Chapter Twelve
‘Ladies? Stella?’
Winnie reared up as Angelo appeared in the cellar, his tie loosened to accommodate his popped top button, his shirt sleeves rolled back.
‘Can I help you?’ she said, still half asleep.
‘I think it’s the other way around, Win,’ Frankie mumbled, straightening up. They hadn’t really drunk all that much gin, but the fact that they’d drunk it neat, and in Stella’s case on an empty stomach, had sent it straight to their heads.
Winnie elbowed Stella, half laughing. ‘Wake up, Stell. Angelo has come to save us.’
Stella mumbled something into the bench, clearly not keen on the idea of waking just yet.
‘Stella,’ Frankie said, more sharply in an effort to penetrate Stella’s haze.
‘I’ll wake her,’ Angelo said. ‘There was someone upstairs in reception, perhaps you ladies should head on up and take a look.’
Frankie and Winnie exchanged glances, and decided on balance that it was probably OK to leave Corinna’s brother with Stella.
‘I’m going to prop the door open at the top,’ Frankie looked at him through narrowed eyes, as if she were warning a teenage boy who was being allowed up to a girl’s bedroom.
‘Come on, Frank,’ Winnie said. ‘We need a big glass of water before we go out and face anyone.’
‘Stella.’
God, was she back at school being shouted at by the headmaster? Maybe if she just kept her eyes closed Mr Tennyson would go back to his dusty spot at the back of her head.
‘Stella, wake up.’
Gah, still here. ‘Go away. I’m tired and you’re not real.’
That seemed to have done the trick. Oh shit! No, it hadn’t! He was touching her! Ew, that wasn’t all right. Opening her eyes to give him a piece of her mind, she sat up and looked straight into the dark, brooding eyes of Angelo Vitalis.
‘You’re not Mr Tennyson.’
He crossed his arms and stared at her. ‘Sorry to disappoint you.’
She frowned, still not completely with it. ‘Not disappointed. He always smelt of cigarettes and liked to hang around the changing rooms.’
‘Are you drunk?’
Was she? Shaking her head experimentally, she found that actually she wasn’t too bad now she’d had forty winks.
‘Don’t think so.’
‘Stand up.’
She didn’t care for his tone but slithered to her feet all the same, straightening her strapless black jersey dress as she went.
‘Would you like me to walk in a straight line and recite the alphabet backwards too?’
‘Can you?’
She shot him a sarcastic smirk, and then focused on him properly for the first time since she’d realised he wasn’t Mr Tennyson. ‘You look like you’ve just come back from a club.’
‘I haven’t.’
God, was he always this uptight?
‘Can I ask you something, Angelo?’ she said. ‘Are you always this uptight?’
WTF? How did that happen? The words were inside her head, and then they were out of it and hanging in the air between them like little bombs.
He stared at her in complicated silence, then reached for the bottle of gin and took a good glug of it.
‘Better?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Is it?’ It was the first alcoholic drink she’d seen him take.
‘Not yet.’ He took a second gulp and then held the bottle out to study the label. ‘What is this stuff?’
Stella was torn between pride and the need to keep the island’s secret. ‘Gin.’
His eyes slowly swept the wall of bottles. ‘Are you expecting a war?’
She swallowed and shook her head, then held her arms out at shoulder height and started to take toe-to-heel steps, reciting the alphabet backwards with little regard for accuracy. By the time she reached A, she was glad to reach the back wall, laughing.
‘Very funny,’ he said.
‘Your turn,’ she said, leaning her back against the cool wall. ‘But do it in Greek.’
Had he not had several measures of gin, he’d probably have refused, but as it was he walked towards her with the bottle in his one good outstretched arm.
‘Omega,’ he said. ‘Psi.’
‘Christ,’ she said. She hadn’t heard him speak his mother tongue before, it was actually easy to forget his heritage because his English was so immaculate. Some of his words were familiar, others new and exotic, and all of them were an incredible turn-on.
‘Kappa,’ he said, more than halfway across the cellar.
Stella watched him, noticing the crinkles around his eyes as he concentrated on going backwards. The closer he came, the faster her heart beat.
‘Gamma,’ he said, his eyes nailed on hers. ‘Beta.’
He was right in front of her now.
‘Alpha,’ he almost growled, low and much too sexy.
‘God, you so are,’ she whispered. He was just about the manliest man she’d ever encountered, and right this very second his chiselled lips were slightly parted and his usually unreadable dark eyes were an open book.
‘You said I was irritating this morning,’ she said.
‘You are. Incredibly irritating and incredibly ravishing.’ His hand landed on the wall beside her head.
‘And you’re obnoxious and drop dead alpha frickin’ gorgeous,’ she said, pulling him closer by his tie until his body pressed hot and oh-so-male against hers. He kissed her, the sort of kiss that went from polite to filthy in ten seconds flat and left them both gasping for more.
‘Fuck,’ he said, lifting her clean off her feet and pinning her against the wall with his hips.
Stella laughed against his mouth, wrapping her legs around his thighs as her fingers unpicked the buttons of his shirt. ‘That, Angelo Vitalis, is music to my ears.’
Upstairs, Frankie and Winnie wandered out to the edge of the terrace and scanned the beach for any sign of their mystery visitors.
‘I don’t see anyone,’ Frankie sighed.
Winnie shook her head. ‘I hope we didn’t lose customers.’
Frankie shook her head. ‘Well, I guess we’ll never know unless they come back.’ She took Winnie’s empty water glass from her hand. ‘I need to get back to the kitchen. I’m trying out Panos’s mother’s baklava recipe ready for the new guests.’
Re-emerging onto the terrace again at a brisk trot a minute or two later, Frankie dropped down beside Winnie on the bench overlooking the sea. ‘I don’t think there were any visitors at all,’ she whispered conspiratorially. ‘I think he wanted to get Stella on her own.’
‘Does she need rescuing?’ Winnie said, ready to go into battle.
Frankie laughed and shook her head. ‘Not by the sounds coming from the cellar, no. I had to leave the kitchen.’
Winnie took a second to register what Frankie meant. ‘Oh my God!’ she mouthed, slapping her hands to her cheeks.
‘Well, I just hope they don’t break any bottles,’ Frankie said. ‘How would we record that in the log?’
‘I’m off to meet the ferry,’ Stella said, jangling the car keys. ‘Wish me luck.’
Frankie held up her crossed fingers, and Winnie nodded, clicking her pen nervously. ‘Have you got the board?’ She’d made a board with the guests’ names on for Stella to hold up.
‘In the car already.’
‘And you know their names?’
‘Smith, Brown and Williams,’ Stella said, even though Winnie had already asked her three times that morning. ‘But if I forget, it’s on the board. Win, I’ve got this. I’ll bring them back, you can check them in, and Frankie can wow them with baklava. Everything will be fine.’
They’d allocated the guests the three connecting rooms that made up the rest of the first floor beside Angelo’s Captain’s Suite in the corner.
All high-ceilinged and decorated in restful whites, greys and neutrals to make the most of the natural light, they reminded Winnie of artists’ studios.
Technically, all of the villa’s letting rooms were then full, meaning that their move down into the owner’s apartment was more urgent than ever.
‘Coffee?’
As Stella set off for the port, Frankie came through to reception dressed in chic black cigarette pants and a black polka-dot sleeveless blouse, carrying two steaming mugs.
With her knotted silk scarf around her neck and her big dark glasses perched on her head, she looked every inch the cool hotelier, a perfect foil to Winnie’s long, flippy ponytail and simple white sundress.
In the month they’d been there they’d both been gilded golden by the sun and wore very little makeup aside from mascara and a slick of lip gloss.
They didn’t even realise how different they already looked from the pale, tired Englishwomen who’d arrived on the island with suitcases full of pipedreams and no real clue what to expect.
‘Thanks,’ Winnie said. ‘You excited?’
Frankie nodded, sparkly-eyed. ‘I know we’ve had Angelo here already, but these are our first actual bookings.’
‘Is it a bit odd, do you think? Three English men travelling here together for three weeks? It’s not like we’re a party island. God knows how Ajax got the bookings in the first place.’
Frankie glanced at their reservation details. ‘Early forties. If they’re on a stag do, it’s going to be a very reserved one.’
‘I hope they like gin,’ Winnie said. Their first bottles would be ready to test in a day or two, and they’d all become slightly obsessed with the arbutus bush in the garden.
Frankie had researched how to best care for it and posted a bullet-point list up on the cork-board in the kitchen, and they were on a daily rota to pop outside and just look at it for any signs of trouble.
‘Who doesn’t?’ Frankie said. ‘Even Angelo seems to have developed a taste for it.’
‘Hmm.’ Winnie wasn’t sure what to make of Stella’s sudden change of heart where the current resident of the Captain’s Suite was concerned.
God knows what he’d said to her in the cellar to make her go from active dislike to insta-lust. Perhaps it was Winnie’s own romantic fragility and confusion over Jesse, but she didn’t want Corinna’s austere brother to leave Villa Valentina with Stella’s affections in his back pocket.