changed out of her cropped jeans into something cooler—a short lime-green drawstring skirt that fitted on her hips and a small sleeveless white vest. Now she felt hideously exposed even though she knew that Theo wasn’t interested in looking at her legs.
‘So what did Michael tell you about the island?’
‘It’s small and has some very good boutiques.’
Theo felt his mouth twitch. ‘Remind me to tell him never to consider a job in the tourist industry. Okay, here are some facts. This island is one of the most violent volcanoes on the planet. Some think that three thousand years ago it wiped out the entire Minoan civilisation. And, believe it or not, there was no tourism to speak of until fairly recently, when people realised that add one famous crater to amazing black sand beaches and you get a must see resort.’
‘And you don’t approve?’ Abby felt herself grudgingly drawn into the conversation. If her mission was to be super-friendly and allay any suspicions, then this was as good a place to start as any because she was genuinely interested in the history of the place.
‘What small island really approves of tourism?’ He glanced briefly at her and she wished again that he would remove the sunglasses.
‘The ones that make a packet of money out of it?’ Abby ventured.
‘Doesn’t mean that the natives like it,’ Theo pointed out. He interrupted himself to point out various sights, drawing her attention to the colour of the rocks and the nature of the landscape, comparing it to other Greek islands. ‘Of course,’ he said, resuming his original topic, ‘they all work towards promoting tourism because it involves promoting their own standard of living, but do you not agree that it deadens the authenticity of a place?’
‘If I had the choice of a roof over my head and food in my stomach, and the price was to be polite to a few tourists for a few months of the year, then I know what I’d choose.’
‘Ah, a practical woman.’ Or something else. ‘And here I was thinking that all women were romantics at heart.’
‘Because someone is sensible doesn’t mean that they’re not romantic as well,’ Abby said.
He wanted to dwell on the significance of what she had said, but decided to go down the tantalising route of finding out just a little bit more about her.
‘I suppose wandering the land with your parents may have resulted in you not getting a large enough dose of reality to extinguish the notion of romance.’
Abby tore her eyes away from the impressive scenery to stare at him. Remember you’re being nice and friendly and open, she thought. ‘Maybe, although I must say I had a large dose of reality in the form of temporary housing and dodgy neighbourhoods. No, I tell a lie, we never really stayed anywhere dodgy. Wolf and River preferred villages to cities.’
‘Wolf and River?’
Abby hadn’t meant to say that. Not even Michael knew about those stupid names her parents had called themselves. Just uttering it out loud made her cringe with embarrassment. She stared resolutely ahead, chin tilted, and didn’t say anything.
‘Your parents were called Wolf and River?’ Theo stole a glance at the stubborn profile. So she was a slightly more complex gold-digger. Probably why she had succeeded with Michael, who had never been one to fall for the obvious.
‘They explained that they needed names to suit the people that they were. Course, I carried on calling them Mum and Dad.’
‘Bet they loved that.’
‘They accepted that I…wasn’t like them. Anyway, that’s all very boring. Tell me some more about the island. You said it’s volcanic. Isn’t that dangerous?’
Theo’s eyes strayed fleetingly to her slender thighs, abundantly exposed thanks to the short skirt which had ridden up, and he tried to focus on the mission at hand.
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