Читать книгу The Bed and Breakfast on the Beach: A gorgeous feel-good read from the bestselling author of One Day in December - Kat French, Kat French - Страница 11

Jesse stood at his kitchen window and watched Winnie as she swung her legs over the low wall around his olive grove and made her way over to the donkeys. She seemed a little more sure of herself this morning, less as if she feared The Fonz might bite her hand off when she reached out to fuss his ears. Or had her skittishness yesterday been more about the fact that he’d been so rude to her on their first encounter? He knew he’d been unnecessarily brusque, but her passing similarity to Erin when she’d opened the door at the villa had been a red rag to a bull. On closer inspection she was quite different, but there was something familiar in the curve of her hip and the slender, lithe length of her limbs, in the natural fairness of the waves that fell around her shoulders and the fullness of her mouth. An echo, a reminder to him of a time in his life that he’d closed the door on. Without even realising it, Winnie had managed to disappoint him simply by not being someone else.

It was a disservice, of course; he was big enough and ugly enough to know that, but just watching her again today stirred that same complicated cocktail of emotions again.

He threw a whole glass of cold water down his throat, then lifted his hand in greeting when she turned and caught him looking her way.

‘Get a fucking grip,’ he muttered. ‘She’s not even that much like her.’

It had all been such a long time ago, really; a decade almost, more than long enough for him to make his peace with what had happened. And he had, for the most part anyway. He’d have given himself a fairly clean bill of emotional health up to yesterday, when all it had taken was a swish of blonde hair and a flick of a hip to send him off the deep end.

He didn’t do blondes any more. He’d nurtured a taste for brunettes with dark eyes and bad attitudes, girls your mama wouldn’t approve of, girls who knew what they wanted and who knew the score. The score, in Jesse’s case, was open access to his body and absolutely no entry into his heart or his head. Over the years he’d grown to enjoy being so sexually upfront; it was pretty liberating, freeing really. He couldn’t actually see why people bothered bending themselves over backwards to be something they weren’t in order to accommodate someone else’s needs. It wasn’t healthy.

‘Am I too early?’

Winnie leaned in through the half-open stable door, cutting off his train of thought. Pink skinny-rib T-shirt. White denim mini. Canvas sneakers. Her face looked free of makeup and she’d tied her hair back in a ponytail; Jesus, if she told him she was eighteen he’d believe her, which pretty much made him a dirty old man at thirty-nine. Brilliant. Another negative emotion to attach to her; she really was pushing all of his buttons without even trying.

Shoving his sunglasses on and sweeping his keys up out of the bowl on the dining table, he shook his head.

‘Nope. Right on time. Let’s go.’

Jesse’s dusty black VW Golf was nothing like Rory’s beloved sports car back home, and Winnie decided she much preferred its simple unpretentiousness. The air-con was icebox cool, and that was a much more valuable prize out here than hand-stitched leather bucket seats or tinted glass. The low-slung red Alfa would have been an entirely unsuitable car for a baby; Winnie sometimes wondered if the idea of losing it had been one of the contributory factors to Rory’s infidelity.

‘I have a couple of errands to run, so I’ll drop you at Carrefour and come back in an hour or so,’ Jesse said, turning left out of the lane onto the main road.

Winnie nodded, taking in the scenery as it whipped past her window. Olive groves, mellow fields and always the still, glittering Mediterranean in view too.

‘This is the island’s only main road,’ Jesse said. ‘It follows the coast all the way around, and the lanes that lead off it all run in towards Skelidos town at the centre. It’s a blessedly simple layout, unlike the crazy one-way systems you’re no doubt used to back home.’

‘Sounds straightforward,’ Winnie murmured.

‘You’ll find that much about Skelidos is like that. Uncomplicated.’ Jesse indicated to turn off the main road, leaving the sparkling sea behind them. ‘It’s one of the big things that I love about the place.’

‘Can I ask how you came to live here?’ she asked, curious and unguarded.

He flicked his dark eyes towards her over his sunglasses. ‘You can ask, but I’ll lie about the answer.’

Winnie held his gaze for a second before he looked back towards the quiet lane, and she saw there that although his answer had been delivered in an off-the-cuff tone, he wasn’t joking. God, he was a prickly fish.

‘Just don’t answer at all then,’ she said. ‘Lies are one thing I’ve had more than my fill of.’

This time when he glanced her way he didn’t look flippant. ‘I’ll bear that in mind.’

They lapsed into silence for the rest of the ride, Jesse concentrating on the bumpy, dusty lane and Winnie taking the chance to see the more agricultural heart of the island away from the coast.

‘Is it mostly olive farms on the island?’

Jesse nodded. ‘Olives. Cattle for dairy produce, and vegetables in season of course. I wasn’t exaggerating about the simple pace of life here. Farmland has stayed in the same families for generations and property rarely comes up for sale. You guys are about the only new people here in as long as I can recall.’

‘Wow,’ she said, taken aback. No wonder Corinna had been so eager to get a look at them. Life in England had been so entirely different; neighbours came and went and people did any number of things to make their living. Here there was an actual community, a sense of family and of history. Even in the short time she’d spent on Skelidos so far, Winnie was already starting to feel that it suited her bones more than the complicated, fractured society back home in the UK.

Home. It was a word that didn’t seem to apply to anywhere for Winnie right now. Her parents’ house would always be her childhood home, but living there again for even a short time had proved glaringly that it was no longer her home these days. Her home had been the house she’d bought with her husband and built into their love nest, but also the place where she’d discovered his infidelity, and so it was no longer somewhere that she held any keys or affection for.

It was too soon to confidently refer to Skelidos as home either though. She hoped that one day it would be in her blood and her heart, but at the moment it felt more like they were visiting the island than emigrating to it. Perhaps it was because the others, Stella in particular, seemed to view this as an experiment, a short-term stopgap to get them all out of crisis points at home. They’d all been in need of something and Villa Valentina had practically fallen into their laps.

They hadn’t realised at the time how rare it was for property to become available on the island; they certainly hadn’t counted on being the only newcomers in the last decade.

‘Is tourism fairly new here?’ Winnie asked.

Jesse nodded. ‘Very much so. None of the tour operators come here, thankfully. We’re happy to leave the crowds over on Skiathos, and on Skopelos too now thanks to Mamma Mia!’

‘They filmed it there?’

‘Sure did, and their tourism shot off the scale as a result. I’m just glad they didn’t glance our way instead.’

Winnie had seen the movie several times over. Her mother had even mentioned it when she’d broken the news about the B&B, in order to fret that life wasn’t like the movies and they were asking for trouble buying a slice of some unknown island. Winnie’s parents valued routine and order; the concept of their daughter upping sticks across the globe to somewhere they’d never even heard of had filled them with unease.

Skelidos did share some of its bigger sisters’ beautiful traits, though. Lush green pine-forest-clad hills surrounded by sleepy agricultural lands, all fringed with pale, sugar-soft sands sliding seamlessly into the gleaming turquoise sea. Given the ever-present overhead sun, it was a surprisingly verdant place, with creamy wildflowers awash through the hedgerows and the familiar, abundant ramble of bright cerise bougainvillea in evidence everywhere. For a small island, it certainly packed a visual punch; it was picture-postcard Greece without the crowds or the neon bars, an off-the-beaten-track paradise that few people seemed to have discovered as yet.

‘This is you,’ Jesse said, turning into the car park of a more sizeable Carrefour than Winnie had expected. ‘What?’ He slid his glasses off and turned to look at her when she didn’t move.

‘Nothing,’ Winnie said. ‘It’s just bigger than I thought.’

‘Just because we’re quiet it doesn’t mean we’re uncivilised. You’re perfectly safe,’ he said. ‘We like our exorbitantly priced English teabags and imported bacon just as much as the bigger islands.’

Winnie rolled her eyes. ‘You think we won’t cut it here, don’t you?’

‘It’s not for everyone,’ he said. ‘You might find it too quiet.’

‘Maybe. I don’t think so though, somehow. And anyway, quiet is good right now.’

He tapped his fingers on the wheel. ‘And what about when you’re all done hiding? What will you do then?’

Winnie frowned. ‘We’re not hiding,’ she said. ‘Just because you overheard snapshots of our lives in the bar yesterday, it doesn’t mean you get to make judgments on our staying power.’

He looked unabashed. ‘I’m just sayin’ it the way I see it, Legs.’

‘Legs? Did you just call me Legs?’

‘You’ve got them.’ He nodded down towards her knees.

‘Everyone does.’

‘Yeah, but yours go all the way up to your ass.’

‘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.