One Bed

Chapter 1

Chapter One

D riving her rental car away from the airport, Bea Williams wished she wasn’t in a rush to get to Golly’s Santorini villa near Oia. It was midday, and the sun was high in the dense blue sky, coating everything in a luminous glow. Despite summer being over, the bougainvillaea, jasmine, and potted geraniums still pulsated with colour, while the lake-smooth turquoise sea shimmered. The Greek sun created sharp contrasts between light and shadow and accentuated the contours of the cliffs and rocky outcrops of the caldera.

Mid-October, when many of the accommodation establishments closed their doors and the owners wiped the sweat from their foreheads and checked their bulging bank accounts, was her favourite time to be on the island.

The sunsets were as vibrant, the sea still warm, but the island, especially the famous, blue-roofed town of Oia, wasn’t a portly man’s vest bursting its buttons. In October, Oia returned to being part of a community, a place where people lived year-round, where you didn’t need to fight your way through the streets because the selfie crowd needed to pose in front of the iconic views of the caldera, or because they had to capture the always amazing sunset.

Thank God the island was, for Santorini, relatively empty. Bea didn’t know if she could contend with hoards of pushy tourists. The next two weeks were going to be busy. She was organising Golly’s joint retirement and seventieth birthday bash while wrestling with a combination of writer’s block, imposter syndrome and characters who wouldn’t bloody talk to her.

She’d visited Santorini in every season, sometimes several times a year, sometimes to write, sometimes to relax. This island was her second home, the place where she’d banged out the first book in her Urban Explorers series, where she’d gathered her courage to show Golly her work, praying her acerbic godmother wouldn’t strip ten layers of her skin while she critiqued her work before telling her it was unsaleable.

It had been unsaleable, back then, but Golly had made a series of suggestions and Bea had rewritten the book three times. A year later, her super-agent godmother sold the first three books in the series. Bea’d submitted book nine of the series a few weeks back and was currently plotting book ten. Lately, she was as insecure as she’d been as a debut author five years ago, jumpy and jittery and second-guessing herself at every turn.

She couldn’t remember when she’d last lost time in front of the keyboard, stumbling out of the story bleary-eyed with cramping fingers, knowing the letters she tossed onto the screen were pure gold. The voices in her head – snatches of conversation between her characters, some in whispers, some shouted – were silent. She no longer saw short video clips of what they were doing or how they were reacting.

Writing, her solace, her joy and her escape felt like dragging stone-heavy feet through peanut butter…

Blup…

Bea cocked her head and hit the volume button to turn down Shaboozey’s ‘A Bar Song’ blasting from the rental car’s small speakers. She usually caught the bus from the airport to Oia, with just a rucksack on her back, but this trip to Golly’s Folly required a large suitcase and dresses in bags. What was that strange noise? Not recognising it, she shrugged, lifted the volume, tapped her fingers against the steering wheel and wished for her own double shot of whisky.

As Bea’s professional crisis was ratcheting up, Golly had announced her retirement and told the publishing world she was closing her literary agency. That meant Bea (and the agency’s other clients) needed to find alternative representation. She’d been tossing back antacids like chocolate-covered peanuts since first hearing her godma’s news.

‘I’ve got more money than God, Bea-darling, and I want to spend it! I want to spend some time at the Hidden Beach Resort, party at Tomorrowland, and drink Ayahuasca in the Orinoco basin. I want to read for pleasure , Bea-darling; if I find the time between learning Spanish and my Pilates and Bikram yoga classes. I also intend to find a lover.’

The fact that Bea needed to look up the Hidden Beach Resort – it was a luxurious nudist colony on the Mexican Riviera – and refresh her mind about Ayahuasca – the Amazon version of psychedelic ’shrooms – was a little embarrassing. Golly was extremely eccentric, vivacious and super cool. Everything she was…

Not.

Her godmother – actually Golly was her mum’s godmother but, thanks to Bea being dropped on her doorstep every holiday since she was six because her mum couldn’t be arsed to have her during the summer as per her parents’ custodial agreement – lived life at a thousand miles per hour.

While Bea was still trying to take in the soul-sinking news about her retirement, Golly went on to say that she wanted her seventieth birthday and retirement bash to be on the Greek island of Santorini, at her villa on the outskirts of Oia.

Golly was a stalwart of the London and New York literary and art scenes and had a vast network of contacts all over the world. She wanted everyone she worked with: editors and authors – friends and foes, Bea-darling! – to attend. It took Bea a week to whittle the thousand-plus guest list down to two fifty, with Golly kicking, shouting and pouting while they argued about whether a lover she’d had in her forties warranted an invitation. Or her beauty therapist or her new hairdresser.

Golly didn’t see the point of holding a small party. She wanted a crowd, dammit, so she could be the belle of the ball and be painted with adulation, buoyed by blandishments. Bea thought she was being a tad optimistic believing everyone thought she was wonderful. Golly’d had numerous lovers, had broken up a marriage or two – I didn’t cheat, Bea-darling, they did ! – and was once a powerful editor in publishing before establishing the G and thanks to her mum and her ex hooking up, Bea rarely dated. What was the point when she was terrified of being hurt and being disappointed again? But she’d allowed Golly behind her mile-high wall. Her life would be paint-dryingly boring without that tiny, cigarillo-smoking, alcohol-swilling, filter-lacking loudmouth, the person who invented the concept of giving no fucks, in her life.

Golly’s house had always been where Bea escaped to when life with her dad became too overwhelming, the only place she could be a kid. Golly had scooped her up after her father died when she was sixteen, becoming her mentor, aunt, grandmother and best friend all rolled into one. And as her literary agent, Golly was the only person (apart from Reena, Golly’s oldest friend) who knew that Bea was Parker Kane, the author of the surprisingly successful Urban Explorers series for pre-teens. Golly – confident, loud, gregarious and generous – was whom Bea strived, with little success, to be.

When she’d dropped the news of her retirement – without the gravity it deserved – Golly had asked Bea to help with two things: one easy, one bitterly hard.

‘ I’m combining my seventieth birthday with my retirement, and I need you to organise everything, Bea-darling. I’m saying goodbye to my old life as a literary doyenne, so I want a blowout, raise-the-roof, fuck-with-everyone’s-head party. Can you organise that for me?’

With the help of an event planner, that part was easy peasy.

Her second request was more difficult.

‘ You also need to think about how my retirement affects you, Bea. Currently, I’m the shield between you and the world, and you need to figure out what you are going to do. I’d like you to step out from behind your pseudonym. I can’t force you to do that, but, if you still want to hide, then you need a new agent. How do we get you one without revealing who you are?’

It was a conundrum and one that made Bea’s head ache. She was no closer to an answer than she was when she’d first heard Golly’s news. What nobody, not even Golly, understood was that she and Parker Kane were two different entities. The Parker Kane who replied to reader’s letters and bantered with her fans on social media was hip and switched-on; a little glam, a lot confident; someone cosmopolitan and creative, who knew how to use words like ‘yeet’ and ‘sus’ and ‘flex’ and didn’t have to look them up on Urban Dictionary. Parker was on the ball, confident, funny, and smart.

Parker Kane was the protective barrier between Bea and the world, a way to shield herself from the criticisms of reviewers and readers, and the fluctuations of an industry that could, on some occasions, be brutal. Bea, the person she was away from her computer, was plagued by self-doubt, someone who found it difficult to trust herself, someone who occasionally, despite some success, often felt lost, and overwhelmed. She could blame her useless parents for her F’d-up mindset.

And she did.

Her parents couldn’t have been more different, and despite racking her brain, Bea failed to comprehend how polar opposites had come together to produce a child. Lou, her mum, was loud, vain, narcissistic, selfish and ambitious. Her dad had been, up until his death fifteen years ago, spineless, ineffectual, a classic victim who believed the world was against him.

They’d never married, nor lived together, and Bea only saw Lou a few times a year. Her father, a twig on some aristocratic branch, had lived off a family trust and royalties and was, on paper, her primary parent.

Like Bea, he’d been a children’s author, but also an illustrator. He’d had little time for children, though, and hated being bothered by them. It was lucky for her – was it luck or a means of survival? – that she’d been the adult-iest child ever. Bea couldn’t remember a time when she didn’t feel like he was the child and she the person holding it all together. She always felt grown up, loved being praised for being a mature and responsible child and she withered under criticism.

At ten, she’d cooked their meals, at twelve she’d paid the household bills and kept an eye on her dad’s finances. And the more she did for him, the more he relied on her. She’d been addicted to his infrequent validation, and all her wheels fell off when he criticised her. To avoid any censure, Bea did everything in her power to avoid making a mistake. Two decades later, she still never went anywhere without doing a week’s worth of research, and never argued a point unless she had salient facts to back her up.

In her early twenties, Bea had met Gerry, and within weeks she was living with the aspiring musician and immediately became his caregiver and solver of his problems. It took her five years, numerous infidelities on his part, and the threat of physical violence for her to realise she was reliving her childhood, prepared to move mountains because he’d occasionally, usually when he wanted something, told her he loved her.

When Golly sold her Urban Explorers series, Bea’s constant second-guessing of herself – oh, and her mum’s public hook-up with Gerry, but that was another story – led her to publish under a pseudonym, hiding her true identity and avoiding the vulnerability of public criticism and scrutiny.

And yes, she knew she’d recreated her missed childhood through her books, she’d figured that much out! And yes, Parker Kane was her alter-ego, but she was someone who lived outside of her, apart from her. Parker was someone that Bea – who spent far too many hours on her arse mainlining coffee, and the bulk of her time alone, who constantly second-guessed herself – wasn’t.

Bea rolled her shoulders, frustrated by what she was – scared, uncertain, a little lonely – and what she wasn’t – brave, outspoken, confident.

She turned up the volume to maximum, hoping to drown out her thoughts. She’d start thinking about herself and her future when her two-week working holiday was over.

But she’d probs find another excuse not to confront the PK question – revisions, deadlines, plotting her next series – when she got back to London. It wasn’t something she could put off forever.

Next week. She’d think about her future as Parker Kane, a future without Golly steering her, next week. Or maybe the week after.

Blup, blup, blup…

The steering wheel started to vibrate under her hands and Bea noticed the flashing light on the dashboard. She steered the car off the road into a lay-by and switched off the engine, placing her forehead on the steering wheel as spiteful trolls excavated her brain with pickaxes. Since hearing Golly’s retirement news four weeks ago, her headache was her most faithful companion, the result of far too much stress and way too little sleep.

She’d asked Golly if she’d continue to represent just her, selling it as a way for Golly to keep her hand in, to stay connected to the world of publishing. Golly’d immediately seen through her ruse, told her she was a manipulative baggage, and refused. Golly wanted to be free, to not have to worry about anyone or anything book-related, and that ‘ includes, Bea-darling, you! ’.

Golly’d made up her mind and there was no changing it. She was determined to enjoy the golden years of her life, vowing to fly into old age with a huge smile on her face, yelling like a banshee.

Nuts. She was nuts. Batshit crazy.

But, God, Bea loved her.

There’ll be lots of drinking and lots of dancing at my party, Bea-darling! We can let our hair down and have some fun, in bed and out.

She’d rather not think about Golly’s bed-based antics, and Bea wasn’t a one-night-stand type of girl. Truthfully, she was more of a got-my-heart-smashed-and-now-I’m-done type of girl. She’d only had two lovers before she met Gerry, and, unfortunately, sex with her ex wasn’t anything like romance novels described – it had been messy, quick and a little boring. Genuinely, she did not understand why sex sold. But it did, and many authors made gang cash by writing dark, sexy romances and erotica.

She pushed her sunglasses up into her thick, dark brown hair—Golly called it walnut brown, Bea called it boring–and opened the door to step out onto the gravel area of the lay-by. To her left was Oia, with its distinct blue-domed churches and blindingly white buildings. She had a one-eighty view of the entire caldera, the lava islands at its centre, the island of Thirasia in the distance and the sea a shade of blue she called Santorini Stunning. On the other side of the island were the famous beaches, Red Beach and Kamari, as well as her favourite, Baxedes Beach, popular amongst locals because of its seclusion, white sand and shallow waters. She hoped to have time to visit them this trip, but she had the next book to plot and a spin-off series to plan. She wanted to get that down before the revisions came in for book nine, but she was expecting, hoping, they would be light.

She also had to make sure Golly’s party would be a classy success.

She’d learnt the hard way that if she didn’t keep an eye on her godmother, there was every possibility this coming weekend would turn into a bacchanalian feast.

Bea placed her hands on her hips and scowled at her car. She couldn’t see any steam or smoke drifting out from underneath the bonnet, so that was a plus. Maybe. She walked around the car, the hem of her brown-and-white patterned dress swirling around her calves. She kicked the back left tyre with the toe of her flat sandal, it looked fine. But the front left tyre was not. It sagged into the gravel, looking sad and sorry for itself. Damn, she’d picked up a puncture…

And changing a tyre wasn’t a life skill Bea possessed. She was a writer, someone who used words, and her arms were day-old noodles strong. Now Pip, the enterprising and practical twelve-year-old ringleader of the motley bunch of underprivileged miscreants who were the stars of Bea’s books, would whip out tools and would know where to find the spare wheel.

It’s in the boot, dummy…

It was the first time she’d heard his voice in a while, and she smiled. Was he back for good? God, she hoped so. ‘Pipe down, squirt.’

So what was she going to do? There was nobody at the villa who could help her, so she’d have to call the rental company or get a mechanic out from Fira. Bea was about to reach for her phone, when she heard the low-pitched rumble of a deep-throated engine. Over the roof of her car, she watched a roof-and-doorless Jeep pull up to a stop behind her. A big man with aviator glasses and windblown hair sat behind the wheel. A bright blue canoe rested on the passenger seat behind him.

She watched as he climbed out of the Jeep and her eyebrows shot up when the unfamiliar hum of attraction vibrated up and down her spine. So … wow . He was tall, he had the best part of a foot on her five-four and he was, holy hell, ripped. Instead of helping her to change the flat tyre, Bea was pretty sure he could just pick up her car and walk it to Golly’s villa.

His loose, long-legged stride quickly covered the space between them. The breeze coming off the ocean played with his wavy hair skimming the collar of his shirt, a deep, rich shade of old gold.

His nose was long and a little hooked, and his face was all angles and planes.

Sexy in a diabolical way, the love child of Jimmy Dean and Clint Eastwood. She couldn’t pull her eyes off him, partly because he was how she imagined her fictional Pip would look like when he was all grown up. If this guy had light, silver-blue eyes, like Pip, her knees might buckle. They were halfway to doing that already. She mentally urged him to remove his glasses, but they stayed on his face. Dammit.

Capable, masculine, a little hard, a lot streetwise. Instinctively she knew he didn’t take crap, not from anyone, anywhere.

He was dressed in tailored shorts and a linen shirt, sleeves rolled back to reveal his strong forearms. He’d only buttoned three of his four shirt buttons, and, thanks to the wind, she caught glimpses of his Canada-wide chest and ridged stomach. Expensive leather flip flops covered his big, so big, feet.

Confident, charismatic and oh-so-cool…

‘Do you need some help changing your flat?’ he asked in a chocolate-over-rough-stone voice. His accent was American, but fairly generic. It did, however, hold a tiny hint of Southern drawl.

‘Uh … that would be amazing,’ she replied, not looking a gift horse, or a knowledgeable guy, in the mouth. ‘What I know about cars is dangerous. I don’t drive that often, I’m a take-the-Tube girl.’

He lifted his chin, silently acknowledging her babbling reply. ‘I’m London born and bred,’ she continued, wishing she could slap duct tape across her mouth. God, she was so bad at flirting. It was his turn to say something, anything .

He didn’t.

‘Are you on a canoeing holiday?’ she asked, nodding to the canoe in the back of his Jeep. She looked at the lake-flat sea.

‘That’s a kayak.’

Wasn’t that what she said?

‘Technically, you kneel in a canoe, and use a one-sided paddle. You sit in a kayak and use a double-sided paddle,’ he explained, catching her confusion.

‘Oh, right.’ Both activities sounded tiring and something that required a lot of energy. And upper body strength. She far preferred to lie on the beach reading a book, taking the occasional dip to cool off. She was adventure-averse, but her characters made up for her lack of skills. Pip was incredible on his skateboard and Jemima had amazing parkour skills. Hettie, her big-brained nerd, could pick any lock anywhere, Gus was a street fighter and Bas a fearless hacker. None of her imaginary friends were scared to wade into dangerous situations. Bea wondered how she could get them to use a kayak/canoe in an urban environment. On an underground river, on a lake? On the Serpentine?

She waited for more and when he didn’t elaborate, she jumped in. Again. ‘Did you hire it in Fira?’

He didn’t answer her but nodded to her car. ‘Do you want to pop the trunk?’

Pop the trunk ? Right, he was asking her to open the boot. Bea ducked into the car, found the lever and before she could straighten up, or give him a warning, Big and Beautiful lifted the hatchback’s door. Her overly full toiletry bag—only half closed because she’d grabbed the bottle of aspirin from it earlier—tumbled to the ground and burst open. A packet of anti-diarrhoea pills landed on his foot and a couple of tampons escaped their box and hit his bare toes. Cream and applicators to treat thrush completed her trifecta of embarrassment.

She hurried forward to gather her possessions and yelped as her bunny-ears vibrator fell to the gravelled road. Bea watched in horror as a big, broad hand snatched it out of thin air. Dark eyebrows rose and the side of his sexy, mobile mouth lifted in amusement. She waited for a snarky, sleazy comment, but it didn’t come. Instead, he swiftly gathered her items, shoved them into her toiletry bag and handed it and the vibrator to her, his expression equanimous.

‘Thank you,’ Bea mumbled, flames eating her face. And thanks bunches for not being a sleazy prick.

She pushed everything into the bag so she could close the zip. Her rescuer gestured to her large suitcase and the stuffed-with-dresses clothes bag. ‘I need to move these to get to the spare wheel and the tools.’

‘The suitcase can sit on the road, and I’ll put the clothes bag on the back seat,’ Bea said. He lifted her heavy bag like it was full of cotton wool – she’d needed both hands and to bend her knees to lift it into the rental car – and placed it on the road. He draped the clothes bag over her arm and lifted the carpet in the boot. And there sat a lovely, new-looking spare.

Excellent. She’d be on the road in no time.

Bea put the clothes and toiletry bag on the back seat and returned to watch her rescuer position a jack under the car. ‘Can I do anything to help?’ she asked.

He looked up at her, and Bea noticed a few silver hairs at his temples, glinting in the sun. She wished she could see his eyes. ‘Do you know how to change a flat?’ he said.

‘That would be a solid no.’

‘It’ll probably be quicker if I do it myself.’

In minutes he had the tyre off, the new tyre on and had tightened the bolts. He put the car back on its four wheels and Bea looked at her watch. OK, she had no idea how long it took to change a tyre, but she sensed he’d made short work of the task. She was impressed.

Gerry had found it difficult to put fuel in the car. Found it even harder to pay for it.

The spare went back into the car, along with the cross-like spanner thing and the yellow jack. He replaced the carpet and easily lifted her heavy suitcase back into the boot. ‘There’s space for your toiletry bag and the clothes bag now,’ he told her.

She shook her head. ‘No, I’ll leave them where they are, I don’t have far to go.’ She held out her hand. ‘I’m so grateful you stopped. I have so much to do today, and you saved me a lot of time.’

His hand engulfed hers and tingles shot up her arm as baby fireworks erupted on her skin. It had to be because he was so roughly handsome, so big, the most masculine man she’d ever met. And the fact that he could sort out her car with ease added another layer to her attraction. ‘You’re obviously good with your hands.’

When he grinned, she realised she’d spoken out aloud. ‘So I’ve been told,’ he drawled.

She blushed, and dropped her eyes, cursing her bright cheeks and the splotches blooming on her chest and neck. Well, obviously . He was in his mid-to-late thirties, gorgeous, and if he hadn’t picked up some bedroom skills, she’d be disappointed. How would his hands feel on her skin? Would he taste as good as he looked, and could his rough-looking stubble be softer than it appeared?

Right, definitely time to move on. ‘I’d offer to pay you, but I have no cash on me,’ she told him. Why are you reacting like this, Bea? He’s waaaayyyy out of your league!

‘I wouldn’t take it, so don’t worry about it,’ he said, shutting the back door to her hatchback. ‘I hope the rest of your trip is drama-free.’

Since she was dealing with Golly, she had zero chance of that happening, so she smiled and nodded. He strode to his Jeep, climbed in and started it up. After pulling on his seatbelt, he looked at her again, smiled and lifted his hand.

And with that, he was gone. And she’d never see him again.