Chapter Eight #2
‘It’s not permanent. I wanted to see how I got on with it before I had a real one.’
‘And?’ he said, pulling the cork out of the chilled bottle of white.
Winnie’s mouth twisted. ‘Not sure yet.’
‘I like it,’ he said, and simple as that she blushed redder than the strawberries he’d packed for their dessert. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘You seriously can’t blush this easily. Make it harder for me, for God’s sake.’
She swallowed hard. ‘I’m sorry.’
He shrugged, exasperated. He’d intended his remark to be flippant, to maybe get a rise out of her, not an apology. ‘Winnie, would you please just relax? It’s just food on a blanket. We’re probably going to be neighbours for a pretty long time, so we need to get along, right?’
She nodded. ‘Now I feel stupid.’
‘I’m starting to feel stupid for suggesting it,’ he said drily, pouring them both a big glass of wine. ‘Drink that. I’m going to do the same. I think we might need it.’
Winnie accepted the glass he held out and took a good gulp, hoping the wine might cool down her stupid, hot cheeks.
Jesse had a way of putting her on edge; being around him wasn’t remotely relaxing.
The wine, however, was deliciously crisp and cool, so she held her tongue and watched him pull the food platter up the blanket towards him.
Accepting the heavy pottery plate he handed her, she admired its bold cherry-red and ivory design as he dug around for a knife to slice the quiche.
‘Yes. I made it,’ he said, sensing the question she was about to ask.
‘I like it,’ she said, wondering if she’d ever get to see anything he’d made besides his crockery.
‘I needed plates.’
It was an odd attitude to creating art. Winnie had always found deep satisfaction and pleasure in crafting beautiful jewellery, but she couldn’t imagine doing it out of simple necessity; it kind of drained the spontaneity out of it.
Not that she could imagine ever feeling creative again.
She was relieved to have the B she came from a wealthy family in Athens and the children had spent much of their childhood being educated in the States.
That accounted for their immaculate Americanised English, then.
Corinna had come here for a summer fifteen years back to recover from a rocky divorce and stayed for a lifetime; that seemed to Winnie to be the case for many who came here.
‘And you? Is now a better time to ask you what brought you here?’ she asked, digging a little deeper.
He laid his plate down on the blanket beside him, and the twist of his mouth told her that it wasn’t a subject he was easy with.
‘Same sorry story, more or less.’ He shrugged. ‘I guess Skelidos is just home to the broken-hearted and dejected.’
‘You had your heart broken?’ Winnie couldn’t imagine anyone less likely to confess to heartbreak.
He took a drink, savouring the wine in his mouth. ‘Not exactly, and it was all such a long time ago now. You learn your lessons, you move on. In my case, that meant coming here. Best damn decision I ever made.’
His bare-bones story told her barely anything really, enough to have answered the question but not even scratching the surface of the truth. His dark eyes hinted that there was much more to know, but they also warned her not to ask because his secrets were his to keep.
‘I guess that makes it my turn to ask a question,’ he said, refilling their glasses.
The wine Winnie had already drunk had eased her nerves a little. ‘Shoot.’
‘When are you going to get back to work?’
She frowned. ‘I am working. The B it was a new look for her. People back home had regarded her as someone they could walk on, and a big part of coming here had been about being the person on the outside that she was on the inside.
‘Less guarded,’ he said, assessing her. ‘Are you brave, Winnie?’
‘Am I brave?’ She repeated his question slowly, turning it over and looking at it from every angle.
Was she brave? ‘I don’t think of myself as especially brave all of the time.
Maybe I’m like Matt Damon in that movie where he bought a zoo – you know, the one with the famous quote?
Every now and then I’m prone to twenty seconds of insane courage. ’
‘Cool,’ he said, getting up and crossing to slide open the glass doors on the back of the house. He disappeared momentarily, and when he sat back down again, he was holding a pencil and a sketchpad. Looking at his watch, he studied the second hand.
‘I’m going to ask you something now, and then you have twenty seconds to decide whether to be insanely brave.’
She stared at him, almost holding her breath in anticipation.
‘Ready?’ he asked, and she nodded without blinking.
He nodded too, his dark eyes nailed on hers.
‘Take your dress off and let me draw you naked?’