The Greek Escape

by Karen Swan

  ‘See?’ He pushed onto his back and floated on the surface as though he – they – had not a care in the world. ‘Working.’

  She worked for the rest of the day. They jumped off the top of the cliffs – only three metres high here – and swam off the rocks. The yacht came with all the toys too, the snorkelling kit being the very least of it, although they whiled away over an hour covering the bay, kicking lazily side by side as he pointed out an octopus to her and she found a starfish. She laughed until she almost cried as he had a go on the aquatic jetpack, face-planting several times into the water, before finally getting the hang of it and looking like Bond as he hovered at deck level and asked for some fruit – just to prove his dexterity and control.

  ‘Ever been on one of these?’ he asked later, pointing to the jetbike.

  ‘No,’ she replied, knowing exactly what was coming next. She had given up protesting. If Joe Lincoln wanted something, it happened.

  ‘Come on then.’

  They watched from the deck as one of the crew winched it into the water, both of them shrugging on the lifejackets.

  ‘I’ll go first,’ he said, eyeing up the sleek machine. It might as well have been a Lamborghini, he looked so excited by it.

  ‘Oh will you?’ she challenged, not even having to say it as he looked across at her.

  A second later, they were both in the water, splashing and laughing and coughing as they raced to get to it first, neither one of them aqua-dynamic in the buoyancy vests. Naturally, he won.

  ‘Only because you’re taller. You have a height advantage,’ she panted, still laughing as she kicked back in the water and looked up, watching him settle on the seat. ‘So in real terms, it was a draw. In which case it should be ladies first. If you were a gentleman you’d let me go first.’

  He looked down at her. ‘That’s skewed logic you’ve got,’ he said, a dark light gleaming in his eyes. ‘And I’ve never said I’m a gentleman.’

  She stuck her tongue out at him. Not her most eloquent riposte but sometimes, when he looked at her, she felt he tore the words away from her. Or the ground. Or the breath.

  ‘Tell you what, I shall be magnanimous in victory –’ He reached down a hand, offering to haul her up too. ‘Come on. There’s plenty of room.’ He shuffled forward slightly on the seat.

  ‘No, I was only joking,’ she grinned, kicking away from the bike again, floating easily in the lifejacket. ‘You go first. I’ll just watch.’

  ‘Get up here.’ His arm was still outstretched.

  Swallowing – knowing he didn’t respond to being told ‘no’ – she reached up and with a single tug was out of the water, balancing on the narrow lip that skirted around the bike. It wasn’t a tandem and although the seat was deep for one, two would be a push.

  ‘Look, it’s—’ she said nervously.

  ‘Just sit down,’ he said, talking over his shoulder.

  Biting her lip nervously, she swung her leg round and scuttled onto the seat behind him. There was just about enough room if she pressed herself as much as was possible against his back; the lifejackets didn’t make it easy but there were no handholds, nowhere to put her arms.

  ‘Holding on?’

  With no other option, she tentatively circled her arms around his waist. He smelled salty and earthy all at once, his arms twice the girth as they came down over hers.

  He revved the throttle and she automatically tightened her grip, braced for the sudden acceleration from nought to sixty. When it came, and she screamed, she felt him laugh, the vibrations from his chest pressing through her. The wind whipped back her hair as they zipped across the water’s surface, whizzing past the boat. To her surprise, she saw the crew winching down a second jetbike.

  ‘Oh!’ she cried, raising one hand to point it out to Joe, to show him.

  But he couldn’t have seen it or heard her, because in the next moment he took a hard left facing out to sea and sped them away faster and faster, making her scream with delight, the yacht at both their backs.

  Chapter Nineteen

  She had never seen so many donkeys in her life.

  ‘What’s the collective noun for a group of donkeys?’ she gasped as they emerged, still breathless from the climb up the steps, through the olive grove onto the dishevelled garden. ‘A herd?’

  ‘A drove, I think.’

  There had to be at least thirty-five of them tethered to various trees, their colourful leather reins slack around their necks, backs bare of burden as their handlers swarmed, lifting heavily plastic-wrapped sofas, tables, chairs, a small wardrobe, up to the house. The little terrace was almost lost from sight under the amount of furniture deposited there, an entire home set outside on the doorstep, waiting to be carried over the threshold.

  Chloe looked across at Joe questioningly. He wanted her to create order from this chaos?

  He shrugged. ‘It won’t be as bad as it looks.’

  ‘You don’t think?’ she scoffed, looking back at the pile of furniture and boxes. ‘I think you’ve confused me for a big strapping Kiwi house mover.’

  He glanced across at her, his quick up-down like fingers raking over her skin. ‘No, I definitely haven’t confused you for that,’ he said in an oblique tone.

  They walked up to the house and she put her head through the doorway. An assortment of leather-skinned men were milling about – oh God, more boxes, she saw – many of them talking in hurried Greek, some of them shrugging their shoulders, others shaking their heads.

  ‘Hello. Hello. Chloe,’ she said, placing a hand on her chest and smiling as they noticed her, the buzz of conversation dying down. ‘Thank you.’ She gestured to the boxes and furniture that had been placed all around. ‘Thank you. Very kind.’

  The men looked at her; they seemed to be waiting for something. Then she remembered. ‘Oh God, payment. Yes, right.’

  She patted her shorts but even as she did, she knew she hadn’t put her purse in them; it was still in her bag on the boat.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ve got it,’ Joe murmured from behind her, pulling a wallet out from his cargo shorts and beginning to peel off fifty-euro notes. Chloe looked on in as much astonishment as the men gathered round, all waiting to be paid. How much cash did that man carry?

  One by one, the donkey owners filed away in a procession, the retreating jingle of cowbells marking their progress over the dirt road and the long, hilly walk back to the port.

  She looked on wistfully as they departed, wishing they would stay and help. ‘Oh God, they’ve carried all that stuff this far, can’t they carry it the final few yards?’ she asked as the last few walked away over the scorched earth.

  ‘Absolutely not,’ he said, watching them leave too. ‘This is the fun part.’

  Fun? She was about to retort he clearly didn’t know the meaning of the word, but the day they had just spent together had been the very definition of it. She hadn’t stopped laughing – or screaming; he seemed to take pleasure in making her do one or the other and for a girl whose heart had just been broken – for the second time – she had done a remarkably good impression of being happy. Stepping out of her own life, into his, had been exactly the recovery she’d needed.

  ‘What first then?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, if you can take that sofa there, I’ll get this,’ he said, picking up a small cardboard box.

  Chloe’s jaw dropped. He had to be kidding?

  ‘Joking,’ he grinned, walking up and putting the box in her arms. His eyes were positively dancing with merriment and she felt a complicated whirl in her stomach at the sight of it. His teases felt provocative, always unnerving her.

  ‘Haha,’ she smiled, dropping her gaze.

  They worked well as a team. He had been surprisingly well organized when putting everything into storage in France, the boxes all being marked with different colour dots and each dot signifying a particular room – so yellow for the kitchen, green for the sitting room, purple for the master bedroom, red for the bedroom oppo
site, orange for the bathroom and so on. She unpacked all but the purple-dotted boxes; he said he’d do those himself.

  The big furniture wasn’t bad either; even those large pieces which he couldn’t move alone were fine when shared between the two of them, although she suspected he was taking most of the weight of everything and she was simply there to balance things. A gentleman after all, then?

  The bones of the building were strong – high ceilings, beautiful windows, aged floors – so it was easy to dress; in fact, it was rather like playing house when she’d been a girl. Almost everything seemed to be vintage and his taste was a lot more eclectic than she would have supposed. They put a faded coral-pink linen sofa in the old stable – or rather, the living room as it was now – with sky-blue linen armchairs at either end and a colourful Moroccan rug was unrolled over the flags; a big painted table and original 1960s rainbow-coloured butterfly chairs were set in the middle of the kitchen; they brought the wooden bedstead up in bits, Joe sitting on the floor for the best part of an hour while he wrestled with screws and nuts and bolts, much to Chloe’s amusement. ‘You know, as the boss of an engineering conglomerate, I would have expected you to be rather more . . . dextrous,’ she grinned – her turn to tease – as he struggled with an Allen key.

  It was dark by the time they finished several hours later, and with the electricity supply not yet reconnected – she made a note to chase it in the morning – they unpacked the last few boxes of towels, bedding and the like by the light of a church candle they had found on a window sill in one of the bedrooms.

  ‘Well,’ Chloe said, looking pretty pleased with herself as she looked around at the almost-finished result. It was still sparsely furnished of course, and there was much that still needed to be brought over, but this was a solid start; the rooms had character now, the house feeling more loved already. ‘I’ll give you this – you’ve got good taste, Joe Lincoln. But you really didn’t need me at all.’

  ‘Au contraire. You knock the spots off all the big strapping Kiwis I know.’

  She laughed. ‘What are we going to do with all this packaging?’ The boxes were piled six feet high, great sails of polythene wrapping lying in tangled heaps. She bent down to scoop some up, stuffing it into the nearest box where no one could trip on it. She took another box and, setting it on its side, stood on it, expecting it to buckle beneath her weight. But it stood firm.

  ‘Oh.’ She wiggled a little and gave several small jumps before the box began to crease and fold. But it wasn’t a straightforward collapse: one corner gave out first, tipping her sideways. ‘Ohhhh!’

  She lurched forwards, Joe just catching her like she was a gymnast as she pitched towards a side table. She felt his arms close like a vice and for a second she was too shocked to do anything but stare up at him, open-mouthed and wide-eyed. But then, the shock abated – and he was still holding her.

  She blinked once. Twice. That crackle that kept shooting between them was threatening to catch and ignite. She saw it in the way he was looking at her.

  ‘That would have been nasty,’ he said finally, setting her upright again.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’ She felt shaken – not by the fall but the capture. The moment that had flashed between them as his face was above hers, flickering in the candlelight, couldn’t be taken back. Ignored perhaps, but it was as though a seal had been broken and air was rushing in. She had a sense of momentum, of inevitability. Every hour, every minute that they spent in each other’s company, invisible lines were being crossed.

  A protracted silence pulsed between them as loudly as any dance-floor beat. She wasn’t sure what to say, where to look, where to put herself as he just stood there, watching her, as though what happened next was her decision.

  ‘I guess we should get back to the boat and return to the hotel,’ she said finally, turning away.

  ‘. . . Yes.’

  He walked across to the candle and blew it out; darkness swarmed but still the air felt charged, alight, as though suffused with electromagnetic rods.

  She found the flashlight on her phone and waited on the terrace as he locked up. She looked back at the proud farmhouse, hidden from civilization, the retreat he had wanted so badly, so impatiently. He had seen it for the first time yesterday evening and now it was his, already filled with his things.

  She still didn’t know the details of how he had made it all happen so fast, but what was it he’d said to her that night at the Basquiat retrospective? ‘Spontaneity is money’s single greatest gift.’ He had simply visited the old couple in the town before breakfast and by the end of the day, he was moving in. That was how things played out in his world. Why wait? If he wanted something, he simply went after it and made it his.

  Was he doing the same with her now?

  By the light of their flashlights, they walked over the ruined lawn, his hand – accidentally – brushing against hers once or twice as they dodged the larger rocks; they walked past the crumbling stone wall and through the grove of olive trees that looked like wizened statues in the moonlight. Not a word passed between them as they followed their own beams of light down the gentle slope to the sea. What was there to say? She had a feeling any conversation would just be diversion, cover. There was an unspoken truth now that was demanding to be addressed.

  At the cliffs, they looked down at the moored yacht bobbing gently on the dark sea, her lights gentle and discreet on the water, ready to take them back to civilization and back to the hotel, as though knowing what awaited them there. He let her go first down the steps and she stepped back onto the boat with a light foot – and frantically beating heart.

  Chapter Twenty

  She stood in her bedroom, looking out to sea, arms wrapped around herself as she watched the lights of a far-off water tanker glide across the horizon. She barely dared to move from the spot; she knew exactly what would happen if she joined him for dinner.

  The invitation had been innocuous enough – they were after all two colleagues (of sorts), together in a foreign country – but there was an undeniable undercurrent to their conversations now, a buzz in their silences, a light in their eyes that only seemed to be growing, and she couldn’t pretend otherwise. Even though he was her client. Even though she had followed him here with the single-minded pursuit of making her life simpler, not of complicating it further with him. Greece was supposed to have been her escape as much as his.

  No, staying here, in her room, was the right thing to do, the safe thing, and tomorrow she would catch the ferry to the mainland and the first flight back from Athens. She could leave him here in his Greek retreat, knowing she had done her job. She would fly back to New York, where she would see Poppy, face Jack and of course—

  Tom. She had come back to another block of missed calls and messages – they were all frustrated and angry now, her continuing silence the slap in the face that told him everything he needed to know, just not why.

  A quiet knock at the door made her turn and she stared at it with a look, as though she expected it to fly off its hinges at any moment. What was Joe doing? Hadn’t her refusal of dinner been clear enough?

  She stared at it, feeling the blood rush around her head. She didn’t know what to do. Should she pretend she wasn’t here? That she’d gone for a walk in the port? But, with her heart pounding, she found herself walking across the room.

  She stopped behind it, remonstrating with herself. She shouldn’t open it. This was a bad idea—

  And yet she did it anyway.

  ‘Oh.’ She was surprised – and crushed – to find a quartet of waiters standing there. ‘Mr Lincoln said you would prefer to have dinner in your room?’

  She hadn’t ordered anything yet; he had taken the liberty of ordering for her? ‘Oh. Yes.’ She stepped back, allowing them into the room, watching as two of them brought through a small square table, one a chair, and the other a large tray of silver-cloche-covered food. One of them had a wine bucket, filled with ice and a bottle of sauvign
on blanc.

  She sank onto the bed, getting out of their way, and picked up a Greek gossip magazine, pretending to look at the pictures as they set up on the balcony; she pretended not to notice her own disappointment, she refused to admit how gutted she felt that he had taken her at her word.

  ‘Dinner is ready, Miss Marston,’ the lead waiter said, coming back into the room a few minutes later. ‘Would you like me to pour your wine?’

  ‘No, that’s fine, I’ll sort myself out, thank you.’

  She tipped and the four of them left, closing the door behind them with a quiet click.

  Well that was that then, she told herself, standing in the middle of the room. Dinner in her room it was. Alone. For the night. Safe as houses.

  They were obviously both of the same view after all.

  With a sigh, she walked out onto the balcony. The waiters had dressed the table with a mink-grey linen tablecloth, a pale-pink candle flickering in a storm glass, her wine glass a rose-hued dimpled tumbler—

  ‘Good evening.’

  The voice to her right made her jump and she looked across to find Joe on his balcony, beside hers. Although not interconnected, they were only a metre apart – and he too had an individual dinner table laid out identically to hers.

  ‘Great idea having dinner in our rooms,’ he said drily as she gawped at the sight. ‘I like it.’ He raised his glass and toasted her, his gaze as steady as her hands weren’t. ‘. . . Are you going to sit?’

  With a laugh of utter disbelief, she sank down into her chair. The tables had been set at angles, so that the two of them faced diagonally towards each other.

  ‘Would you like me to pour your wine?’

  ‘And how are you going to do that?’ she laughed again, imagining him ridiculously leaning over the balcony and risking a forty-foot fall in the name of good manners.