirt down her thighs as she went.
Winding his window down, he shot her a grin. ‘I can still see them.’
‘So stop looking then.’
Winnie turned and walked away, turning at the supermarket to find him still blatantly watching her.
‘You’re so predictable, caveman,’ she half shouted, making a woman pushing a trolley past her turn to look at her in alarm.
‘Signomi! Sorry!’ Jesse called, raising his hand in greeting as he used both Greek and English for clarity. ‘She’s new around here.’
It seemed to do the trick, for the woman at least, who shrugged and moved on.
It had a far less relaxing effect on Winnie, who felt more like throwing tomatoes from the display outside the store at Jesse’s smug grin as he tapped his watch face and threw his arm across the back of the passenger seat to reverse out of the car park.
‘Legs,’ she muttered, watching him pull away in a cloud of dust before heading inside the thankfully cool supermarket.
‘Get everything you need?’
Winnie turned away from the baffling display of cleaning products at the sound of Jesse’s voice behind her.
‘Has it been that long already?’ She frowned down into her half-filled trolley.
Her shopping so far had been hit and miss from the list they’d all cobbled together around the breakfast table that morning.
There were ingredients for dishes Frankie wanted to test out, and vague things like ‘buy dinner’ and then a few requests for tastes of home if they were available.
‘I’m looking for bathroom cleaner. For the loos and things.’
He scanned the shelves, plucked a spray bottle down and briefly read the back before handing it to her.
‘This one. It actually specifies that it’s best for delicate-stomached tourists who insist on a full English breakfast washed down with builder’s tea.’
‘Ha ha.’ Winnie grabbed it from him and put it as far away from the bacon and eggs in her trolley as possible.
‘What else do you need?’
Surveying the list, Winnie said, ‘Dinner.’
‘Eat at Panos’s place.’
‘We live here, Jesse. We want to cook for ourselves.’
‘ I live here, and Panos cooks my dinner more than I do.’
‘You’re a man.’
‘Now who’s being stereotypical?’
She pulled a face at his back as he wandered away towards the deli counter.
Following him, she listened as he chatted easily with the girl behind the display, speaking in fast, fluent Greek that she couldn’t follow.
He made the girl laugh though, so evidently he was more charming in his second language than his native tongue.
‘Not vegetarians, no?’
‘Frankie is.’ Winnie didn’t miss the pained look on Jesse’s face as he turned back and ordered more things from the counter.
‘Olives,’ he said when he turned back around with his hands full. ‘And feta.’
Winnie watched him lay the clear containers of gleaming green olives and big creamy chunks of cheese alongside the salad ingredients already in her trolley.
‘Spanakopita. It’s spinach pie.’
Frankie would approve of that.
‘Keftethes. Meatballs. Tell your vegetarian to steer clear.’
‘I think she could work that much out for herself,’ Winnie said. The balls were huge and clearly strictly for carnivores.
Jesse added a tub of tzatziki and slices of locally cured ham, before moving over to the bakery to order a bag of fresh triangles of pita straight from the ovens.
‘Dinner,’ he said, waving his hand grandly over the trolley as if he’d been out and hunted the meat himself.
‘Thank you.’
They wandered back towards the tills, and once there he automatically unloaded and packed her shopping into brown paper carriers without her needing to ask as she carefully counted out the unfamiliar money.
It was a moment of simple harmony, and she had the grace to thank him as they left the store and filled the boot of his Golf with her shopping bags.
‘Do you need to go straight back?’ he asked as she slipped into the passenger seat.
She looked at him for a long moment, wondering what he had in mind. ‘I don’t think it matters too much. Why?’
He winked at her before sliding his glasses over his eyes and gunning the engine.
‘In that case I’ll show you something special.’
He threw his arm across the back of her seat to glance over his shoulder and reverse in that sexy way that only men on movies ever truly do, and Winnie tried not to notice the inadvertent graze of his fingertips against the back of her neck as they left the supermarket behind them in the distance and drove up into the hills.
Reaching across Winnie’s knees to grab a bottle of chilled water from the glove box, Jesse tried not to notice the fact that she smelled like fresh flowers or that her skin was so double-cream pale against his own sun-weathered arm.
‘Come on, it’s up on foot from here.’
‘What is?’
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.’
Everything about her body language told him she was offended, from her braced shoulders to her balled fists beside her on the bench.
‘I always thought it was romantic, actually. Not everyone has to put themselves about like a …’ She flicked her hand towards him to encompass all that he was. ‘Like a tomcat, snogging anyone and everyone who is even halfway interested.’
Jesse laughed. ‘I like kissing, Winnie. There’s nothing wrong with that.’ He refused to be anything but blasé. ‘I like screwing, too. I like it a lot.’
‘Well, there’s a surprise. No doubt you’ve lost count of how many women you’ve …’ She flicked her hand at him again rather than repeat the word.
‘Does it matter?’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t lie. I don’t cheat. I don’t fall in love either, but we have a damn good time and we respect each other in the morning.’
She spread her fingers flat on the bench and studied them.
‘Maybe you’ve got it right. At least no one gets hurt.’
‘Things are only ever as complicated as you make them, Winnie,’ he said softly.