took his own sweet time making his way down to the boat. He stopped to kick off his shoes when he reached the sand. Stopped again to share a few words with a couple of elderly tourists.
When he stopped with Sam to poke at a mound of seaweed and watch a tiny soldier crab scuttle back into its hole in the sand she could have screamed.
He knew exactly what he was doing to her. Making her wait. And want. And want some more.
Damn but he was good at this game.
‘Serena,’ said Pete with a nod, when he and Sam finally reached her. He leaned into the boat and set the shopping bag and the papers inside it before sending her a lazy, noncommittal smile, but it wasn’t enough. She wanted more. Exactly how much more currently being a subject of much internal debate between her body and her brain.
‘Hey, flyboy.’ She was not changing her plans for him.
‘Apple and honey cake?’ he said affably.
She was going to become a successful international photojournalist! She didn’t want to be a suburban housewife. ‘No,’ she snapped, before reconsidering the question actually on the table. ‘Yes.’ She jammed the paintbrush back into its pot. ‘Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome.’ He eyed her warily. ‘Something wrong?’
‘It’s this island,’ she muttered.
‘She needs to get off it,’ said Nico, zeroing in on that woven shopping bag like a seagull after a crust. Chloe wasn’t far behind him. Not that she blamed them. Marianne Papadopoulos might have been the biggest gossip on the island, but her pastries could make grizzled Greek fisherman get down on their knees and beg. The woven shopping bag Pete had carried down to the boat was one of the ones she saved for special treats and Nico knew it. ‘What’s in the bag?’
‘Apple and honey cake,’ she said. ‘And it’s for me.’
‘Actually, I bought it for all of us,’ said Pete. ‘I would have bought something just for you but I’m being discreet.’
‘Makes sense to me,’ said Nico, delving into the bag. ‘Look, she even sliced it for us. Who’s the big bit for?’
‘Sam,’ said Pete. ‘As directed by Mrs Papadopoulos herself.’
‘She likes you, Sam,’ said Chloe, eyeing the slice. ‘That’s a big bit of cake.’
Sam looked at the cake, looked at Chloe. ‘You can have it if you like,’ he offered awkwardly. ‘I’m not that hungry.’
Chloe stared at him in startled silence, Nico smiled, and Pete turned away but not before Serena caught the hefty dose of concern in his eyes. Serena didn’t know what was going on. But it felt big.
‘Thank you, Sam, but I couldn’t. I’d never hear the end of it,’ said Chloe, trying to make light of his unexpected gesture and not quite managing it. Her eyes were too bright. Her voice wobbled too much. ‘It’s yours.’ She reached into the box and selected a smaller piece. ‘Save it for later if you don’t feel like eating it now.’
Later, by Sam’s reckoning, turned out to be approximately two seconds later. He took the cake and, head down, went back to examining the nets for holes. Loading themselves up in similar fashion, Nico and Pete did the same.
‘I should have taken it, shouldn’t I?’ whispered Chloe anxiously, her gaze still on Sam. ‘He offered, and I turned it down. I did it all wrong.’
‘No.’ Serena laid a hand on the other woman’s arm. ‘It’s okay, you did fine. It was sweet of Sam to offer, and right of you to turn it down.’ Her thoughts turned to Nico and to what she as a good and helpful cousin might do to support his cause. ‘Of course, if you wanted to capitalise on the whole food sharing business you’d go over there and very casually offer to help Sam cook up the sea bass he caught this morning, and even more casually suggest that Nico come over later and help you eat it.’
Chloe blushed furiously, her eyes wide and panicked as she turned back to Serena. ‘But, Serena, I couldn’t! That would put Nico in a terrible position. It’d be almost like a date or something.’
‘What if it was? Would that be so bad?’ Serena shook her head. ‘Get to know my cousin, Chloe. You might be surprised.’
‘I don’t want to be surprised! Nico will leave here soon. They always leave.’ She shrugged and looked back towards the village. ‘Whereas me … I couldn’t leave here even if I wanted to. My parents are old. Someone has to run the hotel. That someone is me. I have to make good, especially now I have Sam.’
‘You know from my point of view Nico’s leaving here is somewhat negotiable,’ said Serena, after a moment. ‘He could make this place his home, given the right incentive. Look at him showing Sam how to roll the nets. He likes fishing. He likes being a part of this community. He likes you.’
Chloe stayed silent, but her gaze skittered back to Nico and Sam. She was scared of opening herself up to hurt, Serena got that. But surely she could see that in this case the prize was well worth the risk? ‘So if you like him, maybe you need to think about giving the man a reason to stay.’
Serena ate apple and honey cake while Chloe headed up the beach towards the nets and Pete headed back down the beach towards her. They stopped midway to chat, while Serena brushed the crumbs from her hands and wet sand from her legs and tried to remember how she was supposed to be acting around this man. Cool, calm and collected, that was it.
Definitely a stretch.
But he made it easy for her as he made small talk about the island and his charter customers, settling back against the boat and leafing through the newspapers he’d brought with him. The Times was one of them; The Australian was the other one.
‘I saw a job in here for you earlier,’ he said as he reached into the cake box for another slice of cake. Serena eyed it wistfully. If she had any more of that cake she’d be up for some serious exercise afterwards. Tempting … but no. ‘They’re looking for a political foreign correspondent. It’s based in Jerusalem though.’
‘I could do Jerusalem.’
‘Can you do Hebrew?’
‘Do I need to?’
‘Beats me.’ He pulled out the jobs section and passed it to her. ‘Keep it.’
She waded the few feet to the shore and set her paint pot down, pushing it into the wet sand to stop it from spilling before settling down beside it and opening up the paper. Nothing like a world of possibilities to distract her from a vision sublime of man and cake, both of which she wanted far more than common sense allowed.
‘There’s one in here for you too,’ she said after a few minutes of silent browsing. ‘Feel like flying climate-control scientists around Greenland?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I’d freeze. Here’s another one.’ He’d been leafing through The Australian. ‘They’re looking for a Wilderness Society photographer. This one’s based
